Patriots In Exile Club
- Thread starter BadBoy@TheWheel
- Start date
Users who are viewing this thread
-
879Replies
-
14KViews
-
0Participant count
-
Participants list
BadBoy@TheWheel
DT3's Twinkie
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
I did however decide on our secret handshake:
I did however decide on our secret handshake:
BadBoy@TheWheel
DT3's Twinkie
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
I made the mistake of stopping on CNN surfing through the channels on the tv in my office this morning.
Guess what the newest buzz is?
CNN is running interviews on people questioning Obamas cabinet selections......Isn't that fucking rich, now that the Taliban News Network got the president they chose, they don't like his advsiory selection :24:
This morning Obama announced the possible appointment of two more advisors, both from Texas, both former Clinton advisors.
My new banner for Obama is:
Obama/Biden "The Change We Had"
I made the mistake of stopping on CNN surfing through the channels on the tv in my office this morning.
Guess what the newest buzz is?
CNN is running interviews on people questioning Obamas cabinet selections......Isn't that fucking rich, now that the Taliban News Network got the president they chose, they don't like his advsiory selection :24:
This morning Obama announced the possible appointment of two more advisors, both from Texas, both former Clinton advisors.
My new banner for Obama is:
Obama/Biden "The Change We Had"
Alien Allen
Froggy the Prick
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
I heard a thing on the radio the other day where somebody has a plan to convert 401k's
It went something like this.............. You turn over your 401k to the feds and they invest it in bonds that would pay about 5%. Your SS payment gets raised by a set amount. same amount for everybody. You end up with an enhanced SS account in effect. The best part. When you die any money left the fucking feds keep. :thumbdownAsshats........... This pig better not fly.
I heard a thing on the radio the other day where somebody has a plan to convert 401k's
It went something like this.............. You turn over your 401k to the feds and they invest it in bonds that would pay about 5%. Your SS payment gets raised by a set amount. same amount for everybody. You end up with an enhanced SS account in effect. The best part. When you die any money left the fucking feds keep. :thumbdownAsshats........... This pig better not fly.
BadBoy@TheWheel
DT3's Twinkie
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
Borrow as much as you can right before they do it
Borrow as much as you can right before they do it
Alien Allen
Froggy the Prick
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
I can seen this kind of shit actually making sense to those morons in Washington. Lord help us if they try to pull that kind of stunt. That is my god damn money and they have no right to it. It would be another form of spreading the wealth. :thumbdown
you would still have to pay it backBorrow as much as you can right before they do it
I can seen this kind of shit actually making sense to those morons in Washington. Lord help us if they try to pull that kind of stunt. That is my god damn money and they have no right to it. It would be another form of spreading the wealth. :thumbdown
Minor Axis
Well-Known Member
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
In the Airline industry the cost of employees is only a fraction of operating expenses and I've all ready given you examples. Employees are the easy targets for cost cutting, but that does not mean management is operating as efficient as it can, that it has made smart choices, and that they are not over compensating their executives for a piss poor job.
You want to bet smart man? Unfortunately I'm not going to post the bill to prove it.
In the Airline industry the cost of employees is only a fraction of operating expenses and I've all ready given you examples. Employees are the easy targets for cost cutting, but that does not mean management is operating as efficient as it can, that it has made smart choices, and that they are not over compensating their executives for a piss poor job.
You want to bet smart man? Unfortunately I'm not going to post the bill to prove it.
BadBoy@TheWheel
DT3's Twinkie
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
Interesting read for those who are familiar with the Federalist/Anti Federalist movements.
The Antifederalists Were Right
Daily Article by Gary Galles | Posted on 9/27/2006
September 27 marks the anniversary of the publication of the first of the Antifederalist Papers in 1789. The Antifederalists were opponents of ratifying the US Constitution. They feared that it would create an overbearing central government, while the Constitution's proponents promised that this would not happen. As the losers in that debate, they are largely overlooked today. But that does not mean they were wrong or that we are not indebted to them.
