JR Dieckmann
The evolution of Marxism in America
By JR Dieckmann
A people can remain free and self governing only for as long as they are educated and informed, and are willing to accept personal responsibility for their own lives. Once they relinquish that responsibility to the government — they are no longer free — but become subjects of those in power.
The "American experiment" was devised by our Founders with the idea that a country could grow and prosper through freedom, ingenuity, and self rule, where the people themselves run their own government and make the laws.
Think about that — we the people run this country, not a king, not a dictator, not a ruling class. We do it all ourselves. That is a huge responsibility, and if we mess it up, our country fails. As a democratic republic, it is our responsibility to elect officials who will be responsible to us, the voters. We do not elect them to rule us. This concept seems to have been lost on those in power today.
The only way that America can succeed is by every American citizen taking personal responsibility for their own lives and electing representatives who will truly represent us, not themselves, and not their own special interests or lobbyists. That requires them to be honest and maintain a high enough level of integrity and discipline to resist the temptations of power that are so prevalent in Washington today.
They must be willing to respect and obey the Constitution and do only those things that are authorized for government to do in that document. Everything else is left up to the individual states and to the people, according to the 10th Amendment. The federal government is empowered by the states, not the other way around.
If you are a citizen who depends too much on the government for your daily needs, what are you going to do when this bloated government collapses under its own weight — the inevitable result of what is happening now in Washington?
That is to say, when the U.S. government can no longer borrow money from other countries to pay for the obligations it has made to the people who are dependent upon it, how will they survive?
It is at that point that everyone will be forced to accept responsibility for their own lives. For those of us who have made a habit of it for most of our lives, it won't be that difficult. But for those who think government will always be there to rescue them and give them what they need, it's going to be impossible for them to survive. They simply won't know how.
The more we get into the habit of depending on government to take care of us, the less equipped we will be to take care of ourselves when our government defaults on its loans to foreign nations. This point has nearly been reached, and when it is, we will no longer be able to borrow money at an affordable interest rate. How can we possibly expect to pay back loans while we continue to spend more than we make? It doesn't make any sense.
Today, we are barely able to pay the interest alone on those loans which amounts to a half trillion dollars every year. That is more than the entire annual federal budget under any previous administration. Not only is this policy unsustainable, it is national suicide.
Now, Obama wants Congress to pass another near trillion dollar stimulus bill to be marketed to the American people as a "jobs bill" — while the last stimulus bill did nothing to grow jobs in the private sector — and more than half of it still remains in his slush fund to promote and finance the elections of more of the same.
Just how stupid does he think we are? You only have to look at his State of the Union speech to answer that one. In trying to sound conservative, Obama's speech was full of rhetoric in direct opposition to his own policies. What this man says is to be ignored. What he does must be watched very closely. They are two distinctly different and opposite things.
When Obama and Pelosi promised transparency in government, what they really meant was that it will be so transparent that you won't be able to see it. We learned that from the invisible healthcare policy meetings held behind closed doors.
The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." — Patrick Henry
Where does the Constitution grant Congress the power to pass laws that regulate the lives of the people? In fact, the Constitution was crafted to do just the opposite by guaranteeing the rights of the people to be free from government oppression while imposing limitations on that government. Those limitations restrict the federal government to doing only those things which must be done, but cannot be done by the individual states acting on their own.
Those wise men who crafted our constitutional foundation were very clear about its limits on government. Our Constitution's principle author, James Madison, wrote, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined [and] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce."
Concerning the legislature's authority, Thomas Jefferson asserted: "Giving [Congress] a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole [Constitution] to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly, no such universal power was meant to be given them. [The Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."
Madison added, "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."
These men knew what would evolve in a government left unrestrained by the national charter. They, perhaps mistakenly, assumed that elected officials would honor and obey these basic laws and limitations. After 230 years, we can now see that they assumed incorrectly.
The Tea Parties are just one example of constitutionally informed people revolting against the people responsible for violations against, and the corruption of, the founding principles laid out in the Constitution, and their failures to live up to their oath of office.
The early 20th century progressives decided that they didn't like the constitutional limits on government so they decided to change it. One thing they did was to change the way the Supreme Court works.
Previously, when the SCOTUS would consider constitutional challenges, they would look not only to the actual wording of the Constitution, but also the background writings of the Founders to understand their intent. The court decision would then be based on what they learned from that research.
The socialist progressives realized that their agenda could never be realized as long as the SCOTUS depended on the wisdom of the Founders for their decision — that had to be changed.
