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Thread: How to understand the Constitution

  1. #1



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  3. #2
    And for those too lazy to read...

    1776 > 1984

    The FAILURE of the United States Government to operate and maintain an
    Honest Money System , which frees the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, is the single largest contributing factor to the World's current Economic Crisis.

    The Elimination of Privacy is the Architecture of Genocide

    Belief, Money, and Violence are the three ways all people are controlled

    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Our central bank is not privately owned.

  4. #3
    That's quite a read, Douglas.
    “One may come to the aid of another being unlawfully arrested, just as he may where one is being assaulted, molested, raped or kidnapped. Thus it is not an offense to liberate one from the unlawful custody of an officer, even though he may have submitted to such custody, without resistance.” (Adams v. State, 121 Ga. 16, 48 S.E. 910).

  5. #4
    Kind of you to say so, that is if you liked it

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Douglass Bartley View Post
    Very good read, thank you. I will add that I am in strong agreement with the philosophical spirit engendered there. However, I must disagree with the assessment of the document itself as being one of the best written instruments to issue from the minds of men. The US Constitution is in fact a rather weakly written document. This assessment is borne out in the reality with which our so-called "government" treats us daily in an ever increasingly miserable and niggardly fashion. This is not to imply that even a greatly improved version of such a document could not be similarly subverted, but would in any case make the subversion much more difficult to carry forth.

    The fundamental structure of the document is hopelessly flawed, particularly for a world full of wicked men seeking to make their mules of the rest. In particular, the provision for amendments per Article V is especially weak and troubling for it leaves a door ajar, however imperceptibly to the casual observer, to chaos and the utter destruction of the nation and its people. A proper constitution, if such a document can even be so termed, would be constructed in at least two major sections wherein the provisions of at least one would lie beyond the reach of any governmental body or instrument to be altered in any way whatsoever. In such a section would reside the immutable principles by which human freedom is founded, bonded, and guaranteed in perpetuity; this in the spirit of the quotes you cite in your exposition from the likes of Marshall and Story and in defense from the likes of the traitorous and treasonous pig Oliver Wendell Holmes.

    Without this hermetic seal securing the boundary between what is absolute and what is malleable, all becomes the latter. To this we all have borne witness in ever increasing strides that continues to grow in boldness and perfidy on almost a daily basis.The article is well taken but goes off the rails in a few places, not through fault of your own per se, but through the flaws of those quoted or paraphrased. For example, in section 1.004 the language of Jefferson itself impeaches the very philosophical structure of the nation. He asks,

    "Can it be believed, that under the jealousies prevailing against the General Government, at the adoption of the Constitution, the States meant to surrender the authority of preserving order, of enforcing moral duties and restraining vice, within their own territory?"
    The obvious answer is "no", but that is not quite sufficient. One must inquire into the reason for it being so and the answer to that is as manifold as the differences between peoples' passions and motivations. For one thing, what are the moral duties to which he refers? Who establishes them? What is their authority for so doing? These are the fundamental questions that must be asked and the answers are rarely simple and logically defensible or even consistent. And what of vice? I can strongly argue that there is not legitimate role for government to interfere in vice. But these are somewhat orthogonal points. The more centrally pressing issue here is that so-called "states" are no less prone to tyranny in principle than is a centralized establishment. Were a state to decide to exercise its 10th Amendment prerogatives and reinstate Jim Crow or perhaps make homosexual behavior a capital offense for which death is the mandatory penalty, how is this any better in principle than if the federal government doing the same? The "move to another state" argument is a non-starter as it fails to address the question substantively, if even at all.

    Our Constitution is pretty and elegant. It is also a failure, not in the principles and ideas it espouses, but in its structure, its language, the specifics of some of the mechanisms and instruments specified, and its generally severe lack of language with which the average citizen may gird and arm himself against the capricious whim and predation of vicious bands of criminals labeling themselves "government".

    Our Constitution is well suited to a far more perfect world where immoral and criminal men are relatively few and far between and where the good people actively participate in keeping government as scrupulously clean and proper as possible and are willing and able to carry forth even the most unpleasant aspects of such enforcement of civil rights such as serving as the executioners of duly convicted politicians who have earner themselves the penalty of death for crimes committed. It is not well suited to a nation wherein cynicism, lassitude and utter corruption rule the day and where men cannot trust it to be true when others tell them the sky is still blue and grass is green.

    A well structured constitution must, above all else, be a technical document; a blueprint that very precisely specifies its stipulations in as context-constant a way as is humanly achievable in order to remove to the greatest degree possible any wiggle-room for "interpretation". In this our Constitution is a dismal and utter failure.

    That our liberties have not been amended away, for example, lays credit not at the feet of the Constitution but at the still extant intolerance of the people. Granted that both are required, but the object is not to make perfidy impossible but only extremely difficult, possibility being what it is in such matters.

