Off Topic: Time To Get Real About The US Consitition

As part of trying to get up to speed on "Austrian Economics" I bumped into this MP3 (click here: http://mises.org/multimedia/mp3/MU2008/MC_Woods.mp3) entitled "Who Killed The Constitution" by Thomas E Woods, Jr. Here's the page with the link: http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=113.

This was a real eye-opener for me. I've considered myself a small-government, social conservative for decades. I thought the best way forward and preserve our liberties was to get a "conservative" president in to put in "conservative" supreme court justices and to go back to the plain reading of the constitution. This MP3 clearly shows that all three branches of the government have been openly ignoring the clear reading of the US constitution for decades and decades, especially as far as any limitations it puts on the power, scope and reach of the federal government.

Its time to get real about the idea that we should "go back to the constitution". The current government and the way it operate is so far away from the US constitution that this idea is clearly "not real". Its not going to happen. The same guys who hold the levers of power are in charge of deciding what the limits are on that exercise of power. Which means, no limitations.

MontyHigh

Comments

[Neil]

I found this post interesting as the only blogs I regularly read written by conservatives are ones like yours - not normally political. And my perspective has always been that the worst abuses of (extra)-constitutional authority come from the right wing. Suspension of Habeus Corpus. Torture. Legislating people's private (sexual) lives. Creating a national drinking age - clearly infringing on areas of state responsibility - by abusing the power of the purse and tying it to highway funding. That sort of thing.

I also found a certain amount of irony in the statement "I've considered myself a small-government, social conservative for decades," since again, from my perspective, social conservative means larger government interference in private affairs, kind of the opposite of small government.

Anyway, interesting to see a glimpse of the other side from someone whose opinion and analysis I've come to respect.