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10thAmendment
08-02-2008, 12:26 AM
The People's Declaration of Independence
from the Constitution-Ignoring Federal Government

Here's the problem with FDR's big, unconstitutional federal government that we have reluctantly inherited, and how to resolve it.

The main problem with our federal government is actually not the government but the people. The problem with the people is that ignorance of the Constitution and its history is epidemic. Widespread constitutional ignorance is evidenced by the following links.

http://tinyurl.com/npt6t
http://tinyurl.com/hehr8

The consequence of widespread constitutional ignorance is that the people are impotent to stop ongoing abuses of federal government power, particularly by Congress, the USSC and judges in general. Let's examine how serious abuses of legislative and judicial federal powers got started as a consequence of widespread ignorance of the law of the land when FDR was President.

With respect to constitutionally unauthorized federal spending by Congress, although FDR's intention to feed hungry Americans was commendable, he blissfully ignored that his constitutionally haphazard approach to starting his New Deal programs would have catastrophic consequences. To understand why, consider the following.

The Founders had made it clear in the Constitution that federal government powers must not only be enumerated in the Constitution, but that federal spending is reasonably limited to such powers.

Article I, Sec. 8, Clause 18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary (emphasis added) and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution (emphasis added) in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

As noted by Clause 18, the other items listed in Sec. 8 of Article I are good examples of enumerated, spending-related powers.

The hurdle that FDR faced with respect to establishing his New Deal programs was that such federal government responsibilities had never been vested to it by the Constitution. Indeed, because of the Constitution's silence concerning the kind of programs that FDR wanted to implement, the 10th A. automatically reserved government power to administer such programs to the states, not the federal government.

10th Amendment: 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.

So in order for FDR to be able to provide constitutionally authorized federal assistance for people through his proposed spending programs, he first needed to rally the states to exercise their Article V power to amend the Constitution to include his programs. Once this was done, Congress would have the justification to lay taxes to administer them.

Instead, FDR unthinkingly created a situation which fostered a constitutional disaster, a national disaster second only to the Civil War.

As if FDR didn't understand the Founder's requirement for constitutionally enumerated federal powers, he strong-armed the USSC to essentially ignore the Founder's division of federal and state government powers evidenced by the 10th Amendment. He did so so that the USSC could give the green light to his constitutionally unauthorized New Deal programs. FDR then turned his head while the USSC began its tradition of sweeping 10th A. protected state powers under the carpet, a tradition which persists to this day.

Continued in next post...

10thAmendment
08-02-2008, 12:27 AM
...Continued from previous post.

The immediate consequence of constitutional flunky FDR's misguided politics is that he unwittingly gave Congress the bogus license to use his wide, politically correct interpretation of the general welfare clause as the "constitutional" basis to justify his New Deal programs.


Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: 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 (emphasis added) of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Considering that we are all now unfortunately expert witnesses to this, every one of us can testify that Congress has continued to use FDR's "profound insight" into the general welfare clause as a constitutionally unchecked excuse to party the taxpayer's dollars away.

But in Congress's "defense," I will also say that members of Congress are not necessarily crooks where the routine practice of earmark funding is concerned. Getting back to the main problem indicated by this essay, we shouldn't be surprised that there are members of Congress who are as ignorant of constitutional federal spending restraints as the people who voted them into office, regardless of any Ivy League schooling.

Getting back to FDR, with the 10th A. politically repealed, FDR and Congress began using the general welfare clause as an excuse to bypass the Article V power of the people to amend the Constitution to formally delegate spending-related powers to the federal government. In other words, thanks to FDR's folly, the federal government has, for many decades, been creating its own powers independently of the will of the Article V majority by simply inventing new ways to spend taxpayer's money in the name of "good" intentions.

Fortunately, Thomas Jefferson comes to our rescue with respect to clarifying the Founders' forgotten intentions for constitutionally limited federal spending. Jefferson had noted that regardless that the federal government has the power to lay taxes, the good intentions of the president or federal lawmakers, FDR's intentions for his New Deal programs for example, are no substitute for constitutionally enumerated federal powers which reasonably direct how our tax dollars should be spent.


