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REPEAL 1913 |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Thursday, 01 October 2009 |
One of the more fascinating features of To The Point is the Users Forum, where TTPers share their insights
and expertise. An excellent example
is the recent (9/26) thread initiated by "Spartan" - Van Kottis - in
commemoration of his 1,000th (!) TTP post.
He asks for suggestions on what TTP can do to help the
TeaParty movement focus its opposition to Zeroism with an updated 21st
century version of the Contract With America
program that ended 64 years of Dem control of the House in 1994.
It's Van's hope that this will generate a lively Forum
discussion rife with trenchant suggestions.
I have two.
The first is to offer specific language that explicitly
defines what conservatives are for
(not simply against) government-wise.
I.e., we stand for not simply "limited government" but constitutionally
limited government.
This means we want to restore constitutional limitations on
central government. It means to go on
the constitutional offensive against laws Congress has no authority to pass and
regulations the federal bureaucracy has no authority to enforce.
This is just what the Pacific Legal
Foundation is doing in its lawsuit challenging the constitutional authority
of the Endangered Species Act as it is being applied in California,
causing a catastrophic man-made drought in the San
Joaquin Valley in
order to protect tiny fish like the Delta smelt.
As PLF head Rob Rivett explained to Sean Hannity on Fox
News: "Because the Delta smelt exists
only in California and has no
commercial value, the feds have no constitutional authority to issue
regulations relating to it."
Hopefully, Rivett will add to the lawsuit the argument that
the Environmental Protection Agency has no lawful authority regarding the
rivers themselves that form the Sacramento Delta (the Sacramento, American, San
Joaquin et al), because all of them are entirely within California - source to
mouth.
The constitutional limitations argument can accomplish goals
that some amorphously vague argument for "limited government" never could. Even when a good-guy conservative like Florida's
Marco Rubio
advocates it, the concept is essentially meaningless. Limited to what? Limited by what?
So here's a specific course of action you can personally
take. Every time you see a politician,
pundit, or political activist quoted as being for "limited government," send
him/her an email politely requesting they change this to "constitutionally
limited government."
One place to start with is an outfit called Americans for Limited Government. It's a great group doing good things. You could consider writing to them at
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
to suggest they
change their name to Americans for Constitutionally
Limited Government.
"ALG is dedicated to putting the principles of limited
government into action," is its defining mission statement. But what are the principles, and how are they
going to achieve a government limited to what?
The enumerated powers granted to the federales provide those limitations
- and that is what ALG (ACLG?) should explicitly stand for.
The word "constitutionally" should always precede the word "limited" by any conservative when
discussing government. And it you want
to ask Marco Rubio to do so, you can write to him here.
Now about that second suggestion of mine. It's to form a movement to repeal 1913.
Just between you and me (can you keep a secret?), it's actually
a movement to repeal progressivism,
repeal the entire liberal-left agenda, but we need a specific target to
focus upon.
That would be the year 1913, the worst year for American
freedom in our country's history (or at least since the Civil War). By the time 2013 rolls around, and a Palin
Presidency inaugurates a revival of American freedom, a nation-wide movement
can be in place that says 100 years of destruction of American freedom is
enough, that it's time to Repeal 1913.
In 1913, America's
first
fascist presidency, that of Woodrow Wilson, began. In that one single year, the Federal Reserve
was created, the 16th Amendment was ratified creating the IRS, and
the 17th Amendment was also ratified transferring the election of
Senators from state legislatures to popular vote.
The Federal Reserve destroyed our monetary and economic
freedom - the best book to read about it is The
Creature From Jekyll Island - and its very existence is unconstitutional. Only Congress, via Article I section 8, has
the authority to make or "coin" money and regulate its value - not some
privately owned central bank.
The 16th Amendment destroyed our personal
freedom, as anyone who has dealt with the IRS (and who among us hasn't)
painfully knows.
The 17th Amendment destroyed our political
freedom, providing an Open Sesame for the astronomical expansion of federal
power taken place since.
