Posted on 06/29/2012 1:19:16 PM PDT by mojito
The Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling on Thursday cuts right to the very fabric of the relationship between a once-limited government and a once-free citizen, but the eternal struggle between liberty and tyranny endures. It is a beginning, not an end.
As enormously important as the high court’s Obamacare ruling is - and it’s huge - it’s not the final word. The legal and political dust has not yet settled, and it will take some time for the unpredictable ripples to form the powerful waves of history. Yet, history waits for no man, so we begin by asking: What now? First, we mourn. We mourn that a nation built on the principle of limited government has grown the largest government in the history of humankind. We mourn that our Supreme Court rewrote Obamacare into Obamatax to allow for the individual mandate. We mourn that once again we read the lips of a president who promised he would not raise our taxes but did so anyway. We mourn that Washington no longer rules with the consent of the governed.
But this mourning, as appropriate as it is, must be short-lived. This struggle for our liberty, this struggle to abide by the principles of our founding begins anew. We can no longer trust that Washington will save the great experiment of self-governance that is the United States of America. Just as it has always been, the fate of our republic rests in the hands of the voters.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
This has become a time for civil disobedence. As you have rightly have said, those in power will not obey, so then no obedence in turn.
Essentially correct, those who had formally sworn an oath to the Constitution are not absolved by virtue of the existence failure of the same as a Constitution.
That being said your State Constitution being independently derived is still very much in force.
Obama thinks he is playing Simon Says.
Look at some of the people sitting around in an emergency room these days.
Let’s not forget the 2010 Midterms.
Boehner crying off and on for two years.
Romney as our Presidential choice.
ObamaCare is still alive.
Obama is still going full bore.
I guess we sure showed them!
I don’t know if you realized it or not, but it was voters that put the bastards in office to begin with. Then said bastards tell said voters,”Keep me in office and I will take care of you”. It was done.Now the parasites outnumber the producers. I know, I know,according to some, there are more “conservatives” than any other group. If they are more Conservatives than any other group,why are in the damn mess that we are in?
It goes back MUCH farther than that...
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Are you still killing your unborn? -- GOD |
Even Conservatives would rather be praised into Hell;
than rebuked into Heaven.
During the Critical Period between the Revolutionary War and the Constitution, our young republics ran wild with popular, democratic legislatures. While the people had not yet figured out how to legally steal from their neighbors outright, they got their legislators to pass laws that screwed creditors, inflated money, enacted ex-post facto laws, and generally impaired contracts to favor debtors. These faults were corrected in the Constitution so often derided at this forum.
Similarly, we suffer today from too much democracy. For 99 years the Senate has not served as the lid on the House of Representatives it was designed to be. No, our Senators are vote grubbers like the Reps, only worse, because they have six year terms and imagine themselves minor gods.
Our Framers got it right in 1787 and the 16th, 17th amendments have been our undoing. The American Revolution is dead.
This has never been a democracy, This is a Republic and we are allowing it to slip away because good men do nothing.
Take these commies and muslims to the wood shed and explain what they are messing with!
The only answer to clear the air.....
Here we got Ginsburg and Roberts to validate a bill which will lead to some disturbingly similar consequences, once the bureaucracy is gassed up and running.
The States were independent republics under the Confederation. Their popular Assemblies and weak governors during the Critical Period made the notion of republican government almost farcical. They were far closer to unlimited democracies than to republics subject to constitutional limitations.
As we've discussed before on this Forum, John Quincy Adams, who was a child when the Declaration was adopted, 19 when the Constitution was framed, and served in various posts in the new government, including as President, was asked to deliver the "Jubilee" Address in 1839 in New York City. For readers who may not know about it, that complete work can be read here. In it, JQA traces the ideas and history of the nation to that date and discusses the ideas of "democracy" and "republic," as they apply to the government chosen by the Framers. These are his concluding remarks:
". . . the Constitution as construed by Washington, still proved an effective government for the country.
