It’s the Size of Government, Stupid!

This presidential campaign is getting STUPID! We see the candidates catching at straws to gain the attention of the electorate in the hope that voters will elect “me—I can do the best job.” Their campaign pitches are becoming more and more ridiculous. For instance:

Now Governor Romney is criticizing the President for not attending a single meeting of his Jobs Council in months. He says that if the President were really interested in jobless Americans, he would be all over that Council to learn what he could do to get Americans back to work.

The truth about this campaign ploy is that the Jobs Council has made 60 recommendations in the past year about jobs in America; and the President has either implemented or is working on implementation of 52 of those recommendations, according to Politico.com.

About this issue, voters should realize that the President does not need to attend the meeting of all of his advisory councils. He can stay in contact with them by phone or by sending a representative to the meetings.

On the other side of the election debate, we see the President kicking at Governor Romney about his involvement at Bain Capital—sending thousands of jobs overseas. This argument is equally stupid. Romney has had no administrative dealings with Bain Capital that had anything to do with this issue since 1999. That fact has been painfully verified by several of the President’s own supporters on the Bain board of directors.

The real issue in this election is the size of our government. Obama believes in a large government establishment and Romney believes in a small government—it’s as simple as that! All these “issues” we hear about on TV are just a rubric of smokescreen in attempts to make voters believe they are getting to know something new of real value.

Personally, I believe in small government. Large government saps away our freedoms and hamstrings the genuine drivers of our economy, the private entrepreneurial spirit of American business and industry. We would do much better with a smaller government.

All that being said, I must admit that there is another issue that divides conservatives and liberals in this election; and that is the issue of moral integrity. The Democrats are on the side of moral rot with their endorsement of abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, etc., etc. Conservatives are more or less on the side of traditional marriage, stable families, sexual continence, and other issues that have stood the test of time in producing a morally healthy America.

I’ m voting for Governor Romney.

Democracy—How It’s Changed!

We are seeing very different varieties of democracy in the world today. We see what is being called “post-liberal democracy” and “pre-liberal democracy.” Both of them are very different from the old-fashioned kind of democracy, which was characterized by classical liberal ideas—those that espoused individual liberty, limited government, property rights, and democratic sovereignty.

In America and much of Europe (think Greece), we are seeing “post-liberal” democracy, a form of government that replaces the old and seemingly worn out democracy of classical liberalism with a form that emphasizes social rights, social goods, intrusive government, and transnational law.

Opponents of this kind of “post-liberal” democracy claim that there just is not enough money in the kitty to pay for it; and further stretch of the national bank account will destroy the nations that try it. Furthermore, we have the prime example of this kind of socialistic government obviously before us, i.e., the USSR. (What a failure that was! It could not supply the goods and services the people needed.)

On the other hand, we are seeing in the Middle East, a form of democracy which might be called “pre-liberal” democracy. “Pre-liberal” democracy is democracy shorn of the values Westerners typically associate with democracy: free speech, religious liberty, social tolerance, equality between the sexes, and so on. This “pre-liberal” democracy seeks to replace the classic qualities of Western societies with democratically elected officials who would replace the old Western values with a religious form, i.e., Islam and Sharia law. Of course—this “pre-liberal” democracy is chosen by popular vote of the people. That is why it is called “democracy.”

There are definite limits on what this “pre-liberal” democracy can do for the people in a nation that adopt it. Classical expressions of democracy such as freedom of speech and sexual equality will be suppressed just as soon as they collide with Islamic paradigms. But…this form of democracy is seen by the people as preferred to the governments it replaces—the governments of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and other tyrants of the Middle East.

I cannot help wishing that we could get back to the old-fashioned variety of American democracy—the pre-New Deal variety of democracy. I know there were abuses in that kind of government; but the government take-over we are seeing in America today with Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank bill, and other laws just give me a bleak outlook on America’s future.

Much of this blog post was redacted from an editorial on page A-11 of the Wall Street Journal of 19 June 2012.

Am I A Liberal? Well…Sort of.