They began characterizing the Founders as a group of senile old men whose creation represented only their time and grievances against the King of England. They coined the expression "a living document" with the intent of changing the Constitution to suit their wishes. The foundation of our country would be destroyed.
The new SCOTUS, instead of depending on constitutional writings, would now depend on "precedent" for their decisions. The folly in this is that it allowed a judge to interpret the Constitution in a way that he thought it should be, rather than the way it is. A decision based on this perverse thinking then becomes a precedent for the next decision which again distorts the intent of the Founders.
At the same time, they made the same changes in the universities and law schools. Rather than teach the Constitution and the thought processes behind it, they began teaching prior legal decisions which had little basis in the Constitution. All of those law books you see behind lawyers on TV are just full of such ill-begotten decisions.
By the mid-20th century, court decisions had become so corrupted from being based on prior distorted decisions that we now get court rulings that are in direct opposition to the Constitution. It then became accepted that any court ruling on a single case would become law across the country for all to respect and obey, regardless of the fact that lawmaking is the job of Congress, not the courts.
Court rulings must be made to apply only to the specific case at hand and the use of precedence must be abolished. Each case must be judged on its own merits and how they apply to the Constitution, not to previous cases. This is the problem we see in the courts today.
The Marxist progressives, over time, have succeeded in reducing the Constitution to little more than a fairy tale of dreamers long gone. Had the concepts inscribed in the Constitution been respected and obeyed by those in Congress, the White House, and the courts, we wouldn't have 535 people today making a full time job of doing nothing but dreaming up new laws to limit our freedom and liberty.
The 16th Amendment, along with the 1000 page tax code needs to be repealed and federal taxes should be paid on a voluntary basis. This would almost be better than voting in that those who support what government is doing could pay for it.
When few people support the actions in Congress — like their current 2000 page plus bills to take over control of our lives — there would be no financial support for them to continue down their anti-American path of destruction. On the other hand, when the people are happy with what the government is doing, there would be plenty of financial support from the taxpayers.
The only other way we as a people can preserve our democratic republic and insure our freedom and liberty is to restore our Constitution to its rightful place as the supreme law of the land. And that can only be done by electing representatives who respect the Constitution and the will of the people by an educated and informed electorate.
If we cannot do that, then our nation is surely doomed, and will become just another banana republic under the supreme rule of an oppressive elite class who will make laws to ensure their own survival in politics on the backs of the American taxpayers.
© JR Dieckmann
January 31, 2010
A people can remain free and self governing only for as long as they are educated and informed, and are willing to accept personal responsibility for their own lives. Once they relinquish that responsibility to the government — they are no longer free — but become subjects of those in power.
The "American experiment" was devised by our Founders with the idea that a country could grow and prosper through freedom, ingenuity, and self rule, where the people themselves run their own government and make the laws.
Think about that — we the people run this country, not a king, not a dictator, not a ruling class. We do it all ourselves. That is a huge responsibility, and if we mess it up, our country fails. As a democratic republic, it is our responsibility to elect officials who will be responsible to us, the voters. We do not elect them to rule us. This concept seems to have been lost on those in power today.
The only way that America can succeed is by every American citizen taking personal responsibility for their own lives and electing representatives who will truly represent us, not themselves, and not their own special interests or lobbyists. That requires them to be honest and maintain a high enough level of integrity and discipline to resist the temptations of power that are so prevalent in Washington today.
They must be willing to respect and obey the Constitution and do only those things that are authorized for government to do in that document. Everything else is left up to the individual states and to the people, according to the 10th Amendment. The federal government is empowered by the states, not the other way around.
If you are a citizen who depends too much on the government for your daily needs, what are you going to do when this bloated government collapses under its own weight — the inevitable result of what is happening now in Washington?
That is to say, when the U.S. government can no longer borrow money from other countries to pay for the obligations it has made to the people who are dependent upon it, how will they survive?
It is at that point that everyone will be forced to accept responsibility for their own lives. For those of us who have made a habit of it for most of our lives, it won't be that difficult. But for those who think government will always be there to rescue them and give them what they need, it's going to be impossible for them to survive. They simply won't know how.
The more we get into the habit of depending on government to take care of us, the less equipped we will be to take care of ourselves when our government defaults on its loans to foreign nations. This point has nearly been reached, and when it is, we will no longer be able to borrow money at an affordable interest rate. How can we possibly expect to pay back loans while we continue to spend more than we make? It doesn't make any sense.
Today, we are barely able to pay the interest alone on those loans which amounts to a half trillion dollars every year. That is more than the entire annual federal budget under any previous administration. Not only is this policy unsustainable, it is national suicide.
