Posted on 03/21/2010 8:29:18 PM PDT by wizard61
Enslaved by Democracy
Rights never enslave. There is no right to food because that would enslave a farmer. My right to free speech imposes no obligation on anyone, not even to listen. Rights are inalienable. Our primary rights include Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Additional rights never conflict with these primary rights.
Legal contract often require consenting parties to take certain actions. In conversation these requirements may be called “rights” but this is not in the political or governmental sense – such as those enumerated in the Constitution’s Bill Of Rights. My right to bears arms requires no one to those arms for me. Note how Constitutional Rights protect citizens from an abusive government.
A Right to health care would enslave physicians, tax payers, or both. Not all citizens pay taxes, and taxing selected groups is unjust. In 2004, forty percent of US households owed no net federal income taxes(1). In 2007, the top 1 percent of tax returns earned almost 23 percent of adjusted gross income and paid more than 40 percent of all federal individual income taxes, and the top 1 percent of tax returns paid more in federal individual income taxes than the bottom 95 percent (2). While this clearly appeals to many people, does the clause “equal protection under the law” come to mind?
As James Bovard said in 1994: “Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”(3) The Constitution was created to protect the rights of individuals from the tyranny of the majority. For those who are unclear or who feel pulled by the arguments of politicians and professors, please refer to the Federalist papers written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay in 1787 and 1788 explaining and advocating for the ratification of the US Constitution. Our educational system has de-emphasized covering material such as this from the tenth paper:
“The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice.(4)”
Of course a majority would like to establish contracts between our government and our residents to have the tax payers provide food, heat, education, advanced education, employment, health care, and, given human nature, the list will never end. But such obligations require unwilling labor from a minority. These are not Rights as understood by the Founders. Quite the contrary, we are talking about a form of slavery: slavery by democracy.
When our government requires only certain people to provide for obligation not specified in our Constitution, it violates the rights of those people to their Pursuit of Happiness, and we have abandoned the vision that created our country which was founded on a love for justice. How can a base desire to “share the wealth” and take, without consent, from a minority – how can this co-exist with justice? The judicial activism and its theories of an evolving constitution may be popular, but when enacted without proper Constitutional Amendments, they are also both illegal and profoundly un-American. This is theft by democracy.
People may have voted for most of this. Our courts and legislatures may have ignored their sworn oaths to protect the Constitution, but it never the less remains theft, and, at a higher level, it remains illegal and a violation of citizens rights to Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
And so, as some suggest that health care is a right: I reject the premise behind that narratice. This nation was founded on a different and opposing set of values that have led us to a great prosperity and moral clarity that allowed us to lead the way in defeating Hitler and Fascism and the Soviet Union and many other evils, great and small. The Primary Rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence were never about forcing one person to pay the way of another. The Bill of Rights did not require progressive taxes, or any taxes whatsoever.
Forcing citizens to pay for social programs or for foreign nation building was never part of the US agenda as spelled out in our Constitution. Our Founders established limits on the Federal Government, not obligations to provide for much more that secure borders and domestic tranquility.
I reject the notion that the USA owes anything to the United Nations. I reject the Welfare State. Honor requires us to maintain Social Security until we can replace it with something better, but it’s current state underscores the folly, the absolute folly of entrusting our government with enacting a social agenda. The founders knew the government would be a terrible vehicle for transforming society. Those who flaunt the Founder’s example fail to understand how corrupt and foolish politicians have been in all societies and governments throughout history.
Ironically, the most trustworthy and capable governmental leaders ever known, Madison, Washington, Jefferson, et al went to great lengths to limit the power of the government they were creating. Even as they created something more noble and limited than the kingdoms of Europe and Asia, they knew and feared even their own creation. They knew with certitude that power corrupts.
Over the many decades the US has progressively thrown off those wise limits, as new generations of politicians sought ever more power. Always in the name of progress, these politicians either believed themselves to be more wise and capable than our Founders, perhaps they just had different goals, or perhaps they were simply blinded by a lust for power.
I reject the modern notion that any Federal Government is a trustworthy and competent guardian who can oversee my life. The Founders feared a government that could entangle us in foreign wars, create fragile economic systems prone to collapse, take our rights away, and even force us to purchase things we do not want. Today our government does all of these things!
It is time to create new laws and amendments that re-impose limits on our government and empowers the individual – not the other way around.
In the latter half of the 1700’s King George of England had the legal right to tax the colonies. The Empire had just spent enormous sums to protect the colonists in wars, and the crown and parliament had, by law and precedent, a clear right to impose whatever taxes they desired.
Many colonists, however, recognized a higher authority and began to demand representation in that government. They had minimal support in law to support this demand, nor to resist paying taxes, nor to rebel against their government. So, as they began, they called out to mankind, both living and to those not yet born, in a Declaration that all men possess unalienable rights which, regardless of the current man-made laws, they claimed these rights transcended the laws of the Empire and empowered them to illegally sever political ties with their King and parliament.
Have the words and concepts from this Declaration of Independence somehow expired?
Today their descendant countrymen have a sacred Constitution, a government to protect it, and even a Supreme Court to protect it against the other two branches of government. Over time, sadly, assorted leaders have weakened these protections and usurped powers reserved for individuals and the States. Even though all three branches were complicit as they broke their oaths, we still have a problem. Taking prohibited powers while technically following the proscribed checks and balances may skirt the borders of legality, but when such actions also interfere with our primary rights of Life Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, then the legal question will become less relevant just as they did in 1776.
When our government forgets its responsibilities and not only fails to protect our rights but even takes a lead role in persecuting a minority by confiscating from them without permission and thereby interfering with their pursuit of happiness, then We the People are obligated to take action. Following Thomas Jefferson’s example, I celebrate a higher source for my inalienable rights.
Even though my government has followed due process in respect to the checks and balances of the three branches as it usurped powers denied to it by the Constitution, it has done so without making the requisite changes to the Constitution, and thus all three branches have broken their collectively sworn oaths.
I hereby declare my government has transgressed its authority and has illegally usurped powers denied it by the Constitution of the United States of America.
I petition my government to correct this with all due haste, by either granting itself these powers via the proscribed amendment process, or by returning those powers to the individuals and States from which they were illegally seized.
I petition all three branches of government to review their laws, decisions, and policies and to enumerate the applicable Constitutional origin. For each power taken with inadequate sourcing, I ask Congress take speedy action to redress the situation.
Most urgently, I call out to my countrymen to assist me it bringing this matter to the attention of our Congressional representatives in the House and Senate.
May God Bless America
1 http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/542.html 2 http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html 3 http://www.giraffe.com/gr_wolves.html 4 http://federali.st/10
-John Adams
Thank you for not giving up or giving in. I have not read the whole thing, although I will do so later, but all things such as this should be commended for the heartfelt patriotism shown here. Without people like you we will never see the end of this travesty and others like it that have been perpetrated upon us over the years, and we will never regain all that has been taken away. I am with you, and it’s so nice to know that I am not alone.
Great post. Not a ‘vanity.’ Thanks!
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