The 16th Amendment Poisons the Broth

       When Benjamin Franklin left Constitution Hall the day the work on the Constitution was completed, a woman asked him what kind of government he had given them. “A Republic,” he said, “if you can keep it.” The framers knew well the dangers of liberty. They understood the fragile character of the American experiment. Democracies of old inevitably fell into tyranny and anarchy. Thomas Hobbs had warned that human beings are not capable of self-government, that despotism was a necessary evil. However, the framers put their faith in Montesquieu and established a federation of small republics bonded together for the purpose of national defense. They established a national government wherein the departments of the federal government itself as well as the governments of the individual republics were all pitted against the others to prevent any government entity from satisfying its natural lust for power
      It might have worked if we had worked to keep it. But we have allowed the federal government to morph into a gigantic leviathan that deems itself lord and master, not just of the United States, but of the entire world. The root of the evil is complex, but most of the damage can be traced to the passage of the 16th Amendment.
       Article I, section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to “lay and collect taxes” to “provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare of the United States.” Promoting the “common welfare” to the founders meant to provide stuff from which everyone benefits, that improves the welfare of everyone.

       The progressives of the early 20th century managed to convince the public that that clause allowed them to plunder the property of some to provide for the welfare for others. They, of course, knew better. The founders feared nothing more than a powerful, intrusive national government.

Refueling the Fires of the Founding

       Early American settlers had a unique opportunity to create a different form of government. The kings of Europe were busy fighting one another, so the settlers were pretty much left to govern themselves for the first 200 years. They developed an appreciation for living independently, which led them to devise a government that protected those rights. They recognized that the most dangerous force in the world was government. They compared it to fire, necessary but a treacherous hazard. They had no confidence in man’s ability to resist the lure of power, so they designed a constitution that would, as Thomas Jefferson said, “bind him down from mischief.”
       Each branch of government was designed to check the power of the other, and the theory was that the sovereign states would jealously guard their powers as expressed in the 10th Amendment. Integral to the design were the differences in the houses of Congress. The House of Representatives was to reflect the passions of the people, members being elected by popular vote. The Senate was to be the more deliberative body, cooling the passions and providing stability. Members were appointed by legislative bodies of the various states and were to represent the interests of the state, keeping the power of the federal government in check.

       Electing senators by popular vote as a result of the 17th Amendment created two problems. First, the Senate loses its deliberative quality, the members now having to spend their energies responding to the passions of the masses, buying votes with our tax dollars. It also changed the allegiance of senators. They are no longer the voice of the state. They are the voice of the federal government. The power and significance of the Sovereign States is lost.

       We didn’t notice the danger at first. Montesquieu was right: “A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.” It’s been a century. It’s time for us all to join the bucket brigade. Or better yet, fight fire with fire. Lovers of freedom must be vigilant, read, study, research, and debate analyzing history and current events according to the principles of liberty. We need to rekindle the fires that fueled the founding.

Obama: Christians less than kind

        At an Easter prayer breakfast our president said, “And I have to say that, sometimes when I listen to other less-than-loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned." He is bothered by less than kind comments by Christians, bothered when Christians are less than loving.
        Did he express concern that members of Islam were less than loving when members of ISIS beheaded 21 Coptic Christians in February?   Did he express concern about Islam when al-Shabaab terrorist slaughtered nearly 150 students at a Kenyan university on Holy Thursday?  Does it bother him the al-Qaeda-affiliated group warned that they were not through, that cities in Kenya will "run red with blood”?
On March 15, Fulani terrorists massacred nearly one hundred Christian villagers in Egba, Nigeria, mostly women and children.  On that same day Jamaat-ul-Ahrar suicide bombers attached two churches leaving 15 worshipers dead.  Did you hear our president express disappointment in Muslims who were less than kind?
By my count, in 2015 alone, there have been 30 acts of terrorism on innocent Christian targeted solely because of their faith by Muslim groups who cite their own religion as motive.  But President Obama is bothered by less than loving comments by Christians?

The 57 per cent

           According to a 2011 Health and Human Services report, of the 309, 467,000 people in the United States, fully 109,631,000 live in households that receive means tested welfare benefits.  There are an additional 55 million seniors who receive Social Security and Medicare benefits which brings the total of those who benefit from government largess to 164,000,000, 43 per cent of the total population.  Consider that the wage earners in the remaining 57 per cent of the population who work two and three jobs to support their families, are financially supporting the rest of us.

             The consequences go far beyond the unfairness of it all.  Nearly half of the population is not producing, not striving to fulfill dreams, not creating what they may have created spurred by want and need.  It’s a grand waste of human potential, and there is nothing more destructive to the soul than the waste of human potential. An Irish prayer says, “May there always be work for your hands to do.”  A Scottish proverb says, “If the Devil finds a Man idle, he'll set him at Work.”  Frederik Mises said, “Man can only derive life and enjoyment from a perpetual application of his faculties to objects, or from labor.”   We have unleashed demons onto the world. 

         But it gets worse.  Those 57 per cent are also funding billions of dollars in corporate welfare.  A $100 million for an airport in a town with 75 residents, 2 million for an internship program for one intern, $1.3 million to help Pepsi Cola build a yogurt plant in New York, billions of dollars to provide the pentagon with a biofuel that costs $424 a gallon.  And the list goes on and on and on.  Our founders are gasping in their graves. 

Disillusioned, but not Capitulating

        I am disillusioned.  Perhaps I have been on a crusade that’s going nowhere.  We worked diligently this past election to help turn the map of our country red, but recent news is taking the wind out of my sails.

