“The colonel behind me… that’s Colonel William Aylett. Now, his great-grandfather was the Virginian, Patrick Henry.” – Gettysburg
While salting his food, Patrick Henry said, “If this be season, make the most of it.”
The biggest genius of the Constitution was an afterthought, the result of a protest. Patrick Henry refused to go to the Constitutional Convention held in 1787, convinced that it was merely an excuse to create a strong central government out of the relatively loose Articles of Confederation. And even though it’s my policy to never trust anyone whose name consists of two first names, I’ll admit that Patrick Henry was right.
When the new Constitution was finally released, Henry (among others) complained, mainly that it didn’t contain a bill of rights. The promise was that if the Constitution was passed, the first act would be to create a bill of rights. Unlike a political promise in 2019, the framers actually did what they said, probably because in 1792 a state could have fairly easily left the United States, since at the time that was widely assumed to be a right held by states. The states voted into the agreement, the states could vote themselves out.
The Bill of Rights was passed by the House and Senate, and sent to the states for ratification – 10 of the 12 proposed rights were ratified. The 11th, the Right for Ben Franklin to be Naked Whenever He Wants was narrowly defeated by people who had seen Franklin naked. The 12th, establishing a National Taco Tuesday and Mandatory Metallica® failed initially but was finally ratified in 1994, much to the relief of radio stations everywhere.
When does this bill show up? Is it monthly?
One objection to the Bill of Rights was that it was felt that the states could do a good enough job protecting the rights of their citizens – the Federal government didn’t have all that much power, right? Another objection? It was felt that listing the rights would allow people to think that those were the only rights. That second objection is somewhat prophetic, especially since (by my count) nearly every right in the Bill of Rights has been violated at some point.
Me? I’m pretty glad Patrick Henry got the job done – the Bill of Rights has been instrumental in keeping us as free as we are today. My Aunt told me I was related to him somehow, and that’s not hard to believe – he had a total of 17 children, so there have to be a zillion descendants. Being his great-great-great-grandkid isn’t all that rare, though I imagine getting a good night’s sleep at the Henry household was rare – especially for Mrs. Henry. If I were to brag about being related to Patrick Henry, it would be like an iguana bragging that he was descended from a velociraptor. While it may be true, it won’t help the iguana get a part in the next Jurassic Park® movie, especially after what his cousin, Harvey Weinstein did. Most people don’t know that Weinstein is part iguana, on his mother’s side.
I hear that freedom weighs a WashingTon.
If that’s where we ended, with a stronger central government and a strong bill of rights, we’d be fine. We’d have a Bill of Rights that protects Americans from abuse by their government in many different ways. But in the decision of Marbury v. Madison, the newly installed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, had a tequila-inspired vision that the Supreme Court had the power to invalidate laws that it felt were contradictory to the Constitution.
This is nowhere in the Constitution itself. Marshall made the logical leap that since the Constitution wasn’t a vague set of political principles but rather the supreme law of the land, it had to be followed as if it was a law. So far, so good. If Congress made a law that couldn’t be interpreted to follow the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, the law had to be made invalid by the Supreme Court.
A Supreme Court is just regular court, but with sour cream and tomatoes.
Thomas Jefferson had a different view: he felt that each branch of government had the power to declare acts by the other branches unconstitutional. Presidents have, in multiple cases, not enforced laws they felt were unconstitutional.
Jefferson further felt that states could declare laws that were especially in violation of the Constitution void. The recent legalization of marijuana in multiple states without intervention from the Federal government has proven the principle that Jefferson wrote about early in the life of the country. If it took a Constitutional amendment to make booze illegal, why shouldn’t it take one to make marijuana illegal at the Federal level. How can the Federal government legally make enforceable laws dealing with the amount of decongestant I can buy?
Because power keeps flowing to the Federal government.
The Constitution was written in 1787, and the Bill of Rights was fully ratified in 1791. The words in the Constitution clearly have changed only through the 27 amendments to the Constitution.
Hey! I can write bathroom graffiti that kids can’t understand!
One concept in English Common Law is that of precedent. From Wikipedia®: Common Law Legal systems place great value on deciding cases according to consistent principled rules, so that similar facts will yield similar and predictable outcomes, and observance of precedent is the mechanism by which that goal is attained. The precedent of the Supreme Court is supposed to remain unchanged.
Most of the time, it is.
Yet there have been 141 cases where the Supreme Court changed its opinion and rejected previous Supreme Court decisions. 102 of those cases came during or after 1960: that was about the time that the Supreme Court became activist in finding new “rights” – the right of people to use contraception or be free from hearing a prayer at the start of school. 28 of the 141 reversals of precedent were in just a single ten year period between 1960 and 1969. Earl Warren was Chief Justice during that time.