At least, I used to be. I used to be the kind of liberal who believed in the protection and empowerment of individuals and institutions over against encroachment and invasion by the sovereign political power. I held views coeval with the emergence of ideas of constitutionally limited government, natural rights, a free-market economy, private property, civil liberties, and a robust sense of individualism. In those things, I still believe.

But… “liberalism” has changed. It has taken on the mantra of power instead of freedom, e.g., just try to proclaim the Christian message in the public square and see if the power of the society and of politically correct public discourse does not put the shutters on your mouth. That’s power in its most subtle and ubiquitous form. Just try to express your conscience-given ideas of the immorality of abortion or same-sex marriage and see what happens! No—present day “liberalism” will turn its back on you after it has thoroughly castigated you for your candor.

Present day liberalism more rightly goes by the name “progressivism,” and it is the politics of Presidents Obama and Clinton, of the Kennedys and of the Democratic Party. It has given up its moral underpinnings and now relies on trying to produce an equality of outcome rather than an equality of opportunity. It is a belief that puts its reliance on big government and bureaucracies. It is a system that says to the people, “You can have anything you want from the government if you just vote yourself the benefit. Somebody else will pay for it.” It is a system of thought and government that is doomed to fall, just as the socialist societies of Europe are doomed to fall for the obvious reason—the worker bees cannot keep up with the demands of the proletariat for government benefits.

Our society needs to regain the benefits of true, morality-based, liberal principles. We need to turn away from the era of big government and tell people what the truth is about how to live. The longer we keep our mouths shut, the worse this welfare-state situation in our country is going to be.

Is The President Being Fair?

A very thought-provoking editorial appeared in the Wall Street Journal on 7 February 2012. Following are a few excerpts from that editorial:

“President Obama has frequently justified his policies—and judged their outcomes—in terms of equity, justice and fairness. That raises an obvious question: How does our existing system—and his own policy record—stack up according to those criteria?

“Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?

“Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country's income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?

“Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?”
”Is it fair that wind, solar and ethanol producers get billions of dollars of subsidies each year and pay virtually no taxes, while the oil and gas industry—which provides at least 10 times as much energy-pays tens of billions of dollars of taxes while the president complains that it is ‘subsidized’?”

“Is it fair that those who took out responsible mortgages and pay them each month have to see their tax dollars used to subsidize those who acted recklessly, greedily and sometimes deceitfully in taking out mortgages they now can't afford to repay?”

Well, these are just some of the excerpts. If you want to read the whole editorial, go to http://on.wsj.com/wrwCvo.

ObamaCare Oversteps American Liberties!

In mandating that public charities must provide contraceptive and abortion prescriptions for their employees in conflict with their stated and long-term religious beliefs, ObamaCare has definitely overstepped its rightful boundaries.
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal dated 8 February 2012 outlines the problem very well:

“The political furor over President Obama's birth-control mandate continues to grow, even among those for whom contraception poses no moral qualms, and one needn't be a theologian to understand why. The country is being exposed to the raw political control that is the core of the Obama health-care plan, and Americans are seeing clearly for the first time how this will violate pluralism and liberty.”

In my opinion, this action of the Department of Health and Human Services represents the exercise of pure political muscle without considering the Constitutional rights to freedom of religion, which is guaranteed to all Americans. The government policy ludicrously claims that organizations which qualify for the title of religious organizations are only churches—religious hospitals, homeless shelters, schools, soup kitchens, and other religious charities are really not religious organizations in the opinion of the government. Therefore, they apparently do not qualify for protection under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The WSJ editorial goes on to say, “The entire thrust of ObamaCare is to standardize benefits and how they must be paid for and provided, regardless of individual choices or ethical convictions.”

This government grabbing of Constitutional liberties must stop!! Today it is religious freedom; tomorrow it will be something even more intrusive, if possible.
If you want to read the whole editorial, I suggest you go to http://on.wsj.com/wk8ZaY.

