Implied or Usurped?
Whenever Congress wrangles about the Federal budget and deficits, I have the same futile thought: Why don’t they just stop spending money unconstitutionally?
Two of the biggest items in the budget, for example, are Social Security and Medicare. The U.S. Constitution doesn’t authorize either program.
If you read the Constitution, you’ll find the legislative powers of Congress carefully enumerated. These powers, fewer than two dozen, don’t include welfare spending.
Thomas Jefferson was deeply suspicious of the whole notion of implied powers; he saw clearly where it might lead.
The greatest usurper of power in American history was Abraham Lincoln. By denying the right of states to secede and equating secession with “rebellion,” he enabled himself, at a stroke, to claim countless implied powers. As his defender Harry V. Jaffa puts it, “No president before him had ever discovered the reservoir of constitutional power within [the] presidential oath.”
in Lincoln’s mind, “preserving the Constitution,” he felt justified in making war on the states, raising armies and money on his own initiative, arresting elected officials, suppressing free speech, shutting down the press, and establishing dictatorial military governments in place of the state governments. It was the worst period of repression in American history, and Lincoln’s actions were directed against the freedoms of the North as well as the South.
If Jefferson, who advocated the right of secession, had been alive during the war, he might well have been arrested for treason.
At Gettysburg Lincoln proclaimed “a new birth of freedom.” What he actually brought the country was the death of limited government.
Já Gore Vidal numa entrevista recente, diz:
(Benjamin) Franklin saw danger everywhere. They all did. Not one of them liked the Constitution. James Madison, known as the father of it, was full of complaints about the power of the presidency. But they were in a hurry to get the country going. Hence the great speech, which I quote at length in the book, that Franklin, old and dying, had someone read for him. He said, I am in favor of this Constitution, as flawed as it is, because we need good government and we need it fast. And this, properly enacted, will give us, for a space of years, such government.
But then, Franklin said, it will fail, as all such constitutions have in the past, because of the essential corruption of the people. He pointed his finger at all the American people. And when the people become so corrupt, he said, we will find it is not a republic that they want but rather despotism — the only form of government suitable for such a people.
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