The Opinionated Old Man

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Taking Back Our Country

I don’t say this lightly, but after spending considerable time watching our federal government and world affairs over the last 12 months and studying the Constitution, I’m now convinced that unless we make a drastic change in direction, we are experiencing the beginning of the fall of our Republic. Can’t happen to us? That’s what pre-WWII Germany thought.

In case you haven’t noticed, our elected representatives seem to be out of touch with their constituents. For one of many examples, universal health care continues to be discussed, even though polls show that significantly more Americans oppose it than favor it. ¹ Congress is busily deciding what health insurance each of us must own, what it will cover and how much it will cost. And on Saturday, the House approved arguably the worst bill ever to be debated on the floor of Congress, the misnamed “Affordable Health Care for America Act”. Yes, we still choose senators and representative and send them to Washington. But almost as soon as they finish decorating their Capitol offices, they are subsumed into a political machine to do their damage for the length of their terms of “service”. They are obligated to special interests. They vote for the favorite pork bill of a peer in return for the same. Corruption abounds. Congress isn’t listening to us. They understand only two things: power and money. According to Gallup, overall approval of congress is at a near-record low of 31% approval, 63% disapproval. ² Is this low approval rating changing their behavior? Amazingly, no. They continue to vote against the will of the electorate. From my personal experience, letters to our president and elected representatives frequently result in standard form letter replies. Senators and Representatives stand before town hall meetings and tell the audiences what is good for them, rather than listening. They refer to their constituents in derogatory, or even insulting, terms. Here’s a recent example, and one of many, of their arrogance as demonstrated by Baron Hill, Representative from Indiana:

Baron Hill Townhall

Another example: On October 22, when asked by a CNS.com news reporter “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?” she replied “Are you serious? Are you serious?” ³ My guess is that she neither knows nor cares what the Constitution says. Not even the Constitution can get in the way of her socialist agenda. An underling later sent an e-mail response incorrectly citing the interstate commerce clause.

Congress has exponentially accelerated our departure from the Constitution, a departure that began in the 1800’s. The Federal Government is rapidly infringing upon our ability to enjoy life, liberty and property, the very intents of the Constitution which all presidents and congressmen take oaths to uphold. Our republic is being systematically dismantled from within and as Cicero observed a few years back, that process is more dangerous than any attack that can come from foreign sources. "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not traitor, he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared." - Cicero, 42 B.C.

I have written previously about the contemporary misinterpretation of the “General Welfare” clause on the Constitution. ⁴ The founders clearly didn’t intend for it to allow the Federal government to do anything it wished. This was affirmed by James Madison when he wrote: “With respect to the words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” ⁵ And Thomas Jefferson in 1798 wrote: "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." ⁶ By “specifically enumerated”, Jefferson was referring to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. (References 5 and 6 are excellent treatises on the subject.)

Our founders and other wise men since have warned us about the greatest pitfall of a democracy. A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy. ⁷ Thomas Jefferson wrote: “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” ⁸ And Dr. Adrian Rogers said: “The government can’t give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody. And when half of the people get the idea they don’t have to work because the other half’s going to take care of them, and when the other half get the idea it does no good to work because somebody’s going to get what I work for, that, dear friend, is about the end of any nation.” ⁹ Our nation is dangerously close to the tipping point. Nearly half of all families and individuals will pay no income tax for tax year 2009. ¹⁰ And even though we are a Republic and not a democracy, Congress is acting lately as though we are neither.

A Solution

I’ve heard it said that we need to replace bad senators and representatives at the next voting opportunity, and that may well happen. I hope so. But I recommend going much further. I think it would send the strongest message possible by removing and replacing EVERY elected U.S. congressman. But why replace the “good” ones? Even if you think there are still some “good ones”, the short answer is to get Congress’s attention in a dramatic way. Next year we have the opportunity to replace 37 of 100 Senators and all 435 Representatives. Simply vote against the incumbents. In cases where the incumbent isn’t running, vote for Libertarian, Conservative, Constitutional or true Republican Party candidate. What a powerful message that would send, not only to Congress, but also to our self-absorbed president who thinks it is acceptable to select an advisor who is a self-professed communist.

Once we clean house in congress, what next? The reality is that we can’t immediately reverse over 150 years of slow, methodical erosion of our liberties, but we have to start somewhere. For starters, I suggest the following steps.

1. Immediately rescind all stimulus bills, and return to taxpayers the portions which haven’t been spent. Oh, I almost forgot, that is money the government doesn’t have anyway. So how about we just not continue borrowing against our children’s and grandchildren’s futures?

