More mythology on the Constitution

[Tero]

reviews worth reading
at least it sees the constitution as something more than a frame around the 2nd amendment
http://www.amazon.com/Unruly-Americans- ... CSXYG1RSD5

[Seth]

Woody Holton upends what we think we know of the Constitution's origins by telling the history of the average Americans who challenged the framers of the Constitution and forced on them the revisions that produced the document we now venerate. The framers who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were determined to reverse America's post–Revolutionary War slide into democracy. They believed too many middling Americans exercised too much influence over state and national policies. That the framers were only partially successful in curtailing citizen rights is due to the reaction, sometimes violent, of unruly average Americans.

If not to protect civil liberties and the freedom of the people, what motivated the framers? In Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Holton provides the startling discovery that the primary purpose of the Constitution was, simply put, to make America more attractive to investment. And the linchpin to that endeavor was taking power away from the states and ultimately away from the people. In an eye-opening interpretation of the Constitution, Holton captures how the same class of Americans that produced Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts (and rebellions in damn near every other state) produced the Constitution we now revere.

Well, this is a classic example of the mendacious weaving together of fact and fiction to create Progressive propaganda. (and I mean the review, not necessarily the book, which I haven't read)

Were the Framers intent on stopping a slide into democracy? You damned betcha they were because they clearly understood the inherently evil and tyrannical nature of democracy. The entire Constitution and it's systems of checks and balances were indeed specifically designed to slow down and impede the often-frivolous and ill-considered flights of fancy of public opinion and provide a structure by which sober and careful consideration would be forced upon lawmakers by preventing them from doing just whatever the hell the public might demand from one moment to the next. That's not a failure, that's a deliberate feature of our system and that is also why the US is NOT a democracy, it's a Constitutional Republic that uses some limited democratic methods.

As for "taking power away from the states and ultimately the people," this is complete fiction. The Constitution was designed not as a charter of positive liberties, which is to say a document, like the Magna Carta, that announced what rights and liberties the people could enjoy, it is a charter of negative liberties, which means that it begins from the presumption that because ALL just powers derive from the people themselves, the people therefore enjoy completely unfettered liberty as the status quo ante, and in order to create a more perfect union they instituted a government in order to balance and adjudicate disputes about the exercises of competing rights in a formal and organized manner, but that the government is not the source of the rights and liberties, and government may only intervene in such matters as the people themselves explicitly authorize it to act upon, and absolutely nothing else.

The central government was NEVER intended to be a huge, bloated, omnipresent bureaucratic nightmare that does nothing but interfere with individual liberty without a charter or mandate to do so.

Article 1, Section 8 specifies the powers that Congress has:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

To establish post offices and post roads;

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

The Congress may not exercise ANY powers that are not explicitly listed in this section.

All other powers are left to the states, or to the people themselves.

The reason for this was to prevent precisely what the federal government has today become. It was the states that were to engage in the sort of detailed rulemaking and regulation necessary for a peaceful and prosperous society, not the federal government. So the notion that the Framers intended to take away power from the states and the people is a flat-out falsehood. The entire construction of the Union of the States strives to PREVENT that from happening.

[Hermit]

Article 1, Section 8 specifies the powers that Congress has:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Oh, wait. Your hallowed Founding Fathers enshrined the right to what you regard as theft in your Constitution?

[laklak]

It's designed to limit the power of the Federal government, which to my mind is a damn good thing.

[Seth]

Article 1, Section 8 specifies the powers that Congress has:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Oh, wait. Your hallowed Founding Fathers enshrined the right to what you regard as theft in your Constitution?

Where in that original power of the Constitution does it say "income tax?"

The plan was for government, which was to be small to begin with, to be funded by taxes levied on commerce, not on individual income. A flat 3% tax on income over $800 was levied after the Civil War to pay for the war effort, but it expired in 1872.

The income tax came to fruition and permanency during the Progressive period in 1913 largely in response to socialist influences agitating for a graduated income (direct) tax, something that was restricted by the Constitution until the 16th Amendment was ratified. See Wikipedia for more information.

Dissenting in Pollock, Justice John Marshall Harlan stated:

When, therefore, this court adjudges, as it does now adjudge, that Congress cannot impose a duty or tax upon personal property, or upon income arising either from rents of real estate or from personal property, including invested personal property, bonds, stocks, and investments of all kinds, except by apportioning the sum to be so raised among the States according to population, it practically decides that, without an amendment of the Constitution — two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and three-fourths of the States concurring — such property and incomes can never be made to contribute to the support of the national government.[17]

However, the income tax was a proper amendment to the Constitution and is now law, though in my opinion should not be.

[laklak]

Fucking Wilson. He should have fallen of the raft.

[Hermit]

Article 1, Section 8 specifies the powers that Congress has:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Oh, wait. Your hallowed Founding Fathers enshrined the right to what you regard as theft in your Constitution?

Where in that original power of the Constitution does it say "income tax?"

It's somewhat below the bit where it says that automatic weapons are arms too. I take it you haven't read that far down.

[Seth]

Fucking Wilson. He should have fallen of the raft.

Somebody should have pushed him out...

[Seth]

Article 1, Section 8 specifies the powers that Congress has:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Oh, wait. Your hallowed Founding Fathers enshrined the right to what you regard as theft in your Constitution?

Where in that original power of the Constitution does it say "income tax?"

It's somewhat below the bit where it says that automatic weapons are arms too. I take it you haven't read that far down.

Er, the Constitution specifically says that no "direct tax" shall be levied unless it is apportioned according to the population of the states, which means that even if collected, the federal government doesn't get to keep it but must give it to the states by way of benefits provided on a per-capita basis.

And the definition of "arms" is deliberately extremely broad. The Framers knew exactly what they were doing when they used "arms" instead of specifying some list of weapons they deemed acceptable for private ownership.

[pErvinalia]

Article 1, Section 8 specifies the powers that Congress has:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Oh, wait. Your hallowed Founding Fathers enshrined the right to what you regard as theft in your Constitution?

Where in that original power of the Constitution does it say "income tax?"

The plan was for government, which was to be small to begin with, to be funded by taxes levied on commerce, not on individual income.

Where in that original power of the Constitution does it say "commerce"?

[Seth]

The plan was for government, which was to be small to begin with, to be funded by taxes levied on commerce, not on individual income.

Where in that original power of the Constitution does it say "commerce"?

"The Congress shall have Power To...regulate Commerce...among the several States....
Article I, Section 8, Clause 3" Source

[Hermit]

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises,

Where in that original power of the Constitution does it exclude income tax?

[laklak]

It's the "direct tax" stuff, Hermit. They had to pass the 16th Amendment, which specifically excludes income tax from the requirement to apportion the proceeds. So income tax is constitutional. Interestingly, the South and West supported the Amendment, but the Northeast did not.

[Hermit]

It's the "direct tax" stuff, Hermit.

Ah. Thanks for the pointer. Now you got me reading up on direct taxation - specifically how it is treated in your constitution - which means primarily Article 1, Sections 2, 8 and 9 and commentary thereon.

As a passing remark, I note with some amusement that amendments people agree with are referred to as "we have", but when they are objected to , their ratification becomes a matter of "they have" even though the process leading to ratification is identical.

[pErvinalia]

The plan was for government, which was to be small to begin with, to be funded by taxes levied on commerce, not on individual income.

Where in that original power of the Constitution does it say "commerce"?

"The Congress shall have Power To...regulate Commerce...among the several States....
Article I, Section 8, Clause 3" Source

That says "regulate". Where does it say that regulating commerce means that taxation can't include income tax? That's some terrible logic, even by your standards, Seth.