Saw this at Liberty Post. It’s an email blast from CA Tea Party Patriots rep. Mark Meckler. He wrote that Assemblyman Dan Logue will introduce AB 18, designed to suspend the state’s 2006 global warming law, Monday.
It is vitally important that Tea Party Patriots pack this committee hearing. Our leaders are steaming ahead with their plans to implement AB 32 and are ignoring the pleas of small business owners, out of work Californians and those fed up with endless regulations telling us how to live our own lives.
I know it’s a little late in the day to take on a road trip to–of all places–Sacramento, but any of you left coasters who see this (wirecutter) might spread the word. Then again, with the state having already given away all it’s money to freeloaders, and businesses fleeing like Japanese extras in a Gamera movie, how much more damage can this insanity do? According to Meckler:
AB 32, signed into law in 2006, is a coming freight train that will kill over a million jobs, add $50,000 to the cost of a new home, increase the cost of gas by 20% and increase electric bills by 30%. In effect, AB 32 will tell you what to eat, what to drive and where to live.
Sounds like an optimistic appraisal to me.
Committee meeting and protest details are at the link, as are contact numbers. Do what you can guys.
Recently much news has been reported, from Bernie Madoff to an attorney in Florida, about many losing vast sums of money to swindlers operating what is commonly called “ponzi schemes”. The swindle takes its name from one Carlos “Charles” Ponzi, an Italian immigrant who swindled investors out of millions of dollars in the early 1920s. The basic premise of this scam is to promise high-yielding returns on investments when there is no basis for it. Those who invest money later down the line end up losing everything because the monies they invested were used to pay returns to those who invested early on in the scheme so as to give the “investment” an appearance of authenticity. Although Madoff swindled investors out of billions of dollars that pales in comparison to the greatest swindle in the history of mankind – i.e., that which is currently being perpetrated upon us, our children, our grandchildren and who knows how many more generations by this current Congress and the Obama Administration.
In fairness, however, I cannot lay the charge of this behavior at the feet of just the current leadership in Congress and occupant of the White House – our “representatives” and presidents have been doing this for decades as they legislated one massive government program after another, piling up insurmountable debts and placing a burden upon the citizenry of this country from which we may never recover.
Perhaps the granddaddy of these scams started with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his “New Deal” socialism that included this grand new program he termed “Social Security”. When it was passed, Roosevelt presented it to the nation as an insurance retirement savings program, the monies for which would be deducted from earnings and deposited into a separate “trust” account. When the Social Security Act was challenged before the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional (which it was and is), Roosevelt’s attorneys argued to the court that there was not to be such a thing as a trust fund, but that the system was simply another form of a payroll tax. Since he had “stacked” the Court with appointees that would go along with his socialization of America, Roosevelt secured the blessing of the Justices and the rest, as they say, is history. Three decades later along comes Lyndon Johnson, another socialist democrat, and he piles the Medicare and Medicaid programs on top of the Social Security system. In all of these schemes the picture presented to the public was of a “safe” investment that would “pay for itself”, while in private those promoting it knew otherwise. However, there is no such “trust” fund – its all a shell game; the money goes into the general fund of the government and is spent as soon as it is deposited (or actually even before then)! As for these programs being self-sustaining, David Walker, the former comptroller general of the United States, testified before Congress in 2008 that the current liabilities of the federal government for these three programs in current dollars total $53 trillion – that’s $53,000,000,000,000!! (For a graphic representation of just what a trillion dollars would look like, I refer you to the pictorial display put together in the following link: http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html). So you see, those who paid into the system earlier are being paid their benefits from the monies being paid currently by us and by future generations, until the whole system collapses from under its own weight and those that are last will be left without any benefits – a “ponzi scheme” of unimaginable proportions, foisted upon us by our own government! (For an excellent, brief expose of these points I would recommend the chapter “On the Welfare State” in Mark Levin’s book Liberty and Tyranny).
