Sheesh. A weak ending to a simpistic article.
People shouldn't be free to do that?
...men not only being able to harness electrical power, but then selling it at a huge profit and brokering future power in such a way as to extract obscene profits from the promised power contracts, and in such a way as to unjustly elevate the cost of all electrical power at the expense of millions of ratepayers and for the profit of a politically connected hierarchy?
You mean like when government allows only ONE company to run power lines in any given area thereby creating a monopoly for power? How about when the state legislature makes it illegal for competing power companies in other states to sell power in their state thereby decreasing the supply and increasing the cost? How about government subsidies to companies to continue developing century-old sources of power (like the internal combustion engine) instead of relying on the free-market to develop cleaner, cheaper, and more efficient power?
And how would John Hancock react if, while he was drafting an official document, his computer began flashing a dreaded "blue screen" and error message before his whole system froze up and wouldn't allow him to store or even work off-line?
He might react by installing Linux.
The thing the founders would agree on, both in the radical years of the Revolution and the more conservative period of the early republic, is the importance of independence. Today many are dependent on the government for our income or upkeep. Such people don't have an independent stake in society and try to extort their money from others using the government machinery. Most of us work for someone else or are dependent on the course of the stock market. Self-reliance produced independence of mind and limited government. Dependence produces the opposite.
On the subject of taxes, the founding fathers could not have been clearer. The Constitution creates two classes of tax -- direct and indirect -- that are spelled out in the plainest possible language,
Article 1, Section 2: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union"
Article 1, Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises...but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States"
Article 1, Section 9: "No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census of Enumeration herein before directed to be taken."
Then, to ensure the central government didn't overstep its clearly enumerated limits, the fathers added the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, which protect us from unreasonable search and seizure and direct that noone cannot be compelled to be a witness against himself.
Today, however, Washington and the courts routinely obscure, ignore and -- when all else fails -- violate these clearly defined distinctions. They get away with it because 70-plus years of compulsory, government-run schooling has erased any collective memory or knowledge of the Constitution. When people don't know what rights they have under the supreme law of the land, they don't know when those rights are being trampled and destroyed.
The only crime that folks like Irwin Schiff of Freedom Books and Bob Schulz of We The People Foundation have committed is to remind everyone of these routine violations and attempt to hold our legislators' feet to the fire. For reminding Congress and the people of these simple truths, they are branded tax protestors, cranks or worse.
When Jefferson said "Let us bind up government in the chains of the Constitution", he knew how easy it was for a central government to morph into the overtaxed police state we live in today. If Jefferson, Henry, Madison or Mason saw how eagerly Americans submit themselves to this spectral power on the Potomac, they would probably just look at each other and ask, "Why did we bother writing a constitution in the first place?"
filthy-rich owners
extract obscene profits
huge profit
high tariffs
starving people
thousands of workers into the street
John Adams would denouce us for our Godless behaviour and for caving in to tyrannic Federalism.
Three weeks later the National Enquirer would run an expose on his weekend trist in Vegas with Hal Berry.
I'd still vote for him.
*grin*
Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Can't this author understand simple gammar and read simple english.
It's pretty clear to most people.
The present and past antics of Hitlery would cause voter disenfranchisement. Many traitors (one who served himself as president) and malcontents would be rounded up and executed by military firing squads.
In short, there would be massive reversals and internments with war being declared and swiftly carried out against all muslim nations. The religion would be banned in America and their temples razed. All adherents to this satanic religion would be deported or incarcerated.
It wouldn't take these founding fathers too long, but they would indeed put this country back in as close to its original shape as possible.
No more welfare or charity coming from the drastically downsized federal government. Drug addiction would be considered a serious offence against the citizenry both for user and seller resulting in death for both.
Well they probably wouldn't approve of tax revenues for public education at ALL!! Considering that before the War, the only hint of federally funded education was in the Northwest Ordinance and that public education did not exist, I imagine they'd be pretty POed. That's the problem with this nation of states. The revisionist history has taught us that the government has always taken care of us. I imagine there's an idiot or two out there that believes Social Security was around long before FDR. Or any federal police force? Anybody care to take a guess how long that's been around?
Pathetic.
How, for example, might Thomas Jefferson view the circumstances under which grown men might be drafted to serve indeterminate lengths of time and paid outlandish amounts of money to play games of baseball and football? What would he think of the fact that they serve variable and insecure tenures at the whim of filthy-rich owners who might sever their relationships by trading them, as one might trade a manservant, to another owner in a far-off province such as Cleveland?Jefferson would have noted that these voluntary transactions (the players, after all, may retire rather than accept the trade) are absolutely none of the business of the government or any other civil authority.
He'd also consider Seattle much more of a "far-off" province than Cleveland. >:)
-Eric