To be sure, about 10% of the Republicans are affiliated in one way or another with the Tea Party movement, and it was this movement (along with the bloodbath Progressivism suffered to a large extent in the 2010 midterm elections) that prompted the oral recitation of the country's founding charter. You would think that more attention would be paid to the Constitution, as it places a fundamental constraint on the power of government, but such attention has been strikingly absent in the recent past. (Also absent, apparently, were two Republican Congressmen [1], who thought it would be better to placate campaign donors than attend the swearing in ceremony in the House. These Congressmen, Rep. Pete Sessions [IDIOT-TX] and Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick [IDIOT-PA] should be remembered in 2012. It sounds like they need to be unemployed.)
The argument could be made that the late 18th century Congress didn't read the Constitution either - it was never established as a tradition by the founding generation. Why would it have been? They spent a considerable amount of time debating merits and principles, as preserved in the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers. This was the generation that wrote it. They knew exactly what was in it without needing to read it aloud.
The same is not true of the current generation of bureaucrats who we have, for some inexplicable reason, allowed to run loose in the halls of Congress unsupervised. Passing Constitutional muster is not even considered when passing a bill, even when the bill falls far outside of Congress's legislative purview.
In fact, the current crop of puerile degenerates inhabiting Capital Hill can't even contain their cluelessness about the bills they are passing, let alone the basic principles of the one document that sets a Republic apart from all other forms of government. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) doesn't understand why he should even read the bills he votes on [1a], although he voted for the Health Care bill anyway (I hear the final 2,000 page bill was placed directly between Pam Anderson's boobs just so Conyers would pay any attention to it at all [1b]). Speaker Pelosi couldn't even muster the usual fail proof excuse of "interstate commerce" when she was questioned where Congress derived the authority to pass the Health Care bill [1c], although she succeeded in providing the token "interstate commerce" excuse on her web page after the fact [1d]. And, given several months to brush up on the details of Congress's Constitutional authority, Rep. Conyers still failed to identify the source of Congressional power to enact the Health Care bill, instead identifying the "Good and Welfare Clause" as the source [1e]. This clause, in case you aren't aware, is found following the "Mike & Ike Clause" and immediately before the "Bit-o-Honey Clause." I also have it on good authority that the "Pixy Stick Clause" is under review by the state legislatures, as well.
Such a salient defect in the governing body of the largest Constitutional Republic in history confirms a much bigger problem: Progressivism has succeeded in nearly eliminating the foundational understanding that in a Republic, the power to govern is derived from the consent of the governed. The People are granted their inalienable rights from their Creator, and then loan those rights to the Congress to legislate on their behalf.
The second basic principle which distinguishes a Republic from all others is that the rights of the minority are protected against being trampled by the majority. Pay particular attention to this detail, because few truly understand it -
A Republic and a Democracy are not the same thing. In a Republic, the minority retains the right to be heard and counted. In a Democracy, the majority is free to run roughshod over everyone else, even if that represents 49% of the population.
The principle of Republic vs. Democracy is covered in detail in Federalist #10 [1f], which I highly recommend reading even more so than any of the others as this concept is of extraordinary importance to a proper understanding of Constitutional intent.
This is something you most certainly won't learn on Progressive talk radio or in Progressive literature - you are far more likely to hear lip service paid to our supposed "democracy," usually in the name of social welfare or some other emotional plea for government to step in, without a thought towards Constitutional authority, and solve some injustice in the name of moral conviction or necessity. This type of behavior is destructive to the Federalist framework, because it forces government into the role of charity, where it clearly does not belong. To illustrate this, we need to only turn to James Madison once again:
The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government [2]. - House of Representatives (1794)Madison's assertion that Congressional charity is anathema to the defined legislative powers should strike immediate concern in every supporter of broad social welfare programs and the redistribution of wealth. According to Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, federal Unemployment Compensation, or any other social program which moves money from one person to another, are unconstitutional. They simply play no part in Congress's legislative duty, regardless of the mention of Congress's consideration to "promote the general welfare."