When the right involves the federal government being prevented from interfering with liberty, I’m for it. But the Warren Court specifically focused on creating new rights and new judicial power and accomplishing goals that the legislatures either at the state or Federal level wouldn’t – the Warren Court was about fairness and equity rather than justice – the Supreme Court decision mandating participation ribbons and allowing soccer into the United States came from the Warren Court.
I had to play soccer with second graders the other day. I really should save up and buy a ball.
Any action provokes a reaction, and the Warren Court specifically was opposed by the newly formed doctrine of “originalism” – the idea that the Constitution means what it says in plain language, and not what you want it to say. If that’s the case, the Constitution just becomes a series of popular (on the Left) interpretations like “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” should really be read as “the state has the right to arm the police,” and “Congress shall make no law” really means “Congress can do whatever it wants to do this week – it’s having a midlife crisis.”
It can be shown that the 1960’s and early 1970’s was the time that set the stage for every problem that we’re experiencing today. As much as blaming the Boomers is popular (I’m not a Boomer), it’s really not deserved. The Boomers had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time – I can make the case that 1973 was the high-water mark for the economy of the country, and the Boomers did what anyone would do – make the best of their time, while wearing dark socks with sandals and listening to way too much Bob Dylan®.
The real culprits of our situation today are the leaders in charge in the 1960’s. The Greatest Generation really created the Greatest Problems. They fought and won a world war, but they put in place policies that are demographically tearing the United States apart today, and have put our economy at risk through a debt that grows exponentially. The Boomers didn’t take us off the gold standard. The Boomers weren’t responsible for Green Acres® being cancelled.
The Boomers did, though, give us Led Zeppelin. Even better when sung by a rubber chicken being observed by a cat.
The Constitution was awesome for a very long time, but it won’t save us – the Constitution of the Soviet Union provided for “freedom of speech” after it was, of course, reviewed by the appropriate government censor. The next Leftist president will happily appoint as many Supreme Court justices as required to interpret the Constitution to mean whatever the Left wants it to mean. The Warren Court wasn’t an aberration- it was a test case, one that set the stage for the future dream of the Left – complete power.
One thing stands in their way. You.
Virginia in this November’s election shows that the solution isn’t to vote moar harder. Virginia, the state that gave us Patrick Henry, is now permanently Left, with both houses and all top state-level jobs now held by Democrats. The Left wants more and bigger government, the exact opposite of Henry wanted. When I was growing up, and someone wanted to do something, I’d often hear, “It’s a free country” as an answer. That meant, essentially, do whatever you want. I rarely hear that phrase anymore.
However, the Right isn’t done yet. Remember what Janis said –
Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon’ if it ain’t free, no no
And while you can vote yourself into tyranny, you can’t vote yourself out of it.
Happy Veteran’s Day!
We’re going to have a whole bunch of new veterans in a few years. Of a real war, with real megadeaths. May God have mercy upon us, because the Left has none at all.
It’s becoming clearer that even the mainstream is picking it up. People sense it.
Oh, John Wilder! Activist Supreme Courts. Voting by We The People. What quaint 20th Century take on our current existential dilemma. You are so adorable!
Deep State, baby. That’s where the 21st Century action is at.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/11/06/how-the-deep-state-justifies-itself-in-america/
There is no clearer example of what is happening propaganda-wise than this list of NYT articles. Pay close attention and take notes. The national narrative went from “There is no Deep State, it is a Trumpian delusion…” in Feb-Mar 2017 to “The ‘Deep State’ Exists to Battle People Like Trump” in Oct 2019.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/10/endorsing-the-deep-state-endangers-democracy.html
Help us, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope….
https://www.libertynation.com/will-durham-investigation-tank-impeachment-efforts/
Deep State, Baby!
I have to agree with you here though it’s more of a “healing power of AND moment” because Mr. Wilder has had a solid insight about the precedent set by the Supreme Court deciding, all on its lonesome to go Maximum Aldwin.
Woodrow Wilson created an unelected, unaccountable, permanent Shadow Government in the Federal Bureaucracy. Killing the Leviathan after it’s full-grown is probably impossible.
Both of these factors are useful to know for those who come after, if Mr. Aesop is correct about how sporty it’s going to get.
AND if anyone can figure out what killed Christendom in the U.S. You will have the trifecta of win.
Horowitz is also a Jedi…
https://saraacarter.com/horowitz-report-will-be-damning-criminal-referrals-likely/
(fingers crossed)
The Left lies until it’s caught. Then it lies again. Then it justifies the awful truth and blames the victim.