In many ways, the group has been misnamed. Federalism refers to the system of decentralized government. This group defended states rights — the very essence of federalism — against the Federalists, who would have been more accurately described as Nationalists. Nonetheless, what the so-called Antifederalists predicted would be the results of the Constitution turned out to be true in most every respect.
The Antifederalists warned us that the cost Americans would bear in both liberty and resources for the government that would evolve under the Constitution would rise sharply. That is why their objections led to the Bill of Rights, to limit that tendency (though with far too little success that has survived to the present).
Antifederalists opposed the Constitution on the grounds that its checks on federal power would be undermined by expansive interpretations of promoting the "general welfare" (which would be claimed for every law) and the "all laws necessary and proper" clause (which would be used to override limits on delegated federal powers), creating a federal government with unwarranted and undelegated powers that were bound to be abused.
One could quibble with the mechanisms the Antifederalists predicted would lead to constitutional tyranny. For instance, they did not foresee that the Commerce Clause would come to be called "the everything clause" in law schools, used by centralizers to justify almost any conceivable federal intervention. The 20th-century distortion of the clause's original meaning was so great even the vigilant Antifederalists could never have imagined the government getting away with it.
And they could not have foreseen how the Fourteenth Amendment and its interpretation would extend federal domination over the states after the Civil War. But it is very difficult to argue with their conclusions from the current reach of our government, not just to forcibly intrude upon, but often to overwhelm Americans today.
Therefore, it merits remembering the Antifederalists' prescient arguments and how unfortunate is the virtual absence of modern Americans who share their concerns.
One of the most insightful of the Antifederalists was Robert Yates, a New York judge who, as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, withdrew because the convention was exceeding its instructions. Yates wrote as Brutus in the debates over the Constitution. Given his experience as a judge, his claim that the Supreme Court would become a source of almost unlimited federal over-reaching was particularly insightful.
Brutus asserted that the Supreme Court envisioned under the Constitution would become a source of massive abuse because they were beyond the control "both of the people and the legislature," and not subject to being "corrected by any power above them." As a result, he objected to the fact that its provisions justifying the removal of judges didn't include making rulings that went beyond their constitutional authority, which would lead to judicial tyranny.
Brutus argued that when constitutional grounds for making rulings were absent, the Court would create grounds "by their own decisions." He thought that the power it would command would be so irresistible that the judiciary would use it to make law, manipulating the meanings of arguably vague clauses to justify it.
The Supreme Court would interpret the Constitution according to its alleged "spirit", rather than being restricted to just the "letter" of its written words (as the doctrine of enumerated rights, spelled out in the Tenth Amendment, would require).
Further, rulings derived from whatever the court decided its spirit was would effectively "have the force of law," due to the absence of constitutional means to "control their adjudications" and "correct their errors". This constitutional failing would compound over time in a "silent and imperceptible manner", through precedents that built on one another.
Expanded judicial power would empower justices to shape the federal government however they desired, because the Supreme Court's constitutional interpretations would control the effective power vested in government and its different branches. That would hand the Supreme Court ever-increasing power, in direct contradiction to Alexander Hamilton's argument in Federalist 78 that the Supreme Court would be "the least dangerous branch."
Brutus predicted that the Supreme Court would adopt "very liberal" principles of interpreting the Constitution. He argued that there had never in history been a court with such power and with so few checks upon it, giving the Supreme Court "immense powers" that were not only unprecedented, but perilous for a nation founded on the principle of consent of the governed. Given the extent to which citizens' power to effectively withhold their consent from federal actions has been eviscerated, it is hard to argue with Brutus's conclusion.
He further warned that the new government would not be restricted in its taxing power, and that the legislatures war power was highly dangerous: "the power in the federal legislative, to raise and support armies at pleasure, as well in peace as in war, and their controul over the militia, tend, not only to a consolidation of the government, but the destruction of liberty."