"And such it has still proved, through every successive change of administration it has undergone. Of these, it becomes not me to speak in detail. Nor were it possible, without too great a trespass upon your time. The example of Washington, of retiring from the Presidency after a double term of four years, was followed by Mr. Jefferson, against the urgent solicitations of several state Legislatures. This second example of voluntary self- chastened ambition, by the decided approbation of public opinion, has been held obligatory upon their successors, and has become a tacit subsidiary Constitutional law. If not entirely satisfactory to the nation, it is rather by its admitting one re-election, than by its interdicting a second. Every change of a President of the United States, has exhibited some variety of policy from that of his predecessor. In more than one case, the change has extended to political and even to moral principle; but the policy of the country has been fashioned far more by the influences of public opinion, and the prevailing humors in the two Houses of Congress, than by the judgment, the will, or the principles of the President of the United States. The President himself is no more than a representative of public opinion at the time of his election; and as public opinion is subject to great and frequent fluctuations, he must accommodate his policy to them; or the people will speedily give him a successor; or either House of Congress will effectually control his power. It is thus, and in no other sense that the Constitution of the United States is democratic - for the government of our country, instead of a Democracy the most simple, is the most complicated government on the face of the globe. From the immense extent of our territory, the difference of manners, habits, opinions, and above all, the clashing interests of the North, South, East, and West, public opinion formed by the combination of numerous aggregates, becomes itself a problem of compound arithmetic, which nothing but the result of the popular elections can solve.
"It has been my purpose, Fellow-Citizens, in this discourse to show:-
1. That this Union was formed by a spontaneous movement of the people of thirteen English Colonies; all subjects of the King of Great Britain - bound to him in allegiance, and to the British empire as their country. That the first object of this Union,was united resistance against oppression, and to obtain from the government of their country redress of their wrongs.
2. That failing in this object, their petitions having been spurned, and the oppressions of which they complained, aggravated beyond endurance, their Delegates in Congress, in their name and by their authority, issued the Declaration of Independence - proclaiming them to the world as one people, absolving them from their ties and oaths of allegiance to their king and country - renouncing that country; declared the UNITED Colonies, Independent States, and announcing that this ONE PEOPLE of thirteen united independent states, by that act, assumed among the powers of the earth, that separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them.
3. That in justification of themselves for this act of transcendent power, they proclaimed the principles upon which they held all lawful government upon earth to be founded - which principles were, the natural, unalienable, imprescriptible rights of man, specifying among them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - that the institution of government is to secure to men in society the possession of those rights: that the institution, dissolution, and reinstitution of government, belong exclusively to THE PEOPLE under a moral responsibility to the Supreme Ruler of the universe; and that all the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.
4. That under this proclamation of principles, the dissolution of allegiance to the British king, and the compatriot connection with the people of the British empire, were accomplished; and the one people of the United States of America, became one separate sovereign independent power, assuming an equal station among the nations of the earth.
5. That this one people did not immediately institute a government for themselves. But instead of it, their delegates in Congress, by authority from their separate state legislatures, without voice or consultation of the people, instituted a mere confederacy.
6. That this confederacy totally departed from the principles of the Declaration of independence, and substituted instead of the constituent power of the people, an assumed sovereignty of each separate state, as the source of all its authority.
7. That as a primitive source of power, this separate state sovereignty,was not only a departure from the principles of the Declaration of Independence, but directly contrary to, and utterly incompatible with them.
8. That the tree was made known by its fruits. That after five years wasted in its preparation, the confederation dragged out a miserable existence of eight years more, and expired like a candle in the socket, having brought the union itself to the verge of dissolution.
9. That the Constitution of the United States was a return to the principles of the Declaration of independence, and the exclusive constituent power of the people. That it was the work of the ONE PEOPLE of the United States; and that those United States, though doubled in numbers, still constitute as a nation, but ONE PEOPLE.
10. That this Constitution, making due allowance for the imperfections and errors incident to all human affairs, has under all the vicissitudes and changes of war and peace, been administered upon those same principles, during a career of fifty years.
11. That its fruits have been, still making allowance for human imperfection, a more perfect union, established justice, domestic tranquility, provision for the common defence, promotion of the general welfare, and the enjoyment of the blessings of liberty by the constituent people, and their posterity to the present day.
