"We think experience has proved it safer for the mass of individuals composing the society to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent..." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816.
The "mass" of individuals is what the framers of the Constitution called "We, the People," and wrote that the Constitution was "to provide for the common Defense" and to "promote the general Welfare."
Never did the Founders dream that what was "common" among them--their defense, their promotion of security, their lives, their liberties, and their pursuit of happiness--would congeal under the nationalism of Federal laws into something called "the common good."
They could not have conceived it, because they could not conceive that the individualism promoted by securing a nation would be turned on its head, turned into the denial of individualism in order to promote the security of everyone but the individual.
The "common good" is nothing but the result of either democracy by majority in which that majority overwhelms the minority rather than protecting it; or it is the republicanism of our representative government becoming the majority. Once case in point is how Washington ignored the people's wishes in this bail-out mess. Poll after poll demonstrated how Americans were against the bail-out, repeatedly telling Washington to let the free market fix the problems caused by Washington.
The people knew there would be hard times. The people know that harder times are now to come because Washingon ignored their pleas to let the banks fail and to let Detroit fail. Why are the harder times to come?
A senator on live TV was heard to say just yesterday that all this debt that the Federal government has taken on in the name of the economic security of the people, will be paid for by the generation now being born and by the children born of that generation.
But what of the debt we must incur before the first-born generation of indebted children can begin to pay off our debts? That will be at least twenty years, if not forty. In that amount of time there will be literally quadrillions, not just trillions, more dollars spent in the red. Then it will be up to the third, forth, even the fifth generations to come to pay off that debt. How will they do it?
They will not be able to pay it off until it is recognized that the free market, when allowed to fail, will heal itself. That is the purpose of capitalism. No capitalist ever thought he should not "try, try again," except in the case of bureaucratic roadblocks and "progressive" taxes that took from him when he made money the very profits needed to make more money.
"Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted." “The Nature of Government,” The Virtue of Selfishness; Ayn Rand
Since individuals may do anything whatsoever that does not violate the rights of others, keeping his profits is within his own rights. Proper taxes are those which go to pay for government infrastructure. Improper taxes are the debts incurred by "the people" when government prints even one dollar that is not backed by the security of goods already manufactured. Since Nixon took us off the gold standard, and since the dollar is backed only by the Gross National Product (GNP), and since all the manufactured money for the bailout is credit in the name of the hope of future production that can back up the debt, such credit is immoral of any government to print, and should be illegal if it is not already.
What is missing from the Constitution is a provision such as the one below, a provision that explicitly states the derived nature of "individual sovereignty" in order to prevent our government from acting in the name of the "people" when the "people" is merely the "mass of individuals," not some organic whole made of everyone now living and yet to be born for generations.
"Reserved to each Citizen of the several States, and to each citizen of the United States, the unalienable and rightful powers of said Citizens as defined by Natural Law shall not be abridged except to conform where necessary to the functioning of the common sovereignty of said Citizens. 'Natural Law' shall be defined as the right of action by any and all individuals when those actions do not violate the same right of action of any other individual. 'Common sovereignty' shall be defined as those minimal powers deemed necessary for the maintenance of a democratically operated republican government to establish justice, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. 'General Welfare' shall be defined as the mitigating powers of the common sovereignty over individual sovereignty. 'Liberty' shall be defined as the unalienable and rightful powers of each individual Citizen as is given at birth by the fruits of nature and of nature's god, except where mitigated by the common sovereignty, which mitigation shall constitute the general Welfare."
This provision would do much to restore American law and jurisprudence to the Originalist position. From there, changes could be made to the Constitution where "the mass of individuals" saw a need for it. The "exercise of all rightful powers" is the right of every individual under any doctrine of natural law. "The exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent..." is a matter of prudence and justice under the law of men. We are engaged as a nation in the politics of pragmatism, which is neither prudent, nor just, denying the exercise of any rightful power because to deny one is to deny the principle that makes all of them "rightful."
Note: I am withdrawing my membership in the Center for Inquiry. It's liberalism, it's humanism, and its subjectivity are beyond the pale, when considering such items as this, from CFI Chigago:
The Center For Inquiry/Chicago is pleased to present: Re-Framing the Educational Debate: Teaching and Freedom with Guest Presenter Dr. William Ayers
Not only is this the very same Ayers at the center of controversy in the Obama for President debate, the CFI Chigago, after listing his many academic milestones and failing to mention his domestic terrorism background, has only this comment to make: "He is an inspiration to a generation of young teachers."
The Center for Inquiry seems to have no standards for their behavior or their moral choices for investigation of any subject except that of secularity. Secularity is not a moral choice. It is the division of one's life--or the life of an organization--into the religious and the non-religious, or the outright rejection of religiosity; and it is the separation of church of state.
I reject outright any faith and religiosity in my life; but I also reject the presentation in the name of "secularity" of terrorists as legitimate objects of veneration, respect, and inspiritation.
