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America's Greatness

Posted by j_IR1776wg 8 years, 3 months ago to Government
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America's greatness lies in those principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the first ten amendments of the Constitution. While the Constitution is not perfect, as Rand pointed out, the clear intent of the framers was to ensure that future generations of Americans would enjoy the benefits of the Rights affirmed viz. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. They did this by limiting the Government's power to inflict tyranny on the people. Every one of the first ten amendments is a chain link forged around the ankles of government employees elected or hired which prevents them from imposing such tyranny.

Principles are values. They suffer no defect from time or the unwise. They are, by definition, either true or not true. They cannot be parsed by regulation, are not applicable to one citizen but not another, and cannot be denied by the howling of the mob.

The sole reason the American form of government has persisted for two and a half centuries is that enough citizens understood the meaning of the DOI and the BOR. It should not come as a shock that there exist people who do not believe that Individuals should be free and independent beings and that government should have no limits placed on them to control the lives of Individuals down to minutest degree. In the recent election, H. Clinton was pressed to agree that Americans had the right to bear arms. After a short period of evasion she replied that yes people had a right to own guns but like all rights they were subject to "reasonable regulation."

So did America stop being great? And when? Did its decline stem from the original Commerce Clause? "The Commerce Clause describes an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.""

Or was the beginning of the end traceable to the advent of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887 as I suggested on this post?

https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

It is impossible to put a date and time on the decline and fall of America. But to trivialize and deny the loss of individual rights can only be the work of fools.


All Comments

  • -1
    Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "how about ... or not being ruled at all?"
    What would that look like? Would it be like when were hunter/gatherer tribes? Or were when then ruled by tribal chiefs?
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  • Posted by DeanStriker 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    And how does an individual be permitted to make your choices?
    how about ... or not being ruled at all?
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  • Posted by chad 8 years, 3 months ago
    I would say with the first president who charted the first fiat bank, ran the country into debt that had to be paid by placing unapportioned taxes on those who produced whiskey at a rate that favored his larger production, outlawed and prosecuted any who used the right of free speech to protest his action and when queried by the British after winning the Revolutionary Wary if he would free his slaves he replied; 'No, I intend to profit from them."
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  • Posted by chad 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I agree with you, we not approaching socialism, we are a democratic communist country where we have the right to vote for the leader that will continue to remove every last vestige of rights or protection from the governing use of violence to achieve their desired end.
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  • Posted by DeanStriker 8 years, 3 months ago
    j_IR1776wg

    Sorry, I'm finding this website nearly impossible when trying to write to threads which became too narrow to work with.

    Thus I'll be trying to post here a 2007 article by Prof Peter T Leeson which was lost from my website. It's gonna be difficult because it is in .pdf format which I must somehow convert to usable text, then repost to noruler.net and finally link back to here. Seems here this is my only way of letting you know what's going on, as I don't care to pay membership fee for this website. You might try striker at noruler.net if you have the savvy.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If we get there soon, I will say President Trump is amazing. I think he's a complete clown, so deficits, gov't spending, and gov't intrusiveness will all increase. Get ready for trillion dollar deficits like we had during President Obama's first term.

    I'm wasting space speculating. We'll know the answer when the budget passes.
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  • Posted by 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I disagree. If all men are either wolves or sheep, the United States of America would never have existed!
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  • Posted by DeanStriker 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    When man creates governments of Force, they have created a dictatorship from the git-go. That's man's entire history!
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  • Posted by 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Like Ayn Rand you decry the initiation of physical force in human relations but provide no solutions. Somalia is not overwhelmed with refugees yearning to live out their Anarchic spirit. I've said elsewhere that all governments tend toward dictatorship. The question is why and what can be done to stop governments from becoming dictatorships?
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Hopefully, deficits will be lower. A balanced budget is the dream goal, but I'm skeptical we'll get there soon.
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  • Posted by Dobrien 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 formally freed 800,000 Africans who were then the legal property of Britain’s slave owners. What is less well known is that the same act contained a provision for the financial compensation of the owners of those slaves, by the British taxpayer, for the loss of their “property”. The compensation commission was the government body established to evaluate the claims of the slave owners and administer the distribution of the £20m the government had set aside to pay them off. That sum represented 40% of the total government expenditure for 1834. It is the modern equivalent of between £16bn and £17bn

    The compensation of Britain’s 46,000 slave owners was the largest bailout in British history until the bailout of the banks in 2009. Not only did the slaves receive nothing, under another clause of the act they were compelled to provide 45 hours of unpaid labour each week for their former masters, for a further four years after their supposed liberation. In effect, the enslaved paid part of the bill for their own manumission.

    The records of the Slave Compensation Commission are an unintended byproduct of the scheme. They represent a near complete census of British slavery as it was on 1 August, 1834, the day the system ended. For that one day we have a full list of Britain’s slave owners. All of them. The T71s tell us how many slaves each of them owned, where those slaves lived and toiled, and how much compensation the owners received for them. Although the existence of the T71s was never a secret, it was not until 2010 that a team from University College London began to systematically analyse them. The Legacies of British Slave-ownership project, which is still continuing, is led by Professor Catherine Hall and Dr Nick Draper, and the picture of slave ownership that has emerged from their work is not what anyone was expecting.

    The large slave owners, the men of the “West India interest”, who owned huge estates from which they drew vast fortunes, appear in the files of the commission. The man who received the most money from the state was John Gladstone, the father of Victorian prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. He was paid £106,769 in compensation for the 2,508 slaves he owned across nine plantations, the modern equivalent of about £80m. Given such an investment, it is perhaps not surprising that William Gladstone’s maiden speech in parliament was in defence of slavery.
    The records show that for the 218 men and women he regarded as his property, Charles Blair, the great-grandfather of George Orwell, was paid the more modest sum of £4,442 – the modern equivalent of about £3m. There are other famous names hidden within the records. Ancestors of the novelist Graham Greene, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott all received compensation for slaves. As did a distant ancestor of David Cameron. But what is interesting Is women numbered 40% of "owners".
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It's not like the foreign powers in London forced us to accept slaves we did not want. We were British. We had slaves. What's hard to understand?
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes, it is a good thing the 14th Amendment (with
    its reference to "priveleges and immunities of
    citizens of the United States") was passed.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 8 years, 3 months ago
    From what I understand from reading Peikoff's
    The Ominous Parallels (not that he or anyone else is infallible),it began with American tycoons' sending their offspring to colleges in Europe, particularly Germany, where they learned Kantian philosophy.After which, they began not
    to believe in or accept the individual rights of
    man. So the other things (antitrust, Roosevelt's
    New Deal, LBJ's "Great Society") followed.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "so his intent to reduce spending seems clear."
    How much do you think spending will decrease in FY2018 vs FY2017? Do you think deficits will be higher or lower?
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Somalia developed the best mobile wireless network in Africa in the late 90s because there was no regulation. I'm intrigued by this, but I do not want anarchy.
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  • Posted by DeanStriker 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Somalia, which ditched it's government 30+ years ago, has since been ruled only by various islamic tribes. Palestine has some sort of government, but whatever that might be has never gained recognition of others.
    As to websites, you might start with my own http://noruler.net. I've been lax with that of late, hope to move toward some final chapters soon.
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