10 New Proposed Constitutional Amendments

You owe me ten FReebucks.

Whose “we?” That’s the whole problem. The very first word of the preamble to the Constitution expresses a collectivist concept. It was all downhill from there.

The Constitution never was ratified by, “we the people,” it was ratified by politicians who took it on themselves to decide for the people, which at least half of, probably more, did not really want, but had it shoved down their throats. Everybody thinks that was just ducky, even though less than a year after the new “Constitutional” government began, it passed oppressive tax bills that ruined people’s businesses and lives. Perhaps you’ve heard of the whiskey rebellion.

The Constitution did not bring freedom, and there has been less freedom every day of its existence from the very beginning.

There was perhaps more freedom in this country than any other country in history for the first hundred years, but that is not because of the government, but only because the government was so small. Even that small government still brought oppression wherever and whenever it interefered in things. Now that it is very big, everyone is beginning to see just how oppressive it is. It is still the same government.

Hank

“The very first word of the preamble to the Constitution expresses a collectivist concept.”

People gather together to accomplish collectively what they can't accomplish individually. The concept predates government. There's nothing wrong with it in and of itself and if people didn't do so, we'd be running around the woods scavenging individually.

“The Constitution did not bring freedom,...”

Steel and blood bring freedom, and sometimes running away if there is anywhere to run to. The Constitution did not bring freedom but it has aided it.

“...and there has been less freedom every day of its existence from the very beginning.”

“There was perhaps more freedom in this country than any other country in history for the first hundred years,...”

You can communicate what you will from NH to OH almost instantly rather than in days or weeks. You can change jobs limited only by your ability and the availability of employment. You can travel from one end of the country to the other in more than days.

You aren't bound to the land, indentured or enslaved (no matter what you think of taxes). You don't have to work dawn till dusk or past.

You can leave if you think there's a better place to go to.

Do you really think you'd be free to do more in the 18th or 19th century?

Of course a lot depends on your idea of freedom. What is your idea of freedom?

...”the government...It is still the same government.”

There is no “the government to be “the same government” There's the Federal Government, various State Governments, even more City, County and Township Governments. Any one of them can be more or less oppressive at one time or another.

Of course a lot depends on your idea of oppression. What is your idea of oppression?

“People gather together to accomplish collectively what they can’t accomplish individually. The concept predates government. There’s nothing wrong with it in and of itself and if people didn’t do so, we’d be running around the woods scavenging individually.”

This is the very view that has enabled all oppressive governments. Individuals freely choosing to cooperate in an effort that is of mutual effort is not a “collective” effort. Collectivism is any group of individuals forcing others to “cooperate” against their will, like all those forced to accept the American constitution who opposed it, and to support financially the laws that were made under it. They were farmers and business men, not individuals “running around the woods scavenging individually.”

There is nothing wrong, by the way, with working from, “dawn to dusk,” and if most of the people in this country were not living at the expense of the real producers, that is exactly what they would have to do to survive. The reality is, life is not easy, but hard and ruthlessly demanding. It’s one of the great deceptions of the age that life was meant to be easy, and safe, and secure. It isn’t and cannot be made so.

In this county, at least, every individual was more free than today in the nineteenth century. You confuse technological advancements with freedom of choice. In fact, every individual was more free a mere sixty years ago. I lived it and I know. You have no idea how much more free people were in 1950 for example. You could truly go anywhere you liked (my parents did that, dragging me along with them) to every state in the union. My father was always armed (but never question about that by anyone) and we were in almost every federal and state park in the country.

Here’s a simple tiny example. In 1950 you could walk into any hardware store in the country and by all the DDT you wanted (or a gun and ammunition, for that matter). It is perhaps the most harmless and effective insecticide ever produced. You can eat the stuff and it will do no harm at all. Not a single bird’s shell has been affected by it ever. It is the most affective defense against malaria that has ever existed, but is now banned, almost world-wide. Tell me we are still free when I can go to the hardware store and by DDT, otherwise, you better understand, you are living in a totalitarian state where the collective “we the people” are in control of your life.

