What is Constitutional?
Our founding fathers wanted limited government. The plan for government would make it difficult for any person or group to have unlimited power, and make it difficult to get anything done quickly so thought could be given to law. This plan for government was called the Constitution. The Framers of the Constitution listed the powers that they were giving to the federal government and was allowed to do only those “enumerated powers.”
Do you remember that from Public School? THE CONSTITUTION WAS WRITTEN TO LIMIT GOVERNMENT. It is a Commie Lib myth that it is a “living breathing document”. Hence, only 27 Amendments.
American History and the Constitution are either 1) not taught, b) not taught correctly, i.e. it’s ancient history and an ancient document, 3) or taught in such a bland and mundane way that no one will remember it. And lets not forget about the indoctrination that comes with the public school system.
http://animal-farm.us/change/indoctrinating-your-children-441
http://animal-farm.us/change/acorn-and-your-children-553
In The Carnegie Reporter, 2005 Larmar Alexander, (R) Tennessee wrote, “…the last several decades have witnessed a sharp decline in the teaching of American history and civics in our public schools… our public schools are not teaching the history and values that are the American ideology. Instead, students hear a watered-down version of our past, and civics is often dropped from the curriculum entirely.”
On August 9, 2006 Katheryn Kilbert wrote in the New York Times, “Americans know more about “The Simpsons” than they do about the First Amendment… Too few Americans, particularly young people, understand our Constitution and the civil rights and liberties that Americans take for granted… Unfortunately, today fewer and fewer college students grapple with the history of the Constitution, its language or meaning. At a time when constitutional issues, from privacy to presidential power, gun control to Guantanamo Bay, confront this nation daily, understanding the Constitution should be the hallmark of citizenship, not its forgotten tradition.”
In 1794, Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
Constitutional limits on federal power are explained by James Madison in Federalist Paper No. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined… be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.”
This is directly out of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Article 1, Section 8 explains the LIMITED role of Congress. We’ve let Congress and the Presidents get out of hand. We’ve failed because we don’t understand the Constitution.
Commie libs think the meaning of “general welfare” means that Congress can do just about anything it wants to. Again, this is because of our ignorance of history and the Constitution.
In a letter James Madison wrote to Edmund Pendleton “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the ‘general welfare’, the government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one …With respect to the two words ‘general welfare’, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Pennsylvania Representative Albert Gallatin, “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated… Whensoever the General Federal Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”
In a speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, James Madison said, “The powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction”.
Does it sound like our founding fathers wanted an “all encompassing” government? They rebelled against a tyrannical king who was the “all encompassing” government. A government with too much power – the power to take away rights and freedom. A government with power to take away our God-given rights, had to be stopped. And they did it.
They specifically wrote the Constitution to preserve a “separation of powers” and to give specific powers to our federal government. Our Constitution reserves all powers not specifically granted to the federal government are to go respectively to the states and to the people. IT’S IN THE CONSTITUTION! It’s called the 10th Amendment.
“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power not longer susceptible of any definition.” It seems Thomas Jefferson agrees with me in his “Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank”, February 15, 1791
Limited government requires individual responsibility for one’s actions. We are to be responsible for ourselves without dependence upon the government for “hand-outs” or “welfare”. Government should not be, nor should we expect, involvement in “social engineering” nor in the re-distribution of wealth.
Each new law passed is taking of freedom and responsibility from individuals and transferring it to the government and we need to recognize this. Instead of “limited government” we have been subsidizing “unlimited government”.
Benjamin Franklin articulated, “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”.
And Thomas Paine wrote in Rights of Man, “We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute”.
I hear Obummer’s a Constitutional lawyer. I’m sure he is, but he defies the Constitution. He relies on the fact that we don’t know the Constitution. He and other Presidents since Woodrow Wilson have expanded government. The stimulus packages, cap-and-trade, and healthcare will increase governments power giving us less freedom. The government is utilizing or creating these crisis’s to scare us into giving them this power. We have to hold out, because when we don’t give in, the lies will unravel.
On August 12th, 2009, tellitlikeitis said:
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