Archive for the ‘US Constitution’ Category
The Biggest Threat to Freedom
Complacency! Surely it’s the biggest threat to freedom in America. While closet communists and Marxists boldly go about neutering the U.S. Constitution, far too many Americans have become so self-absorbed, so distracted by entertainment and amusement that an over-reaching and over bearing government can easily dictate the terms to which citizens must comply.
Posted in Has the Time Come to Replace the Federal Government?
After Clinton appointed Judge Susan Bolton ruled Wednesday that—for all intents and purposes—Arizona does not have the right to protect itself or its citizens from invading drug cartels and the illegal foreign hordes that are bleeding it dry of its resources, it should have become apparent to even the dimmest that We-the-People no longer exist. We are now living under a tyranny developed, directed, implemented and enforced by the Marxists in power.
The 17th Amendment Revisited
By Thomas E. Brewton
Original provisions of the Constitution intended to prevent Congress from enacting "dumb" laws were vitiated by ratification of the 17th Amendment.
Before ratification of the 17th Amendment it's unlikely that a Senate committee would have needed to raise the sort of question posed by Senator Coburn during confirmation hearings on Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court. A Wall Street Journal editorial reports editorial reports:
If Congress passed a law saying Americans were required to eat three fruits and three vegetables a day, Mr. Coburn asked, would that be legitimate under the Commerce Clause? It sounds like a "dumb law," Ms. Kagan wisecracked, which is true enough, but then she added that "courts would be wrong to strike down laws that they think are senseless just because they're senseless." In other words: Congress could do it.
The real question here is whether Ms. Kagan recognizes any limits on the Commerce Clause, which legislators have used as justification to regulate or mandate just about anything, and which the Obama Administration is eyeing as its golden ticket to defend ObamaCare. Some 20 states are challenging the law on the grounds that forcing people to buy health insurance shreds the Constitution.
… Ms. Kagan maintained that in recent years the Commerce Clause has been read broadly, to suggest "that deference should be provided to Congress with respect to matters that affect interstate commerce" and that "the principal protector against bad laws is the political branches themselves.
That one would have made James Madison howl.
I must disagree, however, with the Journal's understanding. Abundant evidence from James Madison's notes on the 1787 Constitutional Convention debates, as well as from the Federalist Papers and correspondence and speeches by prominent political leaders of the founding era, make clear that the Senate's role was to prevent Congress from passing laws that infringed upon powers traditionally reserved to state governments. Read the rest of this entry »
A Proposal For Updating The US Constitution
The way the current United States administration has disregarded the constitution and the will of the American people, is there any point left in having a constitution? From the Bastion of Urban Renewal and Progress (BURP), here is a new, re-writing of the US Constituion.
For Making The Constitution More Compatible With The Modern Age
This proposal has been created and authorized by our organization, the Bastion of Urban Renewal and Progress (BURP). This is a community organization which has its home office on the upper west side of Manhattan, and is dedicated to the betterment of humanity, the cleanliness of the earth and the causes of equality within and between all nations.
We here at our organization (BURP) have always considered the constitution a living and breathing document that should be updated periodically to reflect the changing needs of our community. However, it has gotten more difficult over the years to take a document that was written in the 18th century and keep it contemporary. Therefore, rather than amend the constitution, and continue to put tape and paper clips on an old and out-dated document, it is time for a complete re-writing of the constitution. We will start here with the first 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights.
The Danger Of A Government With Unlimited Power
By Thomas E. Brewton
The Obama administration continues the nation's travels, since Franklin Roosevelt's socialist New Deal in the 1930s, along what Friedrich von Hayek called The Road To Serfdom.
The fundamental thrust of liberal-progressive-socialist governments such as that of President Obama is to abrogate the rights of private property, aiming at the holy grail of their secular religion: redistribution of income and wealth to reduce everyone to an equally low state of economic equality.
But people don't readily abandon what they have labored to earn and save. As Lenin purportedly said, "Socialism emanates from the business end of a gun barrel." Hence the relentless push of liberal-progressives to expand the power of collectivized government in Washington.
The case can be made that, of all our rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, the Fifth Amendment's private property rights are the most important. People who are secure in their own property can maintain their rights to free speech and other aspects of constitutional government. People in a collectivized, socialistic government lose the will and the ability to fight for their rights. They slowly sink into dependence upon the political state, just as the German Empire's Chancellor Otto von Bismarck anticipated when he enacted the world's first systematic welfare-state program.
Private property rights were formalized as early as 1215 in Magna Carta, then in England's 1628 Petition of Right and its 1689 English Bill of Rights, the most fundament elements of the British constitution.
America’s Standing in the World
By Alan Caruba
I am already quite sick of hearing Democrat candidates say that we have to “improve America’s standing in the world” as if the whole world holds our nation in contempt or disagrees with our actions.
All nations act upon what they believe to be their best interests and those interests are often shaped by their political philosophy. These things are subject to change. For example, there are some 200 sovereign nations in the world. Of these, 120 are multi-party democracies. Compare this with 1970 when there were fewer than 35 nations that were not outright dictatorships or operating under the iron fist of the single party rule of Communism.
One might conclude from this that democracy is catching on around the world and that in this new century most people want some form of representative government for their nation.
