Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Capitalism, central-planning, collectivism, Democrat agenda, Dr. Robert Owens, Obama’s agenda, Progressive agenda, socialism
Failure to plan is planning to fail. This truism has been a guiding light in my life and in the lives of countless others. Without planning we would never accomplish much in life. The haphazard serendipity of chance rarely adds up to a consistently positive result. We all know people who seem like they can fall into a sewer and come up smelling like roses. Most of us come up smelling like something quite different if we take the same fall.
On an individual basis planning is absolutely critical. For society some things also need planning such as coining money, defending the nation, and delivering the mail. All of these require planning and for all of these things it is possible to plan realistically and effectively.
There is no argument between the citizen supporters of constitutionally limited government and our perpetually re-elected Progressive collectivists and the fellow-travelers who support them about this. Some planning is both necessary and good. However, this is where we part company. Those who believe in a constitutionally limited government do not believe that it is possible or advisable to try to run an economy and a society through central planning.
The very attempt to use central planning short circuits the myriad of personal decisions which make up the routine functions of a free economy and that is the bedrock of a free society. Every group that advocates central planning, no matter what they call themselves are Utopians who believe that they can do a better job making decisions for everyone than everyone can make for themselves. That is the essence of the Nanny-state: government knows better and must protect us from our own bad choices.
There is one common feature that is clearly a part of all the various collectivist systems no matter what they call themselves. They all call for the deliberate organization of society to accomplish identifiable social goals. That a free society lacks this focus and its activities are guided by the personal whims and feelings of individuals all seeking their own good is always the complaint of the Utopians.
This brings the basic difference between the collectivists and the advocates of personal liberty into stark relief. The different types of collectivists: Socialists, Communists, Fascists, and Progressives may differ as to the specific societal goals towards which they want to drive their populations, and they may differ in their methods depending upon the amount of control they exert over the choices of others. However much they differ from each other they all uniformly differ from the advocates of individual freedom in that they wish to regiment all of society and all its resources to achieve whichever set of goals their particular brand of collectivism sees as the pathway to Nirvana.
Whatever the social goal is whether it’s called the great leap forward, a worker’s paradise, a classless society, the common good, the general welfare, or the Great Society it doesn’t take much reflection to see that these terms are so vague it’s impossible to determine their exact meaning so that any specific course of action could be decided upon. It’s like a war on terror, or drugs, or obesity how are you supposed to know when the goal has been reached or victory achieved?
The welfare and happiness of people cannot be measured on a scale of more or less. There are too many variables. There are too many possible combinations of circumstances that can become either negatives or positives depending upon another set of widely diverse situations. The “good” of any society cannot be expressed as simply or succinctly as the collectivists pretend. It is just too complex.
To direct all of society’s energy and resource by one plan assumes that every need and desire is given a rank in order of importance and a place in order of time. It also assumes that an absolute lineal order of occurrences must proceed from every action. If this happens that will automatically occur. Besides asserting through action that it is possible to order all things as one desires it also inherently expresses the idea that there is one universal set of ethics by which good and bad are obviously seen by the planners. All of these assumptions, assertions and expressions are not only false they are obviously false. No one is as smart as everyone.
The very idea of having a universally accepted and complete code of ethics is beyond the scope of human experience. People are constantly choosing between different values as they go through their daily life. What is best today in this situation may not be best tomorrow in that situation. However, when all of society and all of its resources are to be harnessed and driven in one direction toward a preselected set of goals such a universal and complete set of ethics are not only a necessity they are a prerequisite for success. Since this is unattainable success is also unattainable. If this sounds harsh please view the tattered hulks and broken lives which litter the history of all Utopian collectivist societies.
Only God can plan the end from the beginning. Only God has an ultimate and a true ethical code that is universally applicable to all people in all situations. Only God has a right to order events to suit His purposes. He created all things, and all things exist because He holds them up. All things are His, and He has the ability and the right to do with them as He pleases.
The problem we face is that collectivism puts the state in the place of God. Collectivists believe that government, through its bureaucracy, can make decisions and take action that could only work if designed and carried out with the aid of omniscience and omnipotence neither of which qualities have ever or will ever belong to government.
A scientist once said to God, “You’re not so much. We have learned how to make life in our laboratories.”
God answered, “Is that so.”
The scientist proudly said, “Yes it is and I am willing to have a contest with you right now to see who can make life faster and better.”
“All right,” God said, “let’s go.” With that God stooped down and picked up some dirt and started molding it into a man as the scientist grabbed his test tubes and started pouring liquids from one to another.
Just as God was about to blow the breath of life into His creation, he looked at the scientist and said, “Hey! Get your own dirt.”
There is one thing I have learned in this life: God is God and I am not and neither is anyone or anything else. Sounds like a pretty basic lesson; however, it took me about half of my life to learn. If we could only get those entrusted with our government to learn the same thing maybe we would stop our slow slide into that long dark night.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Capitalism, collectivism, Competition, Dr. Robert Owens, fundamentally transform America, Obama’s agenda, Progressives, Progressivism, quantitative easing, socialism
In politics and economics as in everything in life there always seems to be more questions than answers.
Some answers previously shared:
Politically speaking, I have said before in these columns that I no longer consider myself to be a conservative because there is nothing left to conserve. Instead I consider myself a Liberal in the classical sense: in the tradition of Jefferson and Paine a believer in human liberty. The once proud name of Liberal has been coopted and fundamentally transformed by the Socialists who have followed the advice of one of their early leaders, Norman Thomas, “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
I say it is time to reclaim the name.
In the economic realm, I am unabashedly a believer in capitalism. The reason for this is that it is the only system ever devised by man that requires freedom as a foundation for it to exist. Every other economic system ever tried is a centrally-planned command system. The king, the dictator, or the politburo decides how many widgets the country needs and that is how many widgets the country gets and everyone works at the widget factory.
