California lawmakers are ignoring the historic recall last week of two Colorado state legislators who backed new gun restrictions. And they are ignoring the Bill of Rights.

Second Amendment

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” says the Second Amendment within the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

The gun control debate waged during the last eight months in the California Legislature has been an attack on the Second Amendment.

Democratic lawmakers claim the legislation is needed to address acts of gun violence. But who are they trying to control?

Increase in violence, or media hype?

Never letting a good crisis go to waste, California’s Democratic lawmakers reacted en masse to the Dec. 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults. By January 2013, the Legislature introduced 40 gun control bills.

But as I wrote in “Gun control laws would not make us safer,” the worst deadly massacre at a school in American history was not the Newtown shootings, or the Columbine shootings.

The worst school massacre took place before there was even a television in every home — in Michigan in 1927 when a school board official, enraged at a tax increase to fund school construction, planted explosives in Bath Township Elementary school, then blew the school up.  When crowds rushed in to rescue the children, he drove up his shrapnel-filled car and detonated it, killing more people, including himself.

While the media and politicians respond purely emotionally and opportunistically, they have ignored that these incidents are not new, and are certainly not indigenous to America.

Despite media claims that these types of mass killings are on the rise, criminologist James Allen Fox, of Boston Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, said “the random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest,” Fox said. “Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer.”

Experts who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common or on the rise.

In April, the U.S. Senate killed measures to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and require background checks during the purchase of guns at gun shows or on the Internet.

Study after study has shown that between 6 percent and 10 percent or criminals are responsible for up to 70 percent of all crimes committed.

Interpretation of the second amendment varies between those who believe it protects citizens’ rights to own guns, and those who do not.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protected the individual right to keep suitable firearms at home for self-defense. This case overturned Washington D.C.’s ban on handguns.

Naming names

Listed are the lawmakers who authored the gun control bills — all Democrats:

AB 48 by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, bans ammunition and gun parts. Skinner infamously said, “bullets are the very thing making guns deadly.”

Also by Skinner, AB 1131, increases prohibition periods after credible threat of violence from 6 months to 5 years.

AB 170 by Assemblyman Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, prohibits anyone who owns a business from getting assault weapon permits.

SB 374 by Sen. Pres. Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, bans detachable magazines in rifles.

SB 567 by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, redefines a shotguns to delete the requirement that it be fired from the shoulder.

SB 755 by Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, expands list of crimes resulting in ban from owning firearms.

AB 180 by Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, allows the city of Oakland to pass gun control regulations.

AB 500 by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, allows the Department of Justice additional time to run background checks on gun purchasers.

SB 299 by Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, requires gun owners to report all lost or stolen firearms.

SB 683 by Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, requires gun buyers to take a firearm safety class to earn a “safety certificate.”

SB 475 by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, bans gun shows at the Cow Palace by requiring approval from San Mateo and San Francisco counties.

AB 169 by Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, limits transfer of “unsafe” handguns — any pistol, revolver, or other firearm capable of being concealed, which has not been vetted by the California Department of Justice.

AB 711 by Assemblyman Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, bans the use of lead ammunition.

AB 231 by Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, adds criminal liability for firearm storage that endangers a child.

Oppressive CA government

An oppressive government is what led to the Bill of Rights. The Founding Fathers wrote into the Bill of Rights that rights are human rights endowed with by our Creator, and not rights granted by the government. The argument over the Second Amendment is not just about preserving the right to keep and bear arms; this fight is about making sure the government cannot take away citizens’ rights.

If the government can grant rights, it can also take them away. That’s what makes the liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights “unalienable.”

“All power is inherent in the people; . . . it is their right and duty to be at all times armed,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, shortly before his death.

George Mason, a delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention, believed the relationship between arms and liberty was crucial, and said history had demonstrated that the most effective way to enslave a people is to disarm them.

SACRAMENTO — Two Republican members of the California Assembly recently authored resolutions encouraging Congress to halt the eavesdropping on the America people by the National Security Agency. Both resolutions were smacked down Tuesday in the Assembly Judiciary Committee, whose hearings I attended. The Democratic majority refused even to vote on the resolutions, claiming more information was needed.