This is what inspires Buddhist monks to risk their lives to march against the military dictators in Burma (now Myanmar). This is what provokes outrage in the former Soviet satellite of Georgia when the rule of law is suspended or, most dramatically, when lawyers and judges, along with others, pour into the streets of Pakistan when its president seeks to extend his term in office by declaring an emergency and martial law. It’s thousands of Venezuelans filling the streets to try to stop the dictatorial ambitions of Hugo Chavez.
Where did these nations and people learn about democracy and representative government? For the most part, the United States of America has been both the example and the instrument for the spread of these concepts.
Why You Should Own a Gun
By Alan Caruba
The murders on the Virginia Tech campus, the worst such rampage in our history, might have been mitigated if just one member of the faculty or a student had the means to return fire.
I have owned guns for decades. On rare occasions, I have had to “show” one of my guns to people with bad intentions. Not surprisingly, they changed their plans to take my money and do me some harm. The Virginia Tech murders confirm the value of empowering ordinary citizens to carry a concealed weapon.
On March 9 I learned of a ruling in the case of Parker v. District of Columbia in which Senior Judge Lawrence H. Silberman wrote an opinion, with Judge Thomas B. Griffith concurring, that restored the Second Amendment to the citizens of the District and, by extension, to every citizen of these United States. Not since 1976, had residents of the District had the right to defend themselves with force of arms.
Judge Silberman wrote, “In sum, the phrase ‘the right of the people’, when read intratextually and in light of Supreme Court precedent, leads us to conclude that the right in question is individual.”
As Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, noted succinctly, “The right of self-preservation was understood as the right to defend oneself against attacks by lawless individuals, or, if absolutely necessary, to resist and throw off a tyrannical government.”
First Amendment Separation of Socialism and State
by Thomas E. Brewton
Separation of church and state applies as much to the religion of socialism as to the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Read Sol Stern’s article in City Journal, the publication of the Manhattan Institute, which was the think tank whose ideas underlay Mayor Giuliani’s slashing of crime rates, tax cuts, reduction of public employee rolls, and revitalization of New York City’s economy.
As I have repeatedly asserted, and nearly every major socialist thinker has agreed, socialism is a religion (see Socialism: Our Unconstitutionally Established National Religion).
Therefore, the tax-supported teaching bias and methodology described by Mr. Stern are a gross violation of the First Amendment, which in the 20th century was interpreted by the Supreme Court as applicable also to states and local governments, via incorporation under the 14th Amendment.
New York City is at the extreme left wing of such educational practices, but Federal funding of elementary and secondary education has meant that a handful of liberal-Progressive-socialists have sufficient influence in textbook selection to see that the atheistic materialism of socialism permeates all of our educational system.
To some degree, all of our children are being taught that moral relativism is the proper approach to life and that everything good in their lives comes from the collectivized National State.
His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776http://www.thomasbrewton.com/
Lift Up Thy Voice as the First Admendment Nears Death
PHILADELPHIA – Repent America (RA) is urgently calling Christians not to exercise their "right to remain silent" as the federal "hate crimes" bill proposal, H.R. 1592, heads for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, May 3, 2007.
"H.R. 1592 is an unnecessary, unconstitutional, and un-American bill, which, with the aid of homosexual-friendly prosecutors, will be used to criminalize Christians for their thoughts, beliefs, and speech," stated Repent America director Michael Marcavage. "The silence of the American church, together with the unrelenting rage of the ungodly, will soon result in the widespread incarceration of true believers," said Marcavage.
In October of 2004, eleven Christians with RA were arrested while ministering and preaching the Word of God and the Gospel message on the public streets and sidewalks of Philadelphia during a taxpayer-funded celebration of homosexuality. After spending 21 hours in jail, the District Attorney’s office charged the eleven under Pennsylvania’s hate crimes law, along with a host of other felony and misdemeanor charges. These charges were later dismissed, but if convicted, the Christians would have faced up to 47 years in prison and $90,000 in fines each.
Social Contracts
by Thomas E. Brewton
Since the 1930s, most Americans have come to believe in a fairy tale that has no happy ending. Democrats' victories in the recent elections have revived the fairy tale.
Washington Post staff writer Dan Balz, in a November 13, 2006, article explores the unresolved questions and internal debates remaining after the recent congressional elections.
One of those questions, as he sees it, is:
Equally important is the question of which party can adequately address the twin problems of keeping the United States competitive in a global economy and restoring the social contract that has helped provide economic security to workers and that has been shattered as a result of the corporate restructuring that globalization has brought about.
Mr. Balz is working under a false assumption: the expectation that the Federal government controls business, as well as the idea that it is possible to have a "social contract" under which government can effectively provide economic security to workers.
That assumption originates in the religion of socialism, which presumes that councils of intellectual planners, backed by technocratic administrators, are capable of managing businesses better than businessmen. Intellectuals and technocrats theoretically are motivated solely by the common good, not by private greed for profit. Businesses therefore, in theory, will be more efficient and be able to support full employment at all times when under government control.
In practice, this hasn't worked well, a typical example being the collapse of the socialistic EU's technocratically-managed AirBus and the resurgence of Boeing.
The term "social contract" was most famously used by John Locke in 1689 and by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762. Locke's conception, not Rousseau's, was the basis of our War of Independence in 1776.
Locke erected a theoretical framework for a government of inherently limited powers. Even the king is subject to God's higher law of morality, which embraces the natural-law rights of individuals. Individuals, when they entered a social contract to create political society, retained inalienable rights to life, liberty, and private property. Hence our 1776 slogan, "No taxation without representation."