Desperate Measures for Desperate Times.

Our founding fathers were brilliant men. They did so much more than give us a functional government, they institutionalized liberties that prior man had only aspired to and achieved in the smallest fragments. Our founding documents have endured longer than any other because they balanced the ambitions of government with three competing branches and limited the central government to certain enumerated powers, leaving all other matters to the state and local authorities. Most importantly the founders empowered the individual with sovereignty over his or her own life and destiny. We have fallen far.

Once bold men met and declared these words that could lead only two places: freedom or a noose. By God’s sovereign providence they achieved the former. Let us read those words again.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

In light of the betrayal of the Constitution and of the American people by Chief Justice Roberts and the Supreme Court we can no longer argue against the notion that our form of government has ceased to do what the founders envisioned.  Our government has become an obstruction to liberty rather than its protector. Some will contend that this actually happened at one point or another in the past, others will say I’m a “dupe” for ever believing in the promises of American freedom to begin with. In the past, since before the constitution was ever written or ratified there has been an ebb and flow in the authorities of government. So concerned with the dangers of creating a new despotism that our founders first erred so far to the side of caution that our first governing document created an weak and impotent central government without the ability to safe guard the rights of the sovereign sates under its care. A reading of The Articles of Confederation is useful however because it reveals much about what our founders feared. http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=3&page=transcript.

We are well beyond the point of political ebb and flow, we have a government destructive to those ends and according to Jefferson it is our duty as well as our right to alter or abolish it.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

The choice between the two is not hard. We must choose to ALTER, even in its current state of “disrepair” our constitution still grants and secures more liberty then has any governing document in the history of the world. Besides it’s not as though we have never altered the constitution before. The founders provided for that eventuality, but they wisely did not make it easy. 27 times the constitution has been amended, the first 10, known as the “bill of rights” were essential to the ratification of the Constitution in the first place, the 12^th, 20^th, 25^t and 27th   deal with standardizing technical aspects of governance. The 13^th 14^th 15^th 19^th and 24^th corrected the shortcomings of the original text establishing the provisions of the bill of rights to 100% of the citizenry. The 11^th and 23^rd dealt with issues of jurisdiction. The 18^th was a well intended but ineffective attempt to do away with intoxicating drinks and the 21^st repealed it. (http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html)

Other than prohibition which was abandoned, the vast majority of the constitutional amendments did little to alter the basic relationship between the citizenry and the government other than to expand existing rights to neglected parties. The amendments we want to look at now are the ones that did, four of them in particular, the 16^th and 17^th amendment were the first two fundamental changes, and 16 the most dreaded of all, it established the income tax.

Is it hard to fathom that once the Government didn’t receive or even need income taxes?

Customs duties, excise taxes, and tariffs were sufficient. In fact prior to the expense of the War Between the States customs duties were all the Federal authorities needed to perform the necessary functions of government. During the War a graduated tax on income was put in place but a later attempt to collect taxes on individual income was thrown out as unconstitutional in 1894. You see chief Justice Roberts, the government’s power to tax was never meant to be unlimited, adding a new source of revenue required a constitutional amendment, but more on Chief Justice Roberts later.

In this matter the founder’s were wise they knew that the simplest most effective way to limit the power of government was to limit its funds. The 16^th amendment (  The Congress shall have 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.) did more than simply provide the government with a massive pool of money, it put the federal government in direct contact with the individual tax payer, something that actually was rare prior to 1913. It also opened a Pandora’s Box of “unintended” consequence. Remember, conservatives view taxation as a necessary evil to fund the essential functions of government, liberals, while they love the money and power that high taxes give them, see taxation as a means to an end, that end being he creation of a society that is “fair”. This is why when it was pointed out that raising capitol gains taxes historically lowered Federal revenue Sen. Barrack Obama replied, “it s about being fair”, or when the same Sen. and Presidential candidate Obama was challenged by “Joe the Plumber” he stated that the purpose of his tax proposals was to “spread the wealth around”. These neither are not free market ideas nor are the American, they are communist. (It is plank number two of the 10 planks of Marx and Engels blueprint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto which calls for a heavy progressive income tax).