“What this says is, ‘We don’t want to error on the side of liberty,’” Assemblyman Tim Donnelly told me. A Republican from Twin Peaks, he authored Assembly Joint Resolution 27 to encourage Congress to pass and President Obama to sign into law the “Limiting Internet and Blanket Electronic Review of Telecommunications and Email Act.”

AJR 26, by Assemblyman Travis Allen of Huntington Beach, calls on the president and Congress to make the protection of civil liberties and national security equal priorities, and to immediately discontinue any practices contrary to the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. That amendment allows searches only with a warrant from a judge.

Leading up to the hearing, both bills had bipartisan support, the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a Democratic co-author.

However, Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, chairman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, removed his name as co-author of Donnelly’s bill, and strongly recommended to committee members they not vote on the resolution.

Donnelly attributed Wieckowski’s change of heart to a case of partisan politics, specifically on orders “from the powers that be.” According to Donnelly, Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, was not happy Wieckowski had his name on a Donnelly bill.

I called Wieckowski, who is an attorney, to discuss why he removed his name from AJR 27, but did not receive a return call.

What’s this all about?

In June, Edward Snowden, an American computer specialist who worked as a contractor for the NSA, admitted leaking secrets about classified U.S. surveillance programs, along with documents detailing U.S. telephone and Internet surveillance efforts, to the Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper. When the news broke, Americans were in an uproar. Charges of spying on Americans were levied against the NSA by politicians and civil libertarian groups.

The NSA had obtained direct access to Google, Facebook, Apple and other U.S. Internet companies, according to the documents first provided by Snowden to the Guardian.

The NSA’s extensive access was originally enabled by changes to U.S. surveillance law introduced under President George W. Bush following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. And NSA access was renewed under President Obama in December 2012.

The Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment guarantees, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Donnelly called the NSA spying practice “abusive” and “tyrannical,” and said his LIBERT-E Act had bipartisan support from hundreds of groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Republican Liberty Caucus.

NSA audit confirms excessive snooping

There have been countless news stories about the NSA collecting and storing Americans’ Internet, phone and financial data, while claiming the information is needed to prevent or stop terrorist activity.

A May 2012 audit of the NSA found 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications, the Washington Post recently reported. “The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.”

Allen said, “This revelation that the NSA has been collecting these records from unaware American citizens and ignoring court orders to cease their activities is raising questions and distrust amongst the public regarding the constitutionality of the government’s actions. AJR 26 appeals to the federal government to equally prioritize the need for national security against terrorist threats and the protection of every American citizen’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches.”

What’s a government to do?

According to several news stories, more than one billion records a day are collected by the NSA in the name of “national security.” The excuse is that all that data is needed to preempt terrorist attacks.

Yet with all the federal muscle and high-tech surveillance available to the NSA, it was a citizen who found the Boston Bombers after three people were killed, and more than 260 were injured.

Both Allen and Donnelly reiterated to the Judiciary Committee they understand the federal government is responsible for protecting Americans from threats to national security, but must balance that with also protecting citizens’ constitutional rights to privacy.

“Our country was founded on the principles of protecting individual liberties and the inalienable rights of the people from the infringement of overreaching governments,” Allen said at the hearing. “Government should be transparent, strive for the highest level of integrity, and be held accountable to the public.”

But Assemblyman Ed Chau, D-Monterey Park, said there just wasn’t sufficient information for him to be able to make a decision. Other Democratic members of the Assembly Judiciary Committee echoed this sentiment, including Assembly members Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrence and Wieckowski — all attorneys.

By John Seiler

Some good news: Nullification is spreading. AP reports:

“JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Imagine the scenario: A federal agent attempts to arrest someone for illegally selling a machine gun. Instead, the federal agent is arrested – charged in a state court with the crime of enforcing federal gun laws.

“Farfetched? Not as much as you might think.

“The scenario would become conceivable if legislation passed by Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature is signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon.

“The Missouri legislation is perhaps the most extreme example of a states’ rights movement that has been spreading across the nation. States are increasingly adopting laws that purport to nullify federal laws – setting up intentional legal conflicts, directing local police not to enforce federal laws and, in rare cases, even threatening criminal charges for federal agents who dare to do their jobs.

