THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FREE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ESSENTIAL LIBERTY ( A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT.” )
“A republic, if you can keep it”
“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” –Benjamin Franklin
At the close of the Constitution Convention in Philadelphia, Ben Franklin was asked if the delegates had formed a republic or a monarchy. “A republic,” he responded, “if you can keep it.”
To that end, as a warning for future generations to beware of “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men,” George Washington wrote, “A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.”
Daniel Webster wrote, “Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
Ominously, Alexander Hamilton noted, “Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”
John Adams observed, “Is the present state of the national republic enough? Is virtue the principle of our government? Is honor? Or is ambition and avarice, adulation, baseness, covetousness, the thirst for riches, indifference concerning the means of rising and enriching, the contempt of principle, the spirit of party and of faction the motive and principle that governs?”
Adams cautioned, “A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
Unfortunately, and at the expense of our Liberty, the Constitution has suffered generations of “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled” politicians and judges whose successors now recognize only vestiges of its original intent for governance. Consequently, constitutional Rule of Law has been weakened by those who have failed to abide by their sacred oaths to “support and defend” the same.
As the erosion of constitutional authority undermines individual Liberty, it likewise undermines economic Liberty.
It can be argued that the most devastating insult to economic Liberty was in passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913, under the populist progressive, Woodrow Wilson. This amendment granted Congress the “power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
This measure would be used to enact unequal and discriminatory taxation of targeted groups of income classes, “progressive” taxation, which resulted in classism and the bulwark of all socialist movements, “class warfare.” It opened the floodgates for populist executives and legislators to enact taxes for expenditures not expressly authorized by our Constitution, thus the undoing of constitutionally limited government and accelerating the slide toward the rule of men.
At the onset of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a wealthy aristocrat, instituted policies that greatly challenged constitutional limits on our government, the cost of which would, generations later, challenge our nation’s economic solvency.
FDR’s economic and social solutions were shaped by his upbringing as an “inheritance welfare liberal” (those raised dependent on inheritance rather than self-reliance). He used the Great Depression as cover to redefine and expand the role of the central government via countless extra-constitutional decrees as well as expanding Wilson’s program for redistribution of wealth in order to fund such folly.
Roosevelt, in fact, issued this proclamation: “Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.”
Upon review, though, his “American principle” is essentially a paraphrase of Karl Marx’s maxim, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
Thus, it may be argued that Roosevelt’s “principles” had no basis in the Rule of Law or the principles of free enterprise, and consequently, his New Deal policies and programs resulted in what now may be considered the central government’s most oppressive weapon: The U.S. Tax Code.
Of government welfare programs, Madison wrote, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents…”
Accordingly, Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution, which addresses the powers of the legislature, does not give Congress the authority to collect taxes for banking, mortgage and automaker bailouts, or to subsidize production or service sectors like health care, or to fund education and retirement, or to issue tens of thousands of earmarks for special interest “pork” projects.
Nor is Congress authorized to institute countless conditions for the redistribution of wealth in its 20-volume, 14,000-page Tax Code, or to impose millions of regulations on everything from carbon emissions to toilet water volume.
As Justice John Marshall aptly noted, “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”
Wisdom of the Founders notwithstanding, at the dawn of the 21st century, more than 70 percent of the federal budget would be allocated for “objects of benevolence” for which there is no original constitutional authority. Put another way, much of your income is confiscated by the government and redistributed for purposes not expressly authorized by our Constitution. Consequently, the liberal hegemony controlling the federal budget in the first decade of the 21st century saddled the nation with more government debt than all previous administrations combined, a burden which may ultimately break the back of free enterprise and replace it with Democratic Socialism.
Of such debt, Jefferson concluded, “The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
Under siege of such economic oppression, can the Republic survive? Can Liberty endure?
“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” –Benjamin Franklin
At the close of the Constitution Convention in Philadelphia, Ben Franklin was asked if the delegates had formed a republic or a monarchy. “A republic,” he responded, “if you can keep it.”
To that end, as a warning for future generations to beware of “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men,” George Washington wrote, “A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.”
Daniel Webster wrote, “Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
Ominously, Alexander Hamilton noted, “Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”
John Adams observed, “Is the present state of the national republic enough? Is virtue the principle of our government? Is honor? Or is ambition and avarice, adulation, baseness, covetousness, the thirst for riches, indifference concerning the means of rising and enriching, the contempt of principle, the spirit of party and of faction the motive and principle that governs?”
Adams cautioned, “A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
Unfortunately, and at the expense of our Liberty, the Constitution has suffered generations of “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled” politicians and judges whose successors now recognize only vestiges of its original intent for governance. Consequently, constitutional Rule of Law has been weakened by those who have failed to abide by their sacred oaths to “support and defend” the same.
As the erosion of constitutional authority undermines individual Liberty, it likewise undermines economic Liberty.
It can be argued that the most devastating insult to economic Liberty was in passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913, under the populist progressive, Woodrow Wilson. This amendment granted Congress the “power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
This measure would be used to enact unequal and discriminatory taxation of targeted groups of income classes, “progressive” taxation, which resulted in classism and the bulwark of all socialist movements, “class warfare.” It opened the floodgates for populist executives and legislators to enact taxes for expenditures not expressly authorized by our Constitution, thus the undoing of constitutionally limited government and accelerating the slide toward the rule of men.
At the onset of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a wealthy aristocrat, instituted policies that greatly challenged constitutional limits on our government, the cost of which would, generations later, challenge our nation’s economic solvency.
FDR’s economic and social solutions were shaped by his upbringing as an “inheritance welfare liberal” (those raised dependent on inheritance rather than self-reliance). He used the Great Depression as cover to redefine and expand the role of the central government via countless extra-constitutional decrees as well as expanding Wilson’s program for redistribution of wealth in order to fund such folly.
Roosevelt, in fact, issued this proclamation: “Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.”
Upon review, though, his “American principle” is essentially a paraphrase of Karl Marx’s maxim, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
Thus, it may be argued that Roosevelt’s “principles” had no basis in the Rule of Law or the principles of free enterprise, and consequently, his New Deal policies and programs resulted in what now may be considered the central government’s most oppressive weapon: The U.S. Tax Code.
Of government welfare programs, Madison wrote, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents…”
Accordingly, Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution, which addresses the powers of the legislature, does not give Congress the authority to collect taxes for banking, mortgage and automaker bailouts, or to subsidize production or service sectors like health care, or to fund education and retirement, or to issue tens of thousands of earmarks for special interest “pork” projects.
Nor is Congress authorized to institute countless conditions for the redistribution of wealth in its 20-volume, 14,000-page Tax Code, or to impose millions of regulations on everything from carbon emissions to toilet water volume.
As Justice John Marshall aptly noted, “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”
Wisdom of the Founders notwithstanding, at the dawn of the 21st century, more than 70 percent of the federal budget would be allocated for “objects of benevolence” for which there is no original constitutional authority. Put another way, much of your income is confiscated by the government and redistributed for purposes not expressly authorized by our Constitution. Consequently, the liberal hegemony controlling the federal budget in the first decade of the 21st century saddled the nation with more government debt than all previous administrations combined, a burden which may ultimately break the back of free enterprise and replace it with Democratic Socialism.
Of such debt, Jefferson concluded, “The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
Under siege of such economic oppression, can the Republic survive? Can Liberty endure?
Lee ADDS: I was questioned by a Liberal and asked to prove our nation was founded as a Republic. When I cited the Pledge of Allegiance she ceased communication!
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