Posted on 07/03/2012 8:15:21 PM PDT by Innovative
Chief Justice John Roberts recently struck another blow against limited government by creating a new, unrestrained power to use taxes to compel activity (even if the proponents of the tax insist vehemently that it is not a tax!).
There's something tragic about a decision that says federal powers are practically unlimited, checked only by public opinion and the political process. There should be a large and healthy sphere of American life that is insulated and protected from political negotiation. But we cannot dwell on that tragedy. We have no recourse left but to engage and win in the political process.
Barack Obama, a man long intent on breaking free from the Constitution's essential constraints, has succeeded in doing so. With those constraints broken Obama is certain to pursue the "redistribution of wealth and more basic issues of political and economic justice." That means massive tax hikes, intrusive regulations, and pervasive government control of our lives.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
…Yes this is a turning point in American history, but with regard to the nature of Robert’s treachery there is no way to go back to meaningful Constitutional protections. Roberts has cut that off with the only remaining enforcer being our States thou nullification & interposition.
From the Federal Government’s point of view John Robert’s has most effectively killed the Federal Constitution. That is why winning the 2012 Federal election doesn’t really matter as far as the Federal constitution goes. Indeed just holding on to what little is left of our reserved rights is premised(in Robert’s world) upon the utterly impossible task of winning every last federal election from now onto forever.
Even amending the Federal Constitution cannot be said to have any effect owing to the Robert’s court creative powers to find ways to justify the power grabs of their appointing Government.
Our only real options all remain in the domain of what the same federal court would regard as a revolutionary if were lucky. Freedom is basically dead at this point...
...John like his liberal buddies doesn’t care about the Text of any Federal Constitution or law of any kind, they just rewrite it to fit his needs. No amendment to that Constitution is going be anything but Text. As long as its up to Federal employees to enforce and “interpret” that text it will only have the force and meaning they want it to have. This is of course to effectively unbound them, The guards are hand picked by the Prisoners who thus now run the prison, and it is we the people who are left subject to their boundless whims...
But your fears that Roberts and the other liberal Justices will continue to defy the Constitution against their sworn oath can be remedied by impeachment.
Impeachement takes balls which no one has
To MALTA of all places.
Relevant Excerpts:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
“We are helpless if only a court decision can save us.”
Absolutely right on the mark.
One wonders where Progressives get the stones to behave the way they do;
They have no regard for differing points of view, their willingness to use violence by proxy to get their point of view across is astounding, they enforce laws selectively when they get elected to public office, they judge others with opposing points of view as knuckle-dragging morons, their open and blatant desire to eliminate any reference to G-d in public is breathtaking and their particular hatred for G-d’s Son is spectacular.
Absolutely amazing.
IMHO
The Supreme Court is irrelevant now. Was always so, no we are sure.
That’s what I say. No more payroll tax deductions until this is repealed.
“Even amending the Federal Constitution cannot be said to have any effect owing to the Robert’s court creative powers to find ways to justify the power grabs of their appointing Government.”
I disagree, however the option is a dangerous one, but should 3/4 of the States call a Convention, they could REMOVE ANYONE they wish and change, abolish, or define anything they wanted to, the problem is with the Leftist States, but there are not enough of them to matter if it was organized properly. But I believe it would be easier for the STATES to CALL FOR REPEAL of THE 16th AMENDMENT, Bypassing CONGRESS and the Administration, this would eliminate most of our problems overnight, and 17 while we are at it.
We have two options beyond engaging and winning in the political process. One is slavery, and the other is uglier than anything has seen since 1865. Of the three alternatives, submission to slavery at the hands of socialists is neither my first choice nor my second choice. We have to win in November for the good of America.