As a child of the Cold War who had Marx shoved down his throat by Socialist teachers from grade school through college, I rebelled when one of my History professors told me that economics was the lynchpin of History. It wasn’t until after the fall of the Evil Empire that I was able to appreciate this truth. It is interesting to note that before we adopted the German style of College education in the 1890s Economics, History and Political Science were all one discipline. How can we understand any one of them without the others? One legged stools do not stand very well. Information in a vacuum is still a vacuum.
So what is the question?
How can America continue to exist politically as a Republic with a constitutionally limited government dedicated to personal liberty, economic freedom and individual opportunity if our central government destroys competition?
The support of competition does not make someone an anarchist as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accuses.
The use of competition as an organizing mechanism in society precludes the use of certain types of coercive regulations. However, it does not preclude the use regulations or guidelines. There are important reasons why the negative aspects of this statement have been stressed by the advocates of competition while the positive have been neglected by its opponents.
It is necessary that all parties in the market place must be free to buy and sell at any price which they can agree on. It is also necessary that everyone should be free to produce, sell and buy anything that can be produced or sold. It is also necessary that everyone has equal and free access into the trades.
Any attempt to control or regulate prices or quantities of commodities deprives competition of its ability to bring about the effective coordination of individual efforts because price changes then are no longer able to correctly act as a reliable guide for an individual’s actions.
This is not an iron-clad rule. As long as any restrictions placed on all potential producers affect all producers the same and are not used as an indirect method for controlling prices and quantities. All such restrictions impose extra costs however if they are imposed evenly competition can survive if not thrive. For example, it is generally agreed that regulations to control the use of poisonous substances, to limit working hours, or to require sanitary conditions are both desirable and necessary.
The only question here is: are the social advantages gained by these regulations greater than the economic costs they impose. Neither is the existence of social services incompatible with freedom as long as their organization and operation is not designed to restrict competition.
Thus it is shown that the advocates of competition and economic freedom are not anarchists demanding a Laissez-faire anything goes free-for-all. They admit the need for safety and agree that as long as things are equal things are fair.
The fairness of competition is shown in one of its primary foundational principles: that the owner of private property benefits from all the useful services rendered and is liable for all the damages caused to others by its use. When it becomes impossible to make the enjoyment of certain services dependent on payment or if the damages from its use are deflected then completion is ineffective as a social organizer because the price system has been disrupted.
Thus both restrictions on the use of property and bailouts which transfer the cost of failure from those who made the bad decisions to the taxpayers cause the market to become unhinged from reality and the creature of government direction. We see licenses, permits, and other regulations control who can engage in what economic activity. Look at the stock market. Does it rise or fall because of innovation? Do the efforts of people to create and market new products lead the DOW to new heights? No. The market rises and falls on whether or not the Fed is going to continue pumping fiat money into the system.
The rules of the game have been so distorted by the government that honest and open competition is almost impossible. This is why the underground economy flourishes, because it the only place where free competition still exists. And people will always yearn to be free. No matter how governments try to chain their citizens down with webs of regulations and nets of laws Gulliver will always struggle and strain against the ties that bind until he breaks free.
It is obvious to all that President Obama has succeeded in his goal of fundamentally transforming America. For example, his massive stimulus that paid off campaign debts to unions and donors and his mountains of new regulations on everything from banking to coal to student loans. There is the never-ending FED pump which just keeps pouring more money into an already bloated bubble in an effort to make a socialized crippled economy at least look like it works. And of course there is Obamacare which effectively socializes 1/6 of the entire economy. The combination of these policies breaks the back of competition and sound the death knell of the great experiment in freedom begun in 1776. Drip by drip, inch by inch we have been moved closer to the goal. Now it is the Health Care take-over and the flood of fiat currency that are leading to a terminal case of bankruptcy, a systems collapse, and as our Progressive leaders hope the dawn of a new day.
When the invisible hand has been tied and competition weighted in favor of government chosen winners and losers, when the electoral game has been stacked in favor of a two headed Progressive Republicrat party of unlimited power, pride and ambition, when equal justice under the law applies only to citizens and not to officials, the Question is, “What’s the Answer.”
That answer might be, “How long?”
How long before we the American people demand that our nation founded in revolution against tyranny reject the empire and restore the Republic? We can all see that the emperor has no clothes. We all know the deck has been stacked, the game rigged, and the winners chosen. How long before we demand that we are allowed to live in a nation where we will be judged by the content of our character and not by our membership in a protected or favored group, our political contributions or whether or not we have saluted the party line?
As we watch our beloved nation transformed it might be well to remember what our second President John Adams once said, “a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” Then again he also said, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, equality of opportunity, Equality of result, liberal media, Mainstream Media, media bias, Obama’s agenda, Progressive agenda, socialism, socialist agenda
The most insidious result that central-planning and the overabundance of government control that it requires is not the maladjustments that it inevitably creates in the economy. It is not the crony capitalism and bureaucratic nepotism that it always fosters. It is not the smothering blanket of nanny-state regulations that strangle creativity. It is not even the tendency to one-party rule even when camouflaged behind a two party system that is in reality two heads of the same bird of prey. It is not a system which may actually contain only two parties if you believe there is the government party and the country party.
No none of these missteps on the way to an illusionary utopia are the most insidious result of any system no matter what it is called that is some variation on the socialist theme of “From each according to their ability and to each according to their need.” Instead the most insidious result of the effort by some to control all is a change in the character of the people.
