Tag: History

You may have seen or heard recently any of a number of politicians justifying actions taken by government by citing the general welfare clause of the Constitution. It may surprise many to find out that there is no such clause in the Constitution.

“Whaaaaaa????”, you may say. “B-b-but I memorized the preamble and it is most definitely in there” Sorry but you are wrong. Let’s get down to it and learn here and now that the preamble is not legally binding as it is merely an introduction to the finest political document ever penned. If one goes by the preamble, which may be the only part of the Constitution they ever read in school, then they could be led to believe that any of the three branches of government in the United States could be responsible for any of the things written in the preamble. Such a situation would clearly be incredibly confusing and contradictory to the system of checks and balances that was actually established. Using anything in the preamble as justification for government action is clearly not the way our government was established. Although with executive orders, signing statements and Courts using case law and outright activism, the original checks and balances are currently very useless. Regardless of that, the original situation was definitely not one in which a branch of government could pick their favorite part of the preamble and force anything they want on the people willy nilly.

Now for those who can read and have made it to Article 1 Section 8, you may think, “Aha, it has the words ‘general welfare’ in there”. Indeed it does. But it is NOT saying that the government can force citizens to pay for goods and services for other people. It is NOT establishing a system for government to give money away to the citizens of the nation. “Well that is your opinion”, I hear a non-critically thinking voice cry out. The line that has the phrase “general welfare” in it is the line that gives congress the power to tax. If you understand the Constitution then you know that it was established to limit government power and split it up among many different people to keep others in check. The powers of these branches of government were enumerated and given some specific limitations. To further clarify things, at the end of the Bill of Rights we have, of course, the tenth amendment; which says that if a power was not given to the federal government then it is left up to states or individuals. With this limiting purpose in mind let us return to Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

This line is not a “general welfare clause” but rather is a taxation clause. Let’s put on our thinking caps here and really dive in. “Lay and collect taxes, duties imposts and excises” OK I got that part, Congress can tax me. But why? Oh I see, to pay debts (listed second in section 8), have an army/navy or provide for the common defense (listed 12th and 13th in section 8), and general welfare of the United States. With your thinking cap on tight, go for it. You know the answer. No, OK, first of all, it says “of the United States” not “of the citizens of the United States” or “the people”. This is made more clear when someone goes where they have never gone before and reads the rest of the Constitution and they find that there are more references to “the United States” clearly distinguished from “the States” or “the people”. These taxes are not supposed to be collected and used for the general welfare of “the people” but for the general welfare of the “United States” which is a nation. Of course the people will benefit from having national debts paid and having defense but that is not the focus of the enumerated power here in section 8. The end product of having that line written is to say that congress can raise funds through taxes which they will use to take care of their enumerated powers. If you do not agree with that, go read the “Federalist Papers” and find some of the writings of James Madison the Father of the Constitution. Reading such with your thinking cap on should clear that up for you nicely.

Another item to note is that if “general welfare” can be stretched over anything that can be construed as good for our nation, then this one line about taxes inadvertently grants congress all powers of government, thus destroying any checks or balances that may have ever existed. If it is good for the country then congress has power over it. Such “general” terms as “good” and “welfare” (which meant “well-being” in 1789) are relative terms and can be viewed differently in the eyes of different people. This wide-open language gives politicians and the power hungry, plenty of room to work in whatever they want regardless of its relation to the intent of the Constitution. This goes against the whole point of the Constitutional system of limited government with checks and balances. To view the words “general welfare” as granting additional powers besides the power actually being enumerated is to destroy the Constitution.