He also objected to the very notion that a republican form of government can work well over such a vast territory, even the relatively small terrority as compared with today's US:
But today, Brutus would conclude that he had been far too optimistic. The federal government has grown orders of magnitudes larger than he could ever have imagined (in part because he was writing when only indirect taxes and the small federal government they could finance were possible, before the 16th Amendment opened the way for a federal income tax in 1913), far exceeding its constitutionally enumerated powers, despite the constraints of the Bill of Rights. The result burdens citizens beyond his worst nightmare.
The judicial tyranny that was accurately and unambiguously predicted by Brutus and other Antifederalists shows that in essential ways, they were right and that modern Americans still have a lot to learn from them. We need to understand their arguments and take them seriously now, if there is to be any hope of restraining the federal government to the limited powers it was actually granted in the Constitution, or even anything close to them, given its current tendency to accelerate its growth beyond them.
Interesting read for those who are familiar with the Federalist/Anti Federalist movements.
The Antifederalists Were Right
Daily Article by Gary Galles | Posted on 9/27/2006
In many ways, the group has been misnamed. Federalism refers to the system of decentralized government. This group defended states rights — the very essence of federalism — against the Federalists, who would have been more accurately described as Nationalists. Nonetheless, what the so-called Antifederalists predicted would be the results of the Constitution turned out to be true in most every respect.
The Antifederalists warned us that the cost Americans would bear in both liberty and resources for the government that would evolve under the Constitution would rise sharply. That is why their objections led to the Bill of Rights, to limit that tendency (though with far too little success that has survived to the present).
Antifederalists opposed the Constitution on the grounds that its checks on federal power would be undermined by expansive interpretations of promoting the "general welfare" (which would be claimed for every law) and the "all laws necessary and proper" clause (which would be used to override limits on delegated federal powers), creating a federal government with unwarranted and undelegated powers that were bound to be abused.
One could quibble with the mechanisms the Antifederalists predicted would lead to constitutional tyranny. For instance, they did not foresee that the Commerce Clause would come to be called "the everything clause" in law schools, used by centralizers to justify almost any conceivable federal intervention. The 20th-century distortion of the clause's original meaning was so great even the vigilant Antifederalists could never have imagined the government getting away with it.
And they could not have foreseen how the Fourteenth Amendment and its interpretation would extend federal domination over the states after the Civil War. But it is very difficult to argue with their conclusions from the current reach of our government, not just to forcibly intrude upon, but often to overwhelm Americans today.
Therefore, it merits remembering the Antifederalists' prescient arguments and how unfortunate is the virtual absence of modern Americans who share their concerns.
One of the most insightful of the Antifederalists was Robert Yates, a New York judge who, as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, withdrew because the convention was exceeding its instructions. Yates wrote as Brutus in the debates over the Constitution. Given his experience as a judge, his claim that the Supreme Court would become a source of almost unlimited federal over-reaching was particularly insightful.
Brutus asserted that the Supreme Court envisioned under the Constitution would become a source of massive abuse because they were beyond the control "both of the people and the legislature," and not subject to being "corrected by any power above them." As a result, he objected to the fact that its provisions justifying the removal of judges didn't include making rulings that went beyond their constitutional authority, which would lead to judicial tyranny.
Brutus argued that when constitutional grounds for making rulings were absent, the Court would create grounds "by their own decisions." He thought that the power it would command would be so irresistible that the judiciary would use it to make law, manipulating the meanings of arguably vague clauses to justify it.
The Supreme Court would interpret the Constitution according to its alleged "spirit", rather than being restricted to just the "letter" of its written words (as the doctrine of enumerated rights, spelled out in the Tenth Amendment, would require).
Further, rulings derived from whatever the court decided its spirit was would effectively "have the force of law," due to the absence of constitutional means to "control their adjudications" and "correct their errors". This constitutional failing would compound over time in a "silent and imperceptible manner", through precedents that built on one another.