In this same vein, Franklin also offered his reasoning on charity as a part of federal public policy:
When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic [3].A truer statement may have never been uttered. Not only does Franklin brilliantly capture the implicit problem with wealth redistribution and government charity, he ties the concept directly to the antithesis of a Republican form of government. This complements perfectly the larger point I established earlier - in a Democracy, the majority can simply drive right over the minority, take their money, and the minority has absolutely no recourse unless they can persuade some of those who participated in stealing their money in the first place to give it back!
Am I the only one who sees the exact same problem in the reasoning being offered to reject renewal of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts? I can't even begin to count the number of times I have heard the following lines of objection made by Progressives:
We will be able to make the case much more clearly that spending $700 billion over 10 years to extend tax cuts for people whose income averages well over a million dollars does not make sense [4]. - Joe Biden, Vice President (2010)
My number-one priority is making sure that we make the middle-class tax cuts permanent, that we give certainty to the 98 percent of Americans who are affected by those tax breaks [4a]. - Barack Obama, President (2010)
Do you want your children and grandchildren to go deeper into debt so that we can give a tax cut to the high end? I don't even know why this is such a big discussion. The middle class should have a tax cut [4b]. - Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House (2010)
The American People understand that with a $13 trillion national debt, it is absurd, totally absurd, to give huge tax breaks - millions of dollars of tax breaks - to the very richest people in this country who are already doing very, very well [5]. - Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) [Sanders is also a self-described Socialist and frequent (weekly) contributor to the very Progressive Thom Hartmann program [6] [7], and who is apparently very admired by the equally Progressive David Sirota [8]).
On a side note, Sirota also offers the following gem regarding Socialism:
Calling someone a "leftist"/"socialist" doesnt "refudiate" a factual argument. Its an admission that u have no factual argument yourself [9].Apparently, Sirota isn't interested in using proper punctuation or taking his own advice (Progressives typically aren't - after all, there is already a "Gifts to the Treasury" address available [10] - why isn't it overflowing with all of the generous contributions to the federal government Progressives demand that everyone else be forced to give?), where he tweets [11] the following "factual arguments" [12]:
Many societies value outsmarting others. In Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin America, it seems our society prioritizes out-stupiding one another.
@JeffDomingues Seek professional help very quickly. You clearly need it. I also have a tin foil hat to sell you.Granted, Twitter isn't exactly the best forum for detailed arguments, but I'd hardly call such passive/aggressive name calling a "factual argument." Actually, I'd call it "an admission that u have no factual argument yourself [sic]." (It's really difficult for me to write the word you as u, because I'm not 12. Oops - that wasn't a factual argument.)
Only right wing tin-foil hatters would see 400 layoffs at NY sanitation dept & yet blame unions for NY's paralysis.
Does it strike anyone that of the quotes mentioned above by members of the current Administration, every single one commits the exact same offense that Madison and Franklin were warning against? Between President Obama, Vice President Biden, Speaker Pelosi, and Senator Sanders, we have leaders of both houses of Congress and the Executive branch clearly voting themselves other people's money without any semblance of shame. Congratulations - Progressivism has taken a stranglehold on the Democratic party (and to a large extent on the Republican party as well)! Rather than believe that everyone should be treated equally under the law, we have learned that it's acceptable in a free society to expect that you are entitled to your neighbor's earned fortune, simply by virtue of your own pathetic existence.
Are we no longer a nation of laws and not of men? Or has Progressivism so destroyed our conscience that we are now a nation of cowards, unwilling to take responsibility for our own lives?
The Progressive mindset is complete. We have succeeded in learning that the rich must pay for absolutely everything - after all, don't those sons of bitches deserve it?
In love of liberty,
The Bulletproof Patriot
Postnote (3:11am): I'm a little concerned that I may have unintentionally cast doubt on the efficacy of the tin-foil hat. Fellow EE's at MIT have put my mind to ease, however, with a brief empirical report on the frequency response curve of such a device [13].
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