Hank

“I suppose you leave it to Madison’s ghost to explain away the logical contradiction found in YOUR interpretation of his writing. Given the opportunity, you took a pass.”

I did not “interpret them.” They are exactly what Madison expressed. You can easily find his exact words if you are not too lazy to do the research. I will not do it for you.

Think what you like (it’s what true individual freedom is all about) but history is not arbitrary, and Barnett just makes to many mistakes to be teaching other people’s children the principles on which this country was founded. Personally, I do not care if you understand that or not, or what you think of me. The facts are there if you want to learn them. I am not your enemy, my friend, and I wish you nothing but the best. Sorry we cannot agree on this, but that too, is what freedom ought to be.

Hank

“This is the very view that has enabled all oppressive governments.”

Of course. I wrote “People gather together to accomplish collectively what they can’t accomplish individually”. The “what” they gather together to accomplish may be good or bad. And while “This is the very view that has enabled all oppressive governments” it is also the view that has enabled people to overthrow oppressive governments. Again, in and of itself there’s nothing wrong with doing things collectively, but I infer from your words that you think there is. I believe you are wrong.

“They were farmers and business men, not individuals ‘running around the woods scavenging individually.’”

They were farmers and business men because their ancestors worked together (collectively) to reach a stage at which people didn’t have to run around the woods scavenging individually.

“Individuals freely choosing to cooperate in an effort that is of mutual effort is not a “collective” effort.”

Yes it is. Such individuals are conducting the effort unitedly, in combination with each other.

(COLLECTIVELY, adv. In a mass, or body; in a collected state; in the aggregate; unitedly; in a state of combination; as the citizens of a state collectively considered. (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary).)

“Collectivism is any group of individuals forcing others to “cooperate” against their will,”

First, I didn’t write “collectivism”, I wrote “collectively”, a dictionary word, which is a different concept than either the Soviet style collectivism or the collectivism of your definition.

Second, I’ve never seen your definition of collectivism before and I couldn’t find it with a quick web search. Do you have a source?

Third, the problem between us here seems to me to be that you have what I consider to be a warped view of the concept of doing things collectively.

“There is nothing wrong, by the way, with working from, ‘dawn to dusk,’…”

I did not say there was. I merely wrote “You don't have to work dawn till dusk or past.” You have a choice, one that you are exercising since you are posting on a discussion forum on the Internet instead of working. And I note that though there is nothing inherently wrong with working from dawn to dusk, mankind has put a lot of collective effort into achieving a condition where it is not necessary; a condition where it is a matter of free choice.

“In this county, at least, every individual was more free than today in the nineteenth century.”

I can’t speak to that since I don’t know your county and I’m assuming from context that’s not a typo.

“You confuse technological advancements with freedom of choice.”

No, technological advancements allow more choices among which to exercise freedom of choice.

“You have no idea how much more free people were in 1950 for example.”

That’s an unwarranted assumption.

“You could truly go anywhere you liked (my parents did that, dragging me along with them) to every state in the union.”

So you saw and remember the time from a child’s viewpoint which may or may not be accurate.

As to the rest of your post, I never said things were all good.

As to your references to “free” and “freedom”, I previously wrote “Of course a lot depends on your idea of freedom. What is your idea of freedom?” I still don’t know what your idea on that is and considering our difference over “collectively” I hesitate to guess.

“Again, in and of itself there’s nothing wrong with doing things collectively, but I infer from your words that you think there is.”

Why would you “infer” from my words anything, when you could read what I said explicitly, “Individuals freely choosing to cooperate in an effort that is of mutual interest is not a ‘collective’ effort.” [I changed “effort” to “interest”]

I think our only difference is a semantic one, but it is a very important one.

If people freely choose to cooperate in doing something, if they want to form a club, an agency, a team, a church, or even a government, so long as every individual is free to join the effort or not, that is not collectivism. It is when a collection of people, no matter how large or small the group, becomes an end in itself, when the “group” and its purposes or actions are regarded as more important, in any way, than any individual in that group, that is collectivism.