Yet today we are being told that the current proposals for “health care reform”, the various “stimulus bills”, the so-called “Cap and Trade” legislation, et al, will also be self-sustaining and will reduce our nation’s debt, all of it brought to us by the same fascist-minded political party (the democrat party) that pulled the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid scams on us. Our current national debt currently stands in the neighborhood of $12 trillion, take a few hundred billion or two, much of which is owned by foreign nations. The largest debt-holder in this category is none other than Communist China, with around $1 trillion in treasury notes (counting those purchased by Hong Kong). We need not fear the Chinese military destroying our republic; with the amount of indebtedness we owe to them, they could and may eventually crush us fiscally without ever having to fire a single shot!
However, do you know who holds the largest amount of our national debt? To learn the answer I want you to go into your bedroom or bathroom, wherever you may have a mirror and look in it – it is us, the American citizens who hold the largest amount of debt. “How is this possible?” you might ask – simple, yet another “ponzi scheme” known in economic and financial terms as “monetizing the debt.” I am far from having a deep knowledge of this subject and those that do may find my following thoughts a little simplistic, but the matter is a serious one for the future financial stability and indeed even the very existence of our republic.
“Monetizing the debt” in the most basic definition occurs when a country, unable to pay its debt, simply prints or mints more money in order to pay it; or as one financial analyst styled it, “replacing government debt with money.” The two main players in this scam are the US Treasury department and the Federal Reserve – the entity that controls our financial system, including the money supply and interest rates. It is important to remember that the Federal Reserve is not an agency of the Federal Government, but rather is independent of it (I know, a hard concept to grasp and one that most of us find somewhat confusing). In the simplest transaction when foreign and institutional investors decide not to purchase US Treasury notes to finance the proliferate spending of the leadership in Congress and the Obama administration the Treasury department turns to various hedge funds and sells the notes to them since they deal in higher risk investments. However, these hedge funds do not retain ownership of the securities but instead turn around and sell them to the Federal Reserve, which being an entity that has no cost of capital and must keep the money supply in line with a set target rate, and not having those funds kept in reserve simply cranks up the its printing presses and creates the money that it needs to purchase these notes out of thin air! And so ’round and ’round it goes until eventually it comes time to “pay the piper” and when unable to do so the entire financial system, economy and indeed our beloved republic comes crashing down like a house of cards, with future generations being the ones upon whose heads it will collapse!
I would like to offer to you as support of what I have said the following analysis published just last month by Sprott Asset Management, LP on the zerohedge website (for a full reading of their insightful analysis click on the following link:
“In the latest Treasury Bulletin published in December 2009, ownership data reveals that the United States increased the public debt by $1.885 trillion dollars in fiscal 2009.1 So who bought all the new Treasury securities to finance the massive increase in expenditures? According to the same report, there were three distinct groups that bought more than they did in 2008…. to summarize, the majority buyers of Treasury securities in 2009 were:
Foreign and International buyers who purchased $697.5 billion.
The Federal Reserve who bought $286 billion.
The Household Sector who bought $528 billion to Q3 – which puts them on track purchase $704 billion for fiscal 2009.
…we were surprised to discover that “Households”…bought 35 times more government debt than they did in 2008.”
When they investigated just who makes up this “Household Sector” they learned
“…that the Household Sector is actually just a catch-all category…. So to answer the question – who is the Household Sector? They are a PHANTOM. They don’t exist. They merely serve to balance the ledger in the Federal Reserve’s Flow of Funds report.
Our concern now is that this is all starting to resemble one giant Ponzi scheme…. It serves to remember that the whole point of selling new US Treasury bonds is to attract outside capital to finance deficits or to pay off existing debts that are maturing. We are now in a situation, however, where the Fed is printing dollars to buy Treasuries as a means of faking the Treasury’s ability to attract outside capital. If our research proves anything, it’s that the regular buyers of US debt are no longer buying,….
Bill Gross, who is co-chief investment officer at PIMCO and arguably one of the world’s most powerful bond investors…. Earlier this year he referred to the US as a “ponzi style economy” and recommended that investors front run Uncle Sam and other world governments into government debt instruments of all forms.12 The fact that he is now selling US treasuries is a foreboding sign.”
As you can well imagine, the creation of money “out of thin air” can have but one effect – it lowers the value of the money and inflation can (and at the rate we are increasing the debt will) run rampant. We need to take a lesson from recent history as to what happens to a country when such an approach to paying debt takes place. I take you back in time to just a little less than one hundred years ago. The First World War has ended and the victorious Allies have imposed a horrific peace treaty upon defeated Germany. The most odious part of that treaty was the imposition upon Germany of “war reparations” – i.e., they (upon the insistence of the French) forced Germany to repay them for their costs of the war. Having already been greatly debilitated by the cost of the war from their own vantage point (for it was really upon this fact which Germany lost the war and not by defeat upon the battlefield) they now had the overwhelming debt of the victors as well. So while the rest of the world enjoyed the boom commonly referred to as the “Roaring Twenties”, Germany suffered under a severe recession (or actually the beginning of what spread to the rest of the world as the “Great Depression” of the 1930s’). Unable to repay the debt through the normal means of taxation and commerce, they cranked up their printing presses to print more German marks. The result (and a sobering fact for us to consider as we face the mountain of debt being amassed by our current Congress and the Obama Administration, as we are following the same path as Germany) can be seen in how this all affected the value of the German mark (as valued against the US dollar):
Beginning with the outbreak of the war, we get a stunning picture of the decline of the value of the mark in its exchange value against the dollar:
July 1914 — 4.2:1
July 1919 — 14.1:1
July 1921 — 76.7:1
July 1922 — 493.2:1
July 1923 — 553,412:1
Nov 15, 1923 — 4,200,000,000,000:1 (yes, that’s 4.2 trillion marks to 1 US dollar!!)
This, my fellow Americans, will be our future if we do not rid ourselves of such out-of-control leaders in this government and return ourselves to fiscal sanity. In his chapter “On Public Debt”, Montesquieu in his monumental work The Spirit of the Laws had these words of wisdom as to the result of a government amassing debt:
“If foreigners possess much paper that represents a debt, they draw, every year, from the nation, a considerable sum in interest. In a nation thus perpetually indebted” [emphasis mine - Epaminondas] “the exchange should be very low. The impost” [i.e., taxes] “levied for the payment of the interest on the debt injures manufactures by making workmanship dearer. One takes the true revenues of the state from those who are active and industrious to transfer them to idle people, that is, one gives the comforts of working to those who do not work, and the difficulties of working to those who work. There are the drawbacks; I know of no advantages“ (Part IV, Book 22, chapter 17).
So that you not think me a lunatic “tilting against windmills” and playing the role of a “Chicken Little”, I leave you with the sound wisdom of perhaps the greatest of the Anti-Federalists, Thomas Jefferson:
“[A] wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” — First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” — letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816
“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” — letter to John Taylor, May 28, 1816
The time is now, my fellow citizens, to rid ourselves of these “swindlers” in Congress and the White House before they bring our precious republic and our inalienable rights of liberty and pursuit of happiness to ruin!
In George Orwell’s final masterpiece, 1984, Big Brother is always there. Whether in his flat or rogering his bird in the woods, Big Brother is always there. There is a similar omnipresence in today’s world. No, it isn’t Graham Norton on TV. It isn’t Americans in St Andrews. It isn’t even glory holes in public toilets. The only omnipresence in the world is mention of 1984 in political articles.
The use of the terms Orwell invented in his work is appropriate in describing the modern attack on liberty, yes. There is no question Orwell possessed superb vision in his description of a potential omnipotent fascist state. 1984 remains the critique of authoritarian power.
However there comes a point where opposition to increased government power needs some form of originality. 1984 was published in 1949, over 60 years ago now, and yet it is still the first point every liberal makes in defence of liberty. You a bit of a libertarian? You getting a bit of a kicking in a debate? You want a way out? Use the “Orwellian” card. BAM. Debate won. It’s like the anti-Semitic card being pulled by defenders of Israeli aggression. Get out of jail free, every time baby.
But more than that, it is the staple diet of every lazy journalist looking to write an article on, well, anything really. John Pilger is very fond of this tactic. Pull a few of Orwell’s terms out, apply it to modern day politics, job done. A very quick search on liberal websites such as the Guardian pulls up this. The New Statesman pulls up this. The Independent this. Huffington Post this. Hysterically it was also used by the far right in America to oppose health care reform. You get the picture.
Obama flunks his first year as president
Posted By Gene Healy On January 5, 2010 (8:57 pm) In Top Page News, Voices and Choices
We’re coming up on the anniversary of Barack Obama’s first year in office. How’s he doing so far? ”A good, solid B-plus” — that’s the grade 44 gave himself when Oprah asked him in December. That must be a relief to anyone out there still worried about this president’s self-esteem.
Is it accurate, though? How should we grade presidents, anyway?
Pundits and historians typically ask questions like: Is he popular? Has he worked his will on Congress? And, does he aspire to be a “transformational” president — dreaming big and daring great things?
Those metrics reek of value-free power worship. We shouldn’t judge presidents based on whether they please the crowd or “transform” the country. What if the country doesn’t need to be transformed?
When Obama gave himself a high B, former George W. Bush consigliere Karl Rove pounced, pointing out that 44 had “the worst [popularity] ratings of any president at the end of his first year.”
But what’s popular isn’t always good, and vice versa. If transient public favor is the true measure of success, then Lady Gaga is the singular artistic genius of our age.
Nor should we grade presidents on whether they manage to ram their agenda through. If that merits high grades, then Bush’s first term was an A-plus: He got Congress to authorize a disastrous war in Iraq and pass a prescription drug entitlement that’s going to help bankrupt the country. Teacher, give that kid a smiley-face sticker!
Historians usually try to let events cool before they bring out the red pen. But their standards are just as warped as pundits’ — which is why the perennial presidential ranking polls reward nation builders and war leaders, while demoting presidents content to preside over peace and prosperity.
In a recent Washington Post retrospective, historian David Kennedy downgrades Obama for his “Clintonesque” record of legislative success, while scholar Robert Dallek laments the fact that Obama lacks the “advantage” FDR had of using the Great Depression to whip the opposition into line.
Our Constitution spells out a very different benchmark for presidential success: fidelity to the oath of office.
As constitutional scholar Gary Lawson notes, the Constitution prescribes the specific words the president has to affirm before assuming power (as it does for no other office). It requires him to “faithfully execute the Office” and “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.”
The implications of that standard are quite radical, in Lawson’s view: “[T]he new President’s first obligation is to veto pretty much every bill sent to him and recommend the repeal of pretty much everything in the United States Code.”
Maybe you’re not willing to go that far. But surely “first do no harm” is a minimum requirement for fidelity to the constitutional oath. A president who takes the oath seriously shouldn’t add new constitutional violations to those committed by his predecessors.
So does Obama’s leading criminal justice initiative, expanded hate crime laws, which flirt with thought crime and ignore the fact that, as Chief Justice John Marshall put it in 1821, “Congress cannot punish felonies generally.”
Meanwhile, the president runs the ongoing bailout as if the Constitution makes him commander in chief of the U.S. economy, while his Justice Department defends the unconstitutional proposition that the federal government can ban union- or corporate-funded ads and movies that mention federal candidates by name.
All in all, a miserable first-year record.
True, other recent presidents have violated the Constitution just as flagrantly. But give Obama time: He’s just getting started.
It’s true too that the standard advanced here — fidelity to the oath — is one that few presidents have lived up to over the last 100 years. But again, so what? It’s a standard that should at least be part of the debate.
Besides, expecting less of our chief executives reflects what Bush, in another context, once called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Who says we have to grade presidents on a curve?
“We think that we have the fairest approach in our bill,” Ms. Pelosi said. “I always say when it comes to tax policy around here, it’s like a mirror. ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’ The Senate thinks theirs is fairer. We think ours is. We’ll see which mirror cracks.” (NY Times)
Should some mention who actually said those lines to the mirror??
