What would you do if you were forced to argue a position that anyone with a room temperature I.Q. would instinctively know is wrong?
“RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)” Saul Alinsky.
Enter Dan Casey’s contribution to the debate on the role and scope of the Federal Government.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is one of the leading lights of the 10th Amendment movement, or “The Tenthers,” a peculiar band of U.S. Constitution misreaders, dopes and ignoramuses whose asinine arguments are actually garnering some attention to these days.
That is quite an opening sentence. I mean who would want to be seen as a constitution “misreader”, or a dope and an ignoramus?
Of course, I am taking the position that Dan is arguing a point that is so obviously wrong, that his only recourse is name calling and preseting half facts, or maybe quarter facts, and complete misrepresentations of the truth. In the opening sentence we got the name calling out of the way so let’s break down the rest of his article, and see if he provides anything useful to the debate, or does his lack of evidence lead one to believe that maybe there is no evidence?
Tenthers point to the 10th Amendment to the Constitution in arguing the federal government has overreached in myriad ways. The government, Tenthers claim, lacks constitutional authority in areas of food stamps, child labor, Medicare, Social Security and just about everything else you can think of, including the federal highway system.
This is a classic example of the “sacred cow” argument. These people want to enslave your children and subject grandma to abject poverty by taking away her social security and Medicare! This is a misrepresentation of the tenther movement. People are not holding rallies to get rid of Social Security or Medicare or the federal highway system. Are those programs something that should be handled at the federal level? I don’t think they are, and the mismanagement of the Social Security funds and the abuses of the Medicare system are prime examples of why. But those things are not what are motivating people to get involved in the debate. Many of us involved with the Tenth Amendment Center got involved because of the Patriot Act, a blatant violation of the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution. One of the current battles we are fighting is the notion that the Federal Government can force you to buy a product simply for being alive.
They also cite the Tenth Amendment as the justification to for suing to overturn the the Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare — and Cuccinelli is leading the charge on those efforts.
Here is the entire text of the 10th Amendment:
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.
Technically we tenthers are for the States Nullifying the law, not suing, but you at least were able to cut and paste the correct words of the Tenth Amendment.
Of course, this completely obscures actions by Tenthers of an earlier era, who used the 10th Amendment as the prime justification for the “States Rights” argument that itself was a smokescreen for the real cause of the Civil War — the South’s insistence on preserving slavery.
But apart from aligning themselves with slaveholders, there’s another more fundamental flaw in the whole modern Tenther argument. In a nutshell, it’s this: Their interpretation is based on a single sentence in the Constitution, rather than on the document as a whole.
Once again, the idea is to discredit the movement by aligning it with slavery and the civil war. The facts are that Jefferson Davis was against the idea of Nullification, and the principles of 98 (Nullification) was cited by Wisconsin against the Fugitive Slave laws during the abolitionist movement. I also refute the idea that our interpretation is based on a single sentence.
In fact, the larger document directly contradicts the Tenthers’ argument. That’s right — words the founding fathers quite deliberately wrote into the Constitution clearly and effectively rebut the Tenthers’ faulty reasoning.
For example, consider the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The problem for the Tenthers here is that the First Amendment has nothing to do with what Congress can do. It’s all about what Congress can’t do.
So Dan suggests that the entire document refutes the idea that the constitution grants specific powers to the federal government, and provides the First Amendment as an example. The problem with his example is that the first ten Amendments also known as the Bill of Rights were written to forbid the Federal Government from doing certain things. The first sentence of the Preamble to the Bill of Rights reads;
THE Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added:
This is why we believe that the Tenth Amendment is the proper tool for preventing or undoing laws that demonstrate a “Misconstruction or abuse of its powers”. The federal mandate is a clear example of that. While the First Amendment is about what congress can’t do, but does anyway with the Patriot Act being one example, the Constitution does grant specific powers to the Federal Government. In fact, most of those powers are listed in Article One section eight. The first sentence reads;
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;…
The Statesman Sentinel quotes our center in listing 30(up to 35 depending on how you count them) powers listed throughout the document here. So Dan is either ignorant of the Document or is misleading his audience.
I won’t go to Tenther lengths with this line of reasoning, and mount an argument that because the founding fathers did not prohibit the government from requiring individuals to buy health insurance, that requiring them to buy it is constitutional. I’ll leave that one for the scholars and the courts,
You won’t? What was the point of this article then? If you want to see a scholarly view of the Constitution check out “The Original Constitution: What it Actually Said and Meant” by Robert G. Natelson. Or you can base your view of the Constitution from only the First Amendment.
But it’s plainly obvious that the simple language of the First Amendment renders the Tenthers’ interpretation of the 10th Amendment completely bogus.
What’s really going on here is this: the Tenther movement is led by a few smart and cynical people who find economic or political self-interest in Tenther logic. They have won over a much larger bunch of intellectual boobs who can’t be bothered to think for themselves.
And those latter folks are the ones making all the noise.
No Dan, it is plainly obvious your argument has no merit to anyone who does think for themselves. You have presented no credible evidence for your side of the debate. Alinsky tactics and ad hominem arguments will not carry the debate this time. I’ll leave you all with one final shot, in our Constitional Republic the sovereign is listed very plainly in the first three words of the Constitution. This debate may be influenced by the scholars, but the outcome of this debate will ultimatly be determined by “WE THE PEOPLE” in who we elect to represent us in the State Legislative bodies accrosss this great nation of ours. That is what I believe the point of your article was, and that is the point of my rebuttal.