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From the description:
What happens when a Republican Congressman tells Conservative Activists that fighting for the Constitution is a losing battle? Watch the fireworks as Unite In Action’s Director of Legal Affairs KrisAnne Hall and 912 Project National Co-Chair, Unite In Action President, Stephani Scruggs respond.
I’m a hard-bitten political cynic and I was eye-damp by the time this video finished.
Screw people who say America is doomed. Not while these women, and people like them, still draw breath.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the first guy speaking is right. The Constitution has not been “the supreme law of the land” in our lifetimes. Fighting to your death to restore it is simply going to make you dead and another sound bite about those wacko extremists. No plan, no Constitution.
The Constitution should be the Supreme Law of the land, but when you have Supreme Court Justices who use other nations’ constitutions to make their decisions on the constitutionality of American law, when you have Supreme Court Justices who find penumbras, umbras, emanations, and perhaps groovy vibrations in the Constitution, and from these construct whole new “rights”, along with a House and Senate that refuses to tell these Justices “this is beyond your purview” and refuses to remove them from the bench for these transgressions, then you have rule of man instead of rule of law.
Once you have rule of man, you get Obamacare, you get crony capitalism where the person in power decides which business succeeds or fails based on their contributions to an election or re-election fund, you get government interference with settled laws on immigration and bankruptcy, you get a President who, if he were white or Republican, would have been impeached and removed from office, you get a tax cheat writing tax law, a tax cheat enforcing tax law. You get a situation where it is time for the people to exercise their Second Amendment rights for the purpose for which the Amendment was written. You get to the point “That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, 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.”
1) To accept the premise that the Constitution is not the law of the land is simply to buy into the liberal agenda and give up on America. You might as well believe that most of America supports gay marriage (which vote after vote proves is not true), or that most of America supports the welfare state, or that most of America believes public schools aren’t broken, etc. The fact that there are some corrupt judges – like John Roberts and the ACLU-loving lefties on the supreme court – means we work on voting in members of the House and Senate that will once and for all address the problems with the supreme court, revisiting Marbury vs. Madison.
2) If a public servant is going to state publicly that he is not willing to support and defend the Constitution, after swearing to do so as a condition for taking office – as Paul Gosar has done – a recall election should be organized.
Our first Revolution, fought by a ‘minority of a minority’ of colonists, was against a foreign power to achieve freedom and independence.
A second Revolution would be fought against ourselves and become our second Civil War.
But without first identifying the flaws in the Constitution that allowed our Republic to fail in the first place, what’s the point of a second American Revolution?
We need to define the rules for a Republic that CANNOT fail – because our current Constitution – and our politics – are a dismal failure.
Jimmy, The “problem” with The Constitution is that it left a few ambiguous things because at the time they were common sense. The problem we have now is that we let “constitutional scholars” tell us what it meant instead of just reading it and following it. All the “constitutional scholars” do is look for loopholes so they can bypass the letter and spirit of the law.
If you really look at it this is also one of the problems in Christianity today – people look for loopholes in The Bible so they can worship God the way they want instead of the way God wants. So it is not just a problem with the Constitution. It is a problem with the people and always was and always will be. There is no way to make a Constitution so that the Lawyers cannot find loopholes.
re: Jimmy:
“Our first Revolution, fought by a ‘minority of a minority’ of colonists, was against a foreign power to achieve freedom and independence.
A second Revolution would be fought against ourselves and become our second Civil War.”
Not to be persnickety, but you’re being somewhat anachronistic…. our first revolution started out as a civil war within the British Empire & turned into a war of independence.
Not to be persnickety, adagio, but the discussion here doesn’t rely on that distinction at all but more on what Corsair points out, namely, “There is no way to make a Constitution so that the Lawyers cannot find loopholes.” To this end, I am reminded of the Preamble which includes the phrase “…in Order to form a more perfect Union…” implying that people once thought it was worth the effort to define a common set of rules with which to live free lives – together.
Every time I read the Constitution (which I do every few months), I’m reminded of how BAD a contract it would make in Common Law. My point, is, that perhaps we need to try again and define the rules more rigorously in order to achieve that perfect Union – finally.
I also come back to the ‘minority of a minority’ realization. A minority of Colonists were for the Revolution and a minority of them were willing to stake “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” to achieve it.
Those who opposed the Revolution or were unwilling to do that were handed unearned freedom on a silver platter. And today, while they are still in the majority, it’s clear they still don’t value it.
