Posted on 12/15/2010 4:19:58 PM PST by Whenifhow
The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution:
“[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”
Over the years, Congress has sought to — and largely succeeded in — expanding the scope of “commerce” to include the growing and personal consumption of food on one’s own land, solely for one’s own use.
The theory being, of course, that by *not* consuming food grown on someone else’s land in an altogether different state, one has affected “interstate commerce” by *not* doing something one could reasonably be expected to do.
If you sit cross-legged for a while with a couple of thousand sheets of eighty-pound printer paper in your lap, covered in magical legislative hieroglyphics, it will eventually dawn on you that skipping breakfast also affects “Commerce … among the … States,” as does deciding not to go out to the local cinema to watch “Dances With Smurfs” on the big screen.
In other words, commerce, embodied as “the economy,” is one giant exercise in the Butterfly Effect so loved by the Chaos Theory boffins. Everything you do or don’t do affects everything else that anybody else does, and naturally, therefore, it all needs regulating.
All your Commerce are belong to us.
I am struck by the glib invocation and largely uncontested acceptance of a “thighbone-connected-to-the-toebone-connected-to-the-earbone” reasoning process to arrive at a nearly unvarnished totalitarian justification for the equally totalitarian conclusion: if it moves, government owns it; if it doesn’t move, government owns it.
And, in a faintly and somewhat darkly ironic definitional twist, it turns out that these same folks (By The Power Vested In Me By Chaos Theory) are the ones who promote chaos of a different sort — the breakdown of civil order — to create the “Help! Save us!” demand from the populace so they can step in and impose the stark and oppressive framework of total government as our savior.
Exquisite. The Pincers of Chaos. We will use the Theory of Chaos to justify control of all commerce of whatever sort in whatever venue (hey, after all, the way you tie your shoes affects the weather in Siberia) while we work to induce chaos in society to create the power vacuum needed to seize control.
It’s okay, though, because it’s all for your own good.
In my opinion, any jurist, lawyer or legislator who even *attempts* to seriously defend Wickard v. Filburn with a straight face should be pilloried & horse-whipped in public!
Anyone who disagrees with that opinion should also be pilloried and horse-whipped in public!
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