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The Constitution Failed
Submitted by Ryan McMaken via Mises Economic blog,
If you’re still wondering if the US Constitution of 1787 failed to protect liberty, then just look around you. That scrap of parchment is an obvious failure. The US government is the hugest government in the world and meddles in the lives of its citizens (and people worldwide) in every way imaginable. The government accepts no limits on its power whatsoever. The president rules by decree.
This isn’t done under some new constitution. This is all done under the 1787 one. Lots of liberty activists argue that the Supreme Court is just reading the document incorrectly, but one simply cannot deny that virtually everyone in government, as well as most of the general population, is perfectly fine with most of what government does today, and thinks it’s constitutional. If one can plausibly claim that the constitution authorizes most of what the US government does today, then the document’s language is obviously feeble, ineffective, and useless for the purposes of preserving liberty.
Even among those “constitutionalist” types, many of whom are militarists, you’ll find plenty of support for unconstitutional measures such as a standing army, drug prohibition, and other government programs beloved by conservatives, but which are obviously not authorized by the enumerated powers of the constitution.
Rothbard had this figured out a long time ago:
From any libertarian, or even conservative, point of view, it has failed and failed abysmally; for let us never forget that every one of the despotic incursions on man’s rights in this century, before, during and after the New Deal, have received the official stamp of Constitutional blessing.
At a recent meeting of Students for Liberty, John Stossel spoke to some students of Rothbard:
Kelly Kidwell, a sophomore from Tulane University, said, “Regardless of what its intent was, we still have the (big) government that we have now — so the Constitution has either provided for that government, or failed to prevent it.”
Stossel went on:
That’s an argument that libertarian economist Murray Rothbard used to make. He took the pessimistic view that the Constitution’s “limited government” was an experiment that had already failed, since 200 years later, government was barely limited at all. He concluded that libertarians should be not just constitutionalists, but anarchists — get rid of government completely.
That idea sounds extreme to me, and to some libertarians at the conference — not to mention the few pro-big-government speakers, like movie director Oliver Stone. But I’m happy that students ask those sorts of questions rather than wondering which regulations to pass, what to tax and whom to censor for “insensitive” speech.
UPDATE: A reader points out this statement from Lysander Spooner:
But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.
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Well, the Bill of Rights helped to put hundreds of millions of rifles in the hands of American who damn sure know how to use them, right here, right now in 2014.
Tick tock...
The runaway government is worrisome. The fact that they make laws at will, regardless of the constitutional limits and then dare anyone to challenge them knowing that the barriers and expense to successfully challenge any law will break almost anyone who cares about fair and responsible government, is also worrisome. It would be more appropriate if the politicians themselves had to personally defend legal challenges to their laws. It woukd certainly make them think twice about writing laws against the will of the people.
The constitution does provide a mechanism to change itself through "Amendment". Apparently, our politicians cannot be bothered with changing the constitution legally, ethically and morally and instead makes laws at the whim of the hidden powers that pay them.
The Constitution belongs to We the people, and we will enforce it in some manner in due course. This is not the first time the constitution has been trampled by the minions of a collectivist state - Roosevelt's crowd took a good run at it back when Socialism was shiny new and intelligent people of good will actually thought it was the answer. But, damn, leading the entire world into near-bottomless debt - there'll be a lot of stakeholders holding the short straw before this one gets corrected. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Granny. Your Social Security money was stolen long ago.
If you factor in ****ers with a standard of living beyond the deviation. Haha, people will probably wonder hundreds of years from now how much we liked it. Little Johnny: They must have realllly been happy back then. Johnny's mum: No, they were spoiled mother****ers, they thought everyone had it just as bad.
King George III is enjoying his moment of schadenfreude in Heaven right now.
No.
We The People have failed the Constitution.
We have failed to uphold our end of the bargain.
Time to get to work.
There are 2 Constitutions, one from 1787 for the united states. And the later one from 1871, for THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, INC. the one from the Act of 1871 now is used as the operative one by the CORPORATE UNITED STATES.
Lets see, where have I hear this one before....ah yes, the 1787 Constitution is outdated and flawed, WE NEED A NEW ONE. Then they roll out someting straight from the UN, that says the inivduals rights come from government, and are not God given. Whenever you hear something like what was written in this piece, know that you are being set up for totalitarianism.
Yeah, that ol' Constiution was pretty keen. But why are we arguing about it? It hasn't been what it was since at least Abraham Lincoln. So none of us and none of our relatives and none of our grandparents and almost none of our great grandparents even know what it looked like before the fedgov took power. For all the people care, you could sell it on Ebay and be rid of it.
So relax, folks. I bet the US won't survive more than 50 years at the very best, perhaps 5 years at the worst, so why worry about it? Even if space aliens beamed DC away, we couldn't expect the American people to embrace freedom and personal responsibility again in the same fashion that led to the creation of the original Constitution. Nations rise and fall. We're falling. I'm willing to bet the last 250 years will eventually prove to be a solitary bright spot in the history of humanity before it returned to its default operating system: Slavery.
Sorry-double post.
I lay the fault of the failure of the document at the foot of the people.
Lately, I've been reading about Lincoln. Perhaps I'm just extremely ignorant, but I'm surprised by the largely unknown civil unrest and disobedience of the Civil War (Thanks Propaganda!. I was reading about Ohio's Governor Clement Vallandigham who was arrested for speaking out against the war and Lincoln and recommending troops refuse to serve. He was arrested, tried by a military tribunal, and sentenced to imprisonment for the duration of the war. Lincoln commuted his sentence and declared he would be BANISHED to the CSA. I never knew a president could decide to banish a citizen, so this was a bit of history I was surprised to have never previously learned. Vallandigham later escaped the CSA in a blockade runner and settled in Canada where he actually ran for governor of Ohio again! You can see the birth of the Leviathan in the Civil War.