“Oh now there he is again hating on people. Some people just don’t have insurance and are dying because they don’t have it and you want them to die”, I hear that silly voice crying out again. Wow, for those who still do not get it, wow. First off, no one has ever died because they did not have insurance, ever, in the history of humans. “Oh sweet Aetna come save me, I don’t have any premiums.” People die from disease, bodily malfunctions, accidents, violence or old age. Those are your only options. Not having insurance does not kill you. If you are unlucky enough to have such things happen to you and you require the goods and services provided in the health care industry then insurance might have been a good purchase, but there are ways around not having it. Personally, I was struck ill a few years back and thought I was dying. I was uninsured as I was a college student and didn’t qualify for the oh-so-helpful government programs and I was rejected by private insurance a few months earlier because I get “white-coat hypertension”. I went to the emergency room and incurred thousands of dollars in bills which I, of course, could not pay. The hospital had a charitable donation program that they qualified me for after reviewing some information. For the rest of my life now, I am going to donate to hospital charity programs. Oh what’s that I hear, the non-critically thinking, silly voice doesn’t give much to others? Well if we all chipped in and took care of each other we would do a much better job than anyone in Washington D.C. could do. Last year I had a friend who had been fighting cancer for a while. In fact, I never knew him at a point when he was cancer free. I and several other people donated time, talents and other material possessions to try to lighten the burden on our friend and his wife. He died exactly a year ago today. Our giving and receiving of contributions made us all better people. And people coming together to help one another is the real system that will make our country and even our health care industry better. It is not just pie in the sky either, try it out.

In addition to charity amongst the citizens of our nation there are other ways that are allowed under our Constitution. Take for example the state of Massachusetts. They have a big expensive and deficit bloating health care program all their own. Well guess what, it is perfectly Constitutional. Oh my, who would have ever imagined that a government run health care program could be Constitutional? If it is run by a state or local government, it fits perfectly well with the Constitution and the tenth amendment. The central federal government will not be the solution to any of our problems. In fact, to quote the great Reagan:

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”

If we can just learn and apply good principles then we will govern ourselves. So many in our society now look to someone else to help others and those who seek power and control (maybe not even for bad reasons) are perfectly willing to be given more power to be in charge of something we should be doing ourselves. It is when we disregard what we know we should be doing for those around us that we have need of masters and there are plenty who will use any reason to be your master.

To sum it up, there is no “general welfare clause” but rather a tax clause with the word “welfare” in it. To apply the term “general welfare” to government health care and retirement plans is to stretch that one line to points of being completely absurd and so all-encompassing as to grant all government power to one branch. There are ways that small groups of people or even larger groups of people such as cities or states can work out such problems without destroying the Constitution and I might add, such things should be tried out as long as they do not put said groups under the bondage of debt. Lastly, just give. Seriously, give. Find people who need your help and give it to them. They are all around you and sometimes find you, but most times don’t. If the government hadn’t taken as much money as they did you might be able to give more, but for now give your time or anything else you can give. Just don’t give more power to control our lives to someone else. If we keep moving the line in the sand, then what is the point of the line?

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UPDATE:
I must post this video here as it was my inspiration for this.

Wow, chairman of the judiciary committee. We are in huge trouble.

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I am very tired of hearing that FDR and the New Deal helped America get out of the Great depression after Hoover put us in it. In history classes I remember being taught that the depression was Hoover’s fault and that Franklin Delano Roosevelt bravely pulled the plane out of its collision course with his New Deal. FDR and Hoover have always been set at odds with each other in my mind, but something has never seemed right with this set up.

As I started to take more of an interest in history, I learned about the period of time that saw the largest dive in U.S. price level that it had ever seen. A 24% drop in GNP was a definite sign of the painful times that were ahead. The president at the time decided that he should dismantle some government bureaucracies that had been established during WW1. This leader of the nation also had deep concern over the $25 billion in debt that had been run up on the tab and the whole time his mantra was, “less government in business”. This president was quoted as saying, “We need vastly more freedom than we do regulation.” This period of time brought about a lot of charity and soup kitchen work for those looking to help fellow citizens who had fallen on hard times. The unemployment rate reached 11.9%. As the problem seemed to worsen, the president pulled back and removed many government pieces from the puzzle. Congress wanted to come to the rescue but the president told them to hold back. Even the president’s own secretary of commerce pleaded and argued with him to get involved to rescue the economy, but he wasn’t having it. The big reveal that you may have built up in your minds is that the president was Herbert Hoover and his policies made the Great Depression happen. This is part of what has never quite felt right about the story that I have been told in history classes. I was indeed told that Hoover did not want government intervention. But I was then given a lesson about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which made things in the Depression worse after the crash in 1929. I have also read about wage freezes that were ordered during this time, which again, did not help. Those seem like government intervention to me. Now is the moment when I bring out the actual big reveal that the president I spoke about earlier was Warren G. Harding and the year was 1921. All the products in the country dropped half of their value in 1921 and Warren G. just cut taxes and waited it out. His secretary of commerce that was so antsy to intervene (prepare for another big reveal) was Herbert Hoover. The U.S. pulled out of this disaster quickly, with unemployment pulling back to 6.7% by 1922 and by 1923 the roaring twenties were well underway. When they crashed down Herbert Hoover was in charge and free to intervene all he wanted.

At this point the history classes have told us that Hoover did so much damage that it took at least 3 terms of FDR to fix it with the right kind of intervention. This is where I say bullcrap. With the 20/20 vision of hindsight Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian of UCLA looked over Great Depression policies and found that Roosevelt actually hurt more than he helped. In addition to prolonging the Great Depression FDR also trampled all over the Constitution of the United States. He was called on it a few times with the reversal of some policies. A huge unconstitutional dream of his was to have a second bill of rights (which I guess would have been constitutional if it had been amended in). The principles behind this second bill of rights are enough to make anyone who doesn’t like being forced to do anything sick to their stomachs. Included in his wishlist were the right to food, the right to a house, the right the a job, the right to medical care. As I will further demonstrate in an impending post none of these things can be claimed as rights by anyone. Claiming those as rights for people and forcing citizens to provide such things for others goes against the purpose of our established government and is a violation of any official’s oath of office.

In case you missed it I would have been very frustrated with people who kept voting for FDR as he was holding them down. To drive that point home a bit more I will leave it to the great Thomas Sowell:

To me FDR and Hoover are not at odds with each other, but rather had only slight disagreements about which ways government should overstep its bounds and make things worse. Protect rights and enforce laws. And do it in that order, that is all government should do.

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In 1966, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America awarded Martin Luther King Jr. the Margaret Sanger Award for “his courageous resistance to bigotry and his lifelong dedication to the advancement of social justice and human dignity.” After reading about this I could only say, “What the ****????!?!!?” Why did Doctor King accept this award? Why would anyone accept this award, let alone one of the most popular black leaders of all time?

If you are baffled by the paragraph above then you clearly do not know anything about the history of Planned Parenthood or the personal beliefs of Margaret Sanger. When I learned about history and found out about Margaret Sanger I was shocked that anyone could think she was a great lady who should have an award named after her. Then of course, there is Planned Parenthood which Sanger helped found, that supports some of the most disgusting acts ever perpetrated by humans.

Margaret Sanger was a big fan of eugenics as a means to rid society of “undesirables”. In 1939 she started “The Negro Project” which had the goal of suppressing the black population through “family planning”. Planned Parenthood was started by Sanger with the purpose of racial purification. Sanger would often give speeches to members of the KKK. She references black people as “human weeds”, “reckless breeders” and as “human beings who never should have been born.”

All this brings me back to the original and baffling question; why would Dr. King accept an award named after Margaret Sanger from an organization started for her sick purposes? I really have no clue. I have the utmost respect for Dr. King and his accomplishments and I would just like to know about this occurrence which has bothered me for a while.

For a comprehensive history on the whole subject, I recommend the documentary “Maafa 21”.

UPDATE: I just saw this video in which Dr. Alveda King sheds more light on the lies about the history of the relationship between MLK and Planned Parenthood.

I would have liked to have seen an outright refusal of the award, but this definitely helps me to see more of the picture.

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Newt Gingrich is seen by many people as the guy who made that “Contract with America” right before things got nice for a while. He is thought to be a great conservative representative. Just as was the case with George W. Bush you should not fall for the act. Let’s shed a little light on Mr. Gingrich and why he should not be trusted.

Recently, Gingrich has supported Dede Scozzafava as a Republican candidate for congress only because she was Republican. Dede’s views do not resemble anything conservative and Gingrich stated that in supporting her he was simply being loyal to the party so the votes don’t get split and the Democrats win. The question for Gingrich is: If the Republican supports everything the Democrats want, what is the difference between a Democrat winning on a split vote and this Republican winning? The only reason I could come up with for Newt Gingrich not wanting someone who possesses his professed ‘conservative’ beliefs is that he does not actually hold such views. Rather than be guided by principles he prefers to play political games and try for power. Personally I would rather go down in flames while still holding onto my principles than to compromise on what I believed to appease other people.

