What I’m talking about is trying to convince other people that the federal government has no interest in following the Constitution as it was written. More than that is in trying to convince people of the degree that the federal government has deviated from following it.
I’ve written before about the consequences of accepting the premise of the enemy in the political arena of ideas. The basic upshot of this is that if one wishes to win, one should not fight on the enemy’s battlefield while accepting their rules and terms of engagement.
This is very important in today’s politics.
I see day after day honest conservatives buying into every single premise that liberals propose, as if what the liberals are proposing is the irrevocable truth. I really wish we, as a country, as limited government conservatives, as people who want our freedom, wouldn’t do that.
In football terms this would be like the coach of your team, when playing defense, granting to the opponent’s team half of the distance to the first down on every single play. “Ten yards to first down?” the coach says. “I’ll give you five yards!”
Possibly it’s worse than that. It’s more like each play the coach grants the other team half of the distance to the end zone. Then when playing offence the coach grants the other team half of the distance to their own end zone on every play. Then the coach accepts the opponent’s desire to have his team play in hand and ankle cuffs, with their feet embedded in hundred pound concrete blocks. You’d have to be a very crazy and self destructive team owner to hire a coach who operated in this way.
There is this crazy idea of the living Constitution, where the federal government, currently mostly run by liberals, defines the interpretation of the Constitution that best serves their own interests, or more likely their own investment portfolios, and that’s just what we all do.
If you think this is the way it is supposed to be then I’ll be happy to join you in a game of Poker wherein the rules are living as interpreted by me.
The constitutionality of Social Security was challenged very early on in three cases. Carmichael v. Southern Coal & Coke Co., Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, and Helvering v. Davis. As you can read the particulars of the cases elsewhere, I’ll spare you the long and boring details. These cases hinged on the Tenth Amendment verses the “General Welfare” clause of Article One, Section Eight.
For those who regularly read my posts you all know that I’m not a big fan of citing authority with regards to matters of constitutionality. In this case I’m going to diverge from that just a bit and refer to the guy who was largely responsible for writing it. The following are two quotes from James Madison that make a very large portion of the point for me. I do so with the belief that he wrote it, so he must have had some idea of what he was really talking about.
"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."
"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. ... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America."
These two quotes are quintessentially the point of view of the conservative use of government verses the liberal use of government.
Now the liberals will loudly proclaim, “See! You had to go outside of the Constitution to make your point!”
Very well then. Forget the opinion of the guy that wrote it. We can make the point within the Constitution itself, just as Madison said. Let’s look at the first and last clauses of Article One, Section Eight then. I don’t even have to follow up with the Tenth Amendment.
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States…”
"…To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”
Sandwiched in between these two clauses, which are part of a single sentence, is a list of things that Congress has the power to do. In short they are allowed to tax, pay the debts, provide for defense, borrow money, regulate commerce, establish rule of naturalization, make laws on bankruptcies, coin money and regulate the value of it and of foreign coin, fix the standard of weights and measures, provide punishment of counterfeiting, establish post offices and roads, copyright laws, constitute tribunals inferior to the supreme court, write laws to punish pirates, declare war, authorize civilian ships to capture enemy ships during war, raise and support Armies, provide and maintain a navy, make rules for the land and naval Forces, provide for calling forth the militia, provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia and its officers and training, do some stuff about the national capital, necessary government buildings, forts, arsenals, etc..
It’s funny how the liberals always remember the “provide for the…general Welfare” part of the sentence, which is by definition grossly taken out of context. They also always forget the “general Welfare of the United States” part of the sentence as well as the “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution.” Particularly the word “vested” which in this context means that in order for the power to be valid it has to be named somewhere in the Constitution.
(Note: “General Welfare of the United States means, strangely enough, general welfare of the United States. Ohio is a State. New York is a State. Texas is a State. When did Social Security achieve statehood?)
My. Isn’t that convenient?
On this site I found the following synopsis of the Steward case:
“In a 5-to-4 decision, the Court held that the tax under the Social Security Act was a constitutional exercise of congressional power. Writing for the majority, Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo found that the tax did not coerce the states in contravention of the Tenth Amendment. The Court underscored the high rate of unemployment and poorly performing economy in concluding that the tax would benefit the general welfare. According to the majority, the Act would benefit both the states and the federal government. The majority rejected the argument that the Act provision was void as involving an unconstitutional attempt to coerce the States to adopt unemployment compensation legislation approved by the Federal Government.