"We think experience has proved it safer for the mass of individuals composing the society to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent..." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816.
The "mass" of individuals is what the framers of the Constitution called "We, the People," and wrote that the Constitution was "to provide for the common Defense" and to "promote the general Welfare."
Never did the Founders dream that what was "common" among them--their defense, their promotion of security, their lives, their liberties, and their pursuit of happiness--would congeal under the nationalism of Federal laws into something called "the common good."
They could not have conceived it, because they could not conceive that the individualism promoted by securing a nation would be turned on its head, turned into the denial of individualism in order to promote the security of everyone but the individual.
The "common good" is nothing but the result of either democracy by majority in which that majority overwhelms the minority rather than protecting it; or it is the republicanism of our representative government becoming the majority. Once case in point is how Washington ignored the people's wishes in this bail-out mess. Poll after poll demonstrated how Americans were against the bail-out, repeatedly telling Washington to let the free market fix the problems caused by Washington.
The people knew there would be hard times. The people know that harder times are now to come because Washingon ignored their pleas to let the banks fail and to let Detroit fail. Why are the harder times to come?
A senator on live TV was heard to say just yesterday that all this debt that the Federal government has taken on in the name of the economic security of the people, will be paid for by the generation now being born and by the children born of that generation.
But what of the debt we must incur before the first-born generation of indebted children can begin to pay off our debts? That will be at least twenty years, if not forty. In that amount of time there will be literally quadrillions, not just trillions, more dollars spent in the red. Then it will be up to the third, forth, even the fifth generations to come to pay off that debt. How will they do it?
They will not be able to pay it off until it is recognized that the free market, when allowed to fail, will heal itself. That is the purpose of capitalism. No capitalist ever thought he should not "try, try again," except in the case of bureaucratic roadblocks and "progressive" taxes that took from him when he made money the very profits needed to make more money.
"Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted." “The Nature of Government,” The Virtue of Selfishness; Ayn Rand
Since individuals may do anything whatsoever that does not violate the rights of others, keeping his profits is within his own rights. Proper taxes are those which go to pay for government infrastructure. Improper taxes are the debts incurred by "the people" when government prints even one dollar that is not backed by the security of goods already manufactured. Since Nixon took us off the gold standard, and since the dollar is backed only by the Gross National Product (GNP), and since all the manufactured money for the bailout is credit in the name of the hope of future production that can back up the debt, such credit is immoral of any government to print, and should be illegal if it is not already.
What is missing from the Constitution is a provision such as the one below, a provision that explicitly states the derived nature of "individual sovereignty" in order to prevent our government from acting in the name of the "people" when the "people" is merely the "mass of individuals," not some organic whole made of everyone now living and yet to be born for generations.
"Reserved to each Citizen of the several States, and to each citizen of the United States, the unalienable and rightful powers of said Citizens as defined by Natural Law shall not be abridged except to conform where necessary to the functioning of the common sovereignty of said Citizens. 'Natural Law' shall be defined as the right of action by any and all individuals when those actions do not violate the same right of action of any other individual. 'Common sovereignty' shall be defined as those minimal powers deemed necessary for the maintenance of a democratically operated republican government to establish justice, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. 'General Welfare' shall be defined as the mitigating powers of the common sovereignty over individual sovereignty. 'Liberty' shall be defined as the unalienable and rightful powers of each individual Citizen as is given at birth by the fruits of nature and of nature's god, except where mitigated by the common sovereignty, which mitigation shall constitute the general Welfare."
This provision would do much to restore American law and jurisprudence to the Originalist position. From there, changes could be made to the Constitution where "the mass of individuals" saw a need for it. The "exercise of all rightful powers" is the right of every individual under any doctrine of natural law. "The exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent..." is a matter of prudence and justice under the law of men. We are engaged as a nation in the politics of pragmatism, which is neither prudent, nor just, denying the exercise of any rightful power because to deny one is to deny the principle that makes all of them "rightful."
Note: I am withdrawing my membership in the Center for Inquiry. It's liberalism, it's humanism, and its subjectivity are beyond the pale, when considering such items as this, from CFI Chigago:
The Center For Inquiry/Chicago is pleased to present: Re-Framing the Educational Debate: Teaching and Freedom with Guest Presenter Dr. William Ayers
Not only is this the very same Ayers at the center of controversy in the Obama for President debate, the CFI Chigago, after listing his many academic milestones and failing to mention his domestic terrorism background, has only this comment to make: "He is an inspiration to a generation of young teachers."
The Center for Inquiry seems to have no standards for their behavior or their moral choices for investigation of any subject except that of secularity. Secularity is not a moral choice. It is the division of one's life--or the life of an organization--into the religious and the non-religious, or the outright rejection of religiosity; and it is the separation of church of state.
I reject outright any faith and religiosity in my life; but I also reject the presentation in the name of "secularity" of terrorists as legitimate objects of veneration, respect, and inspiritation.
