Just damn.
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Posted on 06/04/2005 7:39:14 PM PDT by 26lemoncharlie
During the next 15 years, the United States could see some incredible transformations. Every young adult would be given $80,000 via a new tax on the "rich." Felons would be allowed to vote. A second Bill of Rights would be instituted, complete with a slew of new entitlements to ensure social and economic "equality." And most amazingly, no one will need – or even be allowed – to vote on these sweeping changes. Unelected judges could simply mandate each of them – for our own good, of course.
None of these changes are inevitable, but lest you chalk it all up as alarmist hype, an influential group of legal scholars seeks to make these things – and more – a reality.
In April, Yale Law School's chapter of the American Constitutional Society sponsored a conference titled "The Constitution in 2020." The event was designed to foster leftist policies into being, with the consent of neither voters nor elected officials. Perhaps this strategy should be expected in light of the desperation of many leftist politicians to remain in office these days. Not surprisingly, one of the conference's main financial backers was left-leaning and Bush-bashing international financier George Soros.
The first sentence of the conference description stated the goal forthrightly: "It is time for progressives to set a constitutional agenda for the 21st century." Yale law professor and opening speaker Bruce Ackerman revealed how sweeping their dream agenda could extend.
The professor promoted taxing the "wealthy" to create a "citizenship inheritance" of $80,000 for every young adult to use as each sees fit. In addition, Ackerman and other conference speakers believe that we as a nation need convicted murderers, rapists and other felons to help us select our leaders at the ballot box.
Harvard Law's Martha Minow agreed.
"For the politically unpopular and disenfranchised – including detained immigrants, children and literally disenfranchised ex-convicts – we do need to ramp up affirmative constitutional aid," she urged.
But affirmative action for felons and non-citizens wasn't enough for some. University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein insisted that even more progressive "constitutional interpretation" was required.
"It is important to be clear on what is meant by 'the Constitution,'" he said, churning up thankfully forgotten days when we wondered what the meaning of the word "is" is. "That idea could of course be limited to what is technically part of constitutional law as the Supreme Court understands it. Much more ambitiously, it could include anything deemed 'constitutive' of national commitments and principles."
And which "commitments and principles" is Sunstein referring to? Well, leftist ones, of course.
The professor referred at length to former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's proposed "Second Bill of Rights," which would invent bizarre, socialistic governmental guarantees our Founding Fathers never could have dreamed of.
Rights to a well-paying job, housing, health care, education, recreation and even freedom from "unfair competition" are included in this imagined constitution. No mention, of course, is made of the destruction of our nation's economic engine in the process.
While the original Bill of Rights set limits on the government, the Bill of Rights "the Sequel" would grant the state inconceivable authority to intervene in every sector of our lives.
If brought to the electorate, this breathtaking expansion of state power would be emphatically laughed out of town halls from Arizona to Vermont. But while the proposals seem outlandish today, government-sanctioned abortion and same-sex "marriage" seemed equally outlandish before being fabricated by some members of an unelected judiciary.
The sad truth is that, practically speaking, the only impediment these days to government-enforced recreation and nationwide salary caps is the interpretation of one more runaway Supreme Court decision. And if this effort is allowed to prevail, the results will be with us for a very long time.
We really need another Senator Joe McCarthy.
You do have a point there....
Communism is idiocy. They want to divide up the property. Suppose they did it -- it requires brains to keep money as well as make it. In a precious little while the money would be back in the former owner's hands and the communist would be poor again. - Mark Twain, a Biography
The founding fathers are rolling in their graves :(
Yes, but expecially because the people with those lunatic ideas are considered the intelligent among the masses.
In 15 years, we won't be worrying about any of that.
We'll be at war with red China then.
and, a final ping before retiring: THIS is bloody awful
I second that motion!
OMG....and a moronic newbie, on another thread, keeps arguing about how it's no big deal that the president hasn't been able to get his judicial nominees through the Senate and that the "compromise" is actually a good deal.
Just damn.
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It makes it kind of confusing as to where do we start "Loping Off the Heads"!?? I gues anyplace as long as we start!
But you gotta eat so every American (and visitor) will also have a "right" to free food.
You gotta have a place to sleep, ergo the right to free lodging.
And lest anything think I am joking, there "is" a right to transportation. Those emissions tests you have for your car include subsidies for those who cannot afford a better car. Just as you internet tax brings computers to poor people (although I've NEVER heard of how this plan works or when the market will be "saturated").
To pay for all of these entitlements, er rights, the government will hereby garnish all of your wages and allocate them as they see fit. After all the Clintons told us that we would just waste our money anyway.
To pay for all of these entitlements, er rights, the government will hereby garnish all of your wages and allocate them as they see fit. After all the Clintons told us that we would just waste our money anyway.
_________________________________________
And we know the Klintons are always right!!
A fool and his money were lucky to get together.
Ping
been telling ya for a few years now and guess what there it is .
New Constitution Version II will not be any more valid the one presently being subverted..
The threat of revolution by an armed populace is now and has always been the ONLY guarantor of "the People" and their "rights"... Big difference between "rights" and gov't granted privileges.. Our rights have been stolen and replaced by privileges and it has been getting worse for a hundred years.. Nothing new here..
When "the People" are too much of a coward to exercise that "RIGHT"(2nd amendment).. then the constitution is a small matter anyway.. Then ALL discussions about rights is merely bitching by whiners..
Do you know ANY say, republican, that would turn down a government check.?.
See what I mean.. No, or few principled people left..
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