“An Associated Press analysis found that about four-fifths of the states now have enacted local laws that directly reject or ignore federal laws on marijuana use, gun control, health insurance requirements and identification standards for driver’s licenses. The recent trend began in Democratic leaning California with a 1996 medical marijuana law and has proliferated lately in Republican strongholds like Kansas, where Gov. Sam Brownback this spring became the first to sign a measure threatening felony charges against federal agents who enforce certain firearms laws in his state.”

Right on! And I’m proud that left-wing California took the lead in nullification with Proposition 215, way back 17 years ago.

Now, there’s more our state could do. Here are the very first words of the California Constitution:

“ARTICLE 1 DECLARATION OF RIGHTS

“SECTION 1. All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.”

Note the last word: “privacy.”

As everyone has been learning from the recent scandals, the U.S. government has been spying on all of us continually, in complete violation of the Bill of Rights. What the California Legislature should do is pass a law implementing the “inalienable right” to “privacy” in our state by banning our high tech companies — Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. — from cooperating with the U.S. government unless the Fourth Amendment is strictly followed. That amendment mandates:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

And the state law should specify that the last words, “particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” ban the NSA, FBI and other Stasi Super Snooper State agencies from grabbing any Big Data, such as all phone and other records from Verizon, Google, etc.

And the law should specify that, if the NSA, FBI, etc. do not comply, then the California Highway Patrol and the California National Guard will arrest the police-state Stasi offenders and prosecute them under our state laws.

By John Seiler

Our Bill of Rights is our check on totalitarianism. Now, because of the government’s complete snooping on our phone records, it’s “totally gone,” according to Ron Paul, the former U.S. representative and presidential candidate. He says that beginning at about 3:54 in the following video. He says:

“It isn’t the Democrats and it isn’t the Republicans. It’s both of them. And then it’s the toleration of the people. The people put up with it. So it’s very very dangerous. I don’t think there’s anything left to our Fourth Amendment. This whole idea of needing probable cause to get a search warrant, that’s totally gone. and this to me is very very serious. But also, it’s an awakening call. Let’s hope that we can get the progressives together with the libertarians and the constitutionalists, and say enough of … we’ve had enough of this.”

Although the current Democratic Obama administration has conducted this tyranny, it was first approved by Republican President Bush in 2007. And powerful Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina just said he is “glad” the NSA is tapping our phones without getting a search warrant. He actually said:

“I’m a Verizon customer. I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government if the government is going to make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States. I don’t think you’re talking to the terrorists. I know you’re not. I know I’m not. So we don’t have anything to worry about.”

Trust the Obama government! And he’s from the party that’s supposed to favor smaller government.

This may our last chance to save freedom in America. Otherwise, see you in a FEMA camp.

By John Seiler

It’s terrible that four people were killed in Boston last week. But for that should we ditch the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

That’s what New York Mayor-for-Life Michael Bloomberg insists:

“The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”

Actually, given the events of the last century — the Nazi and communist mass murders of tens of millions of people — we need our constitutional protections more than ever. Compared to those atrocities, the crimes of King George the III — taxing tea and stamps, etc. — were the misdemeanors of a pickpocket.

If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that governments are infinitely more dangerous than even the worst criminals. After all, it was just 20 years ago that the government itself murdered 70 people, including about 20 children and 20 blacks, in the Waco Inferno (shown in the pictures nearby).

More Bloomberg:

“Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11.”

Yes, and the main agent taking away our freedoms after 9/11 was the government itself, with the imposition of the unconstitutional USA “PATRIOT” Act, which was treason to our freedoms.  

“We have to understand that in the world going forward, we’re going to have more cameras and that kind of stuff. That’s good in some sense, but it’s different from what we are used to.

But it was private cameras in Boston that helped finger the alleged perpetrators, not government cameras. And a private citizen located the second suspect.

“Clearly the  Supreme Court has recognized that you have to have different interpretations of the Second Amendment and what it applies to and reasonable gun laws … Here we’re going to to have to live with reasonable levels of security.”

The last was a reference, according to the article, to the use of “magnetometers to catch weapons in city schools.” Which shows how modern schools now are prisons.

And he was referring to his obsession with gun control. He wants to re-interpret our Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms” to mean we can’t.

He also can say such things because he’s immensely wealthy, according to Forbes the 13th richest person in the universe at $27 billion. He now is guarded by New York City police. But if he ever stops being mayor-for-life, he’ll have private guards. And can take unusual precautions to protect his own privacy, such as traveling to those private islands featured on the Wealth Channel.

