Welcome again, voracious readers and defenders of the truth! Lately we have seen our rights and freedoms, under attack by the Obama administration. Day in and day out, we hear of the Empty Chair (Obama) stating about how he will use his pen and phone to circumvent the Congress. The fact that other presidents have done the same thing and at a more advanced rate, is immaterial here. We are looking at intent and the effect it has on your freedoms inspired by God and guaranteed in writing by the founders of our nation.We have to be careful when we look at this issue and at our freedoms. Yes they are under attack but are they truly under as viscious an assault as claimed? We MUST separate the wheat from the chaff in order to more effectively protect both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Snopes. com has listed that Obama has written more than 900 executive orders and while I vehemently disagree with everything the man has done,my research indicates that he has done far less and that the true number while less, will contain far worse results. The true number is 181 and we will delve into these over the next few weeks but this is just an example of how both sides of the political aisle can go a little nuts.
What I want to bring to your attention today is the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights. These documents are at the very center of all of our lives as citizens of this nation. What we say,what we do, when and how we do it are all done under what we perceive our freedoms to be under these remarkable instruments.The question I have been confronted with ( brought to my attention by a person close to me )is,do I really know my rights? Are they all spelled out in the Bill of Rights(BOR for the rest of this post) or are they also in the Constitution? Where do my rights begin and end? What about the duties of the government to protect and preserve those rights?
Tonight lets look at the bill of rights,the full text can be found here:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html
The BOR is actually the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The remaining amendments are not part of the BOR but they are just as important albeit less well known. Lets look at an amendment that by its very wording seems to indicate the first time Congress truly acted against the wishes of the populace.
AMENDMENT XVI
Passed by Congress July 2, 1909. Ratified February 3, 1913.
Note: Article I, section 9, of the Constitution was modified by amendment 16.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Income tax. How we have been beaten pillar to post by this one. There are few other laws made that generate so much hostility towards the government. Prior to this amendment, you kept what you earned. Period. The government used tarriffs on international commerce and excise taxes on liquor,tobacco and other items. Several senators were opposed to this amendment since they saw it not just as a way to raise money from the populace but to also control us by forcing the citizens to not only pay the tax but justify their earnings to the new IRS. They also felt that this was a backdoor way to grow the government and increase our dependence upon it.
Time has proven these senators to be correct. Look at what we are dealing with now. The IRS targeting of conservative groups and the length of time the Head of the IRS was able to ignore the federal investigation. None of this whole ball of wax happens if we do not have the IRS. We have advanced in many ways as a nation due to the taxes collected on income but this is an amendment that should have been debated by and voted on by, the people of this nation. If We The People controlled the purse strings,we would not have the MULTITRILLION dollar debt that our great great grand children are saddled with. The sad thing is that we have no redress to get rid of this abomination.We have many so called " entitlement " programs. To name just a few, we have: SNAP,TANF,Social Security,Medicaid/Care,and guaranteed subsidies to megacorporations that do not need it, also called corporate welfare. If we were to suddenly stop these programs by way of electing congress critters and senators who would vote to abolish the income tax, we would create an instant 2nd or 3rd world nation out of the US of A. This is the predicament that lax attention to the Constitution and its many amendments has gotten us to.
How do we get out of this debacle while ensuring our rights under the very special documents of this nation? The following is my OPINION but I believe that it is a very valid and widely held view. We must NOT give up on the electoral process. We must not let the situation degenerate into violence unless all other forms of redress have been exhausted.We must find a way to get rid of political parties and elect people on their merit not the mud they can sling with the aid of big parties. I sometimes wonder how many other Washingtons,Jacksons,Lincolns or Kennedys, have been missed because their party was small and under funded, especially compared to the parties of the wealthy and well connected. Public service is supposed to be a privilege not a career but that is what we have now. We have a situation where a Senator Richard Luger from Indiana has been in Washington for so long that he no longer maintains a home in his district he "represents". The politicians are beholden to the corporations and special interest groups and this was never meant to be. The Founders envisioned a government where citizens would serve for a time then go back to their civilian careers as lawyers,doctors,farmers and sailors.
How does all this play into the income tax amendment? With this amendment,the government was able to begin paying exorbiant salaries to the representatives that were elected.Once there, the special interests have made it too easy for the peoples representatives to stay there and collect that salary and vote themselves raises even during periods of recession.
We must get back to a fundamental form of government. We have to throw off the blinders that trhe Republicrats and Demicans have put on us. I urge, no, i implore all of you to find candidates who are not affiliated with these parties. Find men and women of good character who have a true,patriotic devotion to the people of this nation. People who will vote to slowly overturn the income tax,tighten the purse strings and begin to require that the government become accountable to the people again, not the other way around. Vote local people with real jobs into positions in the government and require, with term limits, that no person shall make a career out of bending the words of the Constitution into a way to make a profit.
As the weeks go by I will be posting each article and subsection of the Constitution. I will be welcoming of all polite and well reasoned debate on each and every one. Feel free to post links in the comments in order to prove /disprove a point. All I ask is that decorum be maintained. I know that this nation was not founded upon polite debate but we can strive to be nice while disagreeing.
God Bless you all and God Bless America.
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