When government regulation becomes an all-embracing web of minutia that requires lawyers, accountants, and other translators of government-speak to comprehend, when safety-nets become hammocks, and when the do-gooders believe that they know what is best for everyone reaches a tipping point people begin to expect others to do for them what they used to do for themselves. A nation of self-reliant, go-getters can be changed into a sea of slugs on the dole constantly crying and voting for more.
The descendants of the pilgrims and the pioneers are content to wait for their government check and their food stamps as long as there is a game on their flat screen and minutes left on their obamaphone. Militant apathy has ossified the sinews of a once great people. So many people don’t care about anything beyond their creature comforts, the most basic of which are guaranteed, that the will to succeed has been squashed.
When you guarantee success and everyone gets a trophy just for showing up few will strive to do more than is required. When success is punished by the ridicule of the media and the inequality of government policies such as a progressive income tax that says, “The more you make the more we take” few will strive to do more than is required. When college entrance quotas and set-asides say, “We don’t seek the best and the brightest we look at race and gender to pick the winners and losers” few will strive to do more than is required. When government subsidies and tax-breaks say, “If you have connections the government will hold back the crushing reality of the market at tax-payers’ expense” few will strive to do more than is required.
In America today we are surrounded by low-information voters who either don’t pay any attention to affairs beyond their life or who get their news exclusively from the Progressive controlled Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media. Their opinions are scripted for them by the progressive group-think of corporate hacks constantly building a narrative to advance their utopian agenda. If it doesn’t fit it doesn’t print. If they don’t like what you say it will never play. America’s once dynamic free press transformed into a one-sided monologue reciting over and over, “Government knows best.”
Our government controlled and increasingly standardized education system works hard to say as some of my students have; “a ‘D’ is good enough.” Or, “At our school we receive an attendance diploma it just means we were there it don’t mean we learned anything.” Assignments such as I witnessed in a 12th grade Political Science class, “Watch Michael Moore’s film, ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ and then write an essay on how many ways Bush lied to trick us into invading Iraq” show indoctrination has in many places swallowed education. Circumstances such as these tend to stifle those who would drive innovation and promote those who are just along for the ride, pass the mediocre while holding back the brilliant.
We have moved from a capitalist system to a mixed economy and now under a president who promised to fundamentally transform America we are lurching into a socialist system in all but name that seeks to ensure equality of result instead of the equal opportunity which has traditionally been the seedbed of America’s meritocracy. We have transitioned from a small limited government, a representative republic that operates on democratic principles into an all-powerful central government that operates through a massive bureaucracy. Executive orders are used to make end-runs around Congress and the Constitution. Unconstitutional and illegal recess appointments are used to avoid the scrutiny of a Senate confirmation. Our borders are for all intents and purposes open like an automatic door at Wal-Mart. Forgetting what Ronald Reagan told us, “A nation without borders is not a nation.”
Norman Thomas, an early Socialist candidate for President said, “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” And as Lenin said, “Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.”
Step-by-step we have journeyed from being a people birthed in rebellion against tyranny, a people who founded the world’s first experiment in a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Until a nation founded upon a written constitution which guaranteed limited-government, personal liberty, and economic freedom has become just another failed utopia that is spending itself into oblivion as the band plays, “let the good times roll.”
At a time like this it is good to remember some of the wisdom of those who have gone before:
Noah Webster said, “There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government.”
Alexis de Tocqueville said, “The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.”
Benjamin Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”
Barry Goldwater said, “A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.”
AND
Alexander Tyler said, “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship”
A word to the wise they say is sufficient.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: anti-war movement, Capitalism, congressional powers, Dr. Robert Owens, Progressives, socialism, War Powers Act
Recently a person I know who saw himself as being in the forefront of the cultural revolution in the 60s and 70s proudly announced he was going to the 50th anniversary of the March Washington. After his announcement he added the tag line, “I’ll try not to get arrested.”
Let me set the scene. Yes, this person did protest the Vietnam War by burning his draft card and applying and receiving conscientious objector status while going to school not jail. Yes he did turn his back on some traditional America traditions such as Christianity and eating meat. However, he did retain at least two traditions he learned from his family: he has always supported democrats and he is a capitalist.
Of course he would argue vehemently if anyone ever called him a capitalist since he will tell you all day long that he hates capitalists and capitalism. No, he is no capitalist, he is an entrepreneur. According to Dictionary.com “Capitalism is an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.”
Let’s see, my acquaintance is comfortably retired, living on a multimillion dollar private estate in a fashionable area. How did he grab the golden ring? He did it by his own hard work and enterprise. He invented and developed several products; he established a manufacturing company which employed others to do the actual manufacturing and sold enough products to make a living while investing for the future. Then he sold the company and lives on the dividends. But he isn’t a capitalist, he hates capitalism.
I know several people like this. They have reaped the benefits of capitalism yet they hate capitalists. Or as Lenin said, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
Fifty years ago MLK participated in a march on Washington because Blacks in America were suffering from unprecedented unemployment, unspeakable inner city violence, and unconstitutional government surveillance. Fifty years later with the former revolutionaries of the 60s and 70s secure as the power elite, they have finally delivered unprecedented unemployment, unspeakable inner city violence, and unconstitutional government surveillance for everyone without regard to race, creed or color.
The only way someone could get arrested in today’s Washington ruled by Progressives and the very epicenter of Political Correctness is to counter-demonstrate on the other side of the street from the victorious revolutionaries at the MLK triumphal procession.
It amazes me that they cannot see their own inconsistency. They make a pilgrimage to worship a man who said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” and yet they support racial quotas, set asides and preferential treatment just to make things fair.
This proudly quintessential anti-war crowd now supports a regime that waged an illegal war in Libya and whose chosen leader wants to kick the hornet’s nest in Syria. These are needless wars that resulted in the establishment of Al Qaeda franchises in Libya and who knows what we will see from an attack on Syria.
