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Were the militias alone able to defeat the British in the Revolutionary war?
Would they be able to defeat an invasion of the U.S. today?
Would citizens be able to pursue and detain criminals dispassionately?
Would they be able to chase them across state borders, to an area where the crook may be regarded as a conquering hero?
My what short little memories and attention spans we have tonight.
In other words, you're not going to answer the questions.
I expected as much. Your silence speaks volumes.
Back to the subject:
Of course, civilian citizens cannot do these things, as has been established countless times by grim experience. And the price of failing to succeed, is devastating. Which is why the authority to run armed forces, courts etc. are among the very few powers given to the Fed govt by the Framers of the Constitution. Elementary to most people, unknown (or so they claim) to those dodging questions and trying to keep conservatives from limiting government.
Paying for medical care, OTOH, is something civilians CAN do, both individually and in groups such as insurance companies, charities etc. They could even do them WELL, before government started usurping that authority, distorting the market for those payments, etc. Those are probably among the reasons why the Framers were careful to leave such authority OUT of the Constitution, thus forbidding the Fed govt from interfering. Naturally, the big-govt socialists among us blithely ignore such bans, and try to tell us that a majority vote in Congress overrides the Constitution.
Last edited by Little-Acorn; 02-20-2012 at 10:07 PM..
The Affordable Health Care Act gives you nothing for which you do not pay and forces those who receive services for free, at the expense of others, to pay for what they may need. Which by the way used to be a Republican idea.
?? Really? What about the massive subsidies to millions of households? What about the cadillac coverage mandates, no deductible-no co-pay for routine recurring expenses? The Obamanable Health Care Act gives me things I do not want and makes me pay for them--and also puts more deadweight on my back besides.
Yep, the founding fathers did want to keep things small.... The were angling to set a limit on the size of the army. Washington's response was that that he'd agree with congress' wishes to limited the army to 5,000 as long as they required an invading army to limit their size to 3,000.
Imposing arbitrary limits on anything is silly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Little-Acorn
The people who founded the country did it with the idea that government would be a relatively small and unimportant part of everyone's lives, except for the few that were actually policitians. The whole idea was that people would be free to run their own lives and sink or swim by their own decisions, helping their neighbors when needed, learning from their own mistakes, trying again etc.
The government was there only to do things private citizens or groups could NOT do - dealing with foreign countries, national defense, dispassionate criminal pursuit and prosecution, setting national standards etc. And even most of those things were to be done at the most local levels, with the Federal govt's purpose only to handle the matters that even local or state govts couldn't.
The Constitution was written accordingly, giving the Fed only the powers that"the States or the People" couldn't handle at all. And that wasn't very many. It was forbidden all else, though the states and people had all other authority to do the rest.
So many parts of Obamacare (and much of the rest that the Fed has intruded on today) flies in the face of those ideas.
This is a good thing to keep in mind - each time you examine some new (or not so new) thing the Fed govt is to do, this will give you some pointers about whether it is unconstitutional.
And remember that the issue is not whether you think the govt can do it BETTER than the People. It's whether the people can do it AT ALL. If they can, however imperfectly, then the Fed govt is forbidden to "help".
Would they be able to defeat an invasion of the U.S. today?
Yes, of course they could.
We're invaded by China (or Russia or whoever) who sends one million troops in to guard 300 million people of which 100 million has some sort of personal weaponry as long as Obama and his minions don't repeal the second amendment.
The only ground they would occupy would be the ground they were standing on at that moment. Everything else would be Free America.
Technically, the list is the top 5,000 incorporated places and minor civil divisions.
Interesting factoid: the 2,092th most populous city in the U.S. is Lebanon, Indiana. It's estimated population, as of July 2008, is 15,400. The 2,093rd most populous city in the U.S. is Lebanon, Oregon. It's estimated population, as of July 2008, is 15,397.
The 5,000th town is Newport, NC with a population of 4,298.
How in the world is a foreign country going to invade and occupy America with only 1 million soldiers on the ground when we couldn't do the job in South Vietnam with over half a million soldiers in the 60's?
1 million/5,000=200 soldiers in every town with a population greater than 4,297. 200 might be able to do it in Newport but it won't work in Chicago. Probably would work in some, such as San Francisco, where occupying Chinese soldiers would be welcomed as liberating conquerors but in most of the country it would be fail.
How long do you think a garrison of 20 Chinese soldiers, a third of which would be asleep at any one time, would remain alive in North Platte, Nebraska? Every time one stumbled out the gate his life would be in very serious jeopardy.
Financially the occupation costs would eventually destroy any occupying country. Just ask the Romans about that.
The only force we have to fear is our own government.
We're invaded by China (or Russia or whoever) who sends one million troops in to guard 300 million people of which 100 million has some sort of personal weaponry as long as Obama and his minions don't repeal the second amendment.
The only ground they would occupy would be the ground they were standing on at that moment. Everything else would be Free America.
The 5,000th town is Newport, NC with a population of 4,298.
How in the world is a foreign country going to invade and occupy America with only 1 million soldiers on the ground when we couldn't do the job in South Vietnam with over half a million soldiers in the 60's?
1 million/5,000=200 soldiers in every town with a population greater than 4,297. 200 might be able to do it in Newport but it won't work in Chicago. Probably would work in some, such as San Francisco, where occupying Chinese soldiers would be welcomed as liberating conquerors but in most of the country it would be fail.
How long do you think a garrison of 20 Chinese soldiers, a third of which would be asleep at any one time, would remain alive in North Platte, Nebraska? Every time one stumbled out the gate his life would be in very serious jeopardy.
Financially the occupation costs would eventually destroy any occupying country. Just ask the Romans about that.