"1. To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, "to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare." For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase, not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please, which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless.

It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please."

--Thomas Jefferson concerning the constitutionality of establishing a national bank, 1791 http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/amerdoc/bank-tj.htm


In fact, to emphasize the constitutional illegitimacy of federal spending programs like Social Security and Medicare, consider that Jefferson had also noted that the Founders had trusted the states, not the federal government, with the care of the people.


"Our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to others and several States as among themselves. To the united nation belong our external and mutual relations; to each State, severally, the care of our persons, (emphasis added) our property, our reputation and religious freedom." --Thomas Jefferson: To Rhode Island Assembly, 1801. ME 10:262 http://tinyurl.com/onx4j

Continued in next post...

10thAmendment
08-02-2008, 12:27 AM
...Continued from previous post.

But FDR's ignoring of constitutional spending restraints on the federal government was only the beginning of big-government problems.

After the USSC wrongly turned its head away from Congress's exercising of non-existant federal government powers, crooked justices, ignoring their oaths to defend the Constitution, began to use FDR's license to ignore the 10th Amendment for their own, self-serving purposes. Justices front-ending special interest agendas began using FDR's bogus license as their basis to deny state powers, legislating special-interest agendas from the bench. They ignored state powers with perverted interpretations of the 1st and 14th Amendments, unlawfully limiting our religious freedoms, for example. Such abuses of judicial power have resulted in a disastrous erosion of traditional family values.

In fact, let's examine how FDR's 10th-A. ignoring establishment of his New Deal federal spending programs ultimately led to the USSC's scandalous, 10th A.-ignoring legalization of abortion.

To begin with, since the federal Constitution says nothing about abortion, the 10th A. automatically reserves government power to address abortion to the state governments. So what happened to the 10th A. when the Court decided Roe v. Wade? Indeed, the Roe v. Wade opinion doesn't mention the 10th A. protected powers of the states (corrections welcome).

In order to better understand what happened to the 10th A., lets first examine how majority justices had continued to sweep 10th A. protected state powers under the carpet in previous, state-power related cases.

Justice Owen Roberts, a Hoover-nominated RINO, expressed his politically correct understanding of the relationship of the 14th A. to the 1st A. in the Cantwell opinion as follows.


"The First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The Fourteenth Amendment has rendered the legislatures of the states as incompetent as Congress to enact such laws. The constitutional inhibition of legislation on the subject of religion has a double aspect." --Mr. Justice Roberts, Cantwell v. State of Connecticut, 1940. http://tinyurl.com/38a87c

The problem with Justice Roberts' "profound insight" into the 1st and 14th Amendments is that he outrageously misrepresented the intentions of John Bingham, the main author of Sec. 1 of the 14th Amendment. This is because Bingham had clarified, both before and after the ratification of the 14th A., that the 14th A. was not intended to take away any state's rights. See for yourself.


"The adoption of the proposed amendment will take from the States no rights (emphasis added) that belong to the States." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe http://tinyurl.com/2rfc5d

"No right (emphasis added) reserved by the Constitution to the States should be impaired..." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe http://tinyurl.com/2qglzy

"Do gentlemen say that by so legislating we would strike down the rights of the State? God forbid. I believe our dual system of government essential to our national existance." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe http://tinyurl.com/y3ne4n

Given that Justice Roberts' interpretation of how the 14th A. affects state powers flies in the face of Bingham's clearly stated limits for that amendment, is it any wonder that 10th A. protected state powers were ultimately compromised when the USSC started taking on cases which tested the 10th A. against FDR's broad interpretation of the general welfare clause?

And after Justice Roberts got finished using FDR's license to ignore the 10th A. to misrepresent Bingham's intentions for the 14th A., Justice Black, a "former" Klansman and FDR-nominated justice, used FDR's license to misrepresent the ideas of Thomas Jefferson concerning c&s separation.

Indeed, despite that Justice Black wanted everybody to think that Jefferson's "wall of separation," actually Black's wall, somehow meant that the establishment clause was intended to be applied to the states, Jefferson had acknowledged that the Founders had written the 1st and 10th Amendments in part to reserve government power to address religious issues uniquely to the state governments. In fact, Jefferson had done so on at least three occasions. Again, see for yourself.