The constitution itself can protect no rights, that can only be done in court. What's that? You don't know how to do that? Well, there is the actual problem. Your rights are your greatest possession. You must have your rights or you have nothing else. No property, no money, no childeren, no wife, no nothing. Now would you entrust a lawyer with your 50lbs of gold, your childeren or your wife? Then why would you entrust him with your rights? Learn the law, or trust a lawyer.
Don't bet on it. Everyone thought the Taco Supreme Court would stop BarryCare, but Theif Injustice Roberts put paid to that notion and the sad part is he apparently did it just to win friends and influence people. Even the libtards on the court he joined disagreed with his opinion. Where do you go when the highest court in the land is also wrong?
"Learn the law, or trust a lawyer." Telling people to learn the law is silly, since even the folks who write the laws don't know what they say. Hell, the folks who pass the laws don't even write them-lobbyists do and drop them off for approval. The enforcers of the laws also don't know what they say-they just make it up as they go along. "Sorry, Son-biting poptarts into gunshapes is illegal. You can explain it to the judge."
Give me a break!
The constitution IS a piece of paper!
A piece of paper cannot protect anyone or anything. A piece of paper is an inanimate object, incapable of action. Get it?
Furthermore, if anyone expects human beings to avoid predatory actions (in accordance with the statements in the constitution or otherwise), they sure as hell can't expect to achieve this goal by putting predators in charge of actions that avoid predatory behavior. I mean, give me a break!
Yet every single politician on planet earth IS a predator. Every last one. Even Ron Paul favors predatory actions by humans-DBA-government, though admittedly vastly, vastly, vastly fewer than most predators.
And who is in charge of making sure the humans who call themselves "the government" only take actions that thwart predatory behavior, and do not act in predatory ways themselves? The predators themselves? How stupid can humans be to believe such nonsense?
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But in fact, all the above is entirely irrelevant in fact. Why? Because government is a fiction. All organizations, even according to "fundamental law" created by humans-DBA-government, recognize this fact explicitly, which is why all organizations including government are called "fictitious entities". Too bad only 43 humans alive today clearly understand that government literally does not exist.
And that's the answer. All that exists is the universe, galaxies, stars, asteroids, comets, planets and satellites, and the mountains, volcanoes, craters, oceans, lakes, plants and animals upon the planets. That's it. Everything else is fiction. Everything else is just mental-units in the brains of animals, especially human animals. Everything from SantaClaus to government is fiction, meaning, a mental-unit in a brain with out corresponding referent in reality.
Of course, weak-minded fools have been bred and brainwashed since birth to be easy to fool with even the simplest sith mind tricks. Tell the sheeple that "government exists", then "prove it" by pointing at the washington monument or white house or piece of paper (constitution). Don't worry, the sheeple are too stupid to realize they've been shown "buildings" and "a piece of paper", not "government".
Ultimately, humans are too stupid to understand the simplest characteristics of the mental-units that control their brain and thinking processes. Humans cannot understand the characteristic and status of even simple mental-units like "forest" and "tree". They never bother to notice that the trees exist whether they are close together (in a so-called "forest") or not, and thus "tree" does not in any way depend upon "forest". They do not understand that "forest" is nothing more than a mental-unit in their brain, and that the individual trees are all that exist. The "forest" mental unit is a mere shorthand for "this tree, that tree, this other tree, and so forth"... which is nothing more than the freaking individual trees.
This is the answer... they only answer to all so-called "social" and "corporate" and "government" issues. All that exists are individual humans, individual buildings, individual books, individual pieces of paper, and so forth down the list of real, physical existents.
The bottom line should be simple. No human being has any real or legitimate basis to claim authority over another human being. No human being can obligate other human beings - only a human being can obligate himself. All humans came to exist in the same way - they were born. By mere symmetry (as well as a host of other perspectives) we can confirm that no basis exists for one human to have authority over another.
... AND YET ...
How many humans ever noted the following. The individual humans who signed the pieces of paper that humans call "declaration of independence" and "constitution of these united states" had absolutely no basis for authority over millions of individuals then, and certainly had no basis for authority over billions of individuals to be born in centuries to come.
The very notion that a couple dozen self-important humans can smear ink on pieces of paper and somehow obligate billions of humans in perpetuity is insane. Just because they had a few better (and closer to valid) ideas than other gangs of self-important humans changes nothing about the fundamental facts.
All they did was smear ink on paper!
... PERIOD ...
So ask yourself. Why on earth did you accept the reality of an utterly and inherently fictional entity like "USA" or "US government" or "president" or "authority" or "law"? Why on earth did you assume you were obligated by a couple dozen self-important humans nearly 240 years ago?
This is the problem - that humans have no freaking idea how to operate their consciousness. Humans are controlled by their mental-units, but never bother to figure out what they are, and what relationship they have with the real world. And the result? Virtually all humans are manipulated virtually every minute of every day, from the time they are 2 or 3 years old until the moment they die.
The predators have done this to humans. The predators hide the nature of reality and consciousness, but take full advantage of the "fatal flaw in human consciousness"... which is the bias humans (and all animals) have to "trust their mental-units", take them seriously, and act upon them. So the predators just craft diabolical mental-units (abstract fictions), then jam them into the brains of every human they can infect (which is about 99.9999999% at this point in history thanks to the printing press and internet).
That's the story of mankind. You might as well engrave this onto the tombstone of mankind, because this is what happened to [perhaps] the only sentient organisms in the universe.
Humans are finished.
Great potential - entirely wasted.
The Constitution never failed. We failed by not following it. This article is moot.