We, Americans, have a natural hope and trust in government to provide what is best for us, but what we hope for in the Affordable Care Act is an illusion; and we absolutely must recognize this Act for what it is—an illegal government theft of our basic rights. Listen to what Patrick Henry said about such government action: “It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth; and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”

Removing God From the Public Square

A recent action by Director Robert V. Abbey of the Bureau of Land Management has succeeded in denying the placement of a plaque at the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. The plaque commemorated the prayer of President Franklin Roosevelt on the morning of the D-Day invasion. He said, in part: “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion and our civilization, and to set free suffering humanity….Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace—a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be done, Almighty God, Amen.”

Mr. Abbey’s denial undoubtedly reflects the mindset of the Federal Government, bent on erasing all evidence of faith from our people and from our history. This is just another all-too-familiar attempt to throw God out of every aspect of our public life.

I suggest that all the readers of this blog post write to their Congressmen, Senators, the President, and the Bureau of Land Management objecting to this action. Thanks for your participation in the attempt to stem the evaporation of our traditional values.

The Larger the Government, The Smaller the Citizen

We live in an era of burgeoning government. One hallmark of the Obama Administration has been the Dodd-Frank Bill (Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act H.R. 4173) designed to identify risks to the financial stability of the U.S. and promote market discipline. The other has been the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, designed to make health care much more of a responsibility of the Federal Government by adding layers of regulation into health care access.

I have looked as carefully as I can into these two bills; and I find them incomprehensible in their complexity and sheer size. In my opinion, they will almost double the size to the Federal Government.

We, as citizens of the United States, need to be very suspicious of such sweeping legislation and look at burgeoning governments of the past to evaluate such programs.

In The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, I read, “Empires, indeed governments generally, tend to be good things at first and bad things the longer they last. First they improve society’s ability to flourish by providing central services and removing impediments to trade and specialization; thus, even Genghis Kahn’s Pax Mongolica lubricated Asia’s overland trade by exterminating brigands along the Silk Road, thus lowering the cost of oriental goods in European parlors.” Later, however, a pattern was set which has been followed by governments ever since. Aging governments “employ more and more ambitious elites who capture a greater and greater share of the society’s income by interfering more and more in people’s lives as they give themselves more and more rules to enforce, until they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. There is a lesson for today. Economists are quick to speak to speak of ‘market failure,’ and rightly so, but a greater threat comes from ‘government failure.’ Because it is a monopoly, government brings inefficiency and stagnation to most things it runs; government agencies pursue the inflation of their budgets rather than the service of their customers; pressure groups form an unholy alliance with agencies to extract more money from taxpayers for their members. Yet despite all this, most clever people still call for government to run more things and assume that if it did so, it would somehow be more perfect, more selfless, next time.”

What Can America Learn From Europe’s Problems?

This blog post is largely excerpted from a speech made by Václav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic in a speech given to a group of Americans in Berlin on 11 June 2011.

Mr. Klaus sees Europe’s problems as an economic structural problem, which has embraced social permissiveness, anti-market practices, and a principle of money redistribution. Europeans have believed that the most favorable form of government is one of weakened nation-states with the concomitant strengthening of supranational institutions. He pointed out that only within states can democracy function effectively. The unification of Europe in the “Euro zone” was intended to accelerate economic growth, reduce inflation, and protect member states against external economic disruptions—it has failed in all three goals. Europe’s developing social democratic system with its generous social benefits, weakened motivation, shortened working hours, and lowered retirement age, have all diminished the labor supply and resulted in decreased productivity.

He said, “…we have witnessed a gradual shift away from liberalizing and removing barriers and towards a massive introduction of regulation from above, an ever-expanding welfare system, new and more sophisticated forms of protectionism, and continuously growing legal and regulatory burdens on business. All of these weaken and restrain freedom, democracy, and democratic accountability, not to mention economic efficiency, entrepreneurship and competitiveness.

