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Ap Photo/Joel Page
Our Constitution and our rights are under attack...from those who are supposed to be representing our interests.
The Founders wrote the Bill of Rights as a protection of the states and citizens against the federal government. They added it to the Constitution specifically to assure hesitant states that this new federal government they were creating would never trample their rights.
And as spelled out in the 10th Amendment, anything not specifically listed in the Constitution as a federal power is a power the federal government does not have, and that belongs instead to the states. That means nearly 100% of the power in this country was supposed to be at the state and local level. The only powers the federal government was ever supposed to have were extremely narrow, including things like defending our borders, dealing with foreign governments, and interstate matters.
But despite the exhaustive pains taken by the Founders to make this unmistakably clear, Democrats still continue utterly trampling everything this country was designed to be and stand for. Whether it be trying to nationalize everything, trying to silence dissent through the "Fairness" Doctrine and Card-Check, or corrupting the Census Bureau for partisan gain, the left is at war with the Constitution.
They rationalize it by deliberately misrepresenting the text, such as the Commerce Clause, which allows Congress to regulate trade between the states. They outrageously claim that anything in any way connected to interstate trade (which is everything) qualifies as "commerce" and is therefore subject to federal intervention.
Why would Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution even bother spelling out the powers of Congress in the first place if anyone involved meant for it to have a general power of legislation?
They also misuse the General Welfare clause, which allows the federal government to collect taxes to provide for the "general welfare of the United States." They pretend that this is a blanket authorization for the federal government to do anything it wants, as long as it can be construed to benefit the general welfare of the country. But the architect of the Constitution himself, James Madison, emphatically rejected this treasonous twisting of the text, explaining that it would render...
...the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them.
Barack Obama has no authority under the Constitution to be silencing dissent or bankrupting this country to reward failure and punish success. When he abandons the rule of law to impose total government control over one industry after another while creating czars to avoid any and all checks and balances, he is declaring war on the American people. His ongoing attempts to forcibly redistribute health care from the sick and elderly to illegal immigrants and the rest of the Democrat base is just the latest assault.
The federal government has broken its end of the agreement. And the people are demanding answers, but all they get from Washington is either a dialtone or vicious partisan smears.
According to the Founders, we do not have to take such egregious violations of our rights and freedoms lying down. Thomas Jefferson made it abundantly clear in the Declaration of Independence that man has both the right and the responsibility to rise up and "alter or abolish" government that becomes adversarial to his interests.
We hold the power here, not them. No government is legitimate that we do not authorize. This government has forgotten who is in charge and how this arrangement was supposed to work. The only question now is, when is enough enough?
Where is our line in the sand? At what point do we take our refusal to be controlled and manipulated by tyrants to the next level? The moment is rapidly approaching at which we will need to have definitive answers to these questions.
Comments
Democrats are doing this? Hah! You need to take a closer look at your recent history. Republicans have been equally adept at trampling the Constitution. It was Republican presidents who launched the modern drug war, created the EPA, and dramatically boosted the budgets for Medicare, Medicaid, the Depts of Education, Labor and public television.
It was a Republican president who signed the multiple billion-dollar prescription drug benefit.
Please spare us the partisan rants until you have a clearer grasp of the facts.
Actually, it was the Supreme Court that ruled the Bill of Rights didn't apply to the states. This was circa 1835, in Barron v Baltimore. In the Constitutional Convention, per Madison's notes, there was serious consideration regarding creation of a federal panel to review state laws to determine their constitutionality. This measure was not enacted because it would be a huge task, even in those days. Besides, it was assumed that the Court would resolve such matters.
Regarding the assault on rights, the Bush administration's policies--the so-called "Patriot Act," torture practices, which violate the 8th Amendment and numerous treaties, domestic spying, etc., etc., etc.--were the most egregious assault on our rights in history. I guess you were too busy watching Faux News to notice.
Artur, So Democrats aren't trampling the Constitution because you can point to examples of Republicans doing it? You haven't addressed his point at all.
Christopher Clark: "Actually, it was the Supreme Court that ruled the Bill of Rights didn't apply to the states..."
The Supreme Court also legalized slavery. Sure you want to stick with the argument that everything the SC says is constitutional really is constitutional?
And what the hell are you talking about with the Supreme Court deciding the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to the states? What an astonishingly ignorant thing to say. That never happeded, and the entire PURPOSE of the BOR was to protect the states.
Remove head from rectum, THEN debate.
Christopher Clark: "the Bush administration's policies..."
Again wth the Bush diversion. Red Herring. Besides, as Moon points out in his article, foreign terrorists don't even HAVE rights under our Constitution...so no, none of this BS about Bush trampled the Constitution at all.
But I guess you were too busy being spoon-fed DNC talking points by CNN to comprehend that.
It's not a Republican/Democrat thing. The problem is that our Federal government is too big, too arrogant and to power hungry. It needs to back off.
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