    The section 1.004 further refers to "common sense", and once again we return to the question of a standard, which is to day a definition. Without it, the reference means literally nothing whatsoever, save that to which the individual's proclivities and personal bias may lead him, his neighbor quite possibly holding a very different sense of the concept.In having written a new and improved constitution for the USA I came to appreciate the difficulty of the task when the goal is to contrive an unbreakable document. I will not call it impossible, but will say that it is a difficulty of epic proportions. So once again, perhaps the goal should not be to make it perfect, but as close to it as is humanly achievable.

    Just my worthless opinion, of course.
    Last edited by osan; 04-13-2012 at 11:31 PM.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  7. #6
    I'm going to be dead in 40 years, tops (hopefully).

    Do I really need to understand all this? Can't I just sip a martini and enjoy what I've got left of life?

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Democrat4Paul View Post
    I'm going to be dead in 40 years, tops (hopefully).

    Do I really need to understand all this? Can't I just sip a martini and enjoy what I've got left of life?
    You imply these are mutually exclusive. In any event, you can do whatever you wish. Nobody is going to force you to become well versed as it is an impossible task when one is unwilling. Have your martini. Have five. We don't care. Just stay out of our way as we are in no humor to tolerate the corrupt, the willfully stupid, the apathetic, or the parasites looking to ride our coat tails to better living.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  9. #8
    Good blog post. But i think it could be summed up in two words: Read it. Its a straight forward document really. It needs no "interpretation." Just read it and follow it.



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    A well structured constitution must, above all else, be a technical document; a blueprint that very precisely specifies its stipulations in as context-constant a way as is humanly achievable in order to remove to the greatest degree possible any wiggle-room for "interpretation". In this our Constitution is a dismal and utter failure.
    I disagree. The document is fairly straightforward. The idea it has to be, and should be "interpreted" to be understood is largely a liberal myth foisted on the people. Sadly to many fo us believe this as opposed to following The Constitution exactly.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by PierzStyx View Post
    I disagree. The document is fairly straightforward. The idea it has to be, and should be "interpreted" to be understood is largely a liberal myth foisted on the people. Sadly to many fo us believe this as opposed to following The Constitution exactly.
    No, it's just what it is. The wording is so loose it gives politicians and judges plenty of room to interpret it any way they want. (a critical flaw is the 10th amendment, which presidents and SCOTUSes have always ignored or wiggled around...so much that people who actually want to use it are marginalized as "10th-ers"...the lack of an explicit right of nullification and secession-clear in the DoI-is damning of the Constitution also).
    Last edited by heavenlyboy34; 04-14-2012 at 12:01 AM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12

  13. #11
    As it has already been stated best by those much wiser than I (as merely a few of many such examples):

    The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests. --Patrick Henry

    It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail. --Samuel Adams

    Religion is the solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man toward God. --Gouverneur Morris

    Every member of the State ought diligently to read and to study the Constitution of his country... By knowing their rights, they will sooner perceive when they are violated and be the better prepared to defend and assert them. --John Jay

    If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify. --Alexander Hamilton

    [T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established... are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering. --Thomas Jefferson

    Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. --James Madison

    Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. --James Madison

    Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. --John Adams

    Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. --John Adams

    [D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few. --John Adams

    I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power. --Thomas Jefferson

    Let no more be said about the confidence of men, but bind them down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution. --Thomas Jefferson

    Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day. --Thomas Jefferson

    We, the People, are the rightful masters of both the Congress and the Courts. Not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who have perverted it. --Abraham Lincoln
    The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding one’s self in the ranks of the insane.” — Marcus Aurelius

    They’re not buying it. CNN, you dumb bastards!” — President Trump 2020

    Consilio et Animis de Oppresso Liber

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by PierzStyx View Post
    I disagree. The document is fairly straightforward.
    Nowhere did I state nor imply that it was not straightforward. What I did state is that the document is weakly written from operational and implementation standpoints. This cannot be disputed credibly. It is precisely due to the weakness of the structure that those in seats of power have so readily subverted the interpretation of the Constitution's provisions. Those provisions are largely sound but the framework upon which they hang is lacking in terms of defenses against the perfidies of clever and determined criminals whose generations have so very successfully usurped for themselves the very powers and authorities the document forbids. The fault, of course, lay not entirely with the structure of the document, but primarily with the citizens who have stupidly tolerated the crimes of the Branches.

