We all remember the 1938 movie “Robin Hood†staring Errol Flynn. As the story goes, Robin Hood returned from a foreign war to find England under the rule of an evil king who stole all the surfs property; he was the brother of the true King. The true King was still en route to England after leading his Knights to victory. Robin Hood planned to steal back from the evil king and his titled friends, and give the proceeds back to the citizens, who had been impoverished, persecuted, and stripped of all their property.
In the movie, Robin Hood was the hero. The rightful King was restored to his throne, and the bad-guys were killed, imprisoned, or chased out of England. For his reward, Robin Hood married the pretty lady. And they lived happily ever after, or so the story goes.
In the 20th century, we’ve had similar scenarios play out for real. Numerous countries have, through gradual or violent change, altered their government structure to some version of socialism. Whether the transition was peaceful or violent, the result was eventually a dictatorship. And, in any sequence of dictators, eventually there will be an evil tyrant. The freedom to pursue your own dreams and goals will be replaced by government edicts. This is exactly what Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union), Adolph Hitler (Germany), Mao Zedong (China), Kim Jong-un (North Korea), Fidel Castro (Cuba), Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Nicolás Maduro (Venezuela), Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines), and other assorted, like-minded people did to their countries.
Of all of these countries, only the Philippines was able to chase out their violent dictator, Marcos. While Marcos ordered his military to disperse the protesters, the largely Christian Army refused, and within days, Marcos flew out to a safe sanctuary in Hawaii. It appears that President Reagan encouraged him to leave quietly and without inflicting violence on the Philippine people.
You can call them socialist, communist, leftist, progressive or whatever, but nothing really changes. It’s just like finding a “meadow muffin†in a field and arguing about which type of frosting to apply. Underneath it all, no matter what it’s called, you still have nothing but a pile of s**t!
WHY DID I MENTION ROBIN HOOD IN THE TITLE?
Due to a long series of unconstitutional actions by all three branches of our government, we are now in a situation where our great country may be flushed down a socialist toilet. Democrats in particular are doing everything they can to eliminate every remaining conservative element in our Country. Lies, intimidation, obstruction of justice, sabotage of ongoing programs, absurd campaign promises – they are saying and doing everything they can to prevent the re-election of President Trump and any other conservatives.
We are well into the current campaign season, and once again there’s no shortage of democratic candidates who are trying to buy votes by promising all manner of “free stuff†in one form or another. Where does the money come from? It’s collected as taxes from successful individuals and businesses. Let’s see how it’s done.
The Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, is called the “enumerated powers.†It is a list of 18 clauses, each of which grants to the Federal Government a specific authority. The Founders major goal was to prevent the Federal Government from having more authority than is required to perform functions that can and should ONLY be performed at the Federal level; for all other matters, the 10th Amendment to the Constitution states:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.â€
That seems to be a perfectly clear statement. So, by what authority is the Federal Government involved with schools, health care, job training, unemployment subsidies, and a handful of other items not mentioned in the 18 clauses of Article 1, Section 8?
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS NO SUCH AUTHORITY
What over 200 years of our democratic republic has resulted in is a succession of legislative programs that gradually expand the meaning of Clause 1 in the list of enumerated powers. Clause 1 reads:
“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.â€
James Madison, honored as the Father of the Constitution, interprets the phrase “…general Welfare…†as a simple announcement of what Section 8 contains. He discusses this in great length in Federalist Paper #41:
“For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter. The objection here is the more extraordinary, as it appears that the language used by the convention is a copy from the articles of Confederation. The objects of the Union among the States, as described in article third, are “their common defense, security of their liberties, and mutual and general welfare. ” The terms of article eight are still more identical: “All charges of war and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury,” etc.
In summary, he, and others, consider Clause 1 as a simple introduction that describes what is contained in the Section. Others, such as Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and other more recent Presidents have interpreted the words “general welfare†as a license to do whatever they want. Add to that members of Congress, all motivated to “bring home the baconâ€, have used this interpretation to justify all manner of legislation. Put 5 liberals on the Supreme Court, and you have what is needed to do great damage to our Country.
A look at the Partial Cost of US Socialism
Let’s turn the clock back to January 8, 1964 and Lyndon Johnson’s State of the Union speech. This was his first such speech, having replaced President Kennedy on October 8 of the previous year. The big announcement of the speech was Johnson’s http://neilfeather.com/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/\"http:\/\/neilfeather.com\/fwp_portfolio\/1223\/\" War On Poverty. He had a plan that would wipe out poverty, or so he said.