Newt Gingrich voted to form the Department of Education in 1979. Education used to be under the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, but in 1979, with Newt’s and Jimmy Carter’s seal of approval, the government expanded with new individual departments. The new Department of Education had more power over school curricula and hiring, taking some power away from state and local authorities. The department has been a huge hole for politicians to dump money into without ever seeing improvements in student performance. In fact, almost all important numbers, such as graduation rates, have either declined or remained stagnant since the formation of the Department of Education in 1979. There is no authorization in the U.S. Constitution for federal involvement in education. Supporting this department is a violation of the oath Gingrich took to uphold the Constitution. The infamous American Communist William Z. Foster, in his 1932 book “Toward Soviet America” said,

“Among the elementary measures the American Soviet government will adopt to further the cultural revolution are…[a] National Department of Education…the studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of the bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism, internationalism and the general ethics of the new Socialist society.”

This hardly seems like a conservative position for Gingrich to take, especially the part about how the communists called for the formation of the department as part of the way to overtake America.

In 1980 Gingrich voted to give most favored nation status to Communist China; you know the one that kills people in rice paddies. We now get all of our crap from China and they own more of U.S. debt than anyone else.

Gingrich also supported the US signing an agreement to get in on the whole, “General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization” (GATT/WTO). This took the power given to congress by the people in the Constitution, “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations”, and gave it away to the international body “The World Trade Organization”. The Constitution does not allow congress to give away the duties and powers specifically granted to it, to an unelected foreign body.

But the big glaring reason to not trust him, is that his own wife could not trust him. Once any politician has an affair, you really see how good their word is. If a promise is made to the person that they love and they break it in the most offensive way, surely they will not care about an oath they took in behalf of strangers. Gingrich had an affair while going after Bill Clinton for having an affair. Technically, he went after Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice, but he did tout family values and character as important, which makes him an untrustworthy hypocrite.

All of these and more add up to make me not trust Newt Gingrich when he says,

“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

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We have all heard by now, about the attempt on Christmas day to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to the US. There has been a lot of hullabaloo around the fact that he was already known to be a terrorist and even his own father had pointed him out as an extremist. It was another sign of government competence when the US state department revoked the would-be bombers visa well after the incident occurred. We have the extremely long period of time for any acknowledgment of the incident by the leadership of the US. There is also the story of how he got on the plane in the first place, which involves the bizarre tale of a man in a suit speaking with a manager to overlook the lack of a passport. What most people might have heard about in the aftermath of this incident is the fact that TSA screenings have ratcheted up and people are calling for the use of the dreaded strip search machines on everyone.

What I have not heard pointed out at this juncture and what seems painfully obvious to me is the fact that changing the laws in the US to make screening more R-rated and strict would have very little impact on the situation that has prompted the discussion. The flight was from Amsterdam to Detroit. To have an effect on this type of situation foreign laws would need to change. It might be a good idea to actually require passports since we have them and they are a standard to be followed already. We could even try using our terror watch lists. The ineptitude of people all along the chain in this situation does not give me any confidence in anyone. Either they are completely worthless at doing their job or someone did something on purpose.

Since people couldn’t check a passenger to see if he was a terrorist, which he plainly and clearly was known to be, now citizens of the United States of America will lose even more of their already thin right to privacy. The logic in this situation just doesn’t work out.

The great Ben Franklin once said, “As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” During the founding of the United States of America there was a great debate as to whether the people could maintain their liberty or whether they would become corrupt and ruin the whole thing. Many references to “Public Virtue” were made when discussing the topic. After the Constitution was written George Washington said that it would remain intact only “…so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people.”

I have mentioned before that trying to spread freedom to different parts of the world can only be done when the people want it enough and when they have the “Public Virtue” to maintain it. Seeing many stories on the progress of Afghan and Iraqi troops I do not believe they possess the will or the virtue necessary to keep themselves free of dictators and tyrants. Have I also mentioned that each generation of Americans seems to creep closer to the “non-virtue” or rather “vice” that is apparent from the Afghan soldiers in this video?: (language warning)

I feel for any Afghan people who are doing the right things and living responsibly, because it appears they will not be able to be free because of the lack of “Public Virtue”. I also appreciate even more the Armed forces of the United States who have higher education levels than the general population of the US and have much better discipline than armies around the world. It is always like banging your head against a wall to try to get people to do what is right for themselves and their communities and countries.

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