No. More. Corruption.
I see by my daily snail mail that “a recent study found that only 39% of Americans could name all three branches of the federal government!
“Amazingly, more than a third of those surveyed couldn’t name even one of our rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. And this at a time when increasing numbers of college students express doubts about the right to free speech—one of our most fundamental rights.” Larry P Arnn, President, Hillsdale College. (“Pursuing Truth and Defending Liberty Since 1844.”)
And this, in the same mailing:
“Many of the problems on college campuses and in society today, particularly the limits on intellectual diversity as a result of the politically correct movement, are because we have a generation of young people who have a poor or nonexistent understanding of their REAL RIGHTS…” (Lieutenant General Ronald L. Burgess, Jr. USA (Ret.), for the Bill of Rights Institute.)
We hear a lot about our “constitutional rights,” and how so many of our younger citizens have a deplorable understanding of this country’s history and government. A little History and Civics lesson would appear to be in order.
The Colonies began to chafe under regulations coming down from the British Parliament under the imprimatur of the King of England. They tried to get a decent hearing from those authorities regarding their complaints, to no avail. It finally caused a rupture in relations, which became the Revolutionary War resulting from this country’s Declaration of Independence in 1776. At the conclusion of that War the new country existed first under a governing compact called the Articles of Confederation, and when that proved to be cumbersome and insufficient, delegates from the various states came to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to discuss changes in their governing compact. But because it was so clear to a number of these statesmen that the compact itself was insufficient to their needs, they set about to construct a totally new governing compact, which subsequently became known as The Constitution for the United States of America.(1)
Thus was created a federal constitutional republic, i.e., a republic, under law, with clear delineations between the powers reserved to the States and those deeded to the new federal government. The latter were limited and delegated - “few and defined,” in the rather authoritative words of the man quite rightfully known as the Father of the Constitution, James Madison. (The Federalist Papers No. 45.) But when the new Constitution was presented to the States (via their legislatures) and “the people” for ratification, there was such a concern in the former colonies regarding the potential for high-handedness over them again that a Bill of Rights was insisted on being added to it, to specifically spell out some of the rights that were still under the aegis of the several States, as codified in their State constitutions.(2)
I highlight this last phrase, because it is crucial to this dissertation,and understanding of the true nature of the ‘rights’ of The People in this country. And here I will intrude myself personally into this explanation.
At one point in my early adult life I began to be very curious about this ‘constitutional rights’ business. The First Amendment is very clear, in explaining that
“Congress shall make no law respecting…” such-and-such. (My emphasis.) That is to say, the Bill of Rights is a list of rights and powers retained “by the people” - as codified in their state constitutions. We don’t have rights willy-nilly. To live under the rule of law is to live under codification of the law. All the Bill of Rights does is indicate some of the examples of rights and powers that were not being ceded to the new federal government. But in our day and age something has happened, to turn the Bill of Rights on its head, and consider it something that is guaranteed to us and granted to us by the federal government.
How had this come about?
I went to the UCLA Law Schoo Library, from my home in nearby Long Beach, to do some research, in order to attempt to find out the answer to my query. I got something of an answer - beyond the 14th Amendment itself.(3) To wit:
All up to and through the 1930s things constitutional proceeded fairly much according to the normal course of events. In around 1941 something happened to upset said normal course. I discovered in my research that a citizen, protesting the draft for the newly commenced WWII, staged a demonstration by burning the U.S. flag, and was arrested for thereby violating his state law regarding such vandalism. He - i.e. his lawyers - appealed the sentence all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that such a charge violated his, quote, “First Amendment rights” of a form of free speech/ expression.
