[TBP]

I don't believe you have read Hamilton's opinion on the constitutionality of the National Bank since your opinions express the false view that any constitutional act must be specificly traceable in the constitution.

This is the view of the primary author of the Constitution, James Madison, and many others. You assume that if one reads Hamilton's opinion, one must automatically agree. Not necessarily.

The purpose of the Constitution was to limit the power of the Federal government. While it needed to be increased and strengthened over what was in the Articles of Confederation, the Founders were very afraid of the kind of tyranny they had thrown off. They clearly intended to limit Federal power.

The Tenth Amendment makes this extremely clear: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

This is reinforced by Amendment 9: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

American government has grown almost totally because of the threat of warfare.

While wars have been major contributors to the growth of government, this is not really historically accurate. The government has grown in this past century cnsistently without regard to war or peace.

Only after two more world wars had it reached any significant size. The external threat after WWII kept it larger than before.

Given that there are major external threats of a nature unconsidered by the founders and that life is much different than when households were 20 miles apart we will have a government much bigger than that generally acceptable to the far Right. There is no way to go back to simpler times.

This comes dangerously close to the doctrine of the "living Constitution." The Constitution is the rulebook for the country. When you watch sports, would you want the officials deciding in the middle of the game to change the rules "to make it fair"? Of course not. You can't just change the rules without following the procedures.

A "living Constitution" is no Constitution at all.

Liddy's book's title is mere rhetoric and has little bearing on what was reality. It is not true that people had fewer rights impinged upon by money making activities.

People had a lot more freedom to earn a living, to conduct their lives the way they wanted, to eductate their children, and so forth 50 years ago and 100 years ago. There is no way to deny that.

It is true that they could not do anything about it when comibinations of wealth and power decided to do what ever they wanted.

But they couldn't just do whatever they wanted. For one thing, there was competition. No monopoly ever existed without government protection. For another thing, no one disputes the government's right to prevent fraud and to enforce contracts (although there may be different perspectives on how to do so most effectively.) And unions arose to pressure business to do certain things to the advantage of workers (and originally to keep blacks out of the labor force, BTW.) These factors, plus the "Invisible Hand" of consumers, work together to keep business abuses in check.

However bad these were, they are not nearly as dangerous or as harmful as the violations of our liberty that come from Big Government.

Laws to prevent such things were demanded and enacted - to protect rights.

You're kidding. That may have been the stated intention, but I don't believe it. These laws were enacted to keep teh people down, increase the power of the politicians, and make people dependent on the politicians so the politicians -- most of whom, unlike the early days of the Republic, couldn't get a real job if they had to -- could stay in their cushy jobs forever.

The RATmedia hates the GOP because it is too conservative.

I posted earlier a number of issues on which it isn't. Add amnesty for illegal immigrants to that list. The Republican Party may not be out-and-out Socialist like the Dimmycraps, but it is not functionally conservative.

The New York Conservative Party has had no significant influence since Buckley's victory and only by allying with the GOP could he have had any.

Actually, I know something about the Conservative Party. It rarely elects people on its own, although it does so sometimes. The Mayor of Buffalo was elected on teh Conservative Party ticket alone 7 years after Sen. Buckley's victory. The Conservative Party can exercise a measure of control over the New York Republican Party (which needs it) by conferring or withholding its endorsement, thus pulling the NY GOP to the right. That is a good thing.

Libertarians are not to the right of the GOP just the opposite.

I'm not a Liberatarian, but this really depends on how you define "right." If "right" is toward limited government, then the Libertarians are indeed to the right of the GOP. I will say for the Libertarians that they are committed to limited government, and I can't say that for the Republicans.

If, OTOH, you define "right" in moral/social-issue terms, then the Libertarians are to the Republicans' left. Social issues are where I have the most problems with them. Economically, we're very close.

And one things libertarians have done (thanks to Rand) is to bring back the moral argument for capitalism. The practical argument for the superiority of the free market is strong enough, but the moral argument for the superiority of the market is just as strong. Both make our case.

LIke it or not the "General Welfare" clause gives the feds immense undefined (purposely) powers.

See my comments abouve about the "living Constitution." Using this argument is effectively an argument for unlimited government power. Anything any politician wants to do can be attributed to the "general welfare." I'm sure you didn't mean to imply that the power of the Federal government is unlimited, or virtually so.

This is why a right to secede, as we did to the British Empire, is important. As Dr. Walter Williams points out, if the states can't secede, they have lost their ultimate enforcement mechanism and the Federal government can do anything it wants to them.

To quote Madison, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents...." And he should know; he wrote it.

Congress is clearly given the power to regulate federal elections and if the limits on contributions enacted earlier are constitutional (as the Court said) then I don't see how the recent CFR law is not.