Expanded judicial power would empower justices to shape the federal government however they desired, because the Supreme Court's constitutional interpretations would control the effective power vested in government and its different branches. That would hand the Supreme Court ever-increasing power, in direct contradiction to Alexander Hamilton's argument in Federalist 78 that the Supreme Court would be "the least dangerous branch."
Brutus predicted that the Supreme Court would adopt "very liberal" principles of interpreting the Constitution. He argued that there had never in history been a court with such power and with so few checks upon it, giving the Supreme Court "immense powers" that were not only unprecedented, but perilous for a nation founded on the principle of consent of the governed. Given the extent to which citizens' power to effectively withhold their consent from federal actions has been eviscerated, it is hard to argue with Brutus's conclusion.
He further warned that the new government would not be restricted in its taxing power, and that the legislatures war power was highly dangerous: "the power in the federal legislative, to raise and support armies at pleasure, as well in peace as in war, and their controul over the militia, tend, not only to a consolidation of the government, but the destruction of liberty."
He also objected to the very notion that a republican form of government can work well over such a vast territory, even the relatively small terrority as compared with today's US:
History furnishes no example of a free republic, anything like the extent of the United States. The Grecian republics were of small extent; so also was that of the Romans. Both of these, it is true, in process of time, extended their conquests over large territories of country; and the consequence was, that their governments were changed from that of free governments to those of the most tyrannical that ever existed in the world.
Brutus accurately described both the cause (the absence of sufficient enforceable restraints on the size and scope of the federal government) and the consequences (expanding burdens and increasing invasions of liberty) of what would become the expansive federal powers we now see all around us.
But today, Brutus would conclude that he had been far too optimistic. The federal government has grown orders of magnitudes larger than he could ever have imagined (in part because he was writing when only indirect taxes and the small federal government they could finance were possible, before the 16th Amendment opened the way for a federal income tax in 1913), far exceeding its constitutionally enumerated powers, despite the constraints of the Bill of Rights. The result burdens citizens beyond his worst nightmare.
The judicial tyranny that was accurately and unambiguously predicted by Brutus and other Antifederalists shows that in essential ways, they were right and that modern Americans still have a lot to learn from them. We need to understand their arguments and take them seriously now, if there is to be any hope of restraining the federal government to the limited powers it was actually granted in the Constitution, or even anything close to them, given its current tendency to accelerate its growth beyond them.
Fox Mulder
Active Member
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
No--not true at all--salaries and wages are usuall the largest single expense component in a business--certainly for service businesses. The airlines industry would be less due to the cost of the jets, but salaries and wages are still going to be about 30% at least or thereabouts--could be 40% I don't know, but it is absolutely not a "fraction" of the cost.
Yes--how much do you want to bet--the type of procedure and the facility and the insurance will dictate the cost. Hospitals bill much higher than what they expect to recover because they have contracts for reimbursement. I know because I worked at a hospital. I also see many many many medical records because I do personal injury defense as part of my practice. The costs can be more than 16,000 or less than 16,000--again depending on the procedure, where its done, and the insurance coverage (I am talking about net cost--what the insurance and patient pay combined, not what the hospital billed).
No--not true at all--salaries and wages are usuall the largest single expense component in a business--certainly for service businesses. The airlines industry would be less due to the cost of the jets, but salaries and wages are still going to be about 30% at least or thereabouts--could be 40% I don't know, but it is absolutely not a "fraction" of the cost.
Yes--how much do you want to bet--the type of procedure and the facility and the insurance will dictate the cost. Hospitals bill much higher than what they expect to recover because they have contracts for reimbursement. I know because I worked at a hospital. I also see many many many medical records because I do personal injury defense as part of my practice. The costs can be more than 16,000 or less than 16,000--again depending on the procedure, where its done, and the insurance coverage (I am talking about net cost--what the insurance and patient pay combined, not what the hospital billed).