Here is an example you are familiar with, a popular expression of politicians, “the good of society.” That’s pure collectivism. There is nothing wrong with the concept of society, so long as all it means is the sum of all the activities and interactions of all the individuals living in a given geographical area. The only “good” or “bad” in society is also only an abstraction—the sum of all the “good” and “bad” that pertains to the individuals in it. It is when society itself becomes an end or purpose to which any individual’s purposes or ends or time or money or effort must be sacrificed, or limited for, that society (the concept) becomes a collectivist one.

When “we the people” means only the people who agree with something, and everyone else must conform whether they agree or not, that is collectivism.

Just one other point. Groups and collectives never discover anything, only individuals do. Almost every important discovery we know about has been resisted by society (the collective) to the point of absurdity (often leading to the persecution of the discoverers).

A moment’s thought will make it clear, every innovation is always against the flow of the collective, and every improvement in the lot of men has come from men stepping outside the group and doing something new, something no one else in the group is doing. Far from promoting innovation, groups, societies, collectives always tend to stifle change and innovation. Trade unions are a prime example.

You are right, you will not find a common source for "collectivism" as I've been using it. I use it as the antonym of individualism. When Newton used the term "force," to describe his laws of motion, the word had never been used that way before. He would not have been able to "source" it. Today, some academic would have repudiated his discoveries because of it.

By "freedom" I mean what the founders meant--individual freedom. Specifically the freedom of every individual to live as they choose, bearing the consequences or enjoying the rewards of the choices and actions without mitigation. Most people do not want freedom, they want security, and willingly trade freedom for it. It is the responsibility part of freedom that terrifies most people, and the almost universal desire to have more than one can acquire or attain by one's own effort for which most people gladly sell themselves into slavery.

Here. I mean what Mark Steyn means. You might like this:

Live Free, or Die

I live in New Hampshire.

Hank

I did not “interpret them.” They are exactly what Madison expressed. You can easily find his exact words if you are not too lazy to do the research. I will not do it for you. Think what you like (it’s what true individual freedom is all about) but history is not arbitrary, and Barnett just makes to many mistakes to be teaching other people’s children the principles on which this country was founded. Personally, I do not care if you understand that or not, or what you think of me. The facts are there if you want to learn them. I am not your enemy, my friend, and I wish you nothing but the best. Sorry we cannot agree on this, but that too, is what freedom ought to be. Hank

So, no. No humility.

The significance of a self-contradicting proposition is that such a statement is necessarily wrong. The claim that governments both *do* and *do not* usurp powers, and that the Bill of Rights is therefore somehow both useless and also redundant, is self-contradictory. The importance of this here is that you call on Madison for an authoritative stance. Claims of attribution aside, you do not appear to either quote or cite his writing. You have either relied upon the wrong man, if the self-falsifying argument can be pinned on him, or you have set him up to take the blame for an invalid argument. Besides, since you turn to Madison as 'the adult in the room', I have to wonder if you think that his contemporary advocates of the Bill were also less familiar with his ideas. If only you could go back and instruct them!

In point of fact, governments have historically seized upon whatever powers they could. The prohibitive language of the Bill of Rights offers much greater recourse to citizen complainants in court that the mere absence of delegation. It is a matter of substance vs vacuum, and legal substance possesses more legal weight. You are arguing that we are safer from an inevitable government power-grab in the absence of any such prohibitive language.

You continually claim that the article was error ridden and that the original author could be easily unsaddled, though you neither indicate his errors nor argue against any specific element of his proposal. I don't mean to badger you, but your whole posting style seems to consist entirely of slighting a target with vague suggestions of inferiority, though you never actually demonstrate superiority. It's a matter of substance vs vacuum.

"The claim that governments both *do* and *do not* usurp powers, ..."

There was no such claim.