How the matter had gotten to that point of legal reference I couldn’t trace. Al I knew at the time was that that was the first time, or at least one of the first times, that the SCOTUS had ruled on such a matter from the perspective of the Bill of Rights having been turned on its head., to apply from the federal government to the States.(4)
I have now discovered another such an instance. In the current issue of The New American magazine there is an article, entitled ‘FDR’S AAA: The First Government Lockdown’ in which the author (Steve Byas) gives us an important history lesson. During what was to become known as The Great Depression (about which is another story), FDR, and his socialist-minded government bureaucrats (aka ‘planners’. And Planning indeed; in cahoots with the similar Planners over in the fairly freshly-minted Soviet Union), started taking centralized power over the people, primarily involving agriculture, by dictating terms of production to farmers and ranchers; the selling-point rationale being to help them artificially keep their prices up (i.e., being paid not to produce crops and livestock). As Byas reports:
“While many farmers meekly gave up their independence and liberty and accepted the subsidy from the government, many others did not give up easily, and they sued in federal court. On January 6, 1936…the U.S. Supreme Court declared the (Agricultural Adjustment Act; of 1933) unconstitutional, on the grounds that its tax on agricultural processors…was constitutionally indefensible.” And he goes on with a particularly telling point:
“Justice Owen Roberts said the act ‘invades the reserved rights of the states. It is a statutory plan to regulate and control agricultural production, a matter beyond the powers delegated to the federal government. The tax, the appropriation of funds raised, and the direction for their disbursement, are but parts of the plan. They are but means to an unconstitutional end’ and could lead to the ‘regulation of all industry.’”
Indeed, Justice Roberts. Indeed. And the point of the, er, homegrown Bolsheviks behind the whole operation. But to continue, with this intriguing story about the origins of much of the thinking that has pervaded - corrupted? - our national thinking ever since. Byas goes on, as the plot deepens:
“Unfortunately, Roosevelt did not accept defeat easily. In 1937…he failed to get an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress to pass his plan to pack the Supreme Court with six new members, but he ultimately won when justices either retired or died. Soon enough, the AAA rose from the dead in 1938, with new legislation including the (AAA) of 1938. Very little was changed from the original act, except that the Supreme Court was now more complaint to the goals of the New Deal. (Despite its supposed dedication to the importance of ‘precedent,’ the Supreme Court has no real problem reversing itself when it suits the purposes of the majority of the judges.) The new act included acreage and production controls, benefit payments to farmers, and price supports, thus creating the foundation for a subsidy-dependent class of farmers.
“Most farmers accepted their loss of independence, but not all.“
Byas then goes into the story of one such independent-minded farmer, name of Filburn, who lent his name to a lawsuit challenging the Act.(5)
“In 1940, Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard imposed an acreage quota on all wheat farmers such as Filburn…If they did not follow this dictate, they would be subject to a fine…”
(As a result of the subsequent lawsuit) “A three-judge panel in the federal court for (Filburn’s area in Ohio) ruled for Filburn and his fellow wheat farmers…The panel chose not to address the commerce question, instead ruling that subjecting his crop to a lien was ‘taking of the plaintiff’s property without due process’…
“But when the case made its way to the Supreme Curt, the justices did use the commerce clause in their decision. Kilburn argued that the government’s expansive reading of the commerce clause ‘would not only effectually approach a centralized government, but could eventually lead to absolutism by successive nullification of all constitutional limitations.’” (Well observed, team.)
“The Supreme Court said that ‘whether the subject of the regulation in question was ‘production,’ ‘consumption,’ or marketing,’ is therefore not material for purposes of deciding the question of federal power before us. But even it appellee’s activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce, and thus irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as “direct,” or “indirect.”’”
What are they talking about in this decision? Byas explains:
“In other words, the fact that Filburn produced the wheat and used it himself, meant that had he not produced it, he would have had to buy it in the marketplace! ‘If we assume,’ the court reasoned, ‘that it is never marketed, it supplies a need of the man who grew it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open market. Home grown wheat in this sense competes with wheat in commerce.’”
‘A substantial economic effect on interstate commerce’…and just so have the nation-wreckers - the ‘international socialists’; the New World Order crowd - subsequently driven a coach and horses through this breach in the wall of the Constitution…
At that time, The NewYork Times still had the decency, as a fair source of news, to comment: “The net effect of the ruling, in short, seems to be that Congress can regulate every form of economic activity if it so decides.”
And it has. Oh, how it has…(6)
To summarize.
1) In the depressed ‘30s, if the operations of ‘the market’ had been allowed to function, things would have returned to normal. But the Bolsheviks of that era didn’t want things to return to normal. (And notice the parallels to today’s ‘crisis’ - not to be let ‘go to waste’ - in the virus lockdown…Crisis equalling Opportunity in the termites’s lexicon.) As now. Are plumping for ‘The New Normal’. Their version thereof. With a vaccine that will ‘mark’ us from the cradle to the grave, in their total - totalitarian - state…
2) The Bill of Rights, then, as appended to the federal Constitution, was to make doubly sure that the federal government never got too big for its britches, stayed playing in its own ballpark. The weakness of such a form of national government - i.e., a federalized form rather than a centralized form - being that the nation-state could be taken over more easily piecemeal, rather than by the more difficult job of wholesale; even given some well placed judges, and Supreme Court justices, by homegrown termites.