“Europeans today prefer leisure to performance, security to risk-taking, paternalism to free markets, collectivism and group entitlements to individualism. They have always been more risk-averse than Americans, but the difference continues to grow. Economic freedom has a very low priority here. It seems that Europeans are not interested in capitalism and free markets and do not understand that their current behavior undermines the very institutions that made their past success possible. They are eager to defend their non-economic freedoms—the easiness, looseness, laxity and permissiveness of modern European society—but when it comes to their economic freedoms, they are quite indifferent.”

In conclusion, he pointed out that “…the way your American government has been going, you might be able to catch up with us—in terms of our problems—very soon. But you are not as far along, yet. So, maybe seeing Europe’s crisis today will at least help you in America turn back toward freedom.”

I would observe that our American system with its increasing regulation and taxation of business and its promotion of moral laxity is well on the way of adopting Europe’s problems.

Notes on the State of our Nation

I have received the following facts from Capt, Woddie Sprouse, USN/RET, a personal friend of Nancy and me. Capt. Sprouse is an experienced officer of the USN; and I deeply respect his understanding of our national condition. Please read the following and consider the significance of this information.
* 14.5 million Americans are unemployed, or 9.1% of the population this number equals the entire populations of Wyoming, Arkansas, Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Maine, New Mexico, Nebraska, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
* The 7/1/2011 Gallup underemployment rate is an additional 9.2% of the population over 18 years of age.
* The national debt is over 14.5 trillion dollars.
* The interest that must be paid on this debt will equal 414 billion dollars in 2011, this amounts to 1.13 billion dollars in accumulated interest per day. Nothing is being paid on the principle.
* There has not been a national budget approved by Congress for the past two fiscal years.
* The current 2011 Federal deficit, income - expense, is in excess of 1.3 trillion dollars, the Federal fiscal year ends on September 31, 201. This1.3 trillion deficit must be financed by seeking addition credit, adding to the total national debt.
* The nation is engaged in three wars, or something that resembles war to this old warrior.
* None of the three wars were declared by Congress. And, I submit that had they never would have been declared had the Congress been asked to do so.
* The nation has no defined foreign policy, or doctrine, to deal with Iran's nuclear development.
* The Mediterranean Muslim region has undergone a significant, yet to be understood, transformation.
* The wealthy, Muslim Gulf and Arabic, states have deferred taking an active role in the Mediterranean transformation.
* The nation has no defined foreign policy to deal with the diverse aspects of the above transformation.
* With the exception of Germany, the major European economies are in financial, debt, distress.
* The European Central Bank is struggling to cope with the wide spread, Southern European National Debit crisis and protect the Euro common currency.
* The nation has permitted the value of the US currency to decline with respect to the Euro.
* With the exception of the Secretary of the Treasury, all the original, key, members of The Administration's Economic team have left the administration.
* The Chinese national defense expenditure is estimated to be in the range of 20% of their annual budget.
* China is expected surpass the US as the number one world economy in the next 10 years.
* The Japanese economy has been stagnate for the past decade.
* There is no regional economic or military power to counter, or balance, Chinese growth.
* Significant quantities of oil and gas reside in the South China Sea, a region of increased Chinese attention.
* Russia has proven not to be a predictable world player.
* Much of central Europe is now dependent on oil and gas supplies by Russia.
* There are 12-14 million undocumented aliens residing in the nation.
* There is no effective method(s) to control undocumented alien access to the nation.
* There is no comprehensive plan to address the status of the 12-14 million undocumented aliens currently in the nation.
* Currently, only four States: Alaska, Montana, Arkansas and North Dakota, will not have a state budget deficit in 2011. 46 States will have deficits and the majority of these will require significant cuts in their services and/or increases in state revenues to abide by their state constitutions to have a balanced budget.
* All aspects of the US housing industry continue to experience a prolonged decline.
* Over 50% of US families pay no income taxes.
* US College tuition is increasing at a rate exceeding the national inflation rate.
* US Medical care expense is increasing at a rate exceeding the national inflation rate.
* The future national supply of energy is in question.

These facts are not just so much dross and Republican haranguing at an objectionable government administration; these are REAL facts, and we, Americans absolutely must do something about them!