You, however, cannot. He wants to take your guns, leaving you defenseless against terrorists. And he wants the government ceaselessly to spy on your every move.

He should call himself Mayor Orwell.

By John Seiler

I watch debates differently. I look for how each candidate upholds the U.S. Constitution, which each has taken an oath to “preserve, protect and defend.”

In the vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, here’s how many times the Constitution was mentioned: zero.

I listened closely, then checked the transcript.

Same thing for the Bill of Rights: no mentions. The closest either candidate got was Ryan saying, “We should always stand up for peace, for democracy, for individual rights” — and, no doubt if Biden hadn’t kept butting in, Ryan would have added truth, justice, the American Way, baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.

This is more proof that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are moribund documents. They act only as a structure in which the politicians operate: the presidency, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the government bureaus (most of them unconstitutional; all of them doing unconstitutional acts). Inside the structure, the Constitution is completely ignored. Anything goes.

It’s good to know that the government, at all levels, is lawless.

By JOHN SEILER

Writing recently in the Sacramento Bee, two professors mangled the actual meaning of the U.S. Constitution. Alan Gibson of Cal State Chico and James Read of the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in Minnesota charged that while the newly elected Republicans in Congress have initiated new rounds of constitutional contests, “most Americans know very little about the constitution or its history.”

The matter is crucial, especially to California and other “free and independent states,” as the Declaration of Independence called them. Just to cite our ongoing state budget deficit problem of $25 billion, federal mandates control, among other things, spending on health, education and welfare. The mix of federal funding and controls and state and local spending also increases the size and cost of the state and local bureaucracies that manage the tax monies.

The professors write of four “myths” surrounding the Constitution. But before we get into those, it’s worth discussing just what a written constitution — whether for the United States, one of the 50 U.S. states, or foreign countries — is about. The reason a constitution is put in writing is that it’s supposed to be followed to the letter.

This is crucial, because otherwise a constitution might as well just say, “The government can do whatever it wants.”

It’s true that the future brings unexpected events that mandate changing the Constitution. The Constitution itself provides a means of modification, the amendment process detailed in Article 5. Since the Constitution was ratified, there have been 27 amendments, including the first 10, the Bill of Rights. There also have been dozens of unsuccessful attempts to amend the Constitution.

The amendment process is not too cumbersome for any real need to change.

Supposed Myth One

The professors’ Myth One:

The Constitution was created to rein in an out-of-control federal government that was taxing people too much.

They don’t provide a citation for this supposed myth. The common explanation for the Constitution’s creation is provide by them:

Reality: Under the Articles of Confederation, which the Constitution replaced, the federal government was too weak and lacked the power to compel the payment of taxes. The Constitution created a stronger federal government able to “lay and collect Taxes,” defend the country, pay its debts, regulate interstate and international commerce, and in general “secure the blessings of liberty” in ways the states acting individually could not.

They don’t mention the theories of others, such as historian Charles Beard, that some of the wealthy Founders wanted to consolidate their own power, and so created a stronger central government, which they controlled. The so-called Anti-Federalist Papers warned that the government being set up under the Constitution eventually would burst the limits of the Constitution itself and grow to size of the governments of the despotisms of Europe, something Americans of those revolutionary times wanted to avoid.

The Federalists, supporters of the Constitution, replied in their better-known Federalist Papers. Federalist No. 45, written by James Madison, was a key. He wrote:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

The essential phrase: “few and defined.” That’s the premise on which the federal government was sold to the states that ratified the Constitution. No amendment since has changed those words.

In Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, indeed, we see that there are only 18 “few and defined” powers.

So, who was right, Federalists or Anti-Federalists? The Federalists were at the beginning, as the federal government remained fairly small for decades. What changed was the growth in government during the Civil War, and the vast new powers it brought the central government at the expense of the state governments. The Southern states even were defeated in battle and forcibly taken over during Reconstruction.

But even after the Civil War and Reconstruction, the federal government, although larger than before, still was relatively small, comprising only about 2 percent of the economy until after 1900.