Lather-Rinse-Repeat.
“And while you can vote yourself into tyranny, you can’t vote yourself out of it.”
The correct version of the line is,
“You can vote your way into tyranny, but you’ll have to shoot your way out of it.”
Just saying.
The Evil Party seems to want the first half, eve4n if it means all of it, and the mainstream leadership of the Stupid Party seems to be okay with that, just done slower.
Which makes the second half of the line rather inevitable.
My response to all of the above is,
“Well, okay, if you insist, let’s open that ball…”
It’s going to be hard on the furniture and the town square, but we’ll all be better off, and in the end, there’ll probably be about 50% less of us.
Be still, my beating heart.
Mr. Aesop, instead of shooting your way out, you can throw yourself on the mercy of the Creator, repent, and be redeemed. You can, in fact, convert your way out of it. Granted, the medieval model takes centuries, but it is possible.
Just sayin’
And that model worked out how, exactly, for the Christians thrown to the lions in the Coliseum?
If you wish to resolve merely to taste bad, go ahead on. You’ll of course understand if elect to open hunting season on the lions and their masters instead, right?
There’s a story about God, a man who drowned, two boats, and a helicopter that should have come to mind for you without me bringing it up.
Or maybe refer to the following passage
“Then the devil took [Jesus] to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.
“If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to a foolish test.’“
Ha! Actually, I think it’s more likely that we’ll end up with your version than the one I wrote, but remember, the Berlin Wall fell without a shot . . . Eastern Europe (while hanging many commies) transitioned to freedom fairly well.
Our factors (demographics, Leftist desire to control, polarity) make that less likely, and then your version controls.
Kindly reference Germany five seconds ago, and the merkeling* they’ve undergone for the last decade or so.
Now let me know which side the fall of the Berlin Wall has ultimately benefited.
I’ll wait…
When we see Frau Reichsficker hanging heels up a dripping blood like the corpse of Mussolini, we can talk about Germany as something other than a Stage V cancer patient.
At present, we’re precisely one presidential election behind the fates of the caliphates of Germanistan and Britistan.
The next such is now 360 or so days hence.
Folks should bear that well in mind as they make their weekly purchases.
*(merkel v.: 1) What pervy priests, scoutmasters, Michael Jackson, and Epstein island visitors do to young boys, in the same way the namesake has done to Germany, both lands and people.)
True on all points – but I attribute that to the Germans feeling guilty and hating themselves – they still overthrew the Reds. The East German disease has spread – but Hungary and Poland are examples that are stunning, and look to be safe from the Left for a generation.
At some point, the post I wanna see over at your place is Aesop’s Health Solution, bonus points for including Medicare.
I’ll see your Double Dog Dare, and raise you to a Triple Dog Dare (such faux pas has precedent, you’ll recall):
My Health Solution is a one-day fix.
It’s the same as Aesop’s Car Insurance Solution: Buy your own damned coverage!
Medicare is phased out, with a 5% coverage decrease for each year group over each of the next 20 years.
If you’re 45 or under, start saving. When you hit 65, Medicare will be entirely gone, except for the few folks 65 or older now, who live beyond 85. in 30-40 years, even they won’t be around to quibble over. The pittance they’ll cost won’t even be a hiccup in the federal budget.
You want Mercedes insurance, you’ll pay Mercedes prices.
You want Yugo prices, you’ll get Yugo coverage.
And government is free to offer their own plan(s), at whatever rate it costs, and whatever they chose to cover, provided it’s not subsidized even $1 worth. It’s sold at straight cost, the government is free to jack rates or trim back coverage until they make ends meet, but if they suck compared to private business, as they likely will, they’ll have zero clients in short order, and that problem goes away forever.
People that bitch about old farts going bankrupt for medical treatment may then freely observe : “Maybe Grandpa Dumb@$$ should’ve tried doing table push-ups, stopped drinking like a fish, and quit smoking three packs a day, about 30 years earlier.”
No one gets out of here alive.
Insurance should take care of unfortunate circumstances, at appropriate rates.
And any company making more than 10% profit pays the excess in taxes, so there’s no incentive to gouge, or scrimp.
Individual taxpayers, OTOH, are allowed to put up to 10% of their annual pre-tax income into medical savings accounts, to cover small expenses and deductibles for catastrophic care. No maximum limit. Anything in the kitty more than 10 years may be withdrawn any time afterwards, tax-free, as a reward for being healthy.
Bonus: Do the same thing for retirement.
Social Security is phased out the same way, over 20 years, and deductions stop this minute for anyone 45 or under.
