printJohn Danforth responds to “A Republic, if You Can Keep It…”:
The Constitution of the United States of America has become just a decoration in some museum in Washington DC. Its words are platitudes, phrases to be used whenever the ACLU wants to sound scholarly. The populace has been government schooled in studious avoidance of the subject; ignorance of the constitution is fashionable, and this extends to members of congress.
I saw a snippet of an interview with our President the other day. I saw him say that he didn’t question the patriotism of those who opposed this latest bill, but he just sees things differently. He said, in his view, that we are at war, and they don’t see it that way.
This is where the equivocation comes in. We are at war, but not really. Just like other “Wars” we have been in, but weren’t really. I can dredge up from my rusty memory that the constitution explicitly says that congress has the power to declare war, and that the president is commander in chief of the armed forces. Although newer laws and bills have been passed, whereby congress gave assent to the use of force, still, we are NOT at war (at least not legally).
If we are not in a state of war, the U.S. government has no business trying to assert war-time emergency powers (which ought to be limited as well.) The Founding Fathers knew of the dangers of perpetual mini-wars. I believe that is why they tried to prevent them with the wording in our constitution. The threat of real war is intended to be something that our enemies and our citizenry will consider very seriously and very cautiously.
Just as with the commerce clause and amendments to the constitution, if the distinctions drawn by the authors of it can be fuzzed out of our ‘six-pack and ball game’ consciousness, then the fact that we are ‘sort of’ at war can allow the government to ‘sort of’ erode the foundations of our rights, and then only the ACLU will ‘sort of’ argue against the portions of a bill that don’t fit with their socialist agenda.
The attack on rational epistemology that started so long ago and has resulted in the United States adopting many of the planks of the Communist Manifesto–has now begun to bear real rotten fruit. We can justify the constitutionality of virtually anything, especially if the Supreme Court says so.
Pass me the laughing gas, I need another hit. I’m feeling like I don’t fit in around here.
—John Danforth
Mr. Danforth (who shares a name with the notorious liberal Republican former senator from Missouri) has given us a fine letter.
The main reason, as I understand it, that Congress has basically given up its powers to declare war has to do with the treaty signed by the United States, and ratified by the Senate, which effectively nullifies any such declaration absent UN approval.
I refer our readers to the following quote from the Constitution itself regarding treaties and the force of law they enjoy.
“The Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in the Persuance thereof; and all Treaties made, and which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” (US Constitution: Article VI, paragraph 2)
At the very least, a treaty trumps all state laws. At the worst (in the whacked-out minds of judicial leftists), they effective amend the Constitution itself. We sign treaty after treaty after treaty. The CAFTA agreement was 2000 pages. It was ratified by numerous Congressmen and Senators who never even bothered to read the whole document!! Heaven knows what was signed away that time.
I don’t know why people cite the constitution so much. It’s obvious – even admitted in this letter – that it’s useless now. If it’s useless now, and has been in the past, it’s safe to say it’s never really been a big help.
There is no way to curtail government other than radical decentralization. A piece of paper isn’t going to do the trick.
But I disgress – lets talk more about how the Constitution has failed, and what we can do to ‘fix’ it.
…lets talk more about how the Constitution has failed, and what we can do to ‘fix’ it.
The “fix” required isn’t going to come from either of our political parties. Change isn’t going to ferment internally from within. It will have to come from the outside. Jefferson held that, “a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing…[a] medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” The Declaration of Independence states: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [the “ends” being the people’s inalienable rights, derived from natural law], it is the Right of the People to alter or to 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 effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Can anyone look at our government and say, in all intellectual honesty and truthfulness, that is NOT destructive to those ends? But the people don’t care. They are more concerned with who is going to get kicked off American Idol next week.
The self government part of a republic requires both the DESIRE and the ABILITY of the citizenry to govern themselves. We no longer have either I fear.
Excellent comments from Jeanne. A piece of paper is never enough to support good government. The founders were elitists. They believed those doing the governing should be of high moral and intellectual character. (Was Washington paid for his sacrifice? I don’t think so.) And they and their generation held a good consensus as to what was meant by morals and intelligence. These days we don’t have any standards for these qualities—or rather, our standards have been inverted. The top selling books are written by malevolent idiots. Then Tom Paine was a top-selling author.
I guess I should also comment that I was being a little sarcastic when I asked what we could do to fix the constitution. :=\
I agree that Jeanne’s observation here is indeed an excellent one. John Adams had a most interesting remark on the root of the problem, too:
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798
As Jeanne more or less stated, this is the root of the problem. We are, to put it bluntly, no longer a moral or religious people. The whole gossamer net of the constitution thus unravels. The whale of unbridled passions, greed, and avarice has indeed ravaged the net into mere tatters. These are very dark times, to be sure.
Even so, there are signs of hope that we need to remember. It’s encouraging that folks like Ilana, Lawrence Auster, Paul Gottfried, Diana West, David Yeagley, and others are exchanging ideas. All is not yet lost. There are people who are waking up to reality from in Western lands from Israel to Iceland. Let’s continue to spread the word.
Thank you, Ilana, for the honor of placing my letter as letter of the week. And thanks, Carolus, Alex, and Jeanne, for your generous and thoughtful replies.
I think the way government works is, there are two rules. One, there are no rules, and two, I can change the rules whenever I want (as far as I dare) if I’m the government.
The only thing that restrains governments (if they aren’t rare elites like Thomas Jefferson) is the real threat of violent overthrow. I think the founding fathers knew this. I think that’s why they wrote the constitution the way they did. I think they figured if they wrote about limitations of power and individual rights in plain language, then an armed populace might keep an eye on usurpation of power. And I think that they hoped that an armed populace raising a cry about government abuses would stand a pretty good chance of being heard. And if it got serious, it would not be easy to put them down.
That strategy did work sometimes, for a long time, more or less. But the people who favor collectivism and statism knew of a way around it — institute a communist school system and jealousy taxes. By the fourth or fifth generation of compulsory state education, the populace will be too stupid to realize what is happening, too wrapped up in trivial diversions to care, too poor to mount much of an opposition, and easily misled to the next, worse, stage if they ever do get themselves up in arms.
We are hip deep in evidence of the rotten fruit being borne by this campaign. So Carolus is right; the whole concept of the clear ideals in the constitution get constantly eroded not only by treaties, but also by the press, by court rulings, and outright contradiction of its principles in thousands of laws, enough to give any sports fan a headache just thinking about it. And Alex is right; little adjustments to the constitution or arguments about them aren’t going to fix anything. And Jeanne is right; most people don’t care about what the government does until their way of life completely collapses.
People have never willingly given up their homes, their businesses, their lifestyles, unless there was already a very real threat to them. Governments usually bring about their own demise, either through fiat money collapse or a military foreign intrigue getting out of hand.
The question to consider as our government tries to continue increasing its consumption without bringing about its own collapse is “who is in a position to sway the passions of the stupefied masses if a collapse happens, and what will their aims be?”.
I am honored to be in the virtual company of you all, and I am hopeful that you will correct me where I am mistaken.
–John Danforth–
(No relation to the liberal senator.)