Time: Does It Matter? No, not in the least. Completely WRONG; about everything. FAIL.
TIME SUCKS.
Posted on 07/03/2011 5:45:40 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
Time magazine’s cover story shows the U.S. Constitution and asks, “Does it still matter?” Reading this story, we kept waiting for Emmanuel Goldstein to show up for the Two Minutes of Hate. It was difficult to discern whether we were reading Time, or Orwells’ 1984.
It portrays the Constitution as an outmoded document that we should ignore to whatever extent is expedient to pursue someone’s vision of a better society: “We cannot let the Constitution become an obstacle to a future with a sensible health care system, a globalized economy, and evolving sense of civil and political rights.”
The story shows all sorts of poll questions that present a false choice, such as, “The 14th Amendment says that any person born in the U.S. automatically becomes a U.S. citizen… Should [it] be revised?” The Citizenship Clause says no such thing, because it adds that anyone “not subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. is not a citizen.
That’s why children of foreign ambassadors, prisoner soldiers and heads of state born here do not become citizens. The question is how broad that “jurisdiction” clause is. Could Congress exclude illegal aliens? It’s an active debate in legal circles, with no clear answer.
Instead, the questions should have included: “Are you more interested in the Constitution today that you were four years ago?” “Do you agree or disagree with candidates discussing the Constitution more in their campaign speeches this year?” “Are you now aware that the Constitution only vests the federal government with power of specific areas of life, leaving the states sovereign to decide all other issues?”
Or questions on enduring constitutional principles. “Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s 1803 pronouncement that any law contrary to the Constitution is null and void?” “Every government officer (including every judge) takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Should they apply its original meaning to current challenges?”
Does the Constitution still matter? Look at huge crowds of Americans cheering at rallies, whether it’s a spending protest or a pro-life rally. It matters to them, and they vote.
The story was so riddled with distortions that it obscured its message. For example, it says we must raise the debt ceiling because, “the idea that we can default on our debt is not only reckless; it’s probably unconstitutional.” It twists a provision from the 14th Amendment that has nothing to do with the debt ceiling.
The reality is, revenue government collects every month so vastly exceeds our debt payments that we could easily meet our monthly obligations. We would just have to cut discretionary spending on other programs. But it’s deceptive to suggest that not raising the ceiling automatically causes default, and it’s wrong to suggest it’s unconstitutional.
The most disappointing part of the article mischaracterizes the Obamacare legal fight. It says Obamacare’s individual mandate requiring you to buy health insurance is constitutional because government takes your money in taxes and requires you to buy car insurance.
The writer obliviously ignores that the Constitution expressly creates a federal government of enumerated powers. The feds can tax you because of the Taxing Clause of the Constitution (though even then only four types of taxes are legal—not the mandate). And states have authority to make you buy car insurance under state police power, but if the feds required it, such a law would be illegal because the feds have no police power.
Since there is no Healthcare Clause in the Constitution, the feds try cramming it in the Commerce Clause. That’s the whole fight: Whether Congress can control your personal decisions whenever Congress declares such decisions impact interstate commerce.
Every decision in your life has some tangential relationship to interstate commerce. Does that mean the Constitution allows the government to control your every decision? It makes a mockery of the concept of limited government.
The story concludes, “The Constitution serves the nation; the nation does not serve the Constitution.” The connotation is that we shouldn’t be too slavish in our fidelity to the Constitution.
Like the rest of this article, its conclusion misses the point. The Constitution serves the American people as an unbreakable constraint on those in power, dictating their duties and the limits on their authority. The Constitution serves We the People by requiring every government official to take an oath to obey its every word.
The picture art at the outset of Time’s story showed the Constitution cut in dozens of narrow vertical strips. Clearly it had been run through a paper shredder.
Evidently this is wishful thinking for some on the Far Left. The only problem is that it’s false. Interest in the Constitution is resurgent, and that renewed interest is the key to America’s renewal in our third century.
Time: Does It Matter? No, not in the least. Completely WRONG; about everything. FAIL.
TIME SUCKS.
Perhaps we should treat the Constitution like the muzzies treat the “Holy Quran”—you mess with it, we keel you!
Another claim to the moral high ground, brought to you by the "new" gnostic generation at Time magazine. After all, THEY know better than you and I.
Yes, TIME truly sucks!
If there were ever a magazine that deserves to go out of business, it is TIME.
That picture is just about every liberal’s fantasy regarding the Constitution (just as long as the 1st Amendment is snipped out and kept).
TIME will probably make that cover photo into a print suitable for hanging—the X-mas gift on every liberal’s list!
The question on the cover page asks, "Does the [constitution} still matter?"
The question is framed in such a way as to presume that the falsehood is correct and you are forced to defend the accusation as if it were true.
In other words, have you stopped beating your wife yet? Typical pinko commie BS!
Proverbs 22:28
Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.
Jeremiah 6:16
Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.
The problem we have is that our Constitution was very carefully and effectively designed to create a dysfunctional government, one that would have great trouble doing much of anything. That’s the whole point behind checks and balances and all that.
It works reasonably well as long as what the government is trying to do is limited in scope.
However, in recent decades many if not perhaps most Americans want the government to do much more, similar to the activist governments of Europe and elsewhere.
But the Constitution prevents this from being done efficiently, so the government responds by rewriting the Constitution by judicial fiat or by just ignoring it.
I suggest we either ought to redesign our Constitution to one suited to an activist government (as we are allowed to do by the Constitution itself) or return to a minimalist government role in society. This half and half stuff is quite literally killing us.
Apparently, to Time, and to liberals, the constitution should be completely flexible to allow whatever seems to be the popular and important issue or feeling of the day. That would be a recipe for chaos.
A constitution without meaning, and which can be redrawn according to the latest agenda, is no constitution at all.
If we want to end up a country without laws, or laws that can be bent depending upon the latest wishes of whoever is in power at the moment, then the constitution should be declared without value, and we can declare ourselves Somalia West.
The flag of the U. S. will use cloths of color, red, white and blue, be of a specific dimension and be governed by certain rules of display; but the red, white and blue will each have their own distinct meanings.
You stated that very well.
Over the years our elected leaders have let us down and have flipped the entire document. The Fed has taken all the things they were only suppose to protect.
Time is merely justifying what already is.
“A constitution without meaning, and which can be redrawn according to the latest agenda, is no constitution at all.”
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Exactly and that is what the left insists on, that the constitution be reduced to a list of suggestions, to be followed or disregarded as the occasion warrants, a “living, breathing document” to be quoted and respected when it suits the whim of the left and to be laughed at and scorned when it does not.
What clown is so foolish as to actually believe that the founders of this nation spent day after laborious day haggling over every word and then threw in a clause or two that effectively reduce the whole thing to, “If the above does not suit you then do as you please”. It would truly require an imbecile to believe such.
Of course, to those graduates of latter day schools whose knowledge of history and government is comparable to that of a striped house cat it may seem plausible. He who cannot see a distinction between a state law requiring those who desire to own and operate an automobile to purchase insurance protecting others from the financial costs of their errors and a federal law requiring those who want to live and breath to purchase insurance to protect them from medical bills if they should require a physician, even if they have sworn an oath never to use the services of a physician, cannot distinguish between daylight and darkness.
They care nothing about the first amendment. It is a convenient tool, nothing more.
Ann Coulter said it best when she said “The First Amendment is just a one-way ratchet for liberals and traitors.”
(Who are the "bitter clingers" again? And it was their hero, Mao, who opined that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.")
Cheers!
Yes the constitution still matters...... Time magazine does not matter!!! It was bought for one dollar.
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