The only force we have to fear is our own government.
Your confidence in the sheer incompetence of an invading army is touching. Too bad it's so misplaced.
The idea that invaders would just stand around in a land of armed citizens is laughable. Large armed groups, backed by vehicles with artillery of various kinds and a few aircraft in the sky, would go house to house collecting weapons and shooting anybody who resisted. Some of them would get killed too, of course, by armed Americans who resisted before being shot, but mostly people would be cowed by seeing a few of their friends shot and a few houses blown up, especially when it was done before they had a chance to get organized and form a plan, or even hide their personal guns effectively.
The invaders wouldn't expect a welcome. They would take over communications first, controlling radio and television stations, disabling cell phone towers, etc.
Basically an invasion, if done right, would succeed, if militias were the ONLY force in place as silly people like colorado rambler want. Long Term, they may eventually yield to existing customs etc., but only after taking over and running things for quite a while.
Only if national armed forces were ready and waiting, as much of ours always are, COUPLED WITH an armed citizenry that could form an underground resistance, would an invasion "done right" fail.
Part of the reason for keeping our armed forces as we do, is so that potential invaders (or other various kinds of aggressors who want to live to enjoy the fruits of their work) will know they cannot possibly win... so they don't try.
original intent arguments are LAME...times change, consitution must adapt to the changing world or become obsolete. thank Satan most courts have followed my line of thinking through out the years...
original intent arguments are LAME...times change, consitution must adapt to the changing world or become obsolete. thank Satan most courts have followed my line of thinking through out the years...
Exactly. The Constitution has to be a principle of how we operate. I don't believe, in its literal sense, it can hope to govern a country of our size and moderninity. The founding fathers could have never imagined what the country would be like 236 years later. The magnitude of the population itself was probably more than they could imagine. I'm not saying to throw it out the window but ideas of governance for a few colonies can't necessarily sustain the size we are now and what is for the betterment of society today isn't the same as it was in the 1700s.
It's kind of like the bible. Back when it was written, it was a good piece of legislature for controlling people and related to a time that is VERY much different than today. The basic, core philosophies are faith and good deeds and taking care of others are still there. The means of accomplishing that HAVE to be different.
These arguments are typical of those who haven't read the Constitution and/or don't understand it. It is not, and was never intended to be, a "principle of how we operate". It is a directive of how our government operates - a very different thing - and what govt can and cannot do.
It simply says that the Federal govt will take care of this, that, and the other, and nothing else; and that lower governments etc. ("The States or the People") will take care of all the rest as they see fit as long as they don't conflict with this Constitution. And by the way the Congress and States can modify this Constitution any time, in any way they want, again as LARGE majorities of them see fit.
How is that "out of date"?
It basically fits the government to human nature... and human nature hasn't changed between 1789 and today, nor is it likely to in the future. The fact that we now have television, Internet, machine guns, tanks, supersonic aircraft, satellites, and atomic bombs, as well as a population exceeding 300 million (whose natures are no different from the natures of the people of 1789) do not require any changes to the Constitution... and if they did, we can simply go ahead and change it.
The complaints that some people have about the Constitution, boil down to then fact that it prohibits a big-govt Nanny State that takes care of our routine problems in life; and that its requirements for changing that prohibition (getting many diverse states to ratify, far from the seat of central government) makes it too tough to accomplish.
Well, what makes it too tough to accomplish, is that most of the American people don't want that big-govt Nanny State. That's why the big-govt advocates can't get 2/3 majorities in Congress, or 3/4 of the states, to agree. Not because of any defect in the Constitution. The Constitution was expressly designed to ensure that those large majorities, who are controlled by the general populace, would rule - and NOT a small group of people who believe they know better than the general populace how it should live, and who are controlled by no one.
BTW, comparing it to the Bible is silly, if for no other reason than the Bible (a) micromanages a lot, and (b) doesn't have an amendment process. The Constitution differs on both counts, plus others. And there's a reason why the Founding Fathers, and the people of the country at the time, chose the Constitutiton and NOT the Bible as the Supreme Law of the Land.
Last edited by Little-Acorn; 02-21-2012 at 11:24 AM..
The Affordable Health Care Act gives you nothing for which you do not pay and forces those who receive services for free, at the expense of others, to pay for what they may need. Which by the way used to be a Republican idea.
.... only because it is politically incorrect to just refuse service to those that do not or can not pay.
The role of the goverment is to enforce private property rights.
An excellent summation of the more prominent issues. The author does a good job pointing out what our founding fathers never foresaw... and which they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors to prevent.
Overreach: Obamacare vs. the Constitution
by Charles Krauthammer
Published: February 16
Give him points for cleverness. President Obama’s birth control “accommodation” was as politically successful as it was morally meaningless. It was nothing but an accounting trick that still forces Catholic (and other religious) institutions to provide medical insurance that guarantees free birth control, tubal ligation and morning-after abortifacients — all of which violate church doctrine on the sanctity of life.
1. You might want to learn a little bit of history. Nobody pledge "[their] lives, [their] fortunes, and [their] sacred honor" in the Constitution. Do you think you can find the document where that pledge is found?
2. It is Krauthanmmer who is engaging in an accounting trick. The bishops were complaining that none of their money should be going to support birth control, and now it isn't. The logical conclusion of what Krauthammer and the bishops want would be a prohibition on employees of Catholic instutitions to spend their own money on contraceptives, because, given that some of their money comes from a Catholic institution, the church is still forced to provide income that provides "birth control, tubal ligation, and morning-after abortifacients [sic]".
3. I might be a little more interested in church doctrine on the sanctity of life when they start excommunicating people who start wars of aggression, participate in capital punishment, or fail to do anything to address or alleviate poverty.
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