Two Ways to Look at Bin Laden’s Death

Conservatives and liberals have reacted much differently to the Navy SEAL’s operation that killed Osama bin Laden. On the right there was pride in the capabilities, precision and bravery of an elite commando team. There were no illusions that victory had been achieved over international terrorism and islamist fanaticism. But there was a feeling of satisfaction, if not relief, that retributive justice was finally delivered to a heinous mass murderer. There was hope that this could be a turning point in a protracted and continuing war, along with renewed resolve that we persevere for as long as it takes.

On the left, there was no celebration. The liberal penchant for guilt was indulged with hand-wringing about a lack of due process in what may have been a planned “kill mission.” (So what? We are at war!) Abstract moralizers lamented the tragedy of any human life being taken. But even more revealing of the leftist mindset and their detachment from the real world was their indignation over continuing security precautions, which they regard as an affront to civil rights.

They fretted that bin Laden’s death might cause the Patriot Act to be continued, that the CIA and the FBI would still be allowed to conspire together (i.e., share information to thwart terrorist plots); that Gitmo would remain open; that the Transportation Security Administration would continue to inconvenience air travelers; that terrorist phone calls would be monitored without warrants (but with court approval under the Foreign Intelligence Act,); that captured terrorists might be subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques; that American troops will remain abroad, and so on.

These things are all true for the simple reason that we are still at war with suicidal fanatics who are intent on randomly killing innocent American civilians.

I think it is high time that we, Americans, quit being so guilt ridden with the fact that we need to protect ourselves and the ones we love. Let’s end this war on terror with a victory!

This blog post was largely excerpted from the Denver Post 2 June 2011, page 11B. It was part of an editorial written by Mike Rosen.

Is America Being Dismantled?

For years, liberals and other “progressives” in our country have been involved in a project to erode both respect for this country and the social cohesion of our people. This erosion is what has set the stage for today's dismantling of America that is now approaching the point of no return.

Over 100 years ago, progressives began to speak about changing our Constitution so that a more elite group of intellectuals could dictate our laws and customs. They did this under the mantra of the “needs of the times.” By the early 20th Century, the movement to subordinate the constitution to the wishes of our betters was led by our only President with a Ph.D., Woodrow Wilson. He thought that judges should not take the Constitution as meaning what its words plainly say, but "interpret" it to mean whatever it ought to mean, in order to meet "the needs of the times."

In our present times, this movement is still very much alive; and it is taking some subtle twists and turns. We now have a President who has, for years, been soaked in the society of those who strongly disdain our country and its traditions—they have seemingly preferred the principles of other countries to the republican form of government that has been established in the United States.

To get their way, our leaders must erode or dismantle the Constitution, bit by bit, in one way or another. This has been going on piecemeal over the years but now we have an administration in Washington that circumvents the Constitution wholesale, with its laws passed so fast that the public cannot know what is in them, its appointment of "czars" wielding greater power than Cabinet members, without having to be exposed to public scrutiny by going through the confirmation process prescribed by the Constitution for Cabinet members.

But the greatest challenge this administration has presented to the people of our country has been in international relations, where it is alienating our long-time allies, dismantling our credibility by reneging on our commitment to putting up a missile shield in Eastern Europe and--above all-- doing nothing meaningful to stop the leading terror-sponsoring nation in the world, Iran, from getting nuclear weapons.

We could deter the Soviet Union with our nuclear weapons, and now we must design methods to deter suicidal fanatics, whether they are international terrorists of the sort that caused 9/11 or suicidal fanatics in charge of the government of Iran, who have long been supplying international networks of suicidal fanatics.

Conservatism may not be popular with large segments of the United States population; but if we do not return to our democratic and republican roots, we will lose a great country that has served our fore fathers and us well.

Constitutional Changes of the Future—Part 6

Ninth Amendment

Another looming constitutional battleground concerns the meaning of the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People.” Many modern constitutionalists understand this amendment to say that there is some unknown array of unremunerated rights that lie fallow in the Constitution, waiting only to be unearthed by far-sighted judges.