"And now the future is all before us, and Providence our guide.
"When the children of Israel, after forty years of wanderings in the wilderness, were about to enter upon the promised land, their leader, Moses, who was not permitted to cross the Jordan with them, just before his removal from among them, commanded that when the Lord their God should have brought them into the land, they should put the curse upon Mount Ebal, and the blessing upon Mount Gerizim. This injunction was faithfully fulfilled by his successor Joshua. Immediately after they had taken possession of the land, Joshua built an altar to the Lord, of whole stones, upon Mount Ebal. And there he wrote upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written in the presence of the children of Israel: and all Israel, and their elders and officers, and their judges, stood on the two sides of the ark of the covenant, home by the priests and Levites, six tribes over against Mount Gerizim, and six over against Mount Ebal. And he read all the words of the law, the blessings and cursings, according to all that was written in the book of the law.
"Fellow-citizens, the ark of your covenant is the Declaration of independence. Your Mount Ebal, is the confederacy of separate state sovereignties, and your Mount Gerizim is the Constitution of the United States. In that scene of tremendous and awful solemnity, narrated in the Holy Scriptures, there is not a curse pronounced against the people, upon Mount Ebal, not a blessing promised them upon Mount Gerizim, which your posterity may not suffer or enjoy, from your and their adherence to, or departure from, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, practically interwoven in the Constitution of the United States. Lay up these principles, then, in your hearts, and in your souls - bind them for signs upon your hands, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes - teach them to your children, speaking of them when sitting in your houses, when walking by the way, when lying down and when rising up - write them upon the doorplates of your houses, and upon your gates - cling to them as to the issues of life - adhere to them as to the cords of your eternal salvation. So may your children's children at the next return of this day of jubilee, after a full century of experience under your national Constitution, celebrate it again in the full enjoyment of all the blessings recognized by you in the commemoration of this day, and of all the blessings promised to the children of Israel upon Mount Gerizim, as the reward of obedience to the law of God."
So said John Quincy Adams.
The ideas underlying our Constitution are not dead, unless we allow them to die! They are the enduring ideas which originate with the Creator, and if Divine Providence was present at this nation's founding and has an ongoing purpose for America's continued existence, then we owe it to Providence and the brave authors of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution to promote and preserve those ideas for future generations.
Thanks. See my later post to Jacquerie.
Well said! Agree. I finally found a positive note to end the night with.
1961 - Ronald Reagan speaks out on Socialized Medicine - Audio
"One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it.”And
Replace some of the names cited and add a few zeros behind the stated stats, and this 1964 speech could be delivered today with even more relevancy:
THANKS! for this reply!!
We must remember that the Source for the ideas underlying our Declaration of Independence and Constitution's limits on the power of those we entrust with power in government remains unchanged; therefore, the ideas essential to liberty are unchanged.
Only the understanding of the people has changed.
Back in March, one of my posts was the following:
"Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it." - John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams, 1777What an awesome responsibility the Justices of 2012 have to Adams and the other Framers of America's Constitution "make good use" of the opportunity they have now to "preserve" freedom for future generations!
If they "do not," then history will record their action as a betrayal of the trust of all the brave men and women who have been willing to sacrifice everything for freedom's cause--from 1776 to now.
May they feel the heavy cloak of responsibility they bear for the freedom of those future generations, and may their opinions recall those ideas of individual liberty so beautifully articulated by the Framers of the Constitution they are sworn to uphold.
"On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p. 322.
In reading the dissenting opinions of this week's rulings, one realizes that such understanding is alive in the minds of some justices. We must not tolerate the appointment of any more members of the Court who will "squeeze" new meanings which sacrifice the liberty of future generations for momentary illusions about the role of government.
Indeed!
My people perish from lack of knowledge...
I sent the JQA speech to my email list.
I sent the JQA speech to my email list.
(Now if anyone has the attention span to actually READ it; without finding it squeezed on Twitter or LIKED on FaceBook is another thing altogether!)
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