        First Professor Jonathan Gruber admits that he relied on “the stupidity of the American voter” to get the ACA passed.  The news only served to substantiate what I already knew, that progressives throw the corn into the pit hoping to turn us into servile lapdogs.   

         But then I heard McConnell and Boehner already capitulating the morning after the election.  The conservative sweep should have shown them that Americans want to reassert their independence. They no longer want to feed at the public trough. They want to honor the 10^th amendment, turn most of those monstrous buildings in DC into homeless shelters. 

         The lackluster response of the Republican leadership leads me to think that Alex Jones’ rants might not be so farfetched after all.  They’ve all sold out to the Bilderberg Group.  I’m reading The Creature from Jekyll Island again, this time with eyes wide open.

         Perhaps the “illuminati” story is real. Perhaps we are all managed by a small group of elite families who control the world leaders through blackmail, bribery and ruthless tyranny. That would explain John Roberts’ sudden reversal.

         That would explain why they waited until night to announce the findings of the grand jury in Ferguson.  They want race riots. That would explain why, with the war virtually won, they abandon Iraq to the radicals. They need terrorism.  It provides them with all kinds of excuses to limit our civil rights.  We know we were sold out to the big banks after the crash, sold out to big insurance companies with ACA.  Was Bush responsible for 9/11?  Oh my, I’m going insane.    

         I do agree, however, with Phyllis Schlafly.  A third party alternative entrenches the progressive agenda. Republicans at least pretend to believe in the limits of the constitution.  Our only hope is to concentrate all of our energies on bringing the Republican Party back to its conservative roots. 

         I may be disillusioned, but I’m not capitulating.

Who is stoking the fires of discontent?

           Some questions have plagued me ever since the Ferguson riots. 

Why are so many of the powerful stoking the fires of discontent?  Certainly tens of thousands of people cannot afford to leave their families and jobs and fly coast to coast to participate in demonstrations? Who is financing the chaos? 

          Last night I heard a chilling comment, a young man making a plea for the federal government to step in and overturn the jury verdict. Is that the object, to give the federal government an excuse to step in?  To create national police force?

 Who wants to destroy the jury system that has for centuries worked to protect the innocent from a tyrannical government, a system that provides stability to our republic that stands in the way of federal intrusions?

And then I remembered something George Soros said years ago.   “The main obstacle to a just world is the United States.“  George Soros knows that  in order to achieve his lifetime goal of world government he must first destroy the American republic, and he has been working diligently toward that goal for years. 

He’s also been practicing. In 1992, Georgie brought the Bank of England to its knees. In 1997 he destroyed the economies of Thailand and Malaysia, and when interviewed on “60 Minutes,” he said, “It was fun!”  Think how much fun he‘s having now.  He calls it “Accelerating history.”

         George Soros invests billions of dollars into left wing foundations, Open Society, Democracy Alliance, Move On, Center for American Progress, The Tides Foundation, Media Matters, La Raza and the American Arab Anti-discrimination Activity Research Institute, to name a few.   If I were a news reporter I’d investigate the degree to which he finances  “We beat this, we will be the biggest N****** in New York" Al Sharpton, “We’ve gotta teach our kids to kill” Louis Farrakhan and the demonstrators.

Follow the money.  Someone is manipulating the masses. 

Slouching towards Bethlehem

 Now Obama wants to raise the taxes on investment income in order to subsidies the middle class.  They’ve already brought 47 per cent of Americans to their knees feeding at the trough, but they’re not satisfied until they have us all of us bowing to Washington. There was a severe recession in 1921. Unemployment soared to 12 per cent.  All the government did was cut federal spending. In one year the rate dropped to 6 per cent.  By 1923 it dropped to 4 per cent.

Government intervention invariably has huge negative consequences.  Look at the recent housing crisis.  Government forces lending institutions to make questionable loans which causes a huge housing bubble.  The loans go belly up, the bubble bursts and we have another economic crisis.  Ironically enough, the two politicians who are most responsible for the fiasco, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, push through legislation to prevent that from happening again and now the feds are back to making loans, this time with only 3 per cent down.  When do you predict the next crash will be?

We are all brainwashed to believe that government intervention dragged us out of the depression.  A big lie.  The market crash of 1929 caused unemployment to rise to 9 per cent, but by January of the following year things had begun to stabilize. Unemployment dropped to 6.3 per cent. Unfortunately, after the 1921 recession Hoover had convened conference between business and government officials which ended with a call for more government planning to avoid future depressions, so later that month the federal government stepped in to save the day. Within 6 months Unemployment surged to double digits and stayed there for nearly a decade, peaking at 24 per cent.

Several millennia of history repeats the mantra:  Government IS the problem. When the Israelites wanted a king, Jehovah said no.  He destroyed the Tower of Babel and scattered the people. We are all built of faulty timber.  Not one of us has either the wisdom necessary to be a king.  Even King Solomon, the wisest man in the world, screwed things up. By now every reading of history should remind us that governments of men will turn into tyrannies. 

            So what’s wrong with taxing investment income?  In the first place it amounts to double taxation.  Investors pay taxes on profit at the corporation level and then are taxed again on what’s left over.  It also strangles the economy.  The corporate profit that would have been used to invest again in business and hire more of the unemployed is confiscated by the government and flushed down the toilet. 

 It’s not that they are insane: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It’s not that they don’t know the truth.  They are all of them students of history.  It has to be that they are deliberately leading us into slavery.  They give us bread and circuses and we follow them, dead eyed and drooling, into the pen.