Now, Obama wants Congress to pass another near trillion dollar stimulus bill to be marketed to the American people as a "jobs bill" — while the last stimulus bill did nothing to grow jobs in the private sector — and more than half of it still remains in his slush fund to promote and finance the elections of more of the same.
Just how stupid does he think we are? You only have to look at his State of the Union speech to answer that one. In trying to sound conservative, Obama's speech was full of rhetoric in direct opposition to his own policies. What this man says is to be ignored. What he does must be watched very closely. They are two distinctly different and opposite things.
When Obama and Pelosi promised transparency in government, what they really meant was that it will be so transparent that you won't be able to see it. We learned that from the invisible healthcare policy meetings held behind closed doors.
The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." — Patrick Henry
Where does the Constitution grant Congress the power to pass laws that regulate the lives of the people? In fact, the Constitution was crafted to do just the opposite by guaranteeing the rights of the people to be free from government oppression while imposing limitations on that government. Those limitations restrict the federal government to doing only those things which must be done, but cannot be done by the individual states acting on their own.
Those wise men who crafted our constitutional foundation were very clear about its limits on government. Our Constitution's principle author, James Madison, wrote, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined [and] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce."
Concerning the legislature's authority, Thomas Jefferson asserted: "Giving [Congress] a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole [Constitution] to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly, no such universal power was meant to be given them. [The Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."
Madison added, "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."
These men knew what would evolve in a government left unrestrained by the national charter. They, perhaps mistakenly, assumed that elected officials would honor and obey these basic laws and limitations. After 230 years, we can now see that they assumed incorrectly.
The Tea Parties are just one example of constitutionally informed people revolting against the people responsible for violations against, and the corruption of, the founding principles laid out in the Constitution, and their failures to live up to their oath of office.
The early 20th century progressives decided that they didn't like the constitutional limits on government so they decided to change it. One thing they did was to change the way the Supreme Court works.
Previously, when the SCOTUS would consider constitutional challenges, they would look not only to the actual wording of the Constitution, but also the background writings of the Founders to understand their intent. The court decision would then be based on what they learned from that research.
The socialist progressives realized that their agenda could never be realized as long as the SCOTUS depended on the wisdom of the Founders for their decision — that had to be changed.
They began characterizing the Founders as a group of senile old men whose creation represented only their time and grievances against the King of England. They coined the expression "a living document" with the intent of changing the Constitution to suit their wishes. The foundation of our country would be destroyed.
The new SCOTUS, instead of depending on constitutional writings, would now depend on "precedent" for their decisions. The folly in this is that it allowed a judge to interpret the Constitution in a way that he thought it should be, rather than the way it is. A decision based on this perverse thinking then becomes a precedent for the next decision which again distorts the intent of the Founders.
At the same time, they made the same changes in the universities and law schools. Rather than teach the Constitution and the thought processes behind it, they began teaching prior legal decisions which had little basis in the Constitution. All of those law books you see behind lawyers on TV are just full of such ill-begotten decisions.
By the mid-20th century, court decisions had become so corrupted from being based on prior distorted decisions that we now get court rulings that are in direct opposition to the Constitution. It then became accepted that any court ruling on a single case would become law across the country for all to respect and obey, regardless of the fact that lawmaking is the job of Congress, not the courts.
Court rulings must be made to apply only to the specific case at hand and the use of precedence must be abolished. Each case must be judged on its own merits and how they apply to the Constitution, not to previous cases. This is the problem we see in the courts today.
The Marxist progressives, over time, have succeeded in reducing the Constitution to little more than a fairy tale of dreamers long gone. Had the concepts inscribed in the Constitution been respected and obeyed by those in Congress, the White House, and the courts, we wouldn't have 535 people today making a full time job of doing nothing but dreaming up new laws to limit our freedom and liberty.
The 16th Amendment, along with the 1000 page tax code needs to be repealed and federal taxes should be paid on a voluntary basis. This would almost be better than voting in that those who support what government is doing could pay for it.
When few people support the actions in Congress — like their current 2000 page plus bills to take over control of our lives — there would be no financial support for them to continue down their anti-American path of destruction. On the other hand, when the people are happy with what the government is doing, there would be plenty of financial support from the taxpayers.
The only other way we as a people can preserve our democratic republic and insure our freedom and liberty is to restore our Constitution to its rightful place as the supreme law of the land. And that can only be done by electing representatives who respect the Constitution and the will of the people by an educated and informed electorate.
If we cannot do that, then our nation is surely doomed, and will become just another banana republic under the supreme rule of an oppressive elite class who will make laws to ensure their own survival in politics on the backs of the American taxpayers.
© JR Dieckmann
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