"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people..." --Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. http://tinyurl.com/oozoo

"In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general government. I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them as the Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of State or Church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies." --Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural Address, 1805. ME 3:378 http://tinyurl.com/jmpm3

"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. http://tinyurl.com/nkdu7

So by quoting Jefferson to help justify his scandalous interpretation of the establishment clause, Justice Black actually quoted probably the worst possible person that he could have quoted to help justify his dirty work.

Are we having fun yet? :^)

Regarding Black's special-interest shenanigans, consider that Justice Black was not only a Roman Catholic-despising Baptist, but also that certain Baptists regard Matthew 22:21 as God's call for absolute c&s separation, a 10th A.-ignoring interpretation of that passage. So Black was seemingly happy to twist the Founder's intention for the establishment clause to stop Catholic religious exercises in public schools, even if it meant stopping Protestant religious exercise from being practiced too. If this was the case, then Black wrongly put his personal beliefs ahead of his oath to defend the Constitution as evidenced by his misrepresentation of Jefferson's ideas concerning c&s separation.

So based on Jefferson's and Bingham's authoritative understandings of the 10th and 14th Amendments respectively, the states have the constitutional power (10th A.) to authorize public schools to lead non-mandatory (14th A.) classroom discussions on the pros and cons of evolution, creationism and ID, as examples, regardless that atheists, separatists, secular judges and the MSM are misleading the people to think that doing such things in public schools is unconstitutional.

As a side note, consider that neither the Cantwell or Everson opinions contain any reference to the 10th A. protected powers of the states to address religious issues (corrections welcome). Corrupt, secular-minded justices evidently regarded the religious aspect of such powers as too much of a loose canon to bring attention to. In fact, to my knowledge, with the exception of Jones v. Opelika, 1942, Supreme Court cases where 10th A. protected powers of the states were weighed against FDR's New Deal programs are the last time that the 10th A. was mentioned in state-power related Court opinions.

Again, it's no surprise that the Roe v. Wade opinion contains no reference to the 10th Amendment.

About Roe v. Wade...

To begin with, given that the USSC thought that it had the license to use Jefferson's "wall of separation" from a mere, private letter help justify its scandalous interpretation of the establishment clause, surely the Court should have used Jefferson's "all men are created equal" from the Declaration of Independence to help justify finding the rights of unborn children in the 9th Amendment - where it found abortion rights.

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

After all, Jefferson could just as easily have written that all men are born equal. Instead, Jefferson evidently reflected the beliefs of the signers of the DoI that God-given rights start from the moment of conception.

And since we're questioning non-enumerated 9th A. rights, not only did the USSC fail to weigh the 9th A. protected right to life for unborn children against the right to have an abortion, the Court also "overlooked" the 9th A. protected right of a man to be a father!

But there's another problem with the USSC's application of the 9th A. via the 14th A. to abortion. When John Bingham officially discussed the 14th A. after it had been ratified, he clarified that the 14th A. applied only to constitutionally enumerated privileges and immunities.

In fact, regardless that the USSC used the 9th A. as a wild card to find abortion rights in Roe v. Wade, note that Bingham ignored the 9th A. when he read examples of constitutional statues containing explicit privileges and immunities which the 14th A. applied to the states, reading only the first eight amendments. So by relying on the 9th A. to find non-enumerated abortion rights in the Constitution, the USSC scandalously ignored that the 14th A. was meant to apply only enumerated privileges and immunities to the states.

See Bingham's reading of the first eight amendments, the 9th A. omitted, in his discussion of the limits of the ratified 14th A. in the Congressional Globe, a precursor to the Congressional Record.

http://tinyurl.com/y3ne4n

The truth of the matter is that the USSC's 9th A. right to an abortion owes its existance to the politically correct abuse of judicial power as opposed to being properly enumerated in the Constitution by the people exercising their Article V powers. Indeed, the 9th A. refers to rights retained by the people, not to barbaric "rights" retained by renegade, special-interest justices. Jefferson had expressed his concern about such abuses of power.