Professor Thomas Grey of the Stanford Law School has suggested, for example, that the Ninth Amendment constitutes a “license to constitutional decision makers to look beyond the substantive commands of the constitutional text to protect fundamental rights not expressed therein.” Rights to abortion, contraception, homosexual behavior, and similar sexual privacy rights have already been imposed by judges “detecting” such rights in the Ninth Amendment. The problem is that, in the words of Justices Stewart and Black, this understanding of the amendment “turns somersaults with history” and renders the courts a “day-to-day constitutional convention.”

The more conventional understanding of the Ninth Amendment has viewed it in the historical context of the Bill of Rights, of which it is a part. By this understanding, it was written to dispel any implication that by the specification of particular rights in the Bill of Rights, the people have implicitly relinquished to the new federal government rights not specified. Like the Tenth Amendment—which serves as a reminder that powers neither given to the federal government nor prohibited to the states in the Constitution are reserved to the states or to the people—the Ninth Amendment was adopted to emphasize that our national government is one of limited powers. Its principal purpose was to prevent an extension of federal power, not to provide an open-ended grant of judicial authority that would have the opposite effect.

This post was excerpted from Imprimis, April 2010.

Constitutional Changes of the Future—Part 5

Political Questions:

In areas that were once viewed as inappropriate for judicial involvement, federal courts have begun to assert themselves in an unprecedented and aggressive manner. The limited role of the judiciary, for example, with regard to matters of national defense and foreign policy is not explicitly set forth in the Constitution, but such matters have from time immemorial been understood to be non-justiciable and within the exclusive responsibility of the elected branches of government. As far back as Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall recognized that “Questions in their nature political…can never be made in this Court.”

Yet just in the last several years, the Supreme Court, in a series of 5-4 decisions, has overruled determinations made by both the legislative and executive branches regarding the treatment of captured enemy combatants. Most notably, the Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush (2008) that foreign nationals captured in combat and held outside the United States by the military as prisoners of war—a war authorized by Congress under Article I, Section 8, and waged by the President as Commander-in-Chief under Article II, Section 2 (both parts of the Constitution)—possess the constitutional right to challenge their detentions in federal court. Thus, in yet one more realm of public policy—one on which the sovereignty and liberty of a free people are most dependent, national defense—judges have now begun to embark upon a sharply expanded role.

If there is no significant realm left of “political questions,” if there are no longer any traditional limitations upon the exercise of the judicial power, then, every matter coming before every president, every Congress, every governor, every legislature, and every county commission and city council can, with little difficulty, be summarily recast as a justiciable dispute, or what the Constitution, in Article III, Section 2, describes as a “case” or “controversy.” As a result, every policy debate taking place within government , at every level, will become little more than a prelude for judicial resolution.

This post was excerpted from Imprimis April 2010.

Constitutional Changes of the Future—Part 4

State Action on privileges and immunities clause of 14th Amendment

The privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has been interpreted by the Supreme Court since the Civil Rights Cases of 1883 as applying only to the states. It has not been applied to individual private citizens or private institutions. In other words, if a state law violates a person’s privileges and immunities under the Bill of Rights, then the federal courts will hear and judge the complaint. But…if a private person or institution violates these privileges and immunities, then, the federal government would not assume the authority to judge between the two competing parties. It is only after a state steps in to adjudicate a case of alleged violation of rights that a federal court can act.

In recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has heard cases for adjudication between private organizations and other agencies without the intervention of state courts. This tendency has made the Fourteenth Amendment a party to a further takeover of judicial power by federal courts. The federal government has increasingly treated private institutions as the equivalent of the state, thereby extending public oversight in a way the framers of our Constitution never intended.

If this tendency continues, the policies of private institutions in the various states will have to pass the scrutiny and receive the imprimatur of federal judges.

