By Kim Weissman
June 12, 2005
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RESTORE AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY: In the 105th, 106th, 107th, and 108th congresses, Congressman Ron Paul introduced H.R.1146, the American Sovereignty Restoration Act, to end United States membership in the United Nations. Each year the proposed legislation lapsed when the congressional sessions ended without taking action. This year, Congressman Paul has again introduced his bill into the 109th congress, but as in every previous session, H.R.1146 languishes in the House Committee on International Relations (Henry Hyde, Chairman). "Respectable" people, you see, never talk in polite company about ending our participation in that august body of global bureaucrats; such "extremist" ideas belong on the fringe of the "radical" Christian right and the "black helicopter" militia. But if our founding principles still mean anything, if the idea of self-government still means anything, if our Constitution still means anything, it is long past time to terminate American membership in that unaccountable and unrepresentative organization dedicated to expanding its own power, hiding its own failures, and curtailing individual liberty and self government. A previous issue of this commentary stated that the United Nations was unable to recognize the difference between free democratic nations, and totalitarian dictatorships. That may have been incorrect. Perhaps they do know the difference - the problem is that all too often they favor the latter over the former. THE FUTURE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT: In a speech to the Woodrow Wilson Center, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia discussed a vital issue upon which the survival of our liberty and our ability to govern ourselves largely depends. Scalia describes himself as an "originalist" on Constitutional interpretation, which means "that you give the text [of the Constitution] the meaning it had when it was adopted... the Constitution is not a living organism for Pete's sake; it's a legal document, and like all legal documents, it says some things, and it doesn't say other things." If the people who adopted the Constitution want to change it, the democratic procedure by which that can and should be done, by the amendment process, is established in Article V of the Constitution itself. In this idea, Scalia is in the best of company:
Scalia advanced what he called "the best debaters argument" against the concept of a "living" Constitution. An originalist judge bases his decisions on the original meaning of the Constitution. The people adopted the Constitution, and can alter it by amendments adopted democratically by the people. Thus, judges who base their decisions on the meaning of the Constitution are deciding on the basis of what the people intend. But if the living Constitution judge rejects the controlling authority of original meaning - and thereby rejects what the people intend - upon what does he base his decisions? This question goes to the very heart of the meaning of self government. We have already seen the Supreme Court base its decisions on foreign laws and foreign court decisions, on unratified treaties, and on what Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg called "comparative dialogue" and "good thinking foreign sources" ("good" as determined by the unfettered discretion of Justice Ginsburg) - none of which the American public has any ability whatsoever to influence. This is a process that one commentator called the "spontaneous amendment" of the Constitution. Scalia said, "I don't think this is an exaggeration, that the Court has essentially liberated itself from the text of the Constitution, from the text, and even from the traditions, of the American people." Scalia then explained why the confirmation of judges has grown so contentious:
We are now, Scalia says, at "the point of selecting people to write a constitution [emphasis added], rather than people to give us the fair meaning of one that has been democratically adopted." Nine justices on the Supreme Court writing a new Constitution as they see fit, and then mandating that the entire nation obey, is a decidedly undemocratic process which results in meanings that were never adopted or ratified by the people, but which are imposed upon them without their consent. Recall the words of our Declaration of Independence:
If we believe these words still have meaning, what can we say about a government that exercises powers which were not derived from the consent of the governed? And let's not forget that the federal judiciary has declared itself to be the final authority - subject to no higher authority or control - in relation to both the Legislative and Executive branches, and the People. James Madison (Federalist #47):
