A great many people – especially
conservatives – reverence the Constitution, consider that it has been abused
and that if only the doctrines expressed within were revived and respected, all
would be well with America again.
This,
of course, is a kind of children’s bedtime story – and approximates reality to
about the same degree as the story of the Three
Little Pigs.
The
Constitution was peddled and imposed on us by men like Alexander Hamilton, a
grasper after power who very openly loathed the ideas expressed by men like
Jefferson in his Declaration (and
even more so in his Virginia
and Kentucky Resolutions).
Hamilton
and his faction – they were called Federalists, which meant then what it means
today – intended to create a centralized government on the British model, but
without a hereditary monarch. The Bill of Rights was just barely added, in
order to sooth the (rightly, as it turned out ) suspicious, such as George
Mason of Virginia.
Patrick
Henry smelled a rat.
At
any rate, the fact remains that the Constitution was written with great
calculation by lawyers – who
are trained in and well understand the meaning and potential use of words – in
such as way as to assure the expansion of federal power via (among other
things) the purposely open-ended Commerce Clause and deliberately nebulous
phrases such as “general welfare” that can be – and have been – interpreted to
mean . . . anything those
who control the levers of the federal government wish it to mean.
Including
– as actually happened during the Roosevelt Years – that a man farming on his
own land whose produce never leaves his land let alone the state is nonetheless
subject to federal regulation, because his actions “affect” Interstate
Commerce.
In
the same manner, Americans are forced to pay for other people’s retirement (and
in their turn, forcing others to pay for theirs) and this is characterized as a
“contribution.”
Regardless
– the debate ought not to be over a piece of paper and what it does or does
not legalize.
A thing can be morally vile and entirely legal. The debate ought to
be over the question of rights
vs. conditional privileges. And whether the immoral can ever –
rightfully – be lawful.
Does
a man have an absolute right to be left in peace, so long as he himself is
peaceful – or not? If not, then we do not have rights but conditional
privileges, subject to modification at any time – and morality is merely a
question of legality. In which case, the Israelis did Adolf Eichmann a grievous
injustice when they hanged him for doing as German law required.
The
Constitution is an immoral document. It explicates a litany of conditional
privileges, subject to modification at any time. That this is done in an
orderly manner, via “constitutionally” prescribed mechanisms, does not make the
doing of it morally legitimate.
It
merely legalizes it.
Theft
remains theft.
Slavery,
to whatever degree, remains slavery.
The
Constitution articulates in flowery prose the means by which rights are to be
suborned and transformed into conditional privileges; for example, the gauzy
“will of the people” will be “represented” by a handful of actual people called
politicians and bureaucrats and judges – whose opinions become binding on “the people.”
But
this is lawyer-talk. There is no “people.” No single body, imbued with a single
consciousness and – morally, the key point – unanimous in its feeling, capable
of giving unanimous free consent to an action of the government. Without such
unanimity and free consent you have the trampling of the will of individual people, which is
contrary to their rights and which therefore can never be moral.
This
idea that the otherwise immoral act – when performed freelance, by an
individual – becomes not merely legal but moral when it is done via
“representatives” of “the people” or via the false proxy of the ballot box is
the despicable doctrine at the very core of the immoral Constitution and its
intended subordination of the individual.
It
is responsible for everything the authors of the thing intended – and what they
intended was unlimited government.
A government which may- in principle – do anything it likes, so
long as it is done via “the people’s representatives” and after a vote on the
matter.
Is
this not abundantly the fact? Is there any sphere of our lives which the
government may not, in principle, probe? You may not even take medicine to
ameliorate the ills of your own body without the government’s supervision – and
punishment, if you take issue with its prescriptions. The government asserts
ownership over your body.
You
are not free to associate.
You
are not free to say “no, thanks.”
The
government can do whatever it likes, so long as a law is passed or a judge
decrees.
It
is not accidental.
But
it can be rooted out by insistence upon the use of plain, simple
language not subject
to “interpretation” – i.e., the sort of clear, precise language lawyers such as
those who wrote the Constitution do their best to avoid using, in order to use
language against us.
Viz:
“The
people” – it sounds dreamy – have no “will” – and are certainly not sovereign –
because no such creature as “the people” exists in fact; the term is a
rhetorical device used by lawyers to legitimate the trampling of the
rights of individual people – who do exist and have rights. These must be
respected – morally as well as legally – else they are merely conditional
privileges subject to modification or outright revocation at the whim of any
politician, or group of them – or court – which declares it is acting on behalf
of “the people.”
In
fact, of course, these politicians and so on are acting on behalf of
themselves. Or a clique. They cannot ever be acting on behalf of all, in which
case the rights of some are necessarily abused. And if is permissible to
abuse the rights of some, then the rights of none are secure – are anything
other than conditional
privileges.
As
intended.
Hamilton
desired a “vigorous” central government, wanted to hang Americans who
questioned the moral right of the federal government – of any government – to
steal their property. Supported slavery – so long as it was done according to
legalprocess and called by another name.
But
that is mere history.
The
question at hand – whether here in the United States or anywhere on this Earth
– is whether the individual has rights that others are bound to respect –
morally as well as legally.
Or,
not.
Is
your physical body is your exclusive property – to do with as you see fit? If
it is, then you are a free man. If it is not, you are a slave – the degree of
your slavery being morally (as well as logically) immaterial.
Theft is theft. Rebranding legalized theft
as “taxes” doesn’t change the nature of the thing. A person’s property is taken
from him by violence. This is theft, by whatever name.
Moral
human interactions are either voluntary and
consensual – the concept of free association – or they are not. When a man is
forced to interact with other men in any way whatsoever, he is no longer a free
man.
Do
you agree – or disagree – with the proposition that the only moral basis
for interfering with any man is when he causes tangible harm to the person or
property of another free man?
If
you do not agree, then you believe in conditional
privileges . . . as articulated in the Constitution.
.
. .
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