After the Civil War, the presidents of that day promised that they would maintain the old compact, with the federal government being limited. For example, President Grover Cleveland solemnly  promised in his First Inaugural Address in 1885 (worth reading in full):

In the discharge of my official duty I shall endeavor to be guided by a just and unstrained construction of the Constitution, a careful observance of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people, and by a cautious appreciation of those functions which by the Constitution and laws have been especially assigned to the executive branch of the Government.

And it wasn’t just a campaign promise. Cleveland was famous for vetoing hundreds of bills. Here was his veto message to the Texas Seed Bill, a form of welfare in his day being promoted by the Republican Congress:

I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.

Can one imagine a president, Democratic or Republican, doing such a thing to day?

The two professors continue:

But at the same time the Constitution sought to define and limit this increased federal power and make it accountable to the people of the United States – above all through regularly scheduled elections. In the framers’ view, government could be energetic and limited at the same time.

Actually, as Grover the Good noted, it’s the Constitution itself that limits the government, or at least is supposed to.

So far, no amendments have been adopted to allow such things as welfare, Social Security, federal aid to local education, etc., not to mention Obamacare.

But the Anti-Federalists also turned out to be right, as can be seen by the gargantuan size of the U.S. government today. With Cleveland gone, the Democrats discarded their Jefferson-Cleveland heritage of small government and joined Republicans as advocates of incrementally increasing the power of the federal government. Yet things still didn’t get out of hand completely until the 1930s.

Supposed Myth Two

The professors write:

Myth Two: Strict adherence to the Constitution requires desiccated interpretations of congressional power.

Reality: The framers intended the powers of Congress to be fully adequate to the real challenges the country would face. Article 1, Section 8 entrusts Congress with a pretty generous list of enumerated powers, including “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states.” Section 8 concludes by giving Congress the power “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.” This clause, which is the source of the Constitution’s “implied powers,” signals that Congress can pass laws on matters not directly named, as long as those laws have a “necessary and proper” relation to the specified purposes.

As we have seen, Article I, Section 2 actually sharply limits congressional powers. I guess, as ex-President Bill Clinton once put it in another legal context, “It depends on what the meaning of the words ‘is’ is.”

The Constitution rapidly started breaking down during President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s, which was influenced by the fascist regimes then being  imposed in Europe. FDR said in 1933, as the New Deal was being imposed:

There seems to be no question that [Mussolini] is really interested in what we are doing and I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy.

FDR also said that year:

I don’t mind telling you in confidence that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman.

So the model for cracking the strictures of the decentralized Constitution was not Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Madision, but Il Duce and his centralized regime.

The two professors write:

Together the “commerce clause” and the doctrine of implied powers have been the constitutional source of many programs – accepted by Democrats and Republicans alike – that the federal government uses to regulate trade and the economy and enhance the welfare of all Americans. They are also the constitutional source of recent Democratic programs in health care, cap and trade, and economic regulation.

Note that they did not refer to the powers enumerated in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution to justify such increases in the power of the federal government, but the “commerce clause” and the “doctrine of implied powers.” The “doctrine” isn’t in the Constitution, but was made up by Alexander Hamilton to justify the First Bank of the United States — as was pointed out at the time by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Attorney General Edmund Randolph.

This “doctrine” has caused immense mischief, especially since FDR’s day. Any expedient can be found to justify a an “implied powers” expansion of the federal government. It essentially overrides every limit in the Constitution. This is how we ended up with a U.S. government with an incredible $4 trillion budget, $1.5 trillion federal deficit and $15 trillion debt.

Commerce Clause

As to the “commerce clause,” it originally meant — obviously — only the regulation of commerce between states. This made the whole of the United States a gigantic free-trade zone, a major reason for the country’s prosperity. An avocado grower in California can chip his food to the other 49 states without worrying about which tariff must be paid in which state, because there are no internal tariffs.

Unfortunately, FDR didn’t like the Constitution’s limitation on his interference with economic production (which, by the way, only prolonged the Great Depression). In 1935, the Supreme Court, correctly interpreting the U.S. Constitution, overturned the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Federal Farm Bankruptcy Act, two Mussolini-inspired centralizations.

Enraged, FDR branded the upholding of the Constitution a “horse and buggy definition of interstate commerce.” In 1937, FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court with pliable justices. He failed, but after he was elected to an unprecedented third term in 1940, new justices he appointed — and the immense powers he assumed in World War II — made the Court see matters his way.

