Of course we “know” that we must do something to solve the “Climate Change” “crisis.” Of course we “know” that we can’t cut federal spending, because we must “take care of” those who “can’t” take care of themselves. Of course we can’t “profile” potential terrorists at airports or potential illegals (as well as terrorists) at our borders, because we “know” that profiling is “wrong”!
The truth is that one can draw totally logical conclusions from patently false premises. So those who seek to foist their beliefs on the rest of society, haughtily pretend that their positions are self-evident – when, in fact, they are often (as in the examples just given) anything but! As was the case with the ‘king’s clothing’ (or lack thereof), the alleged “facts” are often complete falsehoods!
Yes, if there were such a thing as a “Climate Change” “crisis,” we would need to do something about it!
Of course some of us believe that we should do what we can to help those in need…if, as individuals, we so choose! It is up to each individual, however, to decide whether or not he will - and not the government, which derives its only legitimate powers from the people themselves, as prescribed – or proscribed! - by the Constitution.
Really? Yes, really!
The “General Welfare” clause – according to both Madison and Jefferson (as pointed out in Chapter Two - The Constitution and the Rule of Law) does not give the government the right to forcibly take our money and give it to others whom it decides are more deserving than we!
“They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare…. [G]iving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they are the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.”
Thomas Jefferson – to William Branch Giles, 1825. ME 16:147 (http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1020.htm)
“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.”
James Madison, Letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792 Madison 1865, I, page 546. (http://govote.avoiceofthepeople.com/quoting-the-founders/)
The following quotes were not included in the book, but make the position of these two key founders (the authors of the Declaration and the Constitution respectively) crystal clear:
Thomas Jefferson 1815 – “I hope our courts will never countenance the sweeping pretensions which have been set up under the words ‘general defence and public welfare.’ These words only express the motives which induced the Convention to give to the ordinary legislature certain specified powers which they enumerate, and which they thought might be trusted to the ordinary legislature, and not to give them the unspecified also; or why any specifications? They could not be so awkward in language as to mean, as we say, ‘all and some.’ And should this construction prevail, all limits to the federal government are done away.”
Thomas Jefferson 1817 – “Our tenet ever was…that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money.”
Chief Justice John Marshall 1819 – “The federal government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers. The principle, that it can exercise only the powers granted to it….is now universally admitted.”
James Madison 1831 – “With respect to the words ‘general welfare’, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by it creators.”
And what of “profiling” as morally – and apparently universally wrong? This entire notion stems from the idea that if, in an earlier era, the police were to spot someone of a different race, in a part of town where they would not have lived at the time, and late at night, for example, they (the police) would have “profiled” them as a potential threat to the particular community, based primarily (if not solely) on their race.
The police would at the time have most likely been “white,” so their “profiling” would have been automatically (and, no doubt accurately in some cases) considered “racist” and unfair. While I have not looked at the case law surrounding this issue, there were no doubt court decisions that resulted in the drawing of such conclusions, on the part of the police, being considered “illegal.” On the surface, this all seems reasonable.
To conclude, however, that under no circumstances would “profiling” of race (or now, of anything) be “allowed” or “legal,” is pathetically illogical. In brief, every hiring decision at every company – including the government, at every level (or, on a related note, Janet Nopolitano’s memo profiling 2nd Amendment advocates, and ex-military personnel as potential national security theats ) – is based on a profile of a certain type of candidate. (This will not typically be based on race, but it is profiling nonetheless.) This is done without exception. So to suggest that “profiling” is mortifyingly immoral – and that “everyone” knows it – is absolutely absurd!
The most obvious example of this absurdity is the entire issue of the illegal immigration controversy that has errupted on our Southern border – in my own state of Arizona. Nowhere in AZ Senate Bill 1070 does it mention the race of any prospective illegal immigrant, and yet the hispanic activists and their proponents on the Left, vying for citizenship (amnesty) for illegals, have with feigned outrage condemned the State of Arizona as bigoted and ”hateful” towards hispanics!
How can this be…other than for the fact that those decrying the “profiling” have drawn the only logical conclusion, obvious to all observers: that those suspected of being illegal will most likely be hispanic! Why? Because – as everyone knows - they make up 95-99% of those coming across the Mexican border illegally. In other words, those condemning the “profiling” could only conclude that the state of Arizona was targeting hispanics by making the obviously common sense assumption that hispanics (Mexican nationals) were the most likely ones crossing the border into the US from Mexico illegally (Ya’ think?) - given, once more, that nowhere in the bill is race mentioned (except, of course, to say that “racial profiling” is strictly prohibited!).
So, as I have stated elsewhere, when considering such issues, I refuse to “check my brain at the door.” I also refuse to pretend that what “everyone” “knows” is, in fact, either obvious or true – when I see clearly that it is not! I am not the least bit concerned about what the elite media might say, nor do I care if everyone else in the room is marveling at the king’s avant-garde attire! All that any of us should care about is what is really true – regardless of what anyone else thinks…or even “knows!”
