The U.S. Constitution - use it or lose it! (UPDATED)

If you have so far managed (THIS WEEK!) to make it past the government destroying our wealth through the printing press, and were still stumbling past the ‘notion’ that government should be in the banking (or any other) business, only to be hit with the government using taxation as a way to target particular citizens… AIG peter-principle execs or otherwise, not to mention the fear that just as our government “took an interest in” AIG & leading Banks that were ‘too big to fail’ in order to ‘protect the economy’, there is now the very real possibility that the IMF & nations of the U.N. may decide that the USA is ‘too big to fail’ and so they (China, Russia, etc, who hold our loans) may propose that the fundamentals of our economy may need to be ‘managed’ in order to protect the rest of the world… (pause to catch breath … run-on sentence aerobics…) if you can possibly make it past all of that which is going on right now, which is damn near overwhelming, then this is where you may want to focus some of the remaining shreds of your attention upon: Free Speech.

Free speech, because if that goes, there will be no way left for us to combat the rest of the problems.

When foolish ‘moderates’ such as John McCain led the fight for campaign finance reform (which was also the excuse for the 17th amendment, which reduced the U.S. Senate to the status and quality of House Representatives with triple length terms – which, btw, also increased, rather than decreased, the ‘campaign finance problem’), giving the idiotic excuse that ‘money must be kept out of politics’; completely missing the fact that that established the right of the government to prohibit people from putting their money where their mouths wanted it to be heard - endorsing a political choice – the only free speech the founders had in mind to protect.

McCain and others of his ilk said these ‘protections’ would never spill into prohibitions on actual ‘free speech’ of individual citizens political ideals, no, no, McCain/Feingold would only prevent big money from corrupting big government (the truth is the other way around of course, but that’s another matter), while some of us said that once the principle was established, the rest would surely follow.

Well….

“Court hears arguments over anti-Hillary movie
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned whether government regulation of a movie critical of former presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton might also be used to ban books critical of political hopefuls during election season.”

No crystal balls are needed here to predict the future should this new principle stand, only the application of philosophical principles.

If the McCain/Feingold statutes themselves are not struck down, then whether or not this particular movie is successfully banned, more attempts will follow, until the logical expression of the new McCain/Feingold principle that “Speech can only be free, when and where the government says it’s ok to speak” is given the force of law.

You can see the same principle being applied through a different form in the efforts to recast the “Fairness Doctrine”, and trial balloons over control of speech on the internet. Once limits on movies or commercials are established as ‘detrimental to free speech’, then similar controls on books will follow quickly behind, then the scope of what defines an ‘election season’ will be expanded, and finally it will be extended to prevent interfering in the ability of elected officials to ‘carry out the peoples business which they were elected to do’.

At that point, the Founders Constitution will become only a historical curiosity… which you’ll probably need authorization to examine.

Am I exagerating? Well... have a look at this, which just passed the House, From H.R. 1388: Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, Down in Part III, SEC. 120. INNOVATIVE DEMONSTRATION SERVICE-LEARNING PROGRAMS AND RESEARCH, you'll find this gem,

"‘(B) service-learning is a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the
secondary schools served by the local educational agency."

Which part of 'Mandatory' sounds like 'volunteerism' to you? Which part of 'Home of the Free' do you think seems amenable to forcing our children to volunteer for government mandated 'community service'? People used to say 'It can't happen here' - folks, it IS happening here, here and now. It is happening because people are not familiar with the very document expressly designed and created to prevent such things from ever happening here - the U.S. Constitution, and the relevant documents (Federalist & Anti-Federalist papers, etc) which can help you to understand it, as it was intended then - not as it is being spun now. (BTW: For another look at this which is not as nonchalant as mine, try Gateway Pundit's take - Hat tip to QP)

If you know anyone who thinks anything that is being done now is ‘constitutional’, they are dreaming. If you don’t know how to explain how that it is un-constitutional, how are you going to avoid their dream from becoming your nightmare?

Examine it now. If you aren’t familiar with the ideas which shaped the Founders thinking in writing the Constitution, I’m aware of no better site than the Founders Constitution, hosted by the University of Chicago Press and the Liberty Fund. Each phrase, such as the Preamble, is hyperlinked to the relevant documents, ranging from the Greeks to Locke, the Federalist and the Anti-Federalist papers, even early Supreme Court decisions affecting them… it is outstanding.

Tell your representatives you ‘disapprove’ of these measures, assuming you do (and if not, why not?), but don’t count on them. No long term solutions will come from them, it will have to come from ‘We The People’ learning what is right, Why it is Right, and Demanding that the right thing be done, continually, and over the long term. If you are looking for easy answers, you will just as easily lose it all.

If we don’t learn it, and defend it, it will be gone.

Bank on it.