What do we do about excessive taxation? There are several proposals that are appealing. Mitt Romney’ tax plan would be a good start (http://www.mittromney.com/issues/tax) but over the long term it treats the symptoms, which could themselves be fatal to the economy, but the disease what John Roberts calls the unlimited power to tax, would be like a cancer in remission waiting for one bad election result to flair up again. In order to insure that the government tax policy returns to the limit envisioned by our founders we must define limits that the founders would never dream would have been crossed. We see that the 16^th amendment is loosely defined, intentionally so by the progressives who designed it, when the income tax was first implemented the top marginal rate was 7%, within 4 years that top rate was all the way up to 67% (War Revenue act of 1917).
One idea with appeal is that of former and often Presidential candidate Ron Paul- ditch the income tax altogether. It may however be impossible to fund a legitimate national defense without any tax on income, though I sure would love to see smart people crunch those numbers. Rep. Paul may be overly ambitious but this is the type of outside the box thinking we need.
Another outside the box example is Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 which drew a great deal of attention during the primary season. If you recall the current tax code would be scrapped and a 9% tax would be imposed on income both personal and corporate, as well as a 9% sales tax. This would require a constitutional amendment and I would support it if, and only if, one of these conditions were met. 2/3 majority to raise any of the rates in both houses; the rates were built in to the amendment and could only be changed in a time of crisis and any such increases would have a  sunset of 1 year to 18 months than would have to be actively renewed.
An idea I have not heard articulated outside of my own head, is to change the 16^th amendment to strictly limit what can be taxed and how much it can be taxed. For instance “the Federal government shall not have the authority to tax any individual or business at a rate of more than 20% in peacetime nor 25% in time of war or crisis.”  Or “congress shall be forbidden to lay any tax or duty upon any inheritance of any citizen received from any party related by blood.” Death to the Death Tax!

Sadly, and this is the fiscal madness of our day, limiting tax does not guarantee a limit on spending. The government must have the ability to borrow in crisis situations but the fact that we borrow $0.40 of every dollar is madness!

The popular fix is a balanced budget amendment and I would support it if it was the right one, there are some versions that allow the government to ramp up spending then require tax increases to cover it. Still it was always the clear intention of our founders that we balance our books. Such an amendment must focus on the spending issues and must place strict limits on the purposes for which the government can borrow.

For a long time I have opposed constitutional amendments in most cases. If they are going to ignore the constitution anyway why not ignore the amendments as well? now though we must fight fire with fire as they say. That which our founders intended which has been “reinterpreted” must be properly defined.

Next time we’ll look at the 17^th amendment as well as the overall concept that the several states retain their sovereignty.
Until then… keep on the firing line.

John Roberts and the Requiem for American Liberty

Usually on July 4, I would put aside political discourse long enough to write about freedom, The Declaration of Independence, or American exceptionalism, but this year I can’t bring myself to. On June 28, 2012 Chief Justice John Roberts declared America is no longer free. I am not employing hyperbole. I have contended from the beginning that Obama care in general and the mandate in particular are incompatible with freedom. It gives the government control over how you might choose to provide for your own care, gives the IRS punitive power to compel the individual to enter into a private contract and will lead to all the cost overruns and rationing that conservatives have warned of, but Chief Justice Roberts made it worse, something I thought impossible.