"In dissenting opinions, Justices McReynolds, Sutherland, Van Devanter, and Butler viewed the Social Security Act as a Congressional overreach. These dissenters came to be known collectively as the Four Horsemen, the conservative members of the Court who opposed President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda.”
Because it was a 5-4 split the decision came down to one single person. If one of the five would have ruled the other way then absolute truth for the taxation of the People of the United States would have fallen the other way.
In addition to the logical fallacy that one person can ever be the deciding factor of ultimate truth for everybody, the Supreme Court looked at the economy as it was in 1937 and concluded based on that, that taxing the ever living crap out of us is constitutional, then, now and for all time. Had the economy been great they might have concluded that it was unconstitutional. Or is it constitutional only in a bad economy and unconstitutional in a good one?
It begs the question of, what is the standard for determining constitutionality if it is not the actual text of the Constitution?
More likely it is “constitutional” because they say so—not because the Constitution says so—and they’ve got all of the biggest guns behind them, and great profits to make on their investments with political conflicts of interest, so what are you going to do about it bucko?
I was recently engaged in conversation with someone regarding Social Security and the Supreme Court. This guy knew the Constitution. He knew that there is no authorization within it that gives the federal government authority for Social Security. He freely admitted the Supreme Court had no authority to make the decision they did. Yet he was of the opinion that Social Security was constitutional because the Supreme Court said so and nobody had yet challenged it so the Supreme Court could overturn it.
This is exactly what is meant by accepting the premise of the enemy.
I get it. They’ve decided that’s what they are going to do and there is nothing at the moment I can do to stop them. They are taking the money under false and fraudulent pretenses and there is nothing I can do to stop them.
But that doesn’t mean that I have to agree with them doing it! That doesn’t mean I have to change my mind and believe it is constitutional until some other future Supreme Court comes along and tells me that I should think otherwise. The Supreme Court does not have authority over my mind!
I’m reminded of the lyric in the song by Rush, “No, his mind is not for rent, To any god or government, Always hopeful, yet discontent, He knows changes aren't permanent, But change is.”
This is the attitude we must take. Don’t give your mind away to the liberal’s ideas of what things are.
If we let the Supreme Court tell us what to think and we think it is true simply because they said so, the battle, the war and the country is already lost. If we know what we know and are bold enough to say so, while articulate enough to express it to other people, enough people will eventually believe it and stop supporting the tyrannical idea that the federal government gets to do whatever they want.
As it is the Supreme Court is just another part of a very large mechanism to force the will of the federal government on the People of the United States, at the expense of their freedom.
Over and over again, decision after decision, I see both liberals and conservatives waiting in eager anticipation of what the Supreme Court decides with regards to every single case. Doing so in the hope that they will be in agreement with their own minds and so they can go ahead and do as they wish. Then when they return a decision against their own best interests and in conflict with their own way of thinking they just shrug their shoulders and walk away saying, “oh well, the Supreme Court said so. We’ll just have to get a future court to overturn that.”
That’s the liability of the Supreme Court and what makes them dangerous. They can decide for everybody on one day how things are supposed to be, on whatever whim they want, in direct contradiction to the Constitution, and then on the next day decide the exact opposite, or something else, in direct contradiction to the Constitution. And we accept it.
“The Supreme Court says they can take my money based on whatever they think is important, as defined by them, so here’s my wallet. God bless America!”
There is a word we the People seem to have forgotten. Totalitarianism.
There is a lot I could say about Social Security. I could say that if you set up a private pension company based exactly on how Social Security is set up you would be locked up for fraud. I could say that it’s just another way for a corrupt government to justify taking our money. I could say it is taken by threat of force and spent as an additional tax. I could say that if they didn’t take so much of my money now I wouldn’t need their help later in life. I could say that as all fraud collapses eventually so will this one. I could say the economy would be better with that money in our pockets instead of theirs. I could that and many, many other things about it and I could make a very convincing case that every single one of these other things is true.
I could never say that it is constitutional.
Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part One
Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Two
Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Three
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