2. Divest of all government-owned finance, loan, banking, insurance and auto companies, and any other enterprises which rightfully belong in the private sector. Sell these to private investors for whatever the free market will bear.

3. Pass a Constitutional Amendment requiring a balanced-budget. The provision should require that each year’s Federal budget equal the Congressional Budget Office’s projected income. Debt maintenance would be covered as an expense. Article V of the Constitution specifies how it may be amended.¹² The legislatures of two thirds of the states may call for a constitutional convention for proposing amendments, which when ratified by three fourths of the states become part of the Constitution. Congress may also propose amendments, but don’t hold your breath until this happens for a balanced-budget amendment.

4. Repeal the 16^th Amendment, abolish income tax, and replace it with a consumption tax.

5. Begin to nullify all laws which don’t adhere to the Constitution. Rescind all federal laws which usurp rights reserved to the states and individuals, i.e. laws which are violations of the 10^th Amendment, and there are many.

6. Adopt the following proposed Constitutional Amendment XXVIII: In promoting and providing for the “General Welfare”, as used in the Preamble and Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, congress shall limit such promotion and provisions to powers specifically enumerated by Article 1, Section 8.

7. Demand a constitutional amendment that creates within the Judicial Branch a 12-member constitutional advisory committee selected in the same manner as the Supreme Court. This committee would have the responsibility of providing an assessment of the constitutionality of all new federal laws before the President could sign them. It would have strictly an oversight function. The Legislative and Administrative branches would then have an incentive to only pass laws deemed constitutional under threat of being removed by their constituents. OK, I’ll admit this is a half-baked idea, and it has numerous problems, but ones that I believe can be worked out. But the premise is that with the vast majority of the electorate woefully ignorant of constitutional law and too busy to actively monitor Congress, we need better oversight of potential legislative violations of our Constitution.

8. In all future elections, elect Christian congressmen who hold to the values of honesty, integrity, and personal responsibility, and who can put aside self-serving interests in favor of a genuine concern for our nation’s children, grandchildren and future generations.

How

Judge Andrew Napolitano in his book, “A Nation of Sheep” wrote: “Sheep stay in their herd and follow their shepherd without questioning where he is leading them. The American flock continues to graze happily upon its safe, green grass within the bubble of the American Dream.” ¹¹ We have to overcome massive individual complacency. Don’t be a sheep. You are responsible for your government. Become educated. Learn, or refresh your memory of the Constitution. It’s short and easy to read. ¹² Read about how our personal, constitutionally-guaranteed liberties have been gradually eroded. Pay attention to what Congress is doing and let them know when you disagree with proposed legislation or when they vote the wrong way. Call or write your state legislators and demand a constitutional convention. Don’t rely on others to do your bidding, or assume that they share your values. If you think the above list of changes can never happen, I refer the reader to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “...that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” ¹³ Let’s demonstrate by our actions that it is still our government.

In summary, even if you don’t agree with my proposed solutions, develop your own, but by all means, please get involved. If you don’t have time to be involved, at the absolute minimum, be educated. I am convinced that we are predominantly a nation of right-headed, freedom-loving, patriots – we just don’t vote. Let’s collectively take back our country and restore it to its intended role of protector of freedom and not an oppressor thereof. It can be done.

I’ll close with a very apropos quote of Thomas Sowell concerning the current congress: “One of the few advantages to the country in having Congress overwhelmingly in the hands of one party is that the lack of need to compromise lets the leaders of that party reveal themselves for what they are-- in this case, people with unbounded arrogance and utter contempt for the right of ordinary people to live their lives as they see fit, much less the right to know as citizens what laws are going to be passed by their government. The question is whether voters will remember on election day in 2010.” ¹⁴

Recommended reading

• A Nation of Sheep, Andrew Napolitano, Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2007

• Liberty and Tyranny – A Conservative Manifesto, Mark R. Levin, Threshold Editions, 2009

• The Revolution – A Manifesto, Ron Paul, Grand Central Publishing, 2008

• Arguing With Idiots – How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government, Glenn Beck, Threshold Editions, 2009

References

1. Rassmusen Reports, Health Care Reform, October 19, 2009:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/september_2009/health_care_reform

2. Both Parties in Congress Near Record-Low Approval, Gallup, September 17, 2009: http://www.gallup.com/poll/123011/Parties-Congress-Near-Record-Low-Approval.aspx

3. CNSNews.com, question for Nancy Pelosi, October 22, 2009:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/55971

4. Coming Out of the Closet, The Opinionated Old Man, 3/25/2009
http://opinionatedoldman.blogspot.com/search/label/Coming%20Out%20of%20the%20Closet