Since then, we’ve had a deluge of programs that take – I prefer the word “steal†– what productive individuals and successful businesses have produced, and passed it on to countless recipients:
- the least productive individuals express their gratitude by voting for such legislators,
- unions that force members to pay dues, and then make campaign donations and encourage members to vote for the legislators,
- businesses that receive grants for projects and gratefully make large campaign donations,
- schools that fill students’ heads with socialist sewage to make more socialist believers.
None of the above activities are authorized by the enumerated powers. As we all know, one of the main functions of the Constitution is the separation of responsibilities between the Federal government, and the states and citizens. This is the whole, explicit objective that the founders wanted to achieve. Congress should never have passed the bills that authorize these programs; if passed, the Presidents should have vetoed the legislation, and if overridden, the Supreme Court should have declared the legislation unconstitutional. Alas, that is only possible in a perfect world.
We have now spent $22,000,000,000,000 – that’s 22 Trillion Dollars – over 55 years in the Okinawa War on Poverty. By contrast, with help from our allies, we won WWII in 4 years and spent only $341,000,000,000 – that’s 341 Billion Dollars – not only winning the war, but adding some very important and significant technology to our National Capability. Over 64 times more money was spent on the War on Poverty! Let’s see how well this major Democratic program achieved its stated goals.
President Johnson’s “War on Poverty†started with 30 million citizens, and 13% of the population, living at or below the poverty level. In 2013, after spending 22 trillion dollars, there were 46 million citizens, 13% of the population, living at or below the poverty level. What we learned from this is that
13% of our population are perfectly happy
To let others to do all the work!
The two charts below show this very clearly. While the percentage of the population has hovered around 13% since the end of the Eisenhower administration, the population has increased. And 13% of a bigger number is itself a bigger number!
When any politician of any kind promises you something you haven’t worked for and earned,
RUN, DON’T WALK TO VOTE FOR THE OTHER CANDIDATE!
What the chart above shows is that the percentage of our population at or below the poverty level (red line) has varied between 11% and 15%. The major downward change began late in the Eisenhower administration and reached a fairly flat level of 13% during the Kennedy/Johnson administration and thereafter.
We give the “dependent class†of people free or heavily subsidized food, clothing, shelter, utilities, education, cell phones, cable or satellite TV, job training, health care, and still, they have only 2 reasons for getting into motion: 1) to cash checks with money stolen from our country’s most productive people, 2) vote for politicians who promise to give them even more than they are currently receiving.
There are people who fall on hard times, due to job loss, health, or whatever, and they, too, can and are helped by these programs. Most of us know such people or families, or may even have been in such a family or situation. They use these programs as intended, as a vehicle for getting back on their feet and going again. My tirade above is not intended to apply to them; they participated for survival, and moved on as quickly as possible.
So, how did we get into this situation? Congress has legislated criminally high tax rates applied to successful people and businesses, and, through a wide variety of programs, passed the money out to buy votes and generate campaign contributions. The politicians who do this say they are only being “fair.†The word “fair†appears nowhere in the Constitution. What is truly “fair†is to let each person determine for him or her self.
what sort of life they and their families want. That’s what freedom is all about. We don’t need or want some self-appointed dictator or “arbiter of outcomes†telling us how we should live. And, as determined by the constitution, the Federal Government has no Constitutional authorization to involve itself, in any way, in determining dealing with such matters. Per the 10th Amendment, the States and the citizens thereof are required to handle the matter of people who have chosen to live at the bottom of our social and economic structure.
Two centuries of Congresses, unrestrained due to unconstitutional legislation, administration request and approval, and Supreme Court decisions, have implemented programs that not only jeopardize our financial stability, but have been exploited to establish a “dependent class†of citizens who depend on ridiculous, mostly unfulfilled promises and mindlessly vote for socialist senators and representatives. Our major cities are Democratic bastions of failed schools, failed police departments, failed justice systems, failed services, no jobs, and no expectation for a better future. President Reagan told us that
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
Our dependent class of voters in just 5 major cities can effectively cancel all of the other voters in the country. If it wasn’t for the Electoral College, we would already have completed the transition from the most free country in the world, into just another socialist privy pit. This also explains why the Democrats are working to greatly increase the number of dependent citizens, and warehouse them in the big cities.
Fortunately, we have the Electoral College to prevent such a strategy from totally destroying our electoral process. Note that, after every recent presidential election, the socialists have screamed to abolish the Electoral College. Now you know why, and you know that their goal is to put our country into the hands their of their paid backers, the dependent class of voters.
In subsequent essays, I will set forth the basic steps that need to be taken to replace the socialist movement with what our Founders have given us through the Constitution:
