To answer those questions:
Is freedom a reality or a myth?
Myth, as it stands.
Are the rights guaranteed in the Constitution real or just a
pretense?
It is, after all, "just a piece of paper". That would make it pure
pretense.
Isn’t the whole purpose of government in a free society to uphold
rights rather than interfere with them?
Not according to the government.
Sir Thomas More was morally correct (as a Catholic that granted the
Holy Mother Church and its teachings and edicts superior position to
the English Democratic Monarchy that still exists today) but morally
wrong to ("protestants" and C of E followers) and legally wrong
according to the House of Lords, Lord Protector (read Prime Minister)
and His Monarch to whom he owed earthly fealty.
On Mar 19, 7:50 am, "M.A. Johnson" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Can Congress Write Any Laws It Wants?by Andrew P. Napolitano"Some men think
> the Earth is round, others think it flat… But, if it is flat, will the King’s
> command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten
> it? … NO."When Robert Bolt wrote that truism in his playA Man For All
> Seasons, his protagonist, Thomas More, was attempting to persuade the jury at
> his trial for high treason that all governments have limitations, and that