So, the bottom line of all this:
We need to release the Old. It is corrupted beyond repair; no longer serves us. We have bigger fish to fry.
Can you say, the real New World Order???…
…on the other side of
The Drama.
In which, and by which, to catch our consciences.
P.S. And another example of how corrupted things have become in this country - seemingly beyond repair - is how the requirement for immigrants to be able to rend, speak and write basic English to become an American citizen has become so watered down that it has almost disappeared, in the welter of various state and federal laws allowing all manner of fudging on that score. Indeed, I even had to double-check my understanding of the matter. And there it is: Even on the Internet - still:
“The English Test to Become a Naturalized U.S. Citizen: One of the most important requirements for becoming a U.S. citizen is that you are able to show U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS ) that you can read, speak, and write basic English.
Reference:
I rest my case.
Except just to add, and speaking of the Internet, something that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has just pointed out, regarding the clout of Big Tech:
“They want to control what you see so they can control what you think and how you act, and a free society must stand against this.”
Bingo, Matt.
—
footnotes:
(1) Which subsequently, in 1871, became known as The Constitution of the United States of America, via a nifty bit of legerdemain particularly of the Brits, who insidiously thereby created a corporation out of the original U.S. of America, which they have controlled ever since, behind the scenes. But all that is about to change. Including the true Constitution itself.
But to continue.
(2) The perceptive Reader will note that these are just an example of the rights and powers retained “by the people,” as even codified in the Bill of Rights itself as Amendments IX and X. They are not the only such rights and powers left to the several States “and to the people”.
(3) Briefly, as to that: The 14th Amendment, passed in the wake of the Civil War, was in part to codify the fact that the newly freed slaves were to be considered to be full citizens of the United States “and of the State wherein they reside,” to be dealt with via “due process of law” - i.e., not outwith the law - and not to be denied “the equal protection of the laws” - i.e., not to be dealt with in an arbitrary manner. It was about enfranchisement. It was not about a wholesale turning of the Constitution and its Bill of Rights on its head, and having our rights apply from the federal government to the States; did not say, in effect, ‘All the rights formerly residing in and reserved to the States or the people shall now reside in the federal government to be the adjudicator of’. I finally found something on the order of what I was looking for.
(4) I subsequently discovered that that application of the Bill of Rights was considered by a segment of our legal beagles to be a result of a made-up ‘policy’ called ‘incorporation,’ whereby the rights in the Bill of Rights, under the 14th Amendment, were all ‘incorporated’ into the new control and power of the federal government over the States, as expressed in the 14th Amendment’s terms. Which is a fiction. The 14th did not grant such wholesale power over the states, effectively annulling the 9th and 10th Amendments.
And apparently it was never properly ratified anyway. As was not, apparently, at least one other such amendment. Putting the ‘rule of law’ in this country in limbo. Not to mention the U.S. corruption - I mean, corporation - itself.
But to continue.
(5) As to that Act:
“How did the federal government find such authority in the Constitution? They claimed that their power derived from the ‘commerce clause,’ that part of the Constitution that delegates to the U.S. government the power to regulate…interstate trade…But nothing is said in the Constitution about regulating trade — exchange of goods — within a state, or for that matter, production of goods that are not brought to market at all.” (Referring to a farmer’s use of his products on his own farm.)
(6) As the article goes on:
“This ruling emboldened Congress to force every American to purchase a product - health insurance - in the Affordable Care Act during the Obama administration. When the Supreme Court failed to strike down that law as unconstitutional,…the silver lining was that Chief Justice John Roberts specifically rejected the use of the commerce clause to justify the action of Congress, saying, ‘The Commerce Clause is not a general license to regulate an individual from cradle to grave, simply because he will predictably engage in particular transactions.’”
Well observed, a Chief Justice Roberts of our time as well. However, how was that current decision arrived at, again, did you majority lot say???……
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