Why are the Bill of Rights failing?

Walter Williams of the Capitalism Magazine talks about the reasons why the founding fathers included the Bill of Rights along with the Constitution. Wasn't the Constitution enough to guarantee us those rights? Why did they feel the need to explicitly state those rights and was it enough to protect those right? Unfortunately in this current political scenario, even those explicitly stated rights have failed to stand up to the assault of the American politicians.

In fact the rot had started a long time ago and one of the first and most important contributors to start it was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. of the Supreme Court. In his article in The Objectivist Standard "Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution" Thomas A. Bowden mentions the April 17, 1905, dissenting opinion of the Justice Holmes in the case of Lochner v. New York. The New York law setting maximum working hours for bakers was struck down by the majority but what really made this a landmark case was Holmes dissenting opinion.

The majority interpreted the Constitution as if it embodies a principled commitment to protecting individual liberty. But no such foundational principle exists, Holmes asserted, and the sooner judges realize they are expounding an empty Constitution—empty of any underlying view on the relationship of the individual to the state—the sooner they will step aside and allow legislators to decide the fate of individuals such as Joseph Lochner.

Health has been offered as one of the prime reason for violating the individual rights, like smoking in recent times. Its origins lie in the last century which can be seen in this case when the first New York appellate court held public’s power to promote health more important than the parties’ right to make employment contracts. The court held that the state held the "police power" as a part of its sovereignty to regulate for health reasons (even though there is no mention of police power in the Constitution.) It failed to define this power and pronounced it as proper for the purpose of the public benefit.

The New York court at least used the excuse of health as the reason for violating the individual rights, Justice Holmes's in his dissenting view didn't bother to use any excuses. He simple stated the Constitution placed no limits on this police power of the state and made no reference to protecting the individual rights. What was the basis for this argument which challenged the view of Constitution as placing limits on the power of the government? Amazingly it was supported by Justice Holmes's examples of other violations which routinely took place even in those days to further violate the individual rights.

How could liberty of contract possibly be a principle capable of yielding a decision in Lochner’s case, Holmes asked, when violations of such liberty are routinely permitted by law? “The liberty of the citizen to do as he likes so long as he does not interfere with the liberty of others to do the same,” Holmes observed, “is interfered with by school laws, by the Post Office, by every state or municipal institution which takes his money for purposes thought desirable, whether he likes it or not.” For good measure, he cited several cases in which the Court had recently approved laws prohibiting lotteries, doing business on Sunday, engaging in usury, selling stock on margin, and employing underground miners more than eight hours a day—each law a clear interference with contractual liberty.

That wasn't true, of course.

Holmes had to evade large swaths of evidence tending to show that the Constitution indeed embodies a substantive commitment to individual liberty. In the Declaration of Independence, the Founders clearly stated their intent to create a government with a single purpose—the protection of individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Consistent with the Constitution’s Preamble, which declares a desire to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” every clause in the Bill of Rights imposes a strict limit on government’s power over individual liberty and property.

Holmes's dissenting view had a profound effect. His denial of Constitution as a protector of liberty was eagerly grasped by those who would have settled for any excuse to deny it.
Paul Rahe: Obama's tyrannical ambition:

Back in 1912, when Woodrow Wilson successfully ran for the presidency, he told his compatriots, "We are in the presence of a new organization of society." Our time marks "a new social stage, a new era of human relationships, a new stagesetting for the drama of life," and "the old political formulas do not fit the present problems: they read now like documents taken out of a forgotten age." What Thomas Jefferson once taught is now, he insisted, quite out of date.

Holmes's dissenting view become his most damaging and lasting legacy. According to Bowden, Ayn Rand once observed that Justice Holmes “has had the worst philosophical influence on American law.”

In his bleak universe, there exists no principled limit on government power, no permanent institutional barrier between ourselves and tyranny—and the government can dispose of the individual as it pleases, as long as procedural niceties are observed. This pernicious Holmesian influence is reflected in the declining stature of America’s judiciary

Today the rot has reached the level where the debate between the main parties is about the extent that the government violate the individual rights and not whether the Constitution allows it to or not. Thomas Bowden does a masterful job of refuting Holmes's case for the "empty Constitution" and shows it to be full of content which without a doubt protects the individual rights. Read the full article.

Obama and Bernard Madoff

Most Americans have still not grasped the magnitude and the far-reaching effects of the national debt. Edward Cline makes an excellent attempt.

To grasp the magnitude of the national debt Obama (and his Republican predecessor) has been ringing up, a comparison should help illustrate the task. Bernard Madoff’s robbery and defrauding investors of some $50 billion can be represented by the diameter of the solar system. The federal government, using the same scamming tactics, is amassing a debt about the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy. Madoff’s scheme can be measured in millions of miles. The federal government's, in almost limitless parsecs. That measurement ought to suffice to dramatize the scale of the hole he is deliberately digging for the country in his role as Community-Organizer-in-Chief.

Where is all the money going to come from? From the productive Americans, who are going to work for Obama whether they like it or not. He has short-sold the American future.