The Evil vainglorious, self-obsessed Queen in Snow White?
Come to think of it, the resemblance is remarkably similar
So does that make Health Care Reform the Poisoned Apple?
Freudian Slip? I think not.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, piqued with White House pressure to accept the Senate health reform bill, threw a rare rhetorical elbow at President Barack Obama Tuesday, questioning his commitment to his 2008 campaign promises.
A leadership aide said it was no accident.
Pelosi emerged from a meeting with her leadership team and committee chairs in the Capitol to face an aggressive throng of reporters who immediately hit her with C-SPAN’s request that she permit closed-door final talks on the bill to be televised.
A reporter reminded the San Francisco Democrat that in 2008, then-candidate Obama opined that all such negotiations be open to C-SPAN cameras.
“There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail,” quipped Pelosi, who has no intention of making the deliberations public.
People familiar with Pelosi’s thinking wasted little time in explaining precisely what she meant by a “number of things” – saying it reflected weeks of simmering tension on health care between two Democratic power players who have functioned largely in lock-step during Obama’s first year in office.
Senior House Democratic leadership aides say Pelosi was pointedly referring to Obama’s ’08 pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class, which she interprets to include a tax on so-called “Cadillac” health care plans that offer lavish benefit packages to many union members.
Interesting interpretation of “middle class” wouldn’t you say…
The House aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Pelosi has been miffed with Obama’s tilt toward the Senate plan and his expectation the House will simply go along with the Senate bill out of political necessity.
A Pelosi aide later downplayed the remark, saying, “It was a quip, not a jab at anyone.”
She just specific about whom he was, but it wasn’t anyone in particular. Ah, doublespeak….
“She’s setting up for the conference,” said a leadership staffer. “It’s strategic. She’s staking out her territory.”(Politico)
The Tyrannosaurus Rex Female is staking her claim and protecting her young.
Woe be anyone who gets in her way.
Especially, Republicans.
The ultimate in back room secret deals between a cadre of specially picked partisans will decide that the Government does in fact have the right to decide if you live or die and how you live.
Isn’t Democracy grand.
Wish we still had one.
So I have to laugh, or else…
It’s so bad, I ordered a burger at McDonalds and the kid behind the counter asked, “Can you afford fries with that?”
I got a pre-declined credit card offer in the mail.
The economy is so bad, I went to my bank the other day and the teller handed me a note saying, “This is a robbery!”
The economy is so bad that I went to my bank to get a loan, they said, “What a coincidence! That’s just what we were going to ask you!”
The economy is so bad, that I bought a toaster oven and my free gift with purchase was a bank.
The economy is so bad I saw a man in Costco buying one roll of toilet paper.
The economy’s so bad, Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.
The economy is so bad, Obama met with three small businesses to discuss his Stimulus Plan: GM, Pfizer, and Citigroup.
The economy is so bad, Angelina Jolie adopted a child from America!
It’s so bad, they built an Indian reservation on a casino.
The economy is so bad that when Bill and Hillary travel together, they now have to share a room.
The economy is so bad, Malia and Sasha Obama started a lemonade stand to raise money for bailouts.
The economy is so bad… Motel Six won’t leave the light on anymore.
Even people who aren’t in Barack Obama’s cabinet aren’t paying taxes.
Q: Why is the United States Congress and the porn industry always mentioned together?
A: Between the porn industry and Congress, no one has screwed more people!
Q: Why is there no gold at the end of the rainbow?
A: The Leprachan took it and sold it to Cash4Gold!
Congress says they are looking into this Bernard Madoff scandal. Oh Great!! The guy who made $50 Billion disappear is being investigated by the people who made $1.5 Trillion disappear!
But don’t worry, we’re from the government and were are here to save you.
Especially, with the smoke-filled, non-transparent, 1000% partisan, Bribe-em-to-the-Max, Health Care Reform.
Gordon Brown has said it’s inappropriate, so that’s all right then.
