Guest Post by Eric Peters
Why do we have unlimited government? Probably because the document that was supposed to limit it has done the opposite.
People were told the federal government could do no more than was specified – as in clearly described – by the Constitution, which supposedly enumerated its powers and left those not specifically enumerated to the states and the people (via the 10th Amendment to the Constitution).
So why does the federal government have power over essentially everything? Including over such things as how much gas the vehicles we’re allowed to buy may use? The answer is because the Constitution endowed the federal government with unlimited powers, without enumerating them.
But how did it do that?
Via the wording of the Constitution. Including words with open-ended definitions designed to be amendable to parsing in such a way as to countenance any power those in power (or grasping after it) wished to assert.
Wording such as “general welfare” – and “necessary and proper.” By incorporating such words – which can mean almost anything as they are matters of opinion – the lawyers who wrote the Constitution assured the federal government would assume unlimited power. It took time, of course. But that was always the point as it was necessary to engineer a gradual increase in the power wielded by the federal government for the same reason it is necessary to place the frog in a pot of cool water before gradually turning up the heat.
At the time of the Constitution’s ratification in 1787, the war for independence from the unlimited power of the British government was still fresh in people’s minds. They had to be told they were getting a limited government – one that could not go beyond the specified powers enumerated by the Constitution. Federalists – the lawyers who wrote and backed ratification of the document they put together in secret – had to author a cavalcade of anonymous articles defending what they wrote and assuring the people (non-lawyers, mostly) who read it that the Constitution would limit the powers of the new federal government.
These were the Federalist Papers.
They were very well-written, too. If you read them – as a non-lawyer – you might have believed the arguments put forth that the proposed Constitution (which was being pushed to replace the Articles of Confederation because these actually did limit the powers of the government) that would empower the federal government would limit it.
Lawyers aren’t necessarily smarter than non-lawyers.
But they are extremely careful and deliberate about the words they choose to use. There is always a purpose – and a meaning. A non-lawyer reading about the “general welfare” and “necessary and proper” would likely take these words at face value – as harmless generalities. Yes, of course! We’re all for the general welfare. By which they thought was meant a kind of “good” in the way Jefferson meant when he spoke of “happiness” being good.
The lawyers who chose to embed general welfare in the Constitution knew exactly what they really meant.
Being lawyers, they knew such words could be used to justify exactly what later was done. Alexander Hamilton was one of the first to use what had been made ready, asserting “implied” powers in the Constitution – emanating from the injunction to promote the “general welfare” (and to accomplish what those who wanted more power deemed “necessary and proper”).
If words with open-ended meanings had been expunged from the Constitution, we might have had limited government. Of course, that was not the point of the Constitution – which was to address the problem (from the vantage point of those who wanted more power) of the Articles, which did exactly what the Federalist Papers assured the boobs the Constitution would prevent the newly empowered federal government from doing.
The tactic is brilliant in its oiliness – most especially because those being oiled do not realize they are being greased. Even now – when it is a self-evident truth that the effective power of the federal government is unlimited – many still like to pretend we live in a country governed by a Constitution that limits the power of the federal government.
Until it decides otherwise.
And when it does, how can anyone object? It is all being done for the sake of the “general welfare” and because it is “necessary and proper” and most of all, because that’s what was ratified – which is to say, that’s what we (supposedly) consented to.
Because the tactic is brilliant, it is emulated.
Most recently to further increase the power of unlimited government, via the use of two more words specifically meant to do just that:
“Climate change.”
Is it not as oilily magnificent as “general welfare?
Who can say what “change” is? Or – rather – anyone can say anything they like constitutes “change,” because it’s true. The “climate” does “change.” It does not matter that it lacks specificity. Indeed, that is the whole point of using exactly those words. Exactly the same as the use of words such as “general welfare” and “necessary and proper.”
You can use them to get anything you want.
And that’s exactly what those who use them are getting – because not enough of us yet understand them.
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Pushing obviously nonsense ideas like “climate change” serves two purposes.
First to allow any idea they present to be touted as feasible, effective and just; since the problem is nonsense, so the solution may be nonsensical as well.
Second, to shame those who know it is nonsense and still are powerless to stop it. Just like the border, what are regular people able to do about any of it? The rampant human trafficking, rape, massive drug smuggling, not to mention the endless flow of gimmedats.
Yuri Bezmenov was right.
I think much of what leftist governments do, that is clearly against the will of the majority, is intended to wear them down into a sense of helplessness and despondency. People who feel powerful won’t put up with bs. One of the traits of power seekers is that they can feel just as powerful by taking power away from those surrounding them as in working to gain more themselves. Think how good it must make a powerist feel to be surrounded by people who shuffle along, hopeless and defeated, with their heads down looking at the ground. Leftists also like having homeless, drug addled, impoverished people in their big blue cities. Seeing those in misery, with broken dreams, bodies and minds makes them feel so much more powerful (perhaps until they find human waste on their front porch and the the Gucci’s store closed after being pillaged for the second or third time).
Govenment’s got what people crave, it’s got electrolytes.
Go away! I’m batin’!
🤣 EVEN brandon knows. The “Usual & Customary” is 10%.
King George III & Cronies apparently:
A) got caught stealing more than…
B) asking for more than…
Been an ‘Inside Job’ EVER SINCE.
” Alexander Hamilton was born on the British island of Nevis, in the West Indies, on January 11, 1755. His mother, Rachel Levine…”
Same. As it EVER was
Whatever the failings on his part, Aaron Burr did humanity a great service when he faced Alexander Hamilton on the field of honor and lit his ass up.
Agreed. However, more like socio-psychopaths on parade in u.s. history, than ‘HONOR’ anything.
Any purportedly “limited” government that contains in its constitution the open-ended phrase, “necessary and proper,” is a hustle.
It is real simple. The government has as much power as it can usurp. The only thing mandating that the government comply with the Constitution, was the threat of the public rising up and hanging the politicians if they did not.
Over the years, the government came to understand the public were cowards and would not rise up under any circumstances because they they lacked the courage of the people that actually formed this country though rebellion.
By imposing draconian penalties upon anyone who dares to stand up, like the Jan 6 protesters, they ensure that the 99.9% of the cowards will never challenge them in any way…
Wrong, Jdog. History goes back further than that. The generation who rose up and declared that their states were withdrawing from the Constitution and that they were forming a confederated republic instead had more courage than the one that mostly sat out the “revolution” and allowed the constitution to be imposed upon them.
The example made of those people has lasted ever since as a cautionary reminder. There’s no cowardice involved.