That growing, astronomical debt, however, will serve to shrink the productive sector and make it less productive in exponential leaps and bounds -- off a cliff. It must inexorably reach a point that the productive sector can no longer sustain the debt it is expected to pay. Then we will have reached the economic status of, say, Zimbabwe.

Ed talks about the outraged cry of indignation by the media over Madoff's scam and yet they refuse to apply the same standards to the Obama administration. Why should they? They have become willing accomplices in this scam of horrendous proportions. It will deal a crushing blow to the American way of life - which is - you work hard, be honest, and you will make it big. Now people will work hard to pay-off Obama's debts.

What clashes with the news media coverage of Madoff’s trial, conviction and sentencing for his crime is the studied obtuseness of the news media for the same crime being committed by the government. Madoff, you see, was “greedy” or “avaricious,” and that, according to the morality of altruism and selflessness, is immoral and antisocial. The government, however, is committing the same crime, but that is in order to “do good.” So its orgy of debt-creation, its extortionate policies of roping all Americans into a “dog-eat-dog” welfare state, and its targeting the most productive and the wealthiest in society for special punishment, are all acceptable and laudable.

Even though the news media has knowledge of this multi-trillion dollar scam, that knowledge elicits not an iota of outrage among the photogenic news anchors and highly paid print pundits. No respectable TV or print journalist even thinks of the scam in terms of a continuing and expanding bilking of Americans from their wealth, investments and taxes.

Ed goes on to examine and explain the meaning of Obama's greeting on 4th of July. It is a revealing commentary on the thought process and ideology of a man who will go down in history as the most anti-American president ever. Recent polls have put Obama's popularity at 50%. So half of all Americans are in a state of denial and it's not clear whether the other half fully realises the gravity of the situation. There are some positive signs - the tea parties being organized across America and I take solace in knowing what Samuel Adams said:

"It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."

Lincoln, Churchill and Obama

This recent post by Edward Cline "Obama contra Churchill" talks about President Barack Obama's removal from the White House Oval Office of the bust of Winston Churchill and replacing it in that same spot with one of Abraham Lincoln. Ed comments about Obama's misplaced preference. There are some very revealing passages from one of the Lincoln's speech (quite an eye-opener) and this is what Ed has to say:

Lincoln’s chief motivation for prosecuting the Civil War was to preserve the Union, not to free the slaves. The obvious evil of slavery is not the subject here. We have little to thank Lincoln for. He endorsed the country’s first income tax and the first military draft, and suspended habeas corpus. These were precedent-setting exercises of government power to confiscate wealth and life, in pursuit of a “noble cause,” emulated later by his successors in office and certainly countenanced by Congress in pursuit of causes arguably less “noble.”

Ed also quotes from Churchill's speeches where England's greatest Prime Minister displayed a remarkable understanding of the psyche of the fascist dictators.

Cannons, airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armory of potent and indestructible knowledge?

Ed discusses the Churchill's comments on Lenin and his hatred of private property and the destruction of Russian currency by printing it non-stop. He talks of Obama treading the same path and the damage he and Democrats are likely to inflict even if they are voted out of power. Ed Cline who is the author of the acclaimed Sparrowhawk series of books of historical fiction has written a great post (the best I have read in recent times). Read the whole article here.

What makes America great

A great post by LB from 3 Ring Binder about the Pledge of Allegiance. It is a reminder to all Americans and people like me sharing the same values of what LB states so well:

As an adult, I recognize the flag to be a symbol of what makes America great. It represents the tremendous efforts and outstanding achievement of our Founding Fathers in creating this nation based not on bloodlines, money, religion, or might, but on individual rights.

Initiation of force

Andy, my favourite Charlotte Capitalist talks about his call with "Pete Kaliner Last Night" radio show. He raise the point of lack of moral condemnation of the Flint, Michigan policies to buy, tear down and"green over" private property. Even the host is taken aback at this point as Andy is the only person he had heard discussing the moral implications of the issue. It is a sign of the times that violation of property rights in America today is looked at only as a marginal technical issue and not in terms of violation of moral and constitutional rights.

The misuse of force in this context is treated very casually comparing it to pruning of bushes. I call it pruning of individual rights. As Andy says:

And as I noted in my call, as humans when we introduce force into our relationships, we have exceeded the moral boundary of our nature. Human relationships, in order to be moral, must be based upon reason, discussion, persuasion. The only proper use of force is in defense against the initiation of force.

Reason, discussion, persuasion - the key ingredients of a rational, civilized society. Check the post and listen to Andy patiently talk to the radio host and pointing to the principles involved with clarity.

What about albino hunchback lesbians of Vietnamese descent:
"The nomination of a “wise Latina woman” to the Supreme Court of the United States has signaled the Obama administration’s intent to scrap the Constitution. Whereas SOTUS jurists are charged with interpreting the constitutionality of laws and court rulings, the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Court is the opening salvo in Mr. Obama’s attempt to dismantle the Constitution in favor of a Court that looks upon each individual ruling in light of the appellant’s personal background and life history."