The God of the Machine - Tranche 31
Posted by mshupe 1 year, 8 months ago to Government
Chapter XV, Excerpt 1 of 1
The Fatal Amendments
The Bill of Rights is integrally of the Constitution. The only objection offered was that enumeration of rights might be construed as limiting them to the issues named . . . implying the European idea of “liberties” instead of American liberty. The test may be applied to any amendment by general questions: Does the amendment deny rights? Does it weaken the bases by impairing states? As the structure cracks, disrupting the private economy, the zealous amenders will be plied more furiously.
By the American theory the government is the agent of the citizen; it is absurd to hold that a person may not sue his agent. The Fourteenth Amendment confirmed Federal citizenship and civil rights, but it would have been better if the Bill of Rights had been explicitly extended to bind state governments. The proper use of power and the proper agency for its use are entirely different. The Fifteenth Amendment perpetuated the destruction. It deprived states of an indispensable attribute of sovereignty.
The formal stroke was the Seventeenth Amendment, which took the election of Senators out of the State Legislatures. The “Social Security swindle” is only validated by the income tax amendment. The appearance of an enormous bureaucracy was the natural phenomenon of a structureless nation. Politics became lucrative. The cost and display of government is always in inverse ratio to the liberty and prosperity of it citizens. Political power has a ratchet action; it only works one way.
The Fatal Amendments
The Bill of Rights is integrally of the Constitution. The only objection offered was that enumeration of rights might be construed as limiting them to the issues named . . . implying the European idea of “liberties” instead of American liberty. The test may be applied to any amendment by general questions: Does the amendment deny rights? Does it weaken the bases by impairing states? As the structure cracks, disrupting the private economy, the zealous amenders will be plied more furiously.
By the American theory the government is the agent of the citizen; it is absurd to hold that a person may not sue his agent. The Fourteenth Amendment confirmed Federal citizenship and civil rights, but it would have been better if the Bill of Rights had been explicitly extended to bind state governments. The proper use of power and the proper agency for its use are entirely different. The Fifteenth Amendment perpetuated the destruction. It deprived states of an indispensable attribute of sovereignty.
The formal stroke was the Seventeenth Amendment, which took the election of Senators out of the State Legislatures. The “Social Security swindle” is only validated by the income tax amendment. The appearance of an enormous bureaucracy was the natural phenomenon of a structureless nation. Politics became lucrative. The cost and display of government is always in inverse ratio to the liberty and prosperity of it citizens. Political power has a ratchet action; it only works one way.
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As an engineering principle, the Founders placed the States in a balance between the centrifugal force exerted by the States which would tend to tear America apart and the centripetal force exerted by the Federal government which would, if unopposed, result in a totalitarian America.
The States were originally designed as laboratories of Democracy. They were to set their own rules for elections free from the heavy hand of the central government. This allowed other States to copy the best practices of other States.
The fifteenth amendment took that power away. Citizens and elections were federalized. It weakened the States – the Seventeenth Amendment ended the Republic.
The results are obvious, the current President rules by Executive Order ignoring Congress and the People.
That being said, I would suggest that people who take welfare benefits from the government should forfeit their right to vote while taking such benefits.
I still focus on the Sixteenth. That provided infinite fiscal power to the Federal Government and thus, infinite power.
Can the destruction of the ratchet’s pawl be accomplished without the focused application of the enormous energy of physical force? Talking it to death isn’t working. The ratchet keeps turning.
Ayn Rand’s “mindless face of a thug with a club in his hand” keeps taking with only his unfocused brain and “gut feelings” as his guides. His only absolute being nothing is absolute.
America’s revolution was the first and last “reasoned revolution”. All other revolutions in history merely served to replace one form of dictatorship with another.
America desperately needs another.