The people who elected the Watergate Congress, the people who hounded Nixon out of office because they believed he had violated the Constitution now sow blindly supports our Imperial President, the purported constitutional scholar when he says, “Congress doesn’t have a whole lot of core responsibilities.” Yet the Constitution places Congress as first among equals and devotes more space to its powers than to any other branch.
As they used to remind us the powers of Congress include the sole and exclusive power to declare war.
When President Bush took us into what so many Democrats called illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan he sought a debate and received a vote of authorization from Congress. Our over-the-hill revolutionaries held vigils outside Bush’s Texas home and tried to ignite an antiwar movement. Yet when President Obama attacks Libya without even notifying Congress they said nothing.
Now there is a congressional debate over attacking Syria and that is a good thing. And some are speaking out against a war that doesn’t have anything to do with American national interests. But where are the limousine liberals? Are they still supporting a president who is willing to take us to war to put the red in his line? If they are I pray they remember that red will be the blood of American heroes and what we call so innocently collateral damage.
If you watch the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media tonight you can guess what these perennial revolutionaries will say tomorrow since their personal opinions are plagiarized.
Back during the Vietnam War they were duped into supporting the communists, and now they’re duped into supporting people who want to bring central-planning and eternal surveillance to America.
Is this naivety or hypocrisy? Is this selfless altruism combined with low information? Or is it the self-centered arrogance of people who can be proven wrong time after time yet still believe only they can see the right course.
These aging middle-class capitalists who hate capitalism, these social revolutionaries who live on private estates still see themselves as revolutionaries after they’ve won the revolution. They still worry about getting arrested after their Dear Leaders have taken over control of the police, the IRS, and the NSA. In their 21st Century utopian USSA we find that according to a Department of Defense training material, “people who embrace “individual liberties” and honor “states’ rights,” among other characteristics, as potential ‘extremists’ who are likely to be members of ‘hate groups.’” In Amerika today the 60s radicals are the establishment and the silent majority has become the outsider.
So while I pray for my acquaintance’s safe return from his pilgrimage, I will keep writing about the need to preserve limited government and I’ll try not to get arrested.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, NSA, Obama agenda, Progressive agenda, socialism in America, socialist agenda, spying on citizens
Our leaders aren’t stupid. They may be foolish, they may be corrupt, but they aren’t stupid.
This isn’t just a Democrat phenomenon. It didn’t start with President Obama’s occupation of the White House. This is a manifestation of the Dualocracy: the regime of the government party, that great two headed Hydra wherein the Democrat and Republican Parties are merely two heads on the same bird of prey.
When we look at the current direction our country is going in many people say, “That just doesn’t make sense.” I hear this or a variation of it all the time. We see laws, regulations, and programs spewing forth from Chicago on the Potomac on a daily basis that just don’t add up.
Why would our government spend us into the poorhouse? Borrow more money than anyone could ever pay back? Create money out of thin air like Weimar Republic? Pass Healthcare reform to insure millions that’s really a tax, is almost incomprehensible even to those who supposedly wrote it, and doesn’t insure anyone? Why would we help overthrow our friends to empower our enemies? Why do we look for ways to legalize illegals now and make promises about securing the border in the future? Why? Why? Why?
It doesn’t make sense.
The problem is these people are too smart and their organizations are too well-oiled to do so much that is nonsensical. I don’t believe the problem is that they are from Bizarro World or that they are political savants. I believe we are not looking at what is happening in and to our country in the proper context.
Much like a person who needs glasses: if the lenses aren’t right everything looks blurry or distorted. So too when we look at the actions of intelligent people who are operating with a grand design of how they want the world to be and nothing makes any sense: we need some new lenses. The problem most Tea Party types have understanding what our dear leaders are doing is that we think they should be trying to preserve the America we received from our forefathers. We look at their actions, and they seem like the theater of the absurd.
Who would do what they do if they want what we want?
That’s the key. They don’t want what we want. We want to preserve our heritage and they want to fundamentally transform the United States of America. We believe the Constitution recognizes what the Declaration of Independence calls our “unalienable rights” and it is a good thing to limit government from having the power to violate those rights. Our Progressive masters bemoan the fact that the Constitution only gives negative rights which limit the power of the central government. They dream instead of a second bill of rights which bestows upon the central government and its mammoth bureaucracy a mandate to legislate, regulate, and strangulate us into their vision of utopia.
The problem with any Utopia is that it’s always based upon coercion. People must be forced to do what some all-knowing god-like central authority decides is the way to achieve perfection. From Plato’s Republic to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to Kurt Vonnegut’s Piano Player the visions of a perfect society herded and regimented by an all-powerful government will always end up as some dystopian reflection of George Orwell’s 1984.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but perfection will never happen in this life. We are imperfect people living in an imperfect world. God has endowed us with certain rights and without them it is not possible to be all that we are meant to be. The only way to ensure them is to limit governments from violating them. That is why we have a Constitution to empower our government to do those things we need done for the general good such as defense and providing a sound money while limiting it from trampling upon the things that make us a free people, namely our freedom of action, our privacy and our inviolability as individuals.
In recent years this has been turned on its head as rights we plainly have, rights which are explicitly enumerated such as the right to keep and bear arms are endlessly debated and infringed upon while rights imagined are held up as constitutional.
A case in point: What ever happened to the Fourth Amendment?
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
This is where our God given right to privacy is acknowledged and protected by the Constitutional government of the United States. It expressly mentions the inviolability of our “houses, papers, and effects.” It doesn’t mention abortion. This is the pattern in America today: ignore what the Constitution plainly says and extol imagined things the Progressives wish it said.