Alien Allen
Froggy the Prick
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
good find there BB
I am afraid the genie is out of the bottle. things would have expanded but the 16th amendment really provided the fuel to move the beast. there is no going back. we will self destruct before that ever happens. the nanny state has won.
I remember my dad talking about how they used to originally collect taxes once a year. then the govt needed the money faster so you paid estimated taxes every quarter. then that was not enough and it was every week. i wonder when the time will come where we pay the tax at the end of everyday.
who would have dreamed that one day the govt would develop the technology where one is mandated to run a program on the internet. but that is what I am faced with. when I do certain projects I will next year have to go on the internet and access a site and plug in the data to see if I can proceed with the work. if I get a no go I am basically screwed as the results go to interest groups who will follow up to ensure no site assessment would ever approve the work. worse yet if I get in the middle of the job and the conditions differ from what was expected I would have to stop working and re run the program to see if the new data changes the results. with a possibility that one might do tens of thousands of dollars in work and be told I could not continue. great country we live in aint it.
good find there BB
I am afraid the genie is out of the bottle. things would have expanded but the 16th amendment really provided the fuel to move the beast. there is no going back. we will self destruct before that ever happens. the nanny state has won.
I remember my dad talking about how they used to originally collect taxes once a year. then the govt needed the money faster so you paid estimated taxes every quarter. then that was not enough and it was every week. i wonder when the time will come where we pay the tax at the end of everyday.
who would have dreamed that one day the govt would develop the technology where one is mandated to run a program on the internet. but that is what I am faced with. when I do certain projects I will next year have to go on the internet and access a site and plug in the data to see if I can proceed with the work. if I get a no go I am basically screwed as the results go to interest groups who will follow up to ensure no site assessment would ever approve the work. worse yet if I get in the middle of the job and the conditions differ from what was expected I would have to stop working and re run the program to see if the new data changes the results. with a possibility that one might do tens of thousands of dollars in work and be told I could not continue. great country we live in aint it.
BadBoy@TheWheel
DT3's Twinkie
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
This is the excerpt I honed in on for some reason:
Expanded judicial power would empower justices to shape the federal government however they desired, because the Supreme Court's constitutional interpretations would control the effective power vested in government and its different branches. That would hand the Supreme Court ever-increasing power, in direct contradiction to Alexander Hamilton's argument in Federalist 78 that the Supreme Court would be "the least dangerous branch."
Brutus predicted that the Supreme Court would adopt "very liberal" principles of interpreting the Constitution. He argued that there had never in history been a court with such power and with so few checks upon it, giving the Supreme Court "immense powers" that were not only unprecedented, but perilous for a nation founded on the principle of consent of the governed. Given the extent to which citizens' power to effectively withhold their consent from federal actions has been eviscerated, it is hard to argue with Brutus's conclusion.
This is the excerpt I honed in on for some reason:
Expanded judicial power would empower justices to shape the federal government however they desired, because the Supreme Court's constitutional interpretations would control the effective power vested in government and its different branches. That would hand the Supreme Court ever-increasing power, in direct contradiction to Alexander Hamilton's argument in Federalist 78 that the Supreme Court would be "the least dangerous branch."
Brutus predicted that the Supreme Court would adopt "very liberal" principles of interpreting the Constitution. He argued that there had never in history been a court with such power and with so few checks upon it, giving the Supreme Court "immense powers" that were not only unprecedented, but perilous for a nation founded on the principle of consent of the governed. Given the extent to which citizens' power to effectively withhold their consent from federal actions has been eviscerated, it is hard to argue with Brutus's conclusion.