"One single object... [will merit] the endless gratitude of society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1825. ME 16:113 http://tinyurl.com/zebwr

And speaking of federal and state government leaders who, again, are as constitutionally ignorant as the people who voted them into office, given that the Article V majority of states had the power to regulate abortion when the Court decided Roe v. Wade against the states, then why didn't the states override Roe v. Wade with a constitutional amendment?

What a mess! :^(

Continued in next post...

10thAmendment
08-02-2008, 12:28 AM
...Continued from previous post.

Again, FDR's 10th A.-ignoring establishment of New Deal federal spending programs set off a chain-reaction of Court decisions by special-interest, life-hating, state power-ignoring justices which continue to weaken state powers and traditional family values to this day.

Reflecting back on Jefferson's concern about judges who usurp legislative power, let's also keep on our guard for the following situation. When the USSC, in deciding a case, claims that a given issue is constitutional or unconstitutional when, in fact, the issue has not been reasonably addressed by lawmakers in the Constitution and its history, so-called abortion rights being a good example, the people shouldn't overlook the possibility that the USSC is wrongly legislating special-interest agendas from the bench. Again, we need to be on our guard for such situtations so that the USSC doesn't slip any more special-interest perversions of the Constitution by us.

The bottom line is that the people need to reconnect with the Founder's division of federal and state government powers, particularly where unnecessary federal taxation and the federal government's sticking of its big nose into 10th A. protected state affairs is concerned. Putting an immediate halt to federal interference with state power to protect traditional family values should be a top priority where the disasterous erosion of traditional family values is concerned. The people need to get in the faces of judges, demanding that they start upholding their oaths to respect state powers - or get off the bench. The people also need to get in the faces of members of Congress, demanding a stop to constitutionally unauthorized federal spending while appropriately lowering federal taxes - or get out of DC.

Lincoln put it this way.


"We the People are the rightful master of both congress and the courts - not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."

--Abraham Lincoln, Political debates between Lincoln and Douglas, 1858.
Remember, wherever the Article V majority goes, there they are.

SDG

Paul Revered
08-02-2008, 01:00 AM
This is an awful lot to take in.

Bookmarked.

Truth Warrior
08-02-2008, 06:29 AM
The Federal Constitution Is Dead (http://www.lewrockwell.com/gutzman/gutzman17.html)
Kevin Gutzman on who killed it.

NaT805
08-02-2008, 10:45 PM
The federal govt has been usurped by a national govt.

Truth Warrior
08-03-2008, 04:41 AM
Welcome to the Corporate State of Amerika! :p

Vote on! :rolleyes:

NaT805
08-03-2008, 05:19 PM
Welcome to the Corporate State of Amerika! :p

Vote on! :rolleyes:

UNITED STATES, Inc.

xd9fan
10-10-2008, 11:52 AM
you anti corperatation people kill me

TheEvilDetector
10-11-2008, 01:47 AM
you anti corperatation people kill me

some corperatations are ok.

:)

G-Wohl
10-11-2008, 11:54 AM
you anti corperatation people kill me

I don't they're anti-corporation. They're merely against government acting like a corporation.

Mini-Me
10-11-2008, 01:35 PM
you anti corperatation people kill me

Why's that? Corporations are creations of the state, which is why their shareholders have limited liability at the expense of everyone else who doesn't. Other than this, I have absolutely no problem with joint-stock companies (essentially the free market equivalent of today's corporations) going about their business!

However, I DO have a huge problem with corporate welfare and government largess, and I also have a huge problem with government policy being created at the behest of special interests in general, chief among which are corporations. On this board, I think those are the biggest complaints you'll find about corporations.

RonPaulNewbee
10-14-2008, 12:15 AM
I'm for legal abortion (a necessary evil for 14th Am. citizens). However, my position is not constitutional (re: "Posterity"). However, as Truth Warrior rightly points out the Federal Constitution is dead. However, what we have left of it can be amended. I like Ron Paul's solution: make it a states' rights issue. Why does Ron have to be so right about everything all the time?