There were three things Madison believed, simply:

1. A bill of rights was unnecessary because the Constitution did not extend to the Federal government any powers that would enable it to violate any enumerated rights.
2. Enumerating rights could be dangerous, because it could be construed that those were all the rights there are, and therefore others could be violated.
3. Enumerated rights would be ineffectual anyway, because such bills of rights at the state level were regularly breached.

Number 3 does not contradict number 1, which is what you seem to be implying, it is a different and additional reason for believing there should not be a bill of rights. I also did not say that I agreed with them, and Madison himself, in the end, wrote the Bill of Rights as it exists today.

In the end Madison repudiated these arguments himself in the process promoting the bill of rights. Just so you'll stop accusing me of well, making it up, I guess:

In Madison's own words:

[An address to Congress, "Proposed Amendments to the Constitution, June 8, 1789"]

"It has been said that in the federal government they are unnecessary, because the powers are enumerated, and it follows that all that are not granted by the constitution are retained: that the constitution is a bill of powers, the great residuum being the rights of the people; and therefore a bill of rights cannot be so necessary as if the residuum was thrown into the hands of the government. I admit that these arguments are not entirely without foundation; but they are not conclusive to the extent which has been supposed.

"...

"It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration, and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the general government, and were consequently insecure.

"...

"It has been said, that it is necessary to load the constitution with this provision, because it was not found effectual in the constitution of the particular states. It is true, there are a few particular states in which some of the most valuable articles have not, at one time or other, been violated ..."

You wrote:

"You are arguing that we are safer from an inevitable government power-grab in the absence of any such prohibitive language." Where did I argue that? I didn't, but in fact it should be obvious to everyone today, that since every one of the 10 enumerated rights have been abrogated, their effectiveness is certainly questionable. No piece of paper has ever stopped any individual, or government, determined to do something from doing it.

"You continually claim that the article was error ridden ..." Well, no, I did not say that, because I do not think that. There are some errors but important ones, I think, like the confusion about the meaning of Federalism. The Federalists, like Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and John Adams, and eventually Madison himself in his latter years, wanted bigger and more powerful government. It was the Anti-federalists, like Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and George Mason who wanted to limit the powers of the federal government, and it was the Anti-federalists that insisted on a bill of rights. So, if we were to have a new bill of something limiting government it would correctly be call "anti-federalist."

And here is just one example of mushy thinking, or compartmentalism, or just not noticing:

According to this "Bill of Federalism", "The power of Congress to make all laws which are necessary and proper to regulate commerce among the several states ..." is retained, but this, "All persons are equally free and independent, and have ... inherent and unalienable rights ... amongst which are ... possessing and protecting real and personal property, making binding contracts of their choosing..." is added. So one is only free to own and dispose of their property and make contracts in his own state, apparently, but if he wants to buy or sell property across state lines, or hire workers from another state, that suddenly comes under the control of the Federal government.

Hank

I have to infer from your words because they don’t explicitly make sense. What you wrote means “Individuals freely choosing to cooperate in an effort that is of mutual interest is not a ‘Individuals freely choosing to cooperate in an effort that is of mutual interest’ effort.”

Of course it doesn’t mean that to you because as you wrote: You are right, you will not find a common source for "collectivism" as I've been using it. I use it as the antonym of individualism. When Newton used the term "force," to describe his laws of motion, the word had never been used that way before. He would not have been able to "source" it. Today, some academic would have repudiated his discoveries because of it.

In other words, you’re assigning your own meaning to words. And you refused to accept my use of the word “collectively“ (I did not use “collectivism”) as intended, instead assigning your particular unsupported meaning to it. You’re so individualistic that you spurn the common, what could be called the collective, language forcing others to your terms, or trying to. That’s not just individualistic, it’s tyrannical. Mostly though I think of it as so very gay, so typically liberal.

Since we can’t communicate in a common language, this whole exchange has been a waste of effort and it’s pointless, in my view, to continue.

In considering the foregoing, remember I might not have meant what you think I meant. I may not have assigned the meaning to words that you think I did or that you do.

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