This Year’s cover for Time Magazine has a picture of the constitution not a famous American as is traditional for the July 4th Issue. In its editorial, Time Magazine’s managing editor Richard Stengel, Asks a question about our Constitution: "Does it still matter?" He concludes that the constitution is irrelevant saying, "If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it certainly doesn't say so."
Either purposefully or of ignorance, Stengel completely misrepresents the plain language of the Constitution. "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." Those words make it quite clear that the federal government is limited to only the powers specifically granted to it by the people as clearly stated in the Constitution.
Stengel’s editorial makes the same tired claims that have been used to try and justify taking power from the people and giving it back to the elite for well over a century: “When the Constitution was framed there were no Railroads….” or “When the Constitution was framed there were no Telegraphs….” or “When the Constitution was framed there were no Radios….” “When the Constitution was framed there was no Internet….” The constitution was a framework designed to restrain government, and unlike any other government before it, and very few since, gave most of the power to the people not the ruling elite. No technological advances justify taking self-rule away from the people.
It doesn’t take very much reading on Facebook Groups, chat-rooms, or other internet forums, before you will hear some statist claiming the American people are idiots. When somebody loving freedom uses a poll or other data which clearly shows that a vast majority of Americans are in agreement on a topic but that agreement doesn’t meet with statists ideas or desires, then the people aren’t smart enough to know what’s good for them, or have been mis-lead.
Take Obamacare for instance, most Americans do want some kind of health care reform, but the reality of Obamacare and what it will do, is not what a super majority of Americans want. The statists in our country seem to believe that they know what’s best, and the people should accept what they have determined is best.
This Time Magizine editorial demonstrates clearly that we are not divided by left-right views but by the idea that there are elite who should rule and dole out the countries resources, and plebs who accept it. The statists appear to want to have enough people dependent upon the government that they can once again put the genie back into the bottle and determine who is a success and who isn’t. The constitution and insistence by the people that our government uphold the rule of law stands in the way of statists. Statists hate the idea, and that the people expect and consider it necessary that no person, company, and especially politician, is above the same laws the people must follow. Obama during his campaign lamented that constitution made it hard to “get things done.” Even the liberal St. Petersburg Times, notes that just like Bush, “Obama's refusal to follow the strictures of the War Powers Act says that he, too, is willing to manipulate language to ignore inconvenient limits on his power.”
The destruction of what was an experiment in the people taking for themselves the right to self-rule is over. One by one our natural rights are being stripped from us and we are again regressing to rule by the elite. The government now says no warrant is needed to search a person’s home, that you can be forced to purchase services whether you want them or not, that the government can determine what you are allowed to eat, that employment and work laws that apply to people and businesses don’t apply to the government, that accounting and bookkeeping laws that apply to the people and their businesses don’t apply to the government, the list continues to grow daily.
Setup by Bush and completed by Obama, was the destruction of the rule of law. The primary example being when the government was able to force without legislation, judiciary rulings contrary to existing bankruptcy law to reward political favors to unions over secured creditors and take over both GM and Chrysler as a result of their bankruptcies. The breakup of these companies like AMC, Hudson, Studebaker, Stutz, and others before, would not have seen the demise or end of the US auto industry. Consider Jeep, near bankruptcy it was taken over by AMC, it made and still does make a product people want. AMC made bad business decisions and it too folded, but the Jeep name and assets were purchased by Chrysler, and it remained. If Chrysler folded, another company or new investors would have purchased the Jeep brand physical assets and it would have continued. Jeeps are the best selling products Chrysler has.
Statists claim that you can’t run a post modern country the same way and with the same rules as we did when we were an agriculture based country of the early 1800’s. This is only true if you throw out the reasoning for the institution of the USA and accept the premise that the government has a duty and is responsible for the needs of all its citizens. Only if you throw away the idea of self-rule and limited government, can you justify granting the government the unlimited authority to do whatever the elite feel is necessary for the greater good. It is not based on liberal or conservative ideology but on the idea of statism.
Statism is the concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government often but not necessarily extending to government ownership of industry. The concept of statism, which is seen as synonymous with the concept of nation, and corporatism repudiates individualism and exalts the nation as an organic body headed by the elites and nurtured by unity and force. The militarization of our police forces is prima facie evidence that statists are willing to and will use force to gain compliance by the people; even the Dept. of Education has its own SWAT team(s).
This is tyranny, the goals may be noble, but the implementation of the nanny state is tyrannical. Only with tortured logic can one justify the constitutionality of the federal government having the enumerated power to require people to purchase insurance. That and most other powers are restricted to the States or the People. Statists are doing everything they can to get rid of the pesky notion that the Constitution limits the federal government. Even the editor of Time Magazine, a statist, is willing to lie in order to try and convince the people that that the Constitution wasn’t intended to limit the federal government.
Contrary to what Mr. Stengel says, our founding fathers were quite clear, saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The notion that our forefathers didn’t believe in or want or attempt to limit the government is a lie. Our founding fathers created a framework that granted the government enough power to govern, but severely restricted it powers, knowing that men are not inherently good, that power corrupts, and that a limited government with enumerated powers, would protect future generations from the tyranny of an all powerful government.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” ~ C.S. Lewis
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