This was a time, after all, then FDR (and California Attorney General, later Governor, Earl Warren) were putting loyal Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, an act upheld by the U.S. Supreme Courtin the 1944 decision, Korematsu vs. United States. And FDR launched the Great Sedition Trial against his critics. (Fortunately, in that case, lower-level courts protected the critics’ right to free speech.)

Unfortunately, in the 1942 case, Wickard vs. Filburn, the U.S. Supreme Court absurdly ruled that the “commerce clause” extended to absolutely any economic activity in the country, not just to commerce between states. As Wikipedia summarized it:

A farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed his chickens. The U.S. government had imposed limits on wheat production based on acreage owned by a farmer, in order to drive up wheat prices during the Great Depression, and Filburn was growing more than the limits permitted. Filburn was ordered to destroy his crops and pay a fine, even though he was producing the excess wheat for his own use and had no intention of selling it.

The Wickard ruling was an unprecedented and unconstitutional expansion of federal power worthy of FDR’s model, Mussolini. (By 1942, FDR was at war with Musso, as he was called, but didn’t abjure Musso-style centralization.)

It’s also absurd, of course, to burn perfectly good crops. But the main thing is that the commerce clause since then has been used to excuse almost any federal expansion.

It’s now almost 70 years since the Wickard case, and now the Feds minutely control every aspect of our lives: from the size of our toilets and shower heads, to the content of our children’s public-school books. Before FDR and Wickard, people would go through their whole lives seeing no federal officials except the local postal clerk. Today, the Feds are as pervasive as the old Soviet bureaucracy was in Russia.

Supposed Myth Three

The professors write: “Myth Three: The Constitution used to be followed strictly, but recently has been interpreted broadly.

Reality: Debates about how broadly or narrowly to read the Constitution in general and the “necessary and proper” clause in particular date to the earliest years of the republic.

They bring up the 1791 chartering of the First Bank of the United States, which I discussed above. They note that Hamilton and Jefferson debated the matter, with President Washington siding with Hamilton.

It’s an old debate. When I visited Monticello in 1983, the tour guide noted that Jefferson had placed busts of himself and Hamilton on opposites sides of the entrance on the first floor “so they would be eternally opposed.”

But the debate doesn’t end there. As historian Thomas DiLorenzo describes in his recent book, “Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution–and What It Means for Americans Today,” Hamilton’s obsession with centralism, especially a central bank, has plagued the country ever since.

Click this link for a Google search listing DiLorenzo’s articles and YouTubes on Hamilton. And this article by DiLorenzo is a good summary of his book; in the article, he writes:

The current economic crisis is the inevitable consequence of what I call Hamilton’s Curse in my new book of that name. It is the legacy of Alexander Hamilton and his political, economic, and constitutional philosophy. As George Will once wrote, Americans are fond of quoting Jefferson, but we live in Hamilton’s country.

The great debate between Hamilton and Jefferson over the purpose of government, which animates American politics to this day, was very much about economic policy. Hamilton was a compulsive statist who wanted to bring the corrupt British mercantilist system — the very system the American Revolution was fought to escape from — to America. He fought fiercely for his program of corporate welfare, protectionist tariffs, public debt, pervasive taxation, and a central bank run by politicians and their appointees out of the nation’s capital.

Jefferson and his followers opposed him every step of the way because they understood that Hamilton’s agenda was totally destructive of liberty. And unlike Hamilton, they took Adam Smith’s warnings against economic interventionism seriously.

Moreover, since the über-central bank, the Federal Reserve, was created in 1913, the country’s currency has run through several inflation periods, including the current one, that has eroded the value of the dollar from $22 in 1913 to about $1,355 today. A Hamiltonian central bank is at the center of our economic malaise. For proof, see Ron Paul’s book, “End the Fed.”

How much better off we all would have been to simply follow the Constitution’s stipulation that Congress has the power only to “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures” — meaning, establish that a certain weight of gold is equal to a certain amount of dollars. It’s significant that the “Coin Clause,” as I call it, is next to the Standard of Weights and Measures Clause. The Coin Clause meant the currency — the dollar — was meant to be a yardstick of a certain measure of gold (or silver) everywhere in the country, much as a yard or mile everywhere were given the same length. Thus, uniform measures of dollars, yards and miles would facilitate commerce throughout the land.