The federal judiciary violates the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in other ways by invading common sense and precedent: For instance, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (amended) clearly defines groups that deserve to be protected under the Fourteenth Amendment, e.g., racial and religious groups, etc. That Act does not list sexual orientation as a protected group. But…the Supreme Court in a decision regarding preferential housing for homosexuals in Boulder, Colorado in recent years, found in favor of homosexuals under the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, thus violating the rights of recognized people groups in Boulder. It mattered not to the Court that bills to recognize homosexuals as a special privileged group have been voted down in Congress every year for at least 15 years.

Well…we can see that the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is being misused by liberal groups to change the meaning and intent of the Constitution. More of this activity will be up-coming in the future if nothing is done to stop this judicial take-over.

Constitutional Changes of the Future—Part 3

Positive Rights

For people who believe that we need a new constitution, perhaps the greatest virtue of redefining the privileges or immunities clause is the prospect of transforming the Constitution from a guarantor of “negative liberties” into a charter of “affirmative government,” guaranteeing an array of “positive” rights. As President Obama has observed in a radio interview in criticism of the legacy of the Warren Court of the 1950s and 1960s, “[It] never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and . . . more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. . . . [T]he Warren Court . . . wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution. . . that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.”

President Obama is correct. The original Constitution defines individual rights in terms of what the government cannot do to you. For example, the government cannot inflict cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore the individual has a constitutional right not to be subject to such punishment; the government cannot engage in unreasonable searches and seizures, and therefore the individual has a constitutional right not to be subject to such searches and seizures, and so forth. By contrast, the Framers’ Constitution does not guarantee rights to material goods such as housing, education, food, clothing, jobs, or health care—rights that place a related obligation upon the state to obtain the resources from other citizens to pay for them.

Proponents of constitutional change would like to change the document’s requirements into a document that requires many positive rights for the benefit of the people, rights such as those listed in the above paragraph, i.e., housing, education, etc. And, for today, that specifically refers to health care, which many people are claiming as a basic right that ought to be guaranteed under the Constitution or, at least, under statute law. For them, lack of universal health care abridges and limits the “privileges and immunities” of our citizens. Therefore, these changers of the Constitution like to use the “privileges and immunities” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as their springboard into a new constitutional understanding.

As various advocates of a 21st century constitution have urged, a privilege or immunity might be interpreted to allow the invention of a host of new “rights,” and thus be construed to guarantee social or economic equality. However pleasing this might sound to some people, there should be no mistake: adopting this interpretation will supplant representative decision-making with the decision-making of unelected, unaccountable, and life-tenured judges. Should the privileges or immunities clause be used in this way, as a charter of positive rights, ours will become an America in which citizens are constitutionally entitled to their neighbors’ possessions; in which economic redistribution will become as ingrained a principle as federalism and the separation of powers. If this happens, a succession of new “rights” will be parceled out as people are deemed worthy of them by berobed lawyers in the judiciary.

Much of this post was excerpted from Imprimis April 2010.

Constitutional Changes of the Future—Part 2

Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment

The text of the “privileges or immunities clause” of the 14th Amendment reads as follows: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Since shortly after the Civil War, the privileges or immunities clause of the 14th Amendment has been understood as protecting a relatively limited array of rights that are a function of American federal citizenship, such as the right to be heard in courts of justice and the right to diplomatic protection. In defining the protections of the privileges or immunities clause in this manner, the Supreme Court has rejected the argument that the clause also protects rights that are a function of state citizenship, asserting that this would lead to federal courts serving as a “perpetual censor” of state and local governments. This decision has served as a bulwark of American federalism.

Although a considerable amount of federal judicial authority has since been achieved over the states through interpretations of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, many proponents of a “living and changing Constitution” seek additional federal oversight of state and local laws. Their strategy in this regard is to refashion the privileges or immunities clause as a new and essentially unlimited bill of rights within the 14th Amendment. The practical consequences of this would be to authorize federal judges to impose an ever broader and more stultifying uniformity upon the nation. Whatever modicum of federalism remains extant at the outset of this century, considerably less would remain tomorrow.

Changes such as the one outlined above would be another strike in favor of more and more power for the Federal Government and less power for the people to act through their elected representatives.