The Court has said that money is speech. The First Amendment protects speech. The provision barring any advertisement by an outside group mentioning any candidate's name within 30 days of an election is clearly unconstitutional, as it restricts the speech not of politicians or the media, but of citizens.

The precedent of Buckley v. Valeo will get this bill tossed, IMO.

[justshutupandtakeit]

All the founders during the 1780s understood that every power possessed by the federal government was not specified, including Madison and Jefferson. All understood it was impossible to list all the things a government must do in a short document. Only after Jefferson began to foment his treachery against the Washington administration did the Republicans come out against "implied powers."

I do not believe you have read Hamilton's essay. If so please refute his points. Jefferson and Madison couldn't but maybe you will have better luck. Hamilton is as much an authority on the Constitution as Madison. He probably had more to do with its creation and adoption than even Madison.

The purpose of the Constitution was NOT to limit the federal government since the government had essentially collapsed and had no power to limit. The purpose was strictly "to form a More Perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility..." They certainly wanted to control the government but the purpose of the Constitution was NOT to limit the federal government. The tenth amendment is merely a rhetorical device without meaning in the development of constitutional law. Unless you can show me evidence to the contrary. It and the other useless amendment you reference was strictly concerned with local police powers, health regulations etc. They were passed primarily to reassure the slavers that the feds would leave their victims in their power. Neither amendment had anything to do with increasing freedom but the opposite.

Governmental growth had an explosive growth spurts this century during WWII other than that the rate of growth was very small.

Obviously the Founders did not want to straightjacket the nation by giving it a "Dead" constitution. This was prevented by providing for its adjustment to human life by the amendment process. No document is capable of extension far into the future to control a living process. Thus, Hamilton laid particular emphasis on the men who would have to activate the constitution. By itself the constitution would be useless. A "living constitution" is merely an understanding that the constitution can be changed by a process created within the constitution itself. Of course, it was never intended that it could be changed by judges outside the constitutional mechanism. That is not a "living" constitution but a cancerous one.

That is still false. Only CERTAIN people had all those rights. Blacks did not. In the little town I was raised in in south Arkansas they had the right to work in the sawmill but not the better paying paper mills. They had the right to go to the inferior Black schools but not the superb white schools. They had the right to live in the unpaved, unsewered "quarters" but not the right to live in the paved, sewered rest of town. This was not an anomaly but consistent with conditions all over the South. After the Civil War thousands of ex-slaves were murdered and even in this century race riots by whites killed Blacks in many cities including those in the North. The only people who had more rights back then were wealthy, white men few others. In early America there was strict control of personal behavior, even debtor's prison, churches were given tax revenues and non-attendance fineable or punished. Let's not ignore reality to paint a nostalgic, false picture of the past.

Unions only arose when the workingmen were able to defeat government assistance to the employers. In small towns often one big industry dominated everything. In Crossett, Arkansas as late as the thirties such a company not only owned all the housing, it owned stores and even hired and fired preachers in the local protestant churches. This again was not an anomaly. Anyone who dared speak out against the Company was run out of town. So much for their rights. I am very pro-business and anti-Union but the truth is the truth. We have far more choices today and far more opportunity to advance and learn than ever before. My options were far greater than my parents and my childrens' will be greater than mine.

Laws are not passed because government wants them but because the voters want them. It is false that the government does not represent the voters. It does, to our shame it does. The problem is not government but the American electorate and its drive to ignorance. That is another falsehood about the past. Almost all the founders were professional politicians. How many years was Madison in Congress and the White House? How many political offices did Washington hold? Only Abe Lincoln was a truly non-politician and Hamilton. The rest were professional politicians. Maybe like the Virginians they used the labor of others to pay for their play at politics but they were virtually to a man professional politicians. Care to tell me of some who weren't?

There never was a right to secede from the federal government. Every founder would have told you so. See Washington's Farewell Address. Walter Williams is not an expert on Constitutional Law or american history and his reflections on those subjects clearly demonstrate that. I won't argue with him about economics but he is out of his league in the other subjects. States have no true sovereignty so the only legal way for them to secede is to pass a constitutional amendment allowing it

There are, in reality, few practical limits on the federal government. The federal government can do anything it wants which does not violate the letter or spirit of the constitution. Sovereignty implies the right of a government to protect itself and the constitution was as perfect a creation as is possible by men. Hamilton recognized the inherent weakness of political documents and laws and stressed the importance of electing leaders of virtue and wisdom. The men make the system not the opposite.

The court clearly allows limits on speech and contributions to campaigns thus, it has already established the precedent of controlling the use of money in federal campaigns. Article I section 4 clearly gives Congress great power in controlling federal elections therefore I am not confident that the Court will throw out CFR.