Constitution Day

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Most Americans don't know and don't care that today is Constitution Day, thus proving that a government declaration isn't likely to matter, unless the people think it does. 

The late Harry Browne summed it up thusly.....

There are far more significant days in the year:

• Labor Day, when we pretend to care about other people’s jobs while frolicking at the beach.
• Election Day, when we pretend we’re making a difference by voting.
• Flag Day, when we pretend the government is America.
• Veterans Day, formerly Armistice Day, when we pretended that World War I made the world safe for democracy.
• National Teachers Day, when we pretend our children are getting an education.
• Earth Day, when we pretend that making the government more powerful will make the environment cleaner.
• United Nations Day, when we pretend to believe all those inane statements about world peace.

The Constitution was supposed to spell out what government can do and what it can’t do. The government’s few legal functions are listed in Article 1, Section 8. It was a revolutionary document, in that no government in history had ever had its duties and restrictions so carefully defined.

Despite frequent violations of the Constitution by the government, the document did its job reasonably well for the first hundred years — making America the freest country in history.

As late as 1887, when Congress passed a bill providing federal relief to drought-stricken Texas farmers, Grover Cleveland vetoed it, saying, 

"I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution." 

But that was about the last gasp for limited, Constitutional government. Because the Constitution wasn’t self-enforcing, it depended on the good intentions of politicians, something Thomas Jefferson specifically warned against in 1798 when he said..... 

 "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."     

Whole thing here.

TWC believes that the American southwest saw the freest time in America. From the close of the Civil War until the advent of Jim Crow and the Income Tax Amendment, roughly 1865-1913, we were a free and prosperous people. It was a time when no government agent demanded your papers, there was no income tax, all the vices were legal or tolerated, your property was yours, and money had value and stability over time. 

As Ever,

TWC