Today a Progressive Supreme Court has decreed there is a constitutional right to privacy involved when a woman wants to terminate the life of an unborn child and nowhere else in our 21st century surveillance state America? The right to terminate life is protected and even subsidized by the central government and the right to have a private conversation is no longer acknowledged. Today in the post-constitutional America it is all right for the government to listen to and record every communication of every citizen and the one person who tells us that they are doing so is a traitor.
All it takes is the right set of lenses and we can see clearly. Rather than not making any sense it all makes total sense. Our leaders are leading us from where we have been: a constitutionally limited government ensuring personal freedom, individual liberty and economic opportunity to a centrally-planned, highly regimented, constantly watched society marching lock-step towards a utopia that will never work. With leaders like this all I can do is echo Scott Adams warning, “Don’t step in the leadership.”
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, National Debt, Progressive agenda, Rand Paul, Steve King, Ted Cruz, trade deficit, yearly deficit
The parasite has out grown its host and it can’t live on its own.
We are witnessing the convergence of multiple mistake streams combining into one river of destruction. We have a ruling clique concerned only with maintaining its power supported by a dependent class that wants what it wants now not later. And they are employing public sector unions that want to negotiate feather-bed contracts with the same people they help elect. All empowered by a mass of low information voters who either don’t pay any attention to what is going on or accept anything they see, hear or absorb from the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media, late night talk shows or the Daily Show as real news.
America has been dumbed down so far it is acting stupid. We have been assaulted by so many outrageous actions we are becoming numb. Every day the drip, drip, drip of this Administration’s unconstitutional activities and the constant drumbeat of the media covering-up instead of exposing and advocating instead of investigating makes us so tired of the fight we want to just throw up our hands and retreat into our families and our personal lives. This is just what the Progressives have been working for the last one hundred years. They have educated generations who have educated generations until most people have no idea how things were let alone how things should be.
The loss of historical perspective forces people to live in the now, and the now can always be changed. The lack of intellectual understanding causes people to rely upon emotion, and emotions can always be swayed. When people listen with the intent to respond instead of to understand conversations become two-way monologues between self-absorbed cyphers incapable of joining together in any meaningful way. Our Progressive education has cultivated a nation of couch potatoes who aren’t aware that the Republic of their forefathers is being transformed before their eyes into a centrally-planned utopian experiment in social engineering.
Turn off the game, open a book, go online, and do something that will raise your awareness of what America is supposed to be. Look at our government and what they are doing and see what America is becoming. Think about it. Today in the name of security the government of the people, by the people and for the people is watching and listening to everything that is said and done while the one person who stands up and tells us they are doing it is a traitor, a felon, and must be stopped at all costs.
Yet with all this watching, all this listening even with warnings from multiple sources our vaunted security apparatus couldn’t stop the Boston bombers. Despite the constant surveillance we are told endlessly that there is no way to identify the millions of illegal aliens who are swamping our system. In the face of obvious signs and numerous warnings a Muslim fundamentalist can climb on a table shouting “Allah Akbar!” shoot dozens of people, and this isn’t terrorism while according to the news anchors of one network Senator Ted Cruz is a terrorist, and according to others so are the Americans involved in the Tea Party. Open your eyes and realize this country has been hijacked, the constitution is a dead letter, and if we don’t do something soon nothing will happen.
How long have we waited for someone to rise up and lead the cause of freedom, to call a spade a spade and point out the fact that the Progressives are leading us away from freedom and towards totalitarianism? How long have we waited for someone in Washington to speak plainly and to point out that the Emperor has no clothes?
Finally there are a few in the Senate and in the House willing to lay it all on the line to speak up and be counted. The Progressive Republicans are joining with their fellow travelers across the aisle to denounce them, malign their names and attempt to marginalize them. The Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media are predictably showing praise on the RINOs for becoming statesmen for attacking the true conservatives while they pile on with vindictive abandon.
It is time to support the cause with our time, talent and treasure. Join with others and work, march, organize. Do whatever you can to accomplish all you can in the cause of freedom. Write, speak, share, and do everything you can to influence everyone you can that freedom isn’t free. It is worth saving, and it is time to stand up or be counted out. Give to those organizations and leaders who are in the forefront of the fight.
We will either rise to the occasion or we will sink beneath the waves of oppression as man’s greatest experiment in personal freedom, and individual liberty and economic opportunity descends back into the well of human suffering and statist control from which it emerged in 1776.
This is a call to action to be all that we can be now before we morph forever into what someone else has decided we should be. America, it’s time to be America again, or watch as our children and grandchildren find themselves in the USSA and never even know there was ever anything else. The flags will still wave, the names will remain the same, but this will no longer be the America we have known.
Keep the faith. Keep the peace. We shall overcome.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, IRS scandal, NSA, NSA eavesdropping, Obama illegal activity, recess appointments, tyranny
During the recent 4th of July celebration of America’s independence, Hillsdale College, a bastion of constitutional education and a powerhouse in the promotion of liberty, announced a “Read the Declaration” campaign. This campaign encouraged people who were gathered to celebrate the victory of freedom over tyranny to read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety.
Many of our fellow citizens have never read this foundational document. Many who have may have stopped after famous second sentence of the preamble, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In the Dream Time before political correctness, no child left behind, and the dumbing down of America most of us memorized that sentence in grade school and never forgot it. Sadly many of those same people never read or remembered anything in the document after that sentence. The rest of the Declaration is a litany of the reasons why our ancestors felt that they needed “to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” Or as they expressed it, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
The litany that sought to enlighten the opinions of mankind was a long list of the grievances they had with the King of Great Britain: George III.
I believe it would be a good exercise to see how many items on this list would make sense today if we substituted “The Federal Government” or “The President” for the “He.”