I was intrigued and then also simultaneously amused by the antics of Anjem Choudary, in stating – and then recanting - the theme that he and his might march through Wootton Bassett with a number of empty coffins.
Poor old Wootton Bassett. Its torments will end with the appointment of another Foreign Secretary: I can’t think who it would be right now, but it would have to be someone good and tough. This town was never meant to have to do, what it now feels it has to do out of ordinary civility and politeness – since nobody from the dead chaps’ employers feels able to turn out.
My amusement of course was unlike what is now perceived by the majority of Middle England, which, owing to its current pre-occupations with celebrity and Wireless Tele Vision, is suddenly surprised and hurt by what the mountebank has said.
This stunt, which Choudary has admitted latterly, does not surprise me in the least, and I was expecting it. It is what I would do, in his position and with his belief-system driving me.
The comment thread here is illuminating and worrying for the future. The volume is staggering. And – they have not even got round to moderating mine, and I posted it 36 hours ago.
To what end do individuals in societies form governments – or for what purpose do citizens expect their established government to fulfill? To answer this question and its impact upon several of the remaining amendments contained within our “Bill of Rights” that heretofore I have not commented on, let us turn to some statements made by John Locke, one of the most influential political and philosophical thinkers in Western history. Locke (1632 – 1704) exerted a great influence upon the founders of our republic, especially the Anti-Federalists, and his writings are readily apparent in the thoughts expressed by Thomas Jefferson in our own Declaration of Independence. In one of his most important works, The Second Treatise of Government, Locke has much to say about the purpose of government and why individuals form them. People unite together, he says in chapter 9, “Of the Ends of Political Society and Government”,
“…for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, which I call by the general name, property. The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property;….”
Yet, though man forfeits to a degree the rights he possesses in what Locke terms his state of nature, i.e., his God-given rights and freedoms into which he is born as an individual into the sea of humanity, by forming and submitting to a mutually agreeable government in order to achieve the preservation and protection that is otherwise not available in the state of nature, there are limits to the power of this government in fulfilling such an obligation. In his concluding section of this chapter Locke went on to say
“But though men when they enter into society give up the equality, liberty, and executive power they had in the state of nature into the hands of the society, to be so far disposed of by the legislative as the good of the society shall require;…the power of the society, or legislative constituted by them, can never be supposed to extend farther than the common good, but is obliged to secure every one’s property…and so whoever has the legislative or supreme power of any commonwealth is bound to govern by established standing laws, promulgated and known to the people, and not by extemporary decrees;…And all this to be directed to no other end but the peace, safety, and public good of the people.”
Locke again returned to this thought in chapter eleven, “Of the Extent of the Legislative Power”, of his treatise, to emphasize the point of the limitation that should be placed upon legislative bodies when it comes to the liberties and properties (as understood in his broader context) of the citizenry:
“…men unite into societies, that they may have the united strength of the whole society to secure and defend their properties, and may have standing rules to bond it, by which every one may know what is his. To this end it is that men give up all their natural power to the society which they enter into, and the community put the legislative power into such hands as they think fit, with this trust, that they shall be governed by declared laws, or else their peace, quiet, and property will still be at the same uncertainty as it was in the state of nature….
It cannot be supposed that they should intend…to give to any one, or more, an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate’s hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them. This were to put themselves into a worse condition than the state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maintain it,…therefore, whatever form the commonwealth is under, the ruling power ought to govern by declared and received laws, and not by extemporary dictates and undetermined resolutions. For then mankind will be in a far worse condition than in the state of nature.”
So having quoted extensively from Locke’s thoughts on this, what can we ascertain? We can learn that at the time of his writings and the influence it was to have on our founders when they composed our Constitution some ninety-seven years later, there was great concern over the rights of private ownership. This obviously was due to the nature of the monarchies that were prevalent in Europe at the time in which the king could take whatever he wished, which power was a major spark in the igniting of the American Revolution. Is it no wonder then that this concern received as much attention as it did in the Bill of Rights, namely portions of amendments four, five, and some years later in Section I of the fourteenth amendment.