Much of this post was excerpted from IMPRIMIS April 2010.

Constitutional Changes of the Future—Part 1

As you look at our America, do you ever get the impression that we are living in a country that has drastically changed from the old America you studied in school—the America of ethics, morals, and true religion? Well, if you have that impression, you are exactly right. The America of today does not have the moral anchors that were plainly expressed by our founders.

George Washington said on October 3, 1789 as he proclaimed a national day of prayer, “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and to humbly implore His protection and favor.”

Daniel Webster wrote in 1821, “If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.”

The U.S. Supreme Court wrote in 1892, “Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon the teachings of the Redeemer of Mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent, our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.”

On the other hand, modern thinking is characterized by such statements as this one by John Dewey (often called the father of modern education) in the early 20th Century: “…faith in the prayer-hearing God is an unproved and outmoded faith. There is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, the immutable is also dead and buried. There is no room for fixed, natural law or moral absolutes.”

President Obama has made his position clear in a group of interesting quotes: “We are not a Christian nation. …therefore, the Bible isn’t common ground for all Americans. …therefore, the Bible can’t be the template for how we govern.”

At one time we had a constitution that embodied very different values than the ones which are espoused today by American society, as a whole. And these days, we are seeing that our Constitution is considered outdated and unfit for continued use as a guide for our government. The court system is continually finding new and liberal ideas hidden in its words, so that its precepts are hardly recognizable as the words of its writers. As we will see in the next six blog posts, our Constitution is in the process of drastic change that will very probably take place within the next fifty years. These ideas will be excerpted from IMPRIMIS, April 2010.

America's Founding Principle

A French dignitary, Alexis de Tocqueville, toured America in 1831-1833 to research our prisons and justice system. The American experience had a lasting effect on him, causing him to write his hallmark Democracy in America. For a child raised in the politically tumultuous country of revolutionary France, this expansive volume was the result of his fascination with our government and its founding.

His research and observations uncovered many things about our young country, not the least of which was his realization that a belief in God played a very critical role in its birth. "The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds," he wrote, "that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other."

Yet Alexis also had a warning:

Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?

“RECONCILLIATION” AND TYRANNY

Democrats in Congress seem determined to pass the health care bill through the “reconciliation process” despite its obvious unpopularity with the people of America. Nancy Pelosi has said this week that Democrats “have set the stage” for the reconciliation process to go forward. Reconciliation is a procedure in Congress whereby legislation can be passed without the usual threat of a filibuster. Reconciliation was a measure designed by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 to allow Congress and the Senate to avoid a filibuster and pass budget bills with a smaller group of “yes” votes. The technique has been used only on bills concerning budgets and deficit spending since its inception; and that was its intended purpose. If readers are interested in knowing what “reconciliation” is all about, they can refer to--http://tinyurl.com/y9xk668. Reconciliation has never been used to modify social legislation of the scale and cost of the present health care bill.

Here is how the Democrats in Congress intend to manipulate this health care bill through the reconciliation process. First, House Democrats would pass a series of “fixes” to the Senate bill. The Senate would then pass the House reconciliation bill, sending amendments to President Obama to a bill that did not exist, because it had not yet emerged from the House. The House would then retroactively pass the Senate bill, as is, and send it to the President for signature. Then the President would sign the Senate bill before he signs the reconciliation bill.

This whole process sounds like a bunch of legislative acrobatics in an attempt to pass legislation that is very unpopular with the American people. To me,it sounds like tyranny.

Nobody in their right mind believes that the government can supply health insurance to 38 million Americans and do it for free—actually decreasing the debt load of the government, as President Obama claims.

Liberty and Tyranny

“We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different an incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.” Abraham Lincoln 1864.

So…we see that two persons, both looking at the same phenomenon, may see it entirely differently—depending upon the perspective each brings to the situation. As for me, however, I accept the first definition given by President Lincoln. I believe that liberty is the freedom to do whatever one wishes with one’s self and one’s produce—so long as it does not impinge upon the freedom of others, of course.