America was born out of the desire for people to be free from what they perceived to be tyranny.
At this stage in America’s History we seem to have come full circle. That which we rejected at our birth we find encumbering us once again. Through our own indifference we have forged our own chains and allowed the low-information voters to become the majority of those whose votes are counted. Those who should represent the true majority have been sidelined and cast aside almost as subjects in an occupied state. However people are willing to bear with injustice long and to suffer the insufferable in silence. As our ancestors framed it, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
Our ancestors finally reached the end of their rope when the stated, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” Obviously we have not reached this state. The tyranny which we face holds the seats of power. It calls itself by the old names and all the old forms are still in place. Just as there was still a Senate in Rome even after Octavian became Augustus.
Looking at our present day litany:
The president refuses to enforce laws duly passed by the legislature and signed by the executive.
The Justice department incites racial division and covertly interferes in the judicial process.
The administration spies on its citizens and mandates that its employees spy on each other with legal penalties for those who fail to report..
The Federal Reserve creates money without any oversight and irreparably damaging the earnings and savings of the American people.
The Federal Government which is charged with protecting every state from invasion has refused to secure our borders and allowed tens of millions of people to enter and stay illegally adversely impacting every aspect of American life.
The IRS has targeted groups and individuals that hold opinions opposing the Obama administration.
The President has made recess appointments when Congress was in session; he has waged war without Congressional approval or notification, he took an apology tour around the world, he casts our allies aside, and he promotes our enemies.
Look at this long train of abuses and the subjugation of our God-given rights to a capricious and overbearing perpetually re-elected government dominated by two parties that are merely two heads on the same bird of prey. At such a time as this it is good to recall “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.”
A word to the wise they say is sufficient. After 50 years of ringing the bell of liberty I am beginning to wonder.
It is to the preservation of limited government, personal liberty and economic opportunity that we the descendants of the founders, the children of the Framers should “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence” and “for the support of this Declaration … mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor.”
Be vigilant in the protection of freedom, keep the faith, keep the peace, we shall overcome.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Amendment Process, Articles of Confederation, Constitution, Dr. Robert Owens, EPA, home of the brave, IRS, land of the free, limited government, living document, NSA, Progressive agenda
The people of the founding generation did not think of Americans as Americans. They did not see them as one people but instead as citizens of the various states. Even as late as the Civil War, people such as Robert E. Lee, who disagreed with secession and wanted a united United States, left because his State seceded and not because he suddenly wanted Virginia to be another country. Another example of the feelings of many in the founding generation was the fact that the term “We the People of the United States” that opens the preamble to the Constitution caused great controversy during the ratification debates. It was pointed out as a blatant attempt to make the States irrelevant.
The Constitution was meant to improve the federation of the various States as created under the Articles of Confederation. It was not meant to create anything new. This was stressed over and over by the supporters of the Constitution in the ratification debates. The Framers voted by State, and, though some of the Framers wouldn’t sign the completed document, since it was adopted by all the States it was called unanimous. The ratification votes of the various conventions voted by state not as individuals. As provided in the original document the members of the Senate were not elected by the people at large. They were instead selected by the State legislatures. The house was designed to represent the people, and the Senate was designed to represent the States.
The Constitution never would have been ratified without this provision designed to protect the States from losing their integrity as sovereign republics which had voluntarily joined together. This was essential and this was generally understood.
So when was our social contract revised? How can a contract be unilaterally revised?
When did we agree to surrender our liberty in exchange for security? When did we agree to move from a voluntary federal republic to a centrally-planned democracy? When did our freedom from warrantless searches morph into 360° surveillance? When and how were the guarantees found in the Bill of Rights turned inside out and upside down?
The scariest thing I see about all this as I travel around the country is not that our totalitarian wanabes will use any excuse and any subterfuge to undermine limited government for the benefit of their power and their crony capitalist’s profit. No, that doesn’t scare me or surprise me at all. What catches my attention is that as I speak to more and more people about this creeping corporatism the majority of them say things like, “I’m glad the government is watching out for terrorists” or “If you’re not saying or doing anything wrong why should you care if the government listens in?”
Not only have Americans been dumbed down to the point where the majority of college freshmen need remedial studies, but these descendants of the pioneers have lost sight of the American Dream. Asked “What is the American dream?” most citizens today will recite the pabulum spooned out by the Federal Reserve Bubble Machine, the political hacks who gave them power, and the Wall Street Casino that profits by the game: “The American Dream is to own your own Home.”
That is not the American Dream! The American dream is limited government, personal liberty, and economic opportunity.
At what point do unilateral changes to a contract render it null and void?
I have long said, it will still be called the United States of America. The stars and stripes will still wave, there will still be elections, and we will still hear that this is the freest most prosperous nation on earth as our freedom slips away and our opportunities shrink.
During the ratification debates it became clear that the Constitution would not be ratified unless there was a promise that the first order of business for the new government was going to be to amend the document to state some things that a majority of people thought were missing. The promise was made and the first ten amendments were added. Today we call this our Bill of Rights. While some people can recite all of them and many more can recite a few almost every American knows they exist. The Bill of Rights has a treasured place in the American heart.
Few if any know what was said in the Preamble to the Bill of Rights, which is neither mentioned nor studied today. This sets out their purpose and is enlightening as a starting off point for understanding what they are and what we are losing.
“THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution” (emphasis added). The Bill of Rights was added in order to prevent misconstruction, or the words of the document, or abuse of its power by the government to be established under the Constitution. This could not be possible unless the words of these amendments were supposed to mean what they say, not what black-robed partisans can interpret them to say.