BadBoy@TheWheel
DT3's Twinkie
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
Oh....I guess there's an obligation out there somewhere for me to post this...Yanno, the only thing we stand for
:24:
Oh....I guess there's an obligation out there somewhere for me to post this...Yanno, the only thing we stand for
:24:
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
I've always been confused by the "clinging to guns and religion" statement. Where does he get off suggesting that guns aren't our religion???? :mad
Oh....I guess there's an obligation out there somewhere for me to post this...Yanno, the only thing we stand for
:24:
I've always been confused by the "clinging to guns and religion" statement. Where does he get off suggesting that guns aren't our religion???? :mad
BadBoy@TheWheel
DT3's Twinkie
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
It was started by these two assclowns :ninja
http://images.google.com/imgres?img...ages?q=Guns&start=40&gbv=2&ndsp=20&hl=en&sa=N
It was started by these two assclowns :ninja
http://images.google.com/imgres?img...ages?q=Guns&start=40&gbv=2&ndsp=20&hl=en&sa=N
BadBoy@TheWheel
DT3's Twinkie
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
BTW Welcome SgtSpike, a charter member.
The final Charter Member.:clap
BTW Welcome SgtSpike, a charter member.
The final Charter Member.:clap
Alien Allen
Froggy the Prick
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
Nobody else around that has yet to sign up??
Final??
Nobody else around that has yet to sign up??
Alien Allen
Froggy the Prick
Fox Mulder
Active Member
Re: The Conservatives In Exile Club
I've been beating this drum for years. The liberals are always whining about the Constitution and I tell them that there is no way we would have ever ratified the Constitution if the Framers knew what kind of fucking huge federal governemnt was going to come out of it. What they were afraid of is exactly what we have--a government that's gotten so big that we the people have completely lost control of it and have essentially surrendered up most of our freedom to it. Obama will take what fucking left.
Interesting read for those who are familiar with the Federalist/Anti Federalist movements.
The Antifederalists Were Right
Daily Article by Gary Galles | Posted on 9/27/2006
September 27 marks the anniversary of the publication of the first of the Antifederalist Papers in 1789. The Antifederalists were opponents of ratifying the US Constitution. They feared that it would create an overbearing central government, while the Constitution's proponents promised that this would not happen. As the losers in that debate, they are largely overlooked today. But that does not mean they were wrong or that we are not indebted to them.
In many ways, the group has been misnamed. Federalism refers to the system of decentralized government. This group defended states rights — the very essence of federalism — against the Federalists, who would have been more accurately described as Nationalists. Nonetheless, what the so-called Antifederalists predicted would be the results of the Constitution turned out to be true in most every respect.
The Antifederalists warned us that the cost Americans would bear in both liberty and resources for the government that would evolve under the Constitution would rise sharply. That is why their objections led to the Bill of Rights, to limit that tendency (though with far too little success that has survived to the present).
Antifederalists opposed the Constitution on the grounds that its checks on federal power would be undermined by expansive interpretations of promoting the "general welfare" (which would be claimed for every law) and the "all laws necessary and proper" clause (which would be used to override limits on delegated federal powers), creating a federal government with unwarranted and undelegated powers that were bound to be abused.
One could quibble with the mechanisms the Antifederalists predicted would lead to constitutional tyranny. For instance, they did not foresee that the Commerce Clause would come to be called "the everything clause" in law schools, used by centralizers to justify almost any conceivable federal intervention. The 20th-century distortion of the clause's original meaning was so great even the vigilant Antifederalists could never have imagined the government getting away with it.
And they could not have foreseen how the Fourteenth Amendment and its interpretation would extend federal domination over the states after the Civil War. But it is very difficult to argue with their conclusions from the current reach of our government, not just to forcibly intrude upon, but often to overwhelm Americans today.
Therefore, it merits remembering the Antifederalists' prescient arguments and how unfortunate is the virtual absence of modern Americans who share their concerns.
One of the most insightful of the Antifederalists was Robert Yates, a New York judge who, as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, withdrew because the convention was exceeding its instructions. Yates wrote as Brutus in the debates over the Constitution. Given his experience as a judge, his claim that the Supreme Court would become a source of almost unlimited federal over-reaching was particularly insightful.
