The Constitution was written for a free people, but it has for many years been taken over by corporatists and collectivists. So now the utter adulturation of the Constitution is a done deal. Given mountains and mountains of nonsensical precedents, I don't see how the Constitution can possibly be expected to be restored to any original intent. To try to do so would be to do violence to too many established precedents, for which there is neither political will nor public acumen to effect wholesale correction. Language judges cannot freeze definitions accorded words by changing cultures. Under present establishment, ordinary citizens cannot ease the grip of powerful corporatists and collectivists over the interpreting, writing, and evading of precedents, laws, and regulations and the financing of dependent (puppet) political candidates. Doing so would take a strong movement, probably borne of a severe collapse and therefore quite dangerous. The only alternative would seem to be to inspire fundamental change in how group entities, corporations, collectives, and parties are allowed to do business in the extra-national buying and selling of products and political advantages.
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However, if anyone actually were successful in starting such a movement, he would probably become a target to be eliminated from all quarters of established collectives. Science and technology are altering cultures and countries at a precipitous rate. Without insight meet to the times, old forms, regulations, institutions, checks, and balances will not suffice to win unfolding new battles. I can hardly think of a single established and influential institution or large business or collective that is not likely criminally corrupt through and through. Read Predator Nation to get an idea about how thoroughly corrupt nearly every person and institution of significant influence is. Simply put, there's hardly any toehold of significance remaining that has not been occupied by corrupt sell outs. I don't know the solution. Championing common sense and decency would be a good start. In any event, I'm not advocating giving up. However, to address the problem, it would help to understand its character and extent. Predator Nation is a good place to start.
6 comments:
Is Roberts some kind of punk kid?! A rubber stamp looking for where to place itself to ingratiate despots? If what niggles him is that lots of people didn't like Bush v. Gore, it's time to man up. The encrazed part of the electorate will ALWAYS find ways to stay crazy. Now we have this "It's a tax!" rationale. So, can Congress require anything it wants, stick it with a feather called a tax, and call it macaroni constitutional pie? I grow tired of the death of common sense! Everywhere, the legal profession seems to be plagued with this conceit that law, like a project of logical atomism, must be explicated in such a way as to divide the entirety of human functions into mutually exclusive and exhaustive classifications of legal particulars, thenceforth to roll us merrily and "consistently" along our way, as unthinking bits of serfdom. (Oxymoron: legal reasoning.) I suspect Bertrand Russell figured out more than 50 years ago that such a project of logical atomism is not do-able in mathematics. Apparently, it takes judges awhile longer to figure out that it is not do-able in law, either. Without vision, people may eventually perish. However, in coming unglued from common sense, they are immediately lost. And bankrupted.
Highbrow translation: a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. (Remember the fiasco of un-splitting the infinitive in the oath of office? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/opinion/22pinker.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1340932166-q9m7ZtAIe62DSOp2WEPfwQ)
Lowbrow translation: stupid is as stupid does. Meanwhile, the grip of the Borg squeezes ever harder on the family jewels of human decency.
From A.T. --- Re: "America is now at war."
No. America is now at the circus. We're gladiators and spectators, paid for and controlled. We aren't fighting for a constitution, because we lost that long ago. We lost it when we thought we could keep a country, even while shipping its industry abroad, failing to enforce its borders, and treating corporations as if they had the rights of citizens. The poison that would kill the Constitution was sown when the founders failed to provide for checks to protect individual citizens and their representatives from being undermined by disloyal and international crony corporatists and collectivists.
Intuitive empathy, always guided by the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule, informs common sense. Common sense cannot be explicated in elitist pretzelian logic, because there is nothing that can or cannot be fully explicated in elitist pretzelian logic.
HAMLET
Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
it is a prison.
Human common sense needs to begin standing up for itself, without thinking it must justify itself to practiced, verbal contortionists who seek only to justify perversion and villainy. Enough of elitist, en-serfing rent-seekers! Conserve common sense
Yes, Liberals do incline more to use cliches "to justify" perversions and predations! Thought entails being thoughtful of how to reconcile in respect of the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule. However, Liberals short circuit good will and thought by rationalizing they are trumped by the received wisdom of cliches for rationalizing wannas (transient emotions of the moment).
Re: "the growing clout and exposure of online media"
Well, I doubt this is real. Rather, the trend is to one-world centralized control. Freedom in respect of the right to bear arms and to engage in the free online exchange of ideas will not likely withstand the trend. At least, not without some soon and surprising new factor ... such as a resurgence of respect for individual competence. Indeed, dossiers on those who freely express their thoughts will likely be collected, as such people are potentially dangerous to the central hierarchy. It will become easy to discredit, prosecute, and destroy anyone who does not display great willingness to play ball with the regime. (How many so-called educated profs withstand p.c.?) At most, such people may be availed a virtual world in which to exchange ideas within a rubber room. The check against all this was the U.S. However, U.S. borders are essentially erased, industry is hollowed, serfs are monitored, and steps are planned for confiscating guns. In the substantive world, there will be masters and serfs. Where necessary, the serfs will be placated, divided, and ruled with mindless sex and drugs. Woo hoo! When that is not necessary, the serfs and their produce will simply be harvested. This is because the impotent want security and the potent don't want interference. The individually competent will be reviled and diminished, both by the impotent and by the potent.
From A.T. -- Re: "We need to elect representatives who think income tax credits and deductions based on non-income activities are actually unconstitutional penalties."
Well, to what extent does or should Congress have authority to use the income tax as a means to meddle or incentive against or for various kinds of behaviors? This concerns every kind of potential deduction, credit, or redistribution --- including incentives for associating in households, or marrying, or having or adopting or educating x number of children or dependents. Or for buying homes and deducting interest on mortgages.
Whatever behavior a given Congress may find desirable, can it incentive every such behavior under the tax code? Some behaviors have fundamental and broad based support, but what can preclude a rogue Congress from incenting behaviors that do not, and how may the 14th and other Amendments preclude unequal discrimination among or against various behaviors and lifestyles and ways people undertake to earn their livings? How much discriminatory authority must Congress be entrusted with, in order to incentive replacement demographics thought essential to national defense?
Can the Constitution be read in a principled way that would preclude Congress from having authority to impose tax mandates to purchase healthcare, while retaining authority in Congress to favor marriage, home buying, and having children? The article is an excellent prod for thinking, but it causes me to itch. I will have to brew on this clear, thought provoking, and troublesome article.
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I would prefer that the Income Tax be replaced by a progressive Consumption Tax. However, the same problem would remain: Concress could package some complex notion of preferred behavior and then give consumption tax credits or deductions based on consumptions of such Congressionally packaged products. In that case, the power of Congress to regulate behavior by taxing it would seem nearly unlimited. I don't see a clear way to beat the problem. However, being considered only as a tax, perhaps Congress would be less able to preempt State forays in the field.
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