The Bill of Rights were not written nor adopted in their order of precedence. The number one amendment requested by the States was set as the 10th or capstone. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In other words, above all the citizens of the various States were concerned most that the central government not run rough shod over the States which were the home republics closest to and controlled by the people. They feared that the central government would become a Leviathan, crushing dissent and smothering freedom.
And they never heard of the IRS, the NSA, or the EPA. They never imagined an unelected, appointed for life Supreme Court that would cancel amendments to State constitutions that were legally adopted according to the processes within those constitutions. Not since they had overthrown King George had they lived under the suffocating tyranny of a Patriot Act or rule by decree such as executive orders.
According to the amendment process in the Constitution, the States can offer amendments to the Constitution by calling for a convention to propose such amendments. Many people are afraid of a convention believing that those who advocate for a limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom could not carry the day and the Constitution would be altered in a negative way.
It is time to admit to ourselves that the progressives have been and are changing their “Living Document” every day in countless ways: executive orders, regulations (from the EPA for example) and legislation (the 4th Amendment bending Patriot Act for example). We must face the fact the dam has broken and the foxes are guarding the hen house. The ship has sailed and the fix is in. We need a reset button before we slide completely into the abyss of totalitarianism. The flag will still fly, the national anthem still play, yet the land of the free and the home of the brave will be fundamentally transformed into a centrally-planned, regimented, surveillance state.
Once the scales have fallen from our eyes and we see that just because they call themselves liberals, people who want to control every aspect of every one’s lives are no more liberal than any of the other statists who have sought total control to impose their idea of utopia on anyone at any time in any place.
What we need is an American Spring. We need Americans to act like Americans and demand the freedom that is their birthright. Freedom is not just another word for nothing left to lose. We the People who believe in limited government, personal liberty and economic freedom have got to unite or we might end up joining a worldwide chorus singing, “And freedom, oh freedom well, that’s just some people talkin’ your prison is walking through this world all alone.”
The center no longer holds. We must all work to influence our States, our home republics, to reign in the runaway Washington-centered bureaucracy machine before we are strangled in the red tape and buried in regulations.
The States must prove their relevance or perhaps the States are out of date.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, limited government, living document, Obama’s agenda, Progressive agenda, transform America
I have witnessed a teacher of Political Science in America require a class to watch Fahrenheit 911 by Michael Moore then write an essay outlining how many ways President Bush lied to trick America into invading Iraq. If you don’t find this assignment offensive you’ve already had you quota of Kool- Aid and you should step away from this article and dial 911. Tell them someone is about to tell you the truth and you aren’t prepared for what that might do to your world-view.
Conversely when I say we should have listened to the Anti-Federalists, echoing the message of my book The Constitution Failed I’m sure many who often turn to these dispatches from the History of the Future are ready to call the headquarters of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy and report that poor old Dr. Owens has veered off the reservation. I was once hired to teach history in a high school devoted to promoting the Socratic learning style using the works of the Enlightenment in the hopes of molding another generation akin to the Founders, critical thinkers dedicated to the proposition that liberty is the fountainhead of achievement. I was fired before the semester started because I did not hold the Founders in enough reverence believing as I do that they were mere men and not demigods infallible and universally inspired.
Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that the Founders of American independence and the Framers of the Constitution were a unique collection of political geniuses who did their best to craft the vehicle for their posterity’s benefit and for this nation’s greatness. The limited government they founded allowed the forever pent-up abilities and longings of man to burst forth into the flowering of American Exceptionalism, the brilliance of the American experiment.
However, that experiment crashed upon the shoals when Abraham Lincoln and the newly birthed Republican Party decided to interpret the Constitution which had been freely entered into by sovereign States to say that no State could ever voluntarily leave even though this is not stated anywhere in the document. Having made that determination this minority government used the overwhelming majority they had in what was left of the Congress to shackle the power of the Industrial North to crush the seceding agricultural South. Slavery,
which cannot be divorced from its evil nor defended in any way, provided the spark, the rallying cry, and the effective explanation for a war which shattered the myth of a federal republic composed of sovereign states.
Since that war between brothers our nation has inexorably grown from the vision expressed by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence of a commonwealth of freemen into what is rapidly becoming a statist express highballing its way to the gulag of collectivist uniformity and shabby mediocrity. Gone is the meritocracy of the young republic. Gone is the equality of opportunity smothered in the cold dead grasp of the equality of outcome. Gone is the blind justice of a nation of laws devoured by the politically correct insanity of social justice. The Progressives and their coalition of mega-state lobbies have turned the protections of a Constitution written to limit government into a suicide pact wherein if the nationalist federal government chooses open borders in contravention of federal law and states are condemned for passing laws which requires police to enforce the law.
It is time to think the unthinkable and to embrace the abhorrent conclusion that the Constitution has failed. It was meant to limit government. This is proven conclusively by the 10th Amendment which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Without the promise of the immediate adoption of the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution would never have been ratified by a majority of the States. This important though neglected amendment says, and means that only those powers expressly delegated to the central government are legitimate not the endless multiplication of powers which allows that government to intrude into every aspect of our lives as it does today.
The very reason for a written Constitution was and is to limit the government created by that document to the powers expressly delegated not to open the door for interpretation and precedent to expand infinitely until all limits are gone. If that wasn’t the intent why have a Constitution at all?
Though many trace the diversion from republican purity to Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressives the truth is Hamilton set the stage for a big government. He fathered the movement away from a decentralized federation of free people agreeing to disagree so that compromise would leave enough space for liberty to bloom. John Marshall the second Chief Justice of the Supreme Court manufactured the power of judicial review by exploiting political factions clearing the path for the rule of unelected black robed aristocrats with the power to turn a country of laws into a country of men.