You see Roberts said that the mandate was unconstitutional under the commerce clause, which is what the government argued gave it the authority to impose the mandate. But then he did something that makes no sense legally, or ethically for that matter, he essentially changed the law to say that the mandate penalty was really just a tax and that the government’s right of taxation is essentially unlimited. He did this in spite of the Obama lawyer’s own argument as well as the continuing drum beat of liberal dribble that it is not a tax.  To put it simply, the government according to the chief justice does not have the legal authority to compel you to buy insurance; they just have the authority to punish you, through taxes called penalties, if you don’t. No other decision in history has written so broad a blank check to the Federal government likely in the history of this country. So following this logic, the government doesn’t have the authority to force churches and other religious groups to provide contraceptives, but it can punish them if they don’t, the government can’t order Doctors to perform abortions but it can punish them if they don’t. Where does it end? The government can’t mandate that pastors support gay marriage, but it can “tax” them limitlessly if they don’t, possibly jail them if they can’t or won’t pay. We’re not punishing free speech they might say just enforcing the tax laws. The government can’t mandate that you stop writing politically offensive blogs… you get the idea.

My first impression was that someone got to Roberts. The President did blatantly and inappropriately try to bully the court, inappropriately, blatantly and successfully it would seem. A CBS story seems to confirm that the media blitz and the pressure that overturning an unconstitutional law would be judicial activism caused Roberts to commit one of the most egregious acts of judicial activism in history. Perhaps Roberts was intimidated or maybe he gave in to some promise of gain but it is almost impossible that a legal mind as brilliant as Roberts actually believes the BS in his majority decision. But rather he sold his soul or lost his spine doesn’t really matter, Obama-care is the law of the land, freedom is mortally wounded and the constitution lies in tattered pieces on the ground. Bitterly I recall the flap over Harriet Meyers’ nomination which conservatives opposed due to a lack of record and experience, the nomination of John Roberts replaced hers if you recall. Perhaps Miss Meyers would have had the backbone to stand up to the pressure that Roberts did not. We can’t go back so what do we do moving forward?

There may well be necessarily some constitutional fix put in place. The power of the court has far exceeded the vision of the founders who never saw the court as the final and only arbiter of constitutionality. Safe to say, when one man has the power to flop on an issue and fundamentally and forever change the relationship between government and the individual we have an imperialist court not a constitutional one. The states may well have to stand up to the Federal government in ways un seen since the 1860’s, these alternatives will be explored more as we go forward first we have two things to do and one of those is precariously balanced over a precipice of loss as well as our other liberties.

We can vote. This right is under assault in ways we wouldn’t have imagined twenty years ago. No, no one is trying to stop you from going to the polling place, unless of course you live in a district targeted by the New Black Panthers, whose voter intimidation seems to have the blessing of the Justice Department. What threatens the integrity of the election process is institutionalized fraud.  Consider that this same Justice Department is actively seeking to stop states from removing illegal immigrants, and other people legally ineligible to vote, from their voter rolls. They are referring to this as voter suppression. Do you heart that? Stopping people from voting who cannot legally vote is voter suppression. You need to show a picture ID at any store that still accepts checks but asking for an ID at the voting place is a violation of voting rights? If the thought of this doesn’t make your blood boil, or else just run cold, you aren’t paying attention. The Democrat party seeks to stuff the ballot box with enough illegal votes to override the will of the legal citizenry. I doubt we can look to chief Justice Roberts to uphold the integrity of the electoral process any more than he did the Constitution on Obama-care.

Finally we can pray.  Free exercise of religion is under attack in ways our founders would drop to their knees and weep over, but nothing can stop us from praying. Just ask Ole Daniel. (Daniel 6:10-23) I’m not talking about adding “God bless our country” to the litany of dinner blessings, I’m talking about passionate effectual reverent prayer (James 5: 13-17) I am talking about individual and corporate repentance. The steps necessary to rescue the founders dream are not for the faint of heart. Electing Mitt Romney and 51 Republican Senators is not nearly enough.

In some ways King George was a bush leaguer next to Barrack Obama in the oppression department but our problems hardly began with this administration nor will they end with Romney’s hopeful election. The steps necessary to save our society are hard ones and freedom is not for the faint of heart. Next time we’ll begin looking at what some of those steps may need to be.

Until then stay on your knees, and keep on the firing line.

Ps if ever we get internet access restored from the great set of last weeks storm I will make this post!