Up to 3X that amount may be set aside by anyone out of pre-tax income for retirement, provided it’s untouched until then.
The only people that would be hurt by any of this are government workers, but if you phase 5% of those administering those programs out each year too, the whining and howls will decrease commensurately as well, and the unfunded deficit year over year shrinks to interest on principal, which would become manageable without the burgeoning tsunami of entitlement payments forever.
That’s it.
Kill it all, via slow but inexorable strangulation.
Anyone proposing any renewal or reversal is shot on sight, and their goods and estates, in total, forfeit to the budgets of those dwindling programs.
That would be Day One of the short and happy reign of Emperor Aesop.
On Tuesday, we drop all college loans for anything but medical professions and STEM (which will be based 100% on academic merit, alone), and we completely defund public education over four years, starting with the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades, advancing backwards one year every year. 5% of the savings is allocated to vocational training. 10% is allocated to poor but academically gifted student scholarships. The rest is a straight refund to those who pay taxes.
On Wednesday, we end all corporate welfare and agricultural subsidies. Everybody plays, and everybody pays.
On Thursday we repeal every law relating to firearms. All of them. The federal judiciary is limited to 10 years at the district level, 15 if they make it to the appellate circus courts, and 20, and not a minute longer, if they get to SCOTUS, after which they must live under the rulings they issue, just like everyone else. Sovereign immunity for any public office is revoked other than for the President, the cabinet, the congress, and the federal judiciary. That means every federal official and LEO is civilly liable for capricious jack@$$ery, on the spot. And we restrict firearms and arrest powers to the FBI, the US Marshalls, the Secret Service, Customs and Immigration, and the Coast Guard. Prison and nuclear plant guards get to carry only on duty. No one else gets any guns, badges, or SWAT teams. Just citation books, and a pencil. Somebody wants to make an arrest, they have to ask one of the remaining agencies with that power to tag along.
By Friday, the federal government is projected to be so small, we plan the imminent return to a federal government funded entirely by excise taxes and tariffs, as originally intended, and make plans to repeal the XVIth Amendment, or at worst, amend it in perpetuity to no more than 1% of income, on everyone, starting with an income of $1. Everybody now has skin in the game, to exactly the same degree. (If we agree to exempt anyone with an annual income under $40, on the grounds the stamp is more expensive than the tax, I might relent, just that little bit. But they still have to file.)
Saturday, we explain the facts of life to Mexico: 1 bbl. of crude for every illegal found here, per year. We’ll be generous, and start the levy at 40M in Year One. They also cede Baja California to our designated territorial governor’s rule for the next 199 years. It’s still part of Mexico, but it now runs under U.S. law. The U.S. agrees to assume military defense responsibility for it. It becomes bilingual. Any felons found therein are exiled from Baja for life either to Mexican prison, or for execution. The Western half of the peninsula is developed as the longest luxury Riviera on the planet, and puts Monaco and Vegas into permanent second-class status. The employment is 100% Mexican nationals, earning market wages. The eastern side of the peninsula, and the waters contiguous, becomes the longest nature preserve in the world, and a mecca for divers, whale watchers, and general tree huggers the world over. All profits from both accrue 50-50 to each country. The U.S. profits build a wall from Tijuana to Brownsville, and fund the Coast Guard and Border Patrol. We end birthright US citizenship, including retroactively, and anyone found in the U.S. illegally after 90 days from that date is banned from immigrating here for life. After working for five years on a chain gang, building the wall.
The line of cars headed south is 1000 miles long within a week, mainly to apply for jobs building and working at the resorts going up from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas.
Sunday being a day of rest, we simply abolish the female PT standards for all military services.
Women deserve equal treatment, so we want to give it to them, good and hard.
Everyone performs to the male standards in place, or they’re kicked out that day.
The removes all but about 10 women, total, from the entire military by about 12 noon, Pacific Standard Time.
And after the physical standards for their MOS are applied, those 10 are pretty much back to being clerk/typists or stateside medical personnel in about an hour.
If the military comes up short because of that, we re-establish the draft. And with all those college dreams for mid-level D-students going up in flames, we have a healthy pool of candidates to choose from.
Let’s make it easy: universal service for everyone for 18-24 months after high school. If you don’t want to do it in the military, no problem: the Forest Service needs firefighters, the national parks need trash haulers and trail builders, and we put the rest into the FEMA Corps, to shovel snow after blizzards, shovel sandbags during floods, and clear roads, pick up debris, and generally help people out after hurricanes and tornadoes. You might even learn a skill, like being an EMT, driving trucks, or operating heavy equipment, that you can use to get a job after your 2 years service are completed.
