(CNSNews.com) – When CNSNews.com asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday where the Constitution authorized Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance–a mandate included in both the House and Senate versions of the health care bill–Pelosi dismissed the question by saying: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a “serious question.”
“You can put this on the record,” said Elshami. “That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.”
I can’t help but be reminded by something Thomas Jefferson said:
“The Tenth Amendment is the foundation of the Constitution.”
And what does the 10th Amendment say? Only this:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”
You can understand why Nancy Pelosi couldn’t care less about the Constitution, or its limitations on the exercise of government power. Thomas Jefferson also said, “Let’s hear no more about the confidence in men but to bind them down by the chains of the Constitution.” That phrase was intended to underscore the role of the Constitution as chains to any who would try to impose more government on the people. But Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat Party have thrown off the “chains of the Constitution.” They believe that confidence in men is just fine – as long as those men are liberals and socialists who impose massive government and massive bureaucracies through which they seek to empower themselves and control the people. And everything they are trying to do makes a mockery of the Constitution.
And, after all, Nancy Pelosi’s president — a man liberals believe is greater than Jesus — has pronounced that the Constitution is deeply flawed.
“I think we can say that the Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day, and that the Framers had that same blind spot. I don’t think the two views are contradictory, to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now, and to say that it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”
One wonders how Barack Obama could swear to uphold and defend a document that he himself has publicly held to have deep flaws and reflect an enormous blind spot. It would seem that his oath amounted to “just words.”
Under Barack Obama and the Democrat-dominated Congress, we are seeing government spending, government debts, and government deficits soar beyond anything ever before seen in the history of the human race.
The excellent work on the Constitution and its history by W. Cleon Skousen entitled The 5000 Year Leap has an amazing thesis in light of what we are seeing from our government today:
Since the genius of the American system is maintaining the eagle in the balanced center of the spectrum, the Founders warned against a number of temptations which might lure subsequent generations to abandon their freedoms and their rights by subjecting themselves to a strong federal administration operating on the collectivist Left.
They warned against the “welfare state” where the government endeavors to take care of everyone from the cradle to the grave. Jefferson wrote:
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.”
They warned against confiscatory taxation and deficit spending. Jefferson said it was immoral for one generation to pass on the results of its extravagance in the form of debts to the next generation. He wrote: “…we shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life [expectancy] of the majority.”
Every generation of Americans struggled to pay off the national debt up until the present one.
Let us see what the founding fathers who wrote our Constitution said that liberals so eagerly and so cavalierly wish to dismiss from the people’s attention:
“I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt, and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing, by every device, the public debt on the principle of its being a public blessing.” — Thomas Jefferson letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799
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“To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” — Thomas Jefferson
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“As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible.” — George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796
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“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.” — Thomas Jefferson, to Thomas Cooper, January 29, 1802
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“[W]ith all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
Still one thing more, fellow citizens — a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.” — Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
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“He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.” Benjamin Franklin, from his writings, 1758
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“We are endeavoring, too, to reduce the government to the practice of a rigorous economy, to avoid burdening the people, and arming the magistrate with a patronage of money, which might be used to corrupt and undermine the principles of our government.”– Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mr. Pictet, February 5, 1803
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“With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” — James Madison
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“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.” –Thomas Jefferson
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“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” –Thomas Jefferson
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“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse.” — James Madison letter to Henry Lee, April 13, 1790
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“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” — Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
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“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” — Benjamin Franklin
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“Experience has proved to us that a dollar of silver disappears for every dollar of paper emitted.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1791. ME 8:208
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“If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to anybody, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air… We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of ‘a public debt being a public blessing,’ and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper.” –Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:423
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“It is a [disputed] question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie [gold,silver], is a good or an evil… I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin.” –Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:409
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“To contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones.”– George Washington letter to James Welch, April 7, 1799
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“The maxim of buying nothing without the money in our pockets to pay for it would make of our country one of the happiest on earth.” — Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Donald, 1787. ME 6:192
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The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. — Thomas Jefferson
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“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” — Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766
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“Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.” — Benjamin Franklin letter to Collinson, May 9, 1753
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“I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.” — Thomas Jefferson
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“I hope a tax will be preferred [to a loan which threatens to saddle us with a perpetual debt], because it will awaken the attention of the people and make reformation and economy the principle of the next election. The frequent recurrence of this chastening operation can alone restrain the propensity of governments to enlarge expense beyond income.” — Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1820.
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“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare… they may appoint teachers in every state… The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.” — James Madison
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“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” –Thomas Jefferson
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“The same prudence, which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public monies.” — Thomas Jefferson letter to Shelton Giliam, June 19, 1808
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“It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. … They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.” — Adam Smith, “Wealth of Nations,” Book II, Chapter II
“Every discouragement should be thrown in the way of men who undertake to trade without capital.” — Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Tracy, 1785. Papers 8:399
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“It is a miserable arithmetic which makes any single privation whatever so painful as a total privation of everything which must necessarily follow the living so far beyond our income.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Hay, 1787. ME 6:223
Barack Obama and the Democrats have been offering a disingenuous and dishonest thesis: that they are spending insane amounts of money to save money. They touted their massive $787 billion (and really $3.27 trillion!!!) stimulus as an “investment” in jobs. Jobs that never came. And now a solid plurality of Americans agree that massive stimulus pork bill HURT the economy. That realization is coming even as the facts are increasingly emerging that the Democrats have been using the stimulus to reward themselves in pork-style politics EXACTLY AS THOMAS JEFFERSON WARNED.
And now they are touting their health care bill – and the gimmickry they have played to make it appear “deficit neutral” over the long haul – and their cap-and-trade legislation, to say that their massive spending is really an “investment” in the future as well.
Don’t buy their spin.
Stop the madness. Stop the depraved and insane spending. Stop the Democrats from imposing a socialist agenda that will take away our freedoms and tax us into oblivion all in the name of helping us.
Stop the founding fathers from having to spin in their graves.
It has often occurred to me these past months that the founding fathers were willing to fight in order to throw off tyranny that were virtually nothing compared to the onerous ones we are being fitted with today.
Start Thinking Right 