Our bicameral legislature was set up by the Constitution's
authors so that the House represented the individual citizens of a given state,
while the Senate represented the states themselves. House Members were thus directly elected,
while Senators were elected by the state legislatures because Senators were to
be the representative of the interests of state governments in Washington.
As such, Senators were, in the Founders' eyes, to be jealous
guardians of individual state rights and prerogatives, and alert guard dogs
preventing unlawful federal encroachment upon those rights. They ceased to be since 1913, when they
became nothing more than glorified Congressmen.
To grasp how much the repeal of the 17th
Amendment is an idea whose time has come, Google these three words - repeal 17th
amendment - and you'll get 2,320,000 hits.
A number of conservative organizations now advocate
repealing the 17th, such as The Tenth
Amendment Center; specific websites are dedicated to the issue, such as repealthe17thamendment; pundits like George
Will advocate its repeal. There is
now a Resolution
in the Montana state senate to
repeal the 17th. More states
will follow.
The movement to repeal the 16th Amendment and
abolish IRS intrusion into our lives is even more underway.
Yes, there are folks who believe that the 16th
was never properly ratified - as per the book The Law
That Never Was - and so therefore the IRS doesn't really exist. Acting on that belief is a good way to end up
behind bars.
Serious folks ignore the ratification issue and focus on
repeal - like constitutional law professor Randy Barnett,
and Congressman Steve King
(R-IA) who sponsored H.J.Res. (House Joint Resolution) 16 for a constitutional
amendment that simply states:
"The sixteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of
the United States
is hereby repealed."
Is your Congressman a co-sponsor? Perhaps you should find out.
No replacement of the income tax - such as the proposed Fair Tax
- can be made until the 16th is repealed beforehand. No such repeal
is a virtual guarantee that we'll get both
a national sales tax and the income tax. The only way to kill the Fascist Beast is to
drive a constitutional stake through the heart of the IRS.
Now for the Fed. Ron
Paul (R-TX) has launched a movement to repeal the Fed with his best-selling
book (currently #8 on Amazon) End
The Fed. He has also sponsored
legislation, HR 833, the Federal Reserve
Board Abolition Act, and HR 1207, the Federal Reserve
Transparency Act.
The latter, which orders a full forensic audit of the Fed
(including a determination of how much gold is actually in Ft.
Knox and the New York Federal
Reserve), currently has 297 co-sponsors.
Pelosi won't release the bill, but Paul could force it on the floor with
a discharge petition - yet for some eccentric reason he won't. He's an eccentric guy.
The model for the Repeal 1913 Movement is, of course, the 21st
Amendment.
Excepting the 16th and 17th
Amendments, the most idiotically destructive was the 18th Amendment,
passed - again during the Wilson
presidency - in 1920, banning "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of
intoxicating liquors" in the US.
It's critical to understand that Prohibition was a progressivist creation, a liberal
fascist goody-two-shoes control-people's-lives program, and that as such it was
a progressivist failure, a failure of liberal fascism. Such an overwhelmingly massive failure,
responsible for an explosion of organized crime and a majority of people
flouting the law, that it had to be repealed.
Repealed via the 21st Amendment, passed in 1933,
which stated simply:
"The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of
the United States
is hereby repealed." eighteenth
article of amendment to the onstitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
This is what we need to do to the 18th's two
immediate predecessors - and pass the Fed Abolition Act - for all three have
been equally massive progressivist liberal fascist failures.
Repealing 1913 starting in 2013 within the overall context
of a Palin Presidency pro-capitalist/pro-freedom agenda will drive a stake
through the heart of not just the IRS, the Fed, and Washington's unlawful
control over our lives, but the whole agenda of the liberal-progressivist left.
It will also cause a re-ignition of the American economy, a
cornucopiac burgeoning of prosperity.
This is the promise that awaits - if we use the time we have
until 2013 wisely to plan and prepare.
The Dark Age of Zero may presage - indeed, may be the necessary
precursor for - an American Renaissance.
Projects to achieve Constitutional Limited Government and
Repeal 1913 could be the midwives to that rebirth.
Ps: I now own the domain for www.repeal1913.org. I offer
it to any TTPer(s) who can take it and run with it.
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