    The idea it has to be, and should be "interpreted"
    Let us be clear that in the strictest sense all instruments of communication require interpretation. The standing question is not whether it is needed, but rather what interpretation is correct. Here I agree with the sources cited in the article that the simplest and most straightforward and intuitively obvious interpretation is best. This, however, also becomes something of problematic because different people carry differing senses of intuition. Because it can be impossible to know whether an outwardly expressed interpretation of what a given passage means is honest or disingenuous, establishing a standard of judgment must be undertaken with the greatest care in terms of how it is specified such that it is itself open to only one interpretation. I have studied for several decades the issues of semantics and it is clear to me that sufficiently clear, complete, and precise communication is a difficult endeavor under the best circumstances and that very few people are capable of it.

    to be understood is largely a liberal myth foisted on the people.
    So-called conservatives are equally guilty. I agree that there has been a long and successful effort to convince people that the Constitution holds mysterious meanings that only the initiated may divine. It is, of course, pure lies. The Constitution is written in plain language, but there are a few severe errors of construction that have left us in our currently sorrowful state. The Commerce Clause is an excellent example. It was simplistically constructed and has therefore been wide open to opinion. The term "commerce" should be defined in the document.

    Another severe error of construction lies in the use of the term "welfare". The errors are not large in number but those who have seized upon them have done so to great advantage for them and great damage for the rest of us.

    Sadly to many fo us believe this as opposed to following The Constitution exactly.
    The problem there lies in our willingness to remain uneducated and to trust "them" with stewardship of our liberties.

    The shame lies squarely at our feet.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    Very good read, thank you. I will add that I am in strong agreement with the philosophical spirit engendered there. However, I must disagree with the assessment of the document itself as being one of the best written instruments to issue from the minds of men. The US Constitution is in fact a rather weakly written document. This assessment is borne out in the reality with which our so-called "government" treats us daily in an ever increasingly miserable and niggardly fashion. This is not to imply that even a greatly improved version of such a document could not be similarly subverted, but would in any case make the subversion much more difficult to carry forth.

    ...
    Completely agree.
    “One may come to the aid of another being unlawfully arrested, just as he may where one is being assaulted, molested, raped or kidnapped. Thus it is not an offense to liberate one from the unlawful custody of an officer, even though he may have submitted to such custody, without resistance.” (Adams v. State, 121 Ga. 16, 48 S.E. 910).

  16. #14
    Well if you truly believe that, then it is truly a wondrous happening that there our Forefathers had the foresight to bother righting the Federal Papers, which are 85-letters providing legal evidence in arguing the original intent and breadth of our U.S. Constitution. Therein all confusion and doubt has thus been wiped away, much “like spirits at the dawn of day.” See: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html
    The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding one’s self in the ranks of the insane.” — Marcus Aurelius

    They’re not buying it. CNN, you dumb bastards!” — President Trump 2020

    Consilio et Animis de Oppresso Liber

  17. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    You imply these are mutually exclusive. In any event, you can do whatever you wish. Nobody is going to force you to become well versed as it is an impossible task when one is unwilling. Have your martini. Have five. We don't care. Just stay out of our way as we are in no humor to tolerate the corrupt, the willfully stupid, the apathetic, or the parasites looking to ride our coat tails to better living.
    I must apologize. It was meant to be humor which perhaps did not bode well? I thought a bit of levity may be in order just for the sake of it.

    I am well versed in a good number of things. But I don't take myself all too seriously. Nor the simple words or misplaced humor of others.

    Carry on, men. We all have our interests and opinions of things. I meant no offense and am sorry if some were taken. I suppose this is very serious discussion around here, so I digress.
    Last edited by Democrat4Paul; 04-14-2012 at 04:04 PM.

  18. #16
    Thank you all for the very intelligent comments, even Democrat4Paul, , whose ID seems to be an oxymoron, though nonetheless welcome. I think I'll take his advice and have a Martini.



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Weston White View Post
    Well if you truly believe that, then it is truly a wondrous happening that there our Forefathers had the foresight to bother righting the Federal Papers, which are 85-letters providing legal evidence in arguing the original intent and breadth of our U.S. Constitution. Therein all confusion and doubt has thus been wiped away, much “like spirits at the dawn of day.” See: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html
    The problem is that the Congress ignores them. SCOTUS ignores them except when convenient to do otherwise, and as I recall they are in the habit of reminding the world that they hold no force of law, same as the Declaration.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Democrat4Paul View Post
    I must apologize. It was meant to be humor which perhaps did not bode well? I thought a bit of levity may be in order just for the sake of it.
    Ah, humor. I did not get the sense of it. Pardon me please for being thick.

    Carry on, men. We all have our interests and opinions of things. I meant no offense and am sorry if some were taken. I suppose this is very serious discussion around here, so I digress.
    No offense taken. I just have little use for boot lickers. Did not take you specifically as one of those, but was making a general statement in response to the perception of apathy. As nearly impossible as I know it is to believe, I too am imperfect.
    freedomisobvious.blogspot.com

    There is only one correct way: freedom. All other solutions are non-solutions.

    It appears that artificial intelligence is at least slightly superior to natural stupidity.

    Our words make us the ghosts that we are.

    Convincing the world he didn't exist was the Devil's second greatest trick; the first was convincing us that God didn't exist.



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