The substantive elements we can glean from Locke’s quotes above are that first, the right of property (and not just land, but will be expanded upon in a moment), being a part of the “state of nature” would fall under what Jefferson would later categorize as an “inalienable” right endowed upon man by his Creator. Second, that man forms societies and governments (or as he also refers to them as “Commonwealths”) in order to better protect not only his property but also his liberty and his life, two more of Jefferson’s “inalienable” rights. Third, that although in forming such commonwealths man as an individual gives up some portion of his protective rights to the society so formed, it then is incumbent upon those selected to govern to guard that right as though they would do so as the individual would. And fourth, that such governance should be conducted based upon established laws, consented to by the people and not by the arbitrary whims of those in power to their own benefit, but solely to the betterment of all the people.
Locke continued in the same chapter to expound upon the fact that should government ever take the property of the citizens without their consent such action violated the precise reason for its existence.
“For all the power the government has, being only for the good of the society, as it ought not to be arbitrary and at pleasure, so it ought to be exercised by established and promulgated laws; that both the people may know their duty and be safe and secure within the limits of the law; and the rulers too kept within their due bounds, and not be tempted by the power they have in their hands to employ it to such purposes,….
…The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent. For the preservation of property being the end of government, and that for which men enter into society,…Hence it is a mistake to think that the supreme or legislative power of any commonwealth can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subjects arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure….the prince, or senate, however it may have power to make laws for the regulating of property between the subjects one amongst another yet can never have a power to take to themselves the whole or any part of the subjects’ property without their own consent.”
Locke does not by all this mean to imply that governments have no legitimate right to any portion of the property of the citizens, for he goes on to say
” ‘Tis true governments cannot be supported without great charge, and ’tis fit every one who enjoys his share of the protection should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own consent, i.e., the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves or their representatives chosen by them.”
This last principle will be one that I will show to be of importance as it relates to the current “health care reform” legislation being considered in our Congress. But for the current time, all of this should show that those who have been entrusted by us to govern and legislate laws in our behalf are bound to do so with the protection of our liberties and property in mind and that to exceed their bounds by appropriating more than is necessary or for reasons contrary to our good or expressed will has no support in principle or in what we shall now see in the Constitution.
The fourth amendment addresses our rights against what is commonly referred to as the “searches and seizures” clause.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,…”
The fifth amendment also addressed this matter and added more restrictions upon the government’s power to take that which belongs to the citizenry:
“No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.”
It should be apparent now just how much of an influence Locke’s treatise had upon Mason, Madison and the others as they composed these amendments, as much of the language and phraseology you will find in the quotes I have given in the earlier portion of this essay are here repeated in these amendments. It is in the fourth amendment that we get a glimpse of what is considered to be the rightful property of the citizenry, for within it entails all that pertains to the individual, which would also include our finances. Returning once again to Locke’s treatise, in chapter five “Of Property”, he has this to say in regards to what property consists of:
“…every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property….For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to,…The labour that was mine removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them….the condition of human life, which requires labour and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions.”
Why, you may ask, have I quoted so extensively on this matter, and the answer is simple – to establish that anything that pertains to us that we may have, be it physical property and possessions as we normally think of the term, or intellectual property such as is protected by copyright and patents, or our money since it is the product of our labor, is to be understood as not accessible to other individuals or to the government without our express consent. Perhaps you can now see where this very much ties into the concept of taxation and what should be the proper method of supporting the government and which methods violate these principles and amendments.
Put together, these two amendments assert the following points:
This is a right of the people, as described by Locke as a right of nature, one that Jefferson termed to be “inalienable”;
That this “right” is to be secure, that is protected from and guaranteed not to be deprived of life, liberty and property;
That such security may be violated only when there exists a reasonable basis for doing so and only in accordance with a due process of established laws;
And that should a deprivation of property be necessary due to a need for the common good, it must be a reasonable cause and just compensation must be rendered to the one from whom the property is taken.
