As the march toward November 2nd, 2010 continues, it really turns my stomach to see more and more political rhetoric where candidates are now claiming to be MORE “constitutional” than their opponent. For example, during the primaries in Utah’s U.S. Senate race, both candidates Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater laid claim to the Constitution as their guide. Please explain how EITHER of these guys call themselves fans of the Constitution yet oppose birthright citizenship?And where in the Constitution does it talk about Social Security? file for divorce online Utah
But constitutional “expert” Mike Lee offers the unconstitutional solution of simply raising the retirement age but isn’t that a bit like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? You don’t have to tweak already doomed institutions. For example, as an entrepreneur, I helped to found the leading consulting firm in the Reverse Mortgage space to help create market-based solutions to the problem of senior funding.How can these Constitutional Experts support the unconstitutional War on Drugs (remember, Prohibition? You need a Constitutional Amendment to make prohibition the law of the land and last I checked, we never ratified an Amendment to prohibit drugs).And interesting Constitutional aside for Utahns, the Twenty-first Amendment, which ended prohibition, was ratified when Utah became the state to cast the deciding 36th vote to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933. Utah’s subsequent infamous and unusual liquor laws were a direct result of its decisive vote to end the government enforced prohibition of alcohol.Recently, a headline at the satirical Onion website read: Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be. I call these types “A La Carte Constitutionalists”. You know the type, they pick and choose the parts of the Constitution they like and disregard the rest. Their piecemeal approach may be truly deceitful or merely done for expediency’s sake (e.g., being a “constitutionalist” makes a great sound-byte) but either way it is wrong. “[i]t is true that, in the United States, at least, we have a constitution that imposes strict limits on some powers of government. But, as we have discovered in the past century, no constitution can interpret or enforce itself; it must be interpreted by men. And if the ultimate power to interpret a constitution is given to the government’s own Supreme Court, then the inevitable tendency is for the Court to continue to place its imprimatur on ever-broader powers for its own government. Furthermore, the highly touted “checks and balances” and “separation of powers” in the American government are flimsy indeed, since in the final analysis all of these divisions are part of the same government and are governed by the same set of rulers.” – Murray Rothbard While I do think a move back toward our Constitution and toward truly limited-government of the Founding Fathers is an important goal, I don’t like to call myself a “constitutionalist” because it really isn’t a very clear term. I mean, Barack Obama is a Constitutional Scholar too but we couldn’t be further apart with regards to policy. Now while I favor constitutional government there are things about the U.S. Constitution that I don’t like, for example the 16th Amendment. Often when I suggest to self-described Constitutionalists that they must then favor the institution of the IRS they often counter by saying with a smug smile, “No, I favor the original Constitution”.My response then usually sounds something like: “oh so you support the 3/5th Clause which effectively says that each slave is equivalent to 3/5th of a free man when apportioning how many Representatives each state received (also in the Electoral College)?”or “oh so you don’t support the right of women to vote and feel that the 19th Amendment which prohibits the state from denying people the right to vote based upon gender?”Incidently, Utah was the second territory in the U.S. to grant women suffrage in 1870, under the impression that, if given the right to vote, that Utah women would vote to make polygamy illegal