Brutus asserted that the Supreme Court envisioned under the Constitution would become a source of massive abuse because they were beyond the control "both of the people and the legislature," and not subject to being "corrected by any power above them." As a result, he objected to the fact that its provisions justifying the removal of judges didn't include making rulings that went beyond their constitutional authority, which would lead to judicial tyranny.
Brutus argued that when constitutional grounds for making rulings were absent, the Court would create grounds "by their own decisions." He thought that the power it would command would be so irresistible that the judiciary would use it to make law, manipulating the meanings of arguably vague clauses to justify it.
The Supreme Court would interpret the Constitution according to its alleged "spirit", rather than being restricted to just the "letter" of its written words (as the doctrine of enumerated rights, spelled out in the Tenth Amendment, would require).
Further, rulings derived from whatever the court decided its spirit was would effectively "have the force of law," due to the absence of constitutional means to "control their adjudications" and "correct their errors". This constitutional failing would compound over time in a "silent and imperceptible manner", through precedents that built on one another.
Expanded judicial power would empower justices to shape the federal government however they desired, because the Supreme Court's constitutional interpretations would control the effective power vested in government and its different branches. That would hand the Supreme Court ever-increasing power, in direct contradiction to Alexander Hamilton's argument in Federalist 78 that the Supreme Court would be "the least dangerous branch."
Brutus predicted that the Supreme Court would adopt "very liberal" principles of interpreting the Constitution. He argued that there had never in history been a court with such power and with so few checks upon it, giving the Supreme Court "immense powers" that were not only unprecedented, but perilous for a nation founded on the principle of consent of the governed. Given the extent to which citizens' power to effectively withhold their consent from federal actions has been eviscerated, it is hard to argue with Brutus's conclusion.
He further warned that the new government would not be restricted in its taxing power, and that the legislatures war power was highly dangerous: "the power in the federal legislative, to raise and support armies at pleasure, as well in peace as in war, and their controul over the militia, tend, not only to a consolidation of the government, but the destruction of liberty."
He also objected to the very notion that a republican form of government can work well over such a vast territory, even the relatively small terrority as compared with today's US:
History furnishes no example of a free republic, anything like the extent of the United States. The Grecian republics were of small extent; so also was that of the Romans. Both of these, it is true, in process of time, extended their conquests over large territories of country; and the consequence was, that their governments were changed from that of free governments to those of the most tyrannical that ever existed in the world.Brutus accurately described both the cause (the absence of sufficient enforceable restraints on the size and scope of the federal government) and the consequences (expanding burdens and increasing invasions of liberty) of what would become the expansive federal powers we now see all around us.
But today, Brutus would conclude that he had been far too optimistic. The federal government has grown orders of magnitudes larger than he could ever have imagined (in part because he was writing when only indirect taxes and the small federal government they could finance were possible, before the 16th Amendment opened the way for a federal income tax in 1913), far exceeding its constitutionally enumerated powers, despite the constraints of the Bill of Rights. The result burdens citizens beyond his worst nightmare.
The judicial tyranny that was accurately and unambiguously predicted by Brutus and other Antifederalists shows that in essential ways, they were right and that modern Americans still have a lot to learn from them. We need to understand their arguments and take them seriously now, if there is to be any hope of restraining the federal government to the limited powers it was actually granted in the Constitution, or even anything close to them, given its current tendency to accelerate its growth beyond them.
I've been beating this drum for years. The liberals are always whining about the Constitution and I tell them that there is no way we would have ever ratified the Constitution if the Framers knew what kind of fucking huge federal governemnt was going to come out of it. What they were afraid of is exactly what we have--a government that's gotten so big that we the people have completely lost control of it and have essentially surrendered up most of our freedom to it. Obama will take what fucking left.
79,016Threads
2,186,987Messages
4,974Members