Here are some words from that generation on the importance of "the People" and the States:
"I do not think it for the interest of the General Government itself, and still less of the Union at large, that the State governments should be so little respected as they have been. However, I dare say that in time all these as well as their central government, like the planets revolving round their common sun, acting and acted upon according to their respective weights and distances, will produce that beautiful equilibrium on which our Constitution is founded, and which I believe it will exhibit to the world in a degree of perfection, unexampled but in the planetary system itself. The enlightened statesman, therefore, will endeavor to preserve the weight and influence of every part, as too much given any member of it would destroy the general equilibrium." --Thomas Jefferson to Peregrine Fitzhugh, 1798. ME 10:3"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278
"If Caesar had been as virtuous as he was daring and sagacious, what could he, even in the plenitude of his usurped power, have done to lead his fellow citizens into good government?... If their people indeed had been, like ourselves, enlightened, peaceable, and really free, the answer would be obvious. 'Restore independence to all your foreign conquests, relieve Italy from the government of the rabble of Rome, consult it as a nation entitled to self-government, and do its will.' But steeped in corruption, vice and venality, as the whole nation was,... what could even Cicero, Cato, Brutus have done, had it been referred to them to establish a good government for their country?... No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and their people were so demoralized and depraved as to be incapable of exercising a wholesome control. Their reformation then was to be taken up ab incunabulis. Their minds were to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and deterred from those of vice by the dread of punishments proportioned, indeed, but irremissible; in all cases, to follow truth as the only safe guide, and to eschew error, which bewilders us in one false consequence after another in endless succession. These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure of order and good government. . . . --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1819. ME 15:233
"An enlightened people, and an energetic public opinion... will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit of the government." --Thomas Jefferson to Chevalier de Ouis, 1814. ME 14:130
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820.
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782.
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787.
"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789.
"Whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, the people, if well informed, may be relied on to set them to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789.
From James Madison:
"Although all men are born free, and all nations might be so, yet too true it is, that slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant – they have been cheated; asleep – they have been surprised; divided – the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson?... The people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it."
"A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people."
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
"To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea."
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court even can do much to help it." - Judge Learned Hand
Then, there is Lincoln:
"I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes." - Abraham Lincoln
A comment in reply to that idea came from Houston talk show host, Michael Berry who suggested a constitutional amendment to change the life long appointment to SCOTUS to a limited term of 18 years with two judges revolving off the court every four years similar to the way the senate turns over. That way the people would be much more influential in the judges sitting on the court because every president would get the same amount of appointees every four years.
Your probably right on that, the 16th however is inconsequential compared to the 17th.
It is by means of the 17th that federal power loving injustices are so regularly appointed. Among many other sources of Federal usurpation including all bills, and treaties.
Impeachment by whome? That’s why the same federal officers who enjoy the same usurped federal authority theses Federal employees “upheld” for them.
I think the power & practice of impeachment is much more likely to backfire against Constitutional law than to reinforce it. That is why it has almost never been used.
-—”Here is an idea, why don’t you spend some of that effort getting Romney to withdraw and let a real conservative run?”
Sure, I would much prefer Herman Cain or Alan West to Milch Romney, but unlike you, I think I am more realistic in this stage of the game. IMO, at this point, you’re being a dreamer. Romney withdrawing is just not going to happen, so we have to chip away at this socialist mindset slowly.
I live in the pathetic state of California. Using Calif as an example, it’s a cesspool of liberals. Do you really think a true conservative would even stand a chance of being elected governor here? Not a chance. Extrapolate that to the country as a whole.
Because I’m a realist and you seem to not be one based on your dreamy suggestion, I think I understand the political dynamic in our nation more clearly to know that the country has gone SO FAR LEFT that the masses will NOT vote for our ideal conservative candidate at this juncture in history. A true conservative is truly unelectable in this cesspool of ignorance.
The ONLY WAY we stand a chance is to have a moderate conservative (even a deceitful RINO) elected in 2012 and then hopefully he (and a conservative House & Senate) can gradually re-educate people and change the tone of the country so that a more conservative challenger can challenge in 2016.
I believe this “not voting for the non-Obama candidate because he’s a RINO” is actually a naive view in the grand scheme of things because the alternative to a RINO (4 more years of this fascist socialist crap) is sooooo much worse than a feckless RINO in office.
Think about it...
I’m sorry to pop you bubble, but that’s the way I see it after seeing my friends and some formerly conservative elderly family members succumb to the socialist brainwashing via the MSM. Dumb/naive people take a long time to see the light and this won’t happen overnight.
He is also the CIC.
Great post. Thanks for these very appropriate excerpts.
These quotes remind use that it really is the people’s responsibility to make informed decisions to elect honorable people to office and then to monitor their behavior to make sure they honor their oath of office.
My bubble is not popped, I was pulling your chain a little.
I lived in Palm Springs for 25 years. Moved to a more socialist state with a better climate about a year ago. I am too old to continue this charade of voting for the statist that is better than the other statist. It is a perfectly clear to me that the Fabian Socialists set the agenda and we play along.
You've made a serious, very serious, charge. Link? Source? How do you know that's Roberts in the photo, and not some Italian bigwig?
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