The restoration of self-governance and federalism according to original constitutional intent seems further away than ever. Originalist judges are routinely vilified as "outside the mainstream." Leftists consider the Constitution itself to be "outside the mainstream." The failure of our schools to teach fundamental constitutional principles has convinced the public that unchallengeable pronouncements from judges is how we are supposed to be governed. Elections grow less relevant as our governance is increasingly dictated by a multitude of unelected bodies. Unelected government agencies promulgate millions of pages of regulation over our everyday lives, writing rules with the force of law that even many of them can't understand, but the very incomprehensibility of which serves as a useful tool with which to threaten the population into subservience. In many instances it doesn't even require a showing of criminal intent for someone to end up in jail. The 9/11 Commissioners recently demanded that their nostrums of national security be implemented, and said they intend to "hold the government's feet to the fire" until that happens. Their ideas may be excellent or they may be foolish, but nobody elected them to make those decisions. To whom are they accountable? There may yet be hope for the revival of self-government. After decades of being ruled from on high by courts imposing dictates that everyone outside the ACLU sees as ludicrous or harmful to society, the public finally seems to growing weary of being told by elitists that they're too stupid to manage their own lives. But maybe that's too optimistic. In March, it was widely reported that enactment of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) was, as one account put it, "a carefully crafted fraud perpetrated by political groups," accomplished by creating the appearance of a grass-roots movement favoring BCRA that did not, in fact, exist. The effort was funded by well-known left-wing groups. It has now been several months since the details of this massive hoax were revealed in a videotape reportedly showing a former high-ranking member of one of those groups boasting how the public, the congress, and the media were hoodwinked - and there has been barely a murmur of outrage from anyone. Naturally the media is not concerned that they were duped; after all, the effect of BCRA is to give them more power to misinform the public without contradiction. But there has been no anger from congress either, including BCRA's prime sponsors, Senators McCain and Feingold, or Congressmen Shays and Meehan. We can only speculate why they are so uninterested that they were manipulated. And there's been barely a ripple of protest from an apparently uninterested public. Nobody seems to care. THE UNKNOWN AHEAD: Americans in the 21st century live in the wealthiest, most comfortable, most pampered and most privileged society in the history of mankind. Astounding technologies that wouldn't even have been in the dreams of science fiction a generation ago are now so commonplace as to be unremarkable and even unnoticed, and combine to give us a lifespan unparalleled in human history and a lifestyle so rich in its endless possibilities that even kings and emperors of old could not have aspired to it. And yet, there is a seething, festering rage boiling across the nation. The liberalism of individual liberty has been consumed by group-think totalitarians of the Angry Left, who never let mere facts get in the way of their agenda; who speak the words of freedom, patriotism, and tradition, but believe none of it. They are motivated by a burning hatred and a rabid desire to uproot every vestige of our national heritage. The conservatism of individual self-reliance, limited constitutional government, and a strong national defense has been so browbeaten by political correctness that it can't even protect the nation's borders, fears to do what is necessary to win a war in which our survival is at stake, and continues to expand the power of government. Traditional liberal democrats pretend not to notice that their ideology has vanished from their party. The republicans' inability to exercise leadership shows they are incapable of revitalizing the republic. A restive public increasingly divides itself into uncompromising and irreconcilable factions. We blithely go about our everyday lives as though there isn't a war on; we fight among ourselves, each side acting as though the other is a bigger threat to the nation than terrorism. Nearly four years after the attack that forced us to accept that we are at war (a period longer than our entire involvement on World War Two), our nation still remains appallingly vulnerable. Our military effort is undermined, as if a war can be won by supplying propaganda to the enemy and by demanding the resignation or impeachment of our war leaders. All the while we face an enemy committed to returning the world to a new Dark Age, their threat made all the more dangerous by the perversion of modern science. In his newest book, Newt Gingrich quotes terrorism expert Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld: "...ending the real threat this fundamentalist Islamic theocracy poses to the United States and the West may be impossible, thanks to the Left's and the pro-Islamists' non-stop assault on the president's credibility." The American generation now coming of age faces challenges as momentous as any that have ever faced our nation. Perhaps more so, since we face both internal and external threats simultaneously, both committed to the destruction of our traditional society and our way of life; and aided and abetted by other nations and hostile international organizations that make a mockery of individual liberty and self-government, and would rejoice in our failure. This generation has the opportunity to reverse decades of violence in the most unstable region on earth, to sustain the spread of an infectious yearning for liberty across the globe, and to restore constitutional self-governance here at home. Will the future look upon our time as the start of a new age of enlightenment, or as the tragedy of historic opportunities squandered? FOR MORE INFORMATION... RESTORE AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY: Legislative text (H.R.1146): http://thomas.loc.gov/home/c109query.html Justice Scalia's Woodrow Wilson Center speech: http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/guest_commentary/scalia-constitutional-speech.htm |