@jimmy
“…first identifying the flaws in the constitution…” the constitution was supposed to fix the Articles of Confederation. if followed, including the 8th, 9th and 10th amendments, it actually does a pretty good job. its flaws seem to be what the founders took for granted and didn’t specify. i.e. money is property, english as the national language, our borders need control and illegal immigration is not the same as legal immigration.
I don’t think that Gosar is the brightest bulb in a bag of hammers, but the video does him a disservice. We are only given a few minutes of what was obviously a longer debate. From what I’ve read, Gosar is clearly not afraid to cite the Constitution. His point may have been that the Constitution needs to be placed in larger contexts instead of making it a sole focus.
He may well be right about the percentage of people who believe in the Constitution, especially if you lump in the high percentage of Americans who have nary a clue as to what is in the Constitution.
If I were to extend his thought, it’s not enough to preach to folks that we need to follow the Constitution. We share the word better when we explain why we need to follow it.
@Jimmy: If I understand Corsair correctly, I think he would agree that the problem lies not in the Constitution — or Christianity for that matter — but in ourselves. I don’t always succeed, but I try not to find loopholes in either the Constitution or Bible.
“There is no way to make a Constitution so that the lawyers cannot finde loopholes.”
First kill all the lawyers. – W. Shakespeare
America is doomed.
“…when you have Supreme Court Justices who find penumbras, umbras, emanations, and perhaps groovy vibrations in the Constitution, and from these construct whole new “rights”….”
There is no need to “invent” new rights enjoyed by the people. The people enjoy far more rights than could ever be enumerated, and the Founders knew it (see Barnett on the commentaries to the Ninth Amendment). That Griswold was execrably decided is true, but the (pre)existence of a right to privacy is equally true. If one cannot bid defiance to the crown on one’s own property, then there is no right in property, and all other rights are equally fictive — might makes right rules the day.
One empowers Leviathan at one’s peril.
When God is no longer the source of our inalienable rights, then man is the inventor and grantor of all rights. Anything can become a right. Godless humanists, socialists, communists, what have you, there’s a reason why Christianity and Judaism are incompatible collectivist religions.
Our Constitution was not a dismal failure…our Constitution was/is a glowing success. When power-hungry politicians began to side-step the Constitution, passing laws based on powers they were never granted in the Constitution – THAT resulted in failure.
Sic Semper Tryannis!
“…There is no need to “invent” new rights enjoyed by the people. The people enjoy far more rights than could ever be enumerated…”
this incorrectly assumes that actual rights are under consideration. velvet chains designed to give some particular party control is what is actually being mandated.
“To accept the premise that the Constitution is not the law of the land is simply to buy into the liberal agenda and give up on America. You might as well believe that most of America supports gay marriage (which vote after vote proves is not true), or that most of America supports the welfare state, or that most of America believes public schools aren’t broken, etc. …”
Believing the Constitution literally has just as many things to upset and please both conservatives and liberals.
The Constitution clearly gives everyone the right to bear arms. It’s that simple. We can have guns.
The Constitution clearly states “No State may pass any law impairing the Obligations of Contract” and that states shall honor the contracts of other states. If a gay couple is legally married by contract law in Massachusetts, that contract is valid in any State, unless and until DOMA is made a Constitutional Amendment vs. an unconstitutional Federal law. Just because a majority of people don’t like it doesn’t make it any less Constitutional. The Equal Protection clause is probably applicable also.
Likewise, *anyone* born in the U.S. is a U.S. citizen, even anchor babies. Now, we can kick their parents out and they’ll likely take their kids with them, but those kids can come back as citizens once they’re of legal age.
The Constitution also states Congress can borrow and print money. There’s no limit–no matter how bad it may be.
We’re treading on some iffy ground lately in terms of restricting freedom of speech. When the Founders wrote that the people had the right to peaceably protest for redress of their grievances, I don’t think they said anything such as “but those protestors may be put in pens a mile away from the thing they’re protesting”.
The more government collects, the less is available to the citizens to spend and invest as they see fit.
The final effect is the same on you if the government collects taxes from you, or a thief robs you in the street.
When people spend money they earn for things they need, they care about both expense and quality. (1st party)
If someone else pays for something you receive, you’ll still care about the quality, but not so much about the expense. (2nd party)
If you’re spending money you didn’t earn to buy things you won’t use personally, you won’t care about either the expense or the quality. (3rd party)
Government creates poverty.
http://reason.com/archives/2011/04/28/government-creates-poverty