Dakota Beacon

A few days ago I received an e-mail from an acquaintance that I also count as a friend, with the Subject “Wild Rumors Needing Correction”. My friend, a well-known member of this community and very active within the local Democratic Party surprised me with his e-mail. The information, which was contained therein, concerned the health care plan being supported by the Obama administration. This information was very similar to e-mails I received from the White House, by David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to the President. Frankly I was surprised that I received any communication from the White House, as I had no idea that I was in their address book.

In my response to my friend I told him that my problem with ANY federal government run health care plan was that it was unconstitutional. The issue should NOT be if H.R. 676 (Rep. John Conyers Health Care Bill, which is one of several being considered) is good or bad for America, but whether or not the Congress has authority under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. The same is true for the bailout and/or stimulus legislation passed by Congress in 2008 and 2009, with the take-over of the banking, insurance, financial and automotive industries. The answer is, of course, none of these bills are constitutional.

This is what the American people should be asking their representatives – does Congress have the POWER to be in the business of providing health care, or for running GM or Chrysler or AIG, or the control of any corporation or business? All one has to do is get a copy of the Constitution and read what it says about POWERS delegated to the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches of the federal government. If you need further explanation on the intent of the signers of this document, I suggest that you get a copy of The Federalist Papers, or other material written by several of the Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Thomas Paine, or James Madison (who is credited with actually writing the Constitution).

I recently read an excerpt from Myron Magnet’s book The Dream and the Nightmare, the Sixties Legacy to the Underclass (1993), which talks about how most members of Congress (and politicians in general) view their “role” as “doing good deeds with other peoples money with the feeling that the boundaries of the Constitution is irrelevant.”  Here is the excerpt:

“Instead of ending poverty for the Have- Nots - despite the civil rights movement - despite the War on Poverty - the new culture order fostered, in the underclass and the homeless, a new intractable poverty that shocked and dismayed, that seemed to belong more to the era of ragged chimney sweeps than to modern America, that went beyond the economic realm into the realm of pathology. Poverty turned pathological . . . because the new culture that the Haves invented - their remade system of beliefs, norms and institutions - permitted, even celebrated, behavior that, when poor people practiced it, will imprison them inextricably in poverty . . . Worse, during the sixties and seventies, the new culture of the Haves, in its quest for personal liberation, withdrew respect from the behavior and attitudes that have traditionally boosted people up the economic ladder - deferral of gratification, sobriety, thrift, dogged industry, and so on through the whole catalogue of antique-sounding bourgeois virtues.” (Mr. Magnet was the editor in chief of the City Journal, the Manhattan Institute.)

What has this to do with the issues in our world of 2009? Everything! The “modern liberal progressive” politician has decided that our document of 221 years is no longer relevant in 21st Century America, and therefore the boundaries under the Constitution no longer need to be respected. This phenomenon did not just happen after the 2008 election. This trend began in earnest at the beginning of the 20th Century, and has escalated ever since.  We have ceased to be a nation of “laws”, but rather of “men”.

Compassion is NOT the government’s business. Compassion is the business of the Society of People. Before the advent of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all of the other government social experiments it was the churches, local charities, the Salvation Army, and other organizations that were aware of the needs of those less fortunate. This was true compassion, not the government programs designed to “fit the needs of all”, but to make our society dependent on government.

James Madison in Federalist No. 57 gave the following concerning the House of Representatives:

“If it be asked what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer, the genius of the whole system, the nature of just and constitutional laws, and above all the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, [is] a spirit which nourishes freedom and in return is nourished by it.”

And a little further in No. 57: “The House of Representatives . . . can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples, but without which every government degenerates into tyranny,”

In closing I am reminded of the statement of our greatest Statesman, Thomas Jefferson, from his autobiography (1821) on the federal government: “Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread”. He also stated in his first Inaugural Address the following: “A wise and frugal government shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

James B. Plair, Lt. Col. USAR-Ret. Author of A Study of the United States Constitution and the Federalist Papers