5. Hoover Institution, Stanford University, The Unconstitutional Congress
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3566517.html

6. The Liberal Heretic, The Welfare Manifesto... or our Constitution?, Joe Sponica
http://www.theliberalheretic.com/blog/node/1017

7. Often attributed to Tytler, but the original author is unknown

8. Thomas Jefferson Quotes:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1531520/posts

9. Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931 – 2005

10. Urban Institute and Brooking Institution Tax Policy Center – Who Pays No Income Taxes:
http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/blog/_archives/2009/7/8/4243062.html

11. A Nation of Sheep, Andrew Napolitano

12. The United States Constitution:
http://constitutionus.com/http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html

13. Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm

14. Townhall.com, Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/11/10/random_thoughts?page=2

No comments:

Quotable quotes

In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 to assist some French refugees, James Madison, the father of our Constitution, stood on the floor of the House to object, saying, "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."

James Madison

"No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to. Let the national government be entrusted with the defence of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body..."

Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 2 Feb.

"God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it." -Daniel Webster

"1. It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

2. Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

3. Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

4. Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

5. One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.

6. The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.

7. The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

8. The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

9. What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long."

10. More than a century and a half of ignoring downturns in the economy never produced a depression as deep or as long as the 1930s depression, with its many federal interventions, first under Herbert Hoover and then under Franklin D. Roosevelt."

Thomas Sowell

"“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Mark Twain

"There is no constitutional authority for two-thirds to three-quarters of what Congress does." - Walter E. Williams, Constitutional Awakening, 3/24/2010

"The care, therefore, of every man's soul belongs unto himself, and is to be left unto himself. But what if he neglect the care of his soul? I answer: What if he neglect the care of his health or of his estate, which things are nearlier related to the government of the magistrate than the other? Will the magistrate provide by an express law that such a one shall not become poor or sick? Laws provide, as much as is possible, that the goods and health of subjects be not injured by the fraud and violence of others; they do not guard them from the negligence or ill-husbandry of the possessors themselves. No man can be forced to be rich or healthful whether he will or no." - John Locke, A Letter concerning Toleration, 1689

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” - Winston Churchill

"To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality." From "General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294." — Pierre Joseph Proudhon

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote"-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." - George Washington

"Among the many infirmities of age is omniscience." - Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years." - Anonymous (although see: "The Truth About Tytler" )

"...if you STILL believe that our Constitution isn't under attack, well, then you've probably never read it." - Glenn Beck - 8/18/2009

"There exists a law, not written down anywhere, but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right." - Cicero - approx. 2000 years ago

"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." - Ecc 10:2 , King Soloman, NIV

"The people who go around talking about their soft hearts - I admire them for their soft hearts, but unfortunately it very often extends to their heads as well." Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006. For the full quote:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6813529239937418232&

"Friend, you cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. And what one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government can’t give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody. And when half of the people get the idea they don’t have to work because the other half’s going to take care of them, and when the other half get the idea it does no good to work because somebody’s going to get what I work for, that, dear friend, is about the end of any nation.” - Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931 - 2005

"As the expression goes, when a Republican becomes a Democrat, the average IQ increases on both sides of the aisle." -Ann Coulter, Guilty - Liberal "Victims" and their Assault on America, 2008

I enjoy the humor I find in daily life. Here's the latest example. Yesterday I replaced a burned-out belt on our vacuum cleaner. I found this on the belt wrapper: "IMPORTANT: Turn vacuum cleaner OFF before replacing belt." I'm so glad I read that, as it kept me from perhaps loosing fingers trying to put the belt on a rapidly-spining motor shaft and connecting the belt to a round beater bar wrapped with vicious brushes!

"The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little." - Mark Twain's Notebook, 1902-1903

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." - Mark Twain, a Biography

"Ought not then the right of each successive generation to be guaranteed against the dissipations and corruptions of those preceding, by a fundamental provision in our Constitution? And if that has not been made, does it exist the less, there being between generation and generation as between nation and nation no other law than that of nature? And is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy, and that in instituting the system of finance to be hereafter pursued we shall adopt the only safe, the only lawful and honest one, of borrowing on such short terms of reimbursement of interest and principal as will fall within the accomplishment of our own lives." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:357

Paraphrase: It is immoral to pass national debt on to our children's generation.

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. -- I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer." — Benjamin Franklin - 1766

http://www.historycarper.com/resources/twobf3/price.htm

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

No comments:

Post a Comment