The professors note, for the 1791 banking controversy, “Later, as president, Jefferson took actions that contradicted his narrow view of constitutional power.” That seems to mean that Jefferson changed his mind on the national bank. He didn’t. True, he did violate the Constitution with the way he went about the Louisiana Purchase. But all that means is that he violated his own principles — something not unknown in the annals of history even among great men.

However, by and large Jefferson downsized government, as we would say, from the expansion of the federalist years under Washington, Adams and Hamilton.

Supposed Myth Four

The professors write:

Myth Four: Only one party supports programs readily tied to the Constitution.

Reality: A commitment to consistent constitutional principles is shaky on all sides of the political spectrum – including those most aggressive in their claims to own the document.

Well, they’re certainly right about that one. Republicans, despite their supposed reverence for the Constitution, and reading it at the start of business in the House of Representatives this year, compete with Democrats in seeing which party can most violate the old document.

To cite just one example, the so-called USA “PATRIOT” Act of 2001, enacted in the panic after 9/11, was proposed by the Republican Bush Administration. But it was made up of dusted-off proposals from the Democratic Clinton Administration that had been rejected by the Republican-controlled Congress in the 1990s. However, in 2001 the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate both eagerly approved this severe violation of American liberties as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

The “PATRIOT” Act (more the enactment of traitors) has been continued by the Democratic-run Congress of the past four years and Democratic President Obama.

And both parties have given us the Transportation Security Administration’s perverted groping and molestation of innocent airline passengers, even children and grandmothers.

American Revolution 2.0?

It’s obvious that the original Constitution, as written and established by the Framers and Founders, hardly exists any more. The reason is provided by the two professors: the ease with which they excuse almost any increase in government power these past 222 years since the Constitution became operative. Generations of historians, Supreme Court justices, lawyers, editorial writers and others time after time, have excused massive violations of the Constitution, and increases in government power, to promote the expediency of the day.

This is easy to see by considering the following: What would Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams and even Hamilton say about the following:

* The TSA molestation of airline passengers.

* The federal government’s regulation of toilets and shower heads.

* President Clinton’s incineration of 70 Americans, including 20 children, at Waco in 1993. The excuse given by Janet Reno, the attorney general, was that she suspected “child abuse.”

* A federal debt of $15 trillion. As Jefferson said, “We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.”

* The U.S. military engaged in two unending wars, with troops stationed in more than 130 countries around the world. The Constitution clearly stipulates that war cannot be started by the president, but only by a “declaration of war” by the Congress. The last such declaration was World War II, which ended 65 years ago. Now the wars and the empire are bankrupting us.

Washington warned in his Farewell Address: “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connexion as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop….It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

The problem now is that, if we actually followed the Constitution, we would have to eliminate about 95 percent of what the federal government currently does, including ending the wars and empire, repealing Social Security (now bankrupt, too), Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of Human Services, the Heimat (excuse me, Homeland) Security Department, the Department of Education, and so on down the line.

As mentioned, in 1935 President Roosevelt branded the Constitution’s constrictions on his expansion of federal powers a “horse and buggy definition of interstate commerce.” But that was 76 years ago. We no longer live in the industrial age, of large, labor-intensive industries that could be harnessed by large governments for machine-drive wars.

Instead, we live in the Internet Age, in which the economy and control are widely distributed and dispersed. This has been seen dramatically in the Facebook-driven revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

Ironically, it is the decentralized U.S. Constitution that is appropriate for the Internet Age, not the centralized interpretation of the Constitution imposed especially harshly since FDR’s long-past Mechanical Age. The days of FDR and Mussolini are as remote to us as the “horse and buggy” days were to him.

Because America is essentially bankrupt, government is going to have to be down-sized no matter what.

What’s needed is a new revolution — a peaceful one this time, because the Feds have The Bomb. We need American Revolution 2.0. The Tea Parties, although tepid, are a beginning.

Let’s get started chopping government back down to size, decentralizing everything along the federal model of the actual words of the Constitution. And if we need to cut the size of government down yet further, if government remains too big for the Internet Age, there’s always the Articles of Confederation.

FEB. 7, 2011

John Seiler is a reporter and analyst for CalWatchDog.com. His email: writejohnseiler@gmail.com.