Refuse? No problem: two years as a federal prisoner filling potholes in the summer, shoveling snow in the winter, filling the same sandbags in rain and flood, and picking up trash the rest of the time. If you want anything to eat while you’re in prison. “Ask not what your country can do for you…”
That’s it.
At that point, I can retire, or devolve to merely a wartime emperor, which would be mostly titular only, as anyone who gave us cause to declare war would be deselected from further planetary status in a Darwinian fashion, with a methodology last witnessed during the Third Punic War. Including salting their fields, throwing corpses into their wells, and either selling the unslaughtered survivors into slavery elsewhere (like making them build roads and drain swamps in Africa or South America, or something equally worthwhile and unpleasant) , or using them as agricultural supplements.
Just . . . perfect.
As an optimist (no, not an optometrist, that would require a State-Issued License), I’m not sure that Virginia is “permanently Left”. The leftist media would like you to think so, and the Democratic Party would like you to think so, but there is a chance that reason will return to Virginia, and to other parts of the country. When? When the Left runs out of other-people’s money. Unfortunately, that will probably be at about the same time that the Right runs out of cheap oil and gas, and it’s not clear that anyone will have a feasible solution: alt-Right, control-Left, or Fn-center.
The graph I saw of demographics was pretty convincing. I’m hoping you’re right, but unless the demographics change . . . Texas will fall next.
Dude! You so got upstaged by a rubber chicken!
I thought that was hilarious. I looked for that album FOREVER when I was in high school. Heard the Immigrant Song once, and spent three years looking for the album.
Worth it.
Maybe the entire push of Progressives vs.Alt. Right fight is to convince the people to ask for the ONLY alternative which is Marshall Law implementation. The our government gets to choose how its going to be, vs. having that pesky U.S. Constitution get in the pesky way. Bet you a donut the revised will have more than a few freedoms gone and/or modified from present.
Marshall Law?
Is he the one Jimi Hendrix was singing about when he said,
“Excuse me while I kiss this guy?”
And his cousin is Chester Drawers?
Bone apple tea!
That’s been the trend – less freedom and more control. We’ll see . . .
In defense of the Greatest Generation, the policies they put in place wouldn’t have been disastrous in and of themselves, at least not so quickly, in a nation that resembled the one they came home to in 1945. The issue is the 1965 Immigration Act that threw open the doors to people who have proven for thousands of years to be incapable of creating or sustaining a functioning society. Now the die is cast and we only await the boogaloo starting.
Virginia is never going Republican again in any recognizable sense. Pretty soon that will be true of Texas and Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. The reason is the same over and over: demographics, although in the case of Virginia you also have the DC suburbs which are full of people just begging for a blindfold and brick wall.
The Constitution’s big flaw is that it assumed that the nation it governed would be a moral and homogeneous one. A balkanized disaster of degeneracy? That isn’t a nation that can be governed by a sane set of laws.
Yup. But they allowed the 1965 law. It’s on them. And the gold standard. And the Great Society and the propaganda listed on your page.
Alas, Boomerkin brought us the normalization of abortion and divorce. You can blame their kids, the Gen X-ers for not giving enough of a rat’s pestiferous patootie to stop Teh Gay.
So why #OKBoomer not #UpYoursGenX -?
Because there’s no repentance. I get not wanting to be shamed for #FakeGuilt. But when you actually belong to a cohort of suck for some reason, iinsisting that there is in fact, no suckage is insufferable.
They did bring the abortion/divorce normalization, but it was the Greatest Generation that decided Row V. Wade and made no-fault divorce the norm.
I’m not saying that Boomers are guilt free, none of us are. But the big things that are ripping us apart have been in place for 50 years . . . besides, the Zoomers hate the Boomers. Mainly I just get popcorn out to watch the fireworks.
Still thinking about the Boomer thing. Until then here’s an OK Boomer
https://imgflip.com/i/3frkc7
I like that!
https://i.imgur.com/L4uaqqK.jpg
If people could use a calendar, they might accurately place the blame for most of our current ills where it belongs:
It was the “greatest” generation, and their predecessors from the prior two generations, who inflicted progressivism on us.
(Starting with Amendments XVI-XIX, inclusive; the Depression; the New Deal; and four terms of FDR.).
Everything afterwards is merely gravity, working.
Like it does.
Look, it really was just an OK boomer. The U.S.S. Louisiana on the other hand is an excellent boomer.
And my apologies for not getting back to you on the convert your way out concept. I tried to post that response 3x and it kept getting eaten.
WPDE.
There is not too much freedom. There is too much tyranny.