This history lesson may not make my fellow Patriots glow with the satisfaction derived from accepting the Constitution as inviolable scripture received from on high. However, our current decent into the Progressive’s transformed America should make every lover of liberty ready to embrace the truth. The only question remaining: Can learning the truth unlearn the lie?
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.
Tags: Articles of Confederation, Dr. Robert Owens, living document, original intent, Progressive agenda, the constitution failed, the history of the future, totalitarian government, written constitution
I want to begin by saying that I believe the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, with the Bill of Rights included, comprise the most enlightened, ennobling, and beneficial documents ever penned by the hand of man. I also believe that the Constitution afforded the United States the greatest level of freedom and opportunity ever experienced by humanity. This freedom and opportunity in turn released the talents and abilities of the American people to build the greatest nation ever to exist, rising from thirteen states exhausted and impoverished from years of war into a prosperous and powerful nation which by the end of the twentieth century stood upon the world stage as the uncontested sole superpower.
Simplicity is the essence of genius while over-simplification is the essence of fraud. In a picture perfect example of the truism “The victors write history” what we have been taught concerning the writing and ratification of the Constitution is actually a politically slanted version of the truth. This highly patrician account is also an example of over-simplification.
We are taught that the Articles of Confederation were an abject failure because they were too weak. Shay’s Rebellion scared the venerable leaders who had led and won the Revolution. George Washington and Co. came back from retirement to once again save the nation writing an “almost” divinely inspired document. There was only token dissent to the immediate acceptance of this tablet from the mount by some shadowy unknown people collectively called the “Anti-Federalists.” However after some well-written articles by future leaders called the Federalists, We the People overwhelmingly voted for ratification and the Constitution immediately ushered in the blessings of liberty and opportunity for all rescuing the United States from anarchy and stagnation. Amen.
This is a thumb-nail sketch of what our thumb-nail sketch type history education once delivered as gospel in American public schools. Today, those lucky enough to live in a school district that still includes American History are instead treated to the progressive’s litany of American crimes and debauchery. However, as our constitutionally limited government exceeds all previous limits, is either of these offerings good enough? Americans from all walks of life watch in stunned disbelief as the Federal Government on steroids swallows the economy, health care, the financial system, major manufacturing, the insurance industry, and anything else that doesn’t move fast enough to get out of the way. Can the States themselves be far behind?
How did this come about? How did a government born in the shackles provided by a written constitution designed to limit its power swell into the all-powerful OZ?
Quite simply it was through the deception of the Progressives evolving our Constitution from a rock-solid framework limited to what it actually said to a living document that is constantly being re-interpreted. Thus without amendment, without debate, without a vote our leaders have nudged us from land of liberty to the centrally-planned surveillance state which today sends the IRS after their enemies, leaves our borders open, our opportunities closed, and our sons and daughters manning hundreds of garrisons around the world.
One of the key tools in this century long quest to transform America has been the use of the so-called elastic clauses in the Constitution. One major clause used to accomplish this is found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 which states, “The Congress shall have Power To …make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”
There are several ways to look at this clause and its meaning. First we need to look at what is called “Original Intent,” or what those who wrote the clause meant. Then we will look at what those who ratified the Constitution thought it meant. Finally we will look at how the Progressives interpret and re-interpret their favorite clause.
The necessary and proper clause was added to the Constitution by the Committee of Detail with no debate. Nor was it the subject of any debate during the remainder of the Convention. The reason why this clause was neither attacked nor defended during the Convention becomes clear from the statements of the Framers during the ratification process. James Wilson, one of the most eloquent defenders of the Constitution, a signer of the Constitution, and one of the first justices of the Supreme Court, said that this clause gave the federal government no more or other powers than those already enumerated in Section 8 of Article I and that “It is saying no more than that the powers we have already particularly given, shall be effectually carried into execution.” The Framers felt as if the clause was merely saying that which had been delegated could be used.
During the ratification debates this clause was a hot topic. Brutus proclaimed that through the Necessary and Proper Clause “This government is to possess absolute and uncontrollable power, legislative and judicial, with respect to every object to which it extends…” the debate raged back and forth between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists in newspapers, pamphlets, and on the floor of the ratification conventions. Eventually the Federalists won the day and the Constitution was ratified. The result? The interpretation of this clause that was generally accepted by the ratification conventions was that it added no new or expandable powers to the federal government.
Since the New Deal era, Progressives have argued that the Necessary and Proper Clause expands the powers of the federal government to any it deems necessary and proper. In other words the federal government has all the power necessary to do whatever they want about anything they want. The executive department has been using this clause to grab power since Hamilton used it to found the First bank of the United States in 1791. The Supreme Court has been stretching this clause since they ruled in Mcculloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819) to give themselves the power of judicial review. This expansionist interpretation has been upheld by the Supreme Court on numerous occasions and is today the accepted opinion amongst the political-media-corporate establishment.
It is my belief that if we have a better understanding of where we came from and how we got here that we would have a better understanding of where we are. If we understand where we are perhaps we will see the way to get back to where we wanted to go when we started: back to a limited government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Knowing how a simple clause meant to say that what had been delegated could be used has evolved into near totalitarian power shows us that just as the present use of the Necessary and Proper Clause is neither necessary nor proper. And thus a government of the people, for the people and by the people has been hijacked and become something else.
No matter what we have been taught, no matter even what the reality was the reality is that the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation as the supreme law of the land. The announced purpose of the Constitution’s writing and adoption was to provide a limited government which respected both the rights of the States and the people. Since this was the stated and accepted purpose of the Constitution after two centuries and several decades can We the People deny any longer that it has failed?
Failing and failure are two different things. Everyone who has ever succeeded has failed. It is falling forward from that failure which ultimately brings success. If the Constitution has failed what do we do now? Where’s the reset button.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2013 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 