You will also note that the one amendment states these rights in the positive mode (the fourth) while the other (the fifth) expresses the similar sentiment in the negative. To be “secure in their persons” is tantamount to not being “deprived of life”; “to be secure in houses, papers, and effects” is the equivalent of not being “deprived of property”; and “against unreasonable” corresponds to the same notion of “without due process” and “without just compensation”. The argument is made that in the fourth amendment the right under consideration is a collective one, viz. it does not guarantee that an individual is secure in his person, house, etc. from unreasonable search and seizures. Yet if it cannot be individualized, then it makes no sense as people do not collectively possess a house and possessions other than as individuals. Furthermore, the language of the fifth amendment that is so similar clearly points to an individualistic interpretation.
I will grant that the thrust of these two amendments has to do with the authority of the government in respects to investigating and preventing of criminal activity (at least as it has been applied down throughout our history), but it is more than that – it is a curb on the power of the government to conduct such activities under any circumstance without just cause and, as Locke would say, for the betterment and protection of the society as a whole. However, consider once again how Locke defined “property” – that it was anything that an individual came to possess as a result of his labor. That being the understanding of “property” in the time of the framing of our Constitution then cannot it be further asserted that any method of taxation devised by the legislature that, as Locke put it, “extend farther than the common good“, and rather than to “secure every one’s property” diminishes one’s property by laws and regulations not fully known by the people, I ask – does this not then amount to nothing more than unreasonable seizure by the government of our property without our consent for purposes not necessarily for the good of society and in excess of what is actually required? Consider our complex and convoluted tax code – would you say that it meets that assertation by Locke that such laws regarding property (in this case money earned by labor) are “to secure and defend their properties, and may have standing rules to bond it, by which every one may know what is his.” Do all of the rulings and regulations of the IRS meet the standard set forth by Locke when he said “every one who enjoys his share of the protection should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own consent, i.e., the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves or their representatives chosen by them”?
Furthermore, consider if you will the myriad of agencies in the government that issue rules and regulations that deprive individuals of the very things these amendments were put in place to protect, and yet the Court has in recent years declared that the due process clause does not apply to these agencies!! Therefore the EPA can order that water in a fertile farming region of California can be shut off due to some two inch minnow fish’s existence being threatened, causing the loss of the livelihood of tens of thousands of our fellow Americans, and they have absolutely no recourse to such action! I would beg of you to explain how this can be anything but an unreasonable seizure of the property of these individuals and a deprivation of their life, liberty and property?!
Yet again I would suggest to you that the portion of the so-called “health care reform” legislation currently before our Congress, in its language that would impose fines and even possibly imprisonment for those who refuse to purchase the government-mandated insurance coverage is once more nothing other than an arbitrary capricious use of power to deprive individuals of their property in that the government would seize monies from those individuals, which again as Locke points out, falls under the broader definition of property in that it was gained by the labor of those from whom it would be seized.
There have been other instances in recent years where the private property of individuals was taken under the guise of “imminent domain”, which then was used for commercial purposes and not something that could be defined (without a great stretch of the principle) as something for the common good of society – a clear violation of the fifth amendment, but when appealed by individuals to the courts, fell on deaf ears.
I could continue with but one example after another of how those currently in power in Congress and the White House view our liberty and property not as rights to which only we have claim to, but as vehicles by which they can further their agenda of rendering us slaves to their power, deprived of liberty and wholly dependent upon them for sustenance. What other reason could President Obama have in mind when he speaks of the need to “spread the wealth” – the notion of “redistribution of wealth” is nothing more than a clear violation of our rights as delineated by Locke and a shredding of these two amendments. Our lives, liberties, and property are under the most severe assault that this nation has ever witnessed, and unless we rise up in opposition to those seeking to seize these from us with their unreasonable agendas we are doomed.
I leave you then with these words of warning of Thomas Paine in the opening pages of his work, Common Sense:
“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer….WHEREFORE, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows, that whatever FORM thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.”
Pundits and historians typically ask questions like: Is he popular? Has he worked his will on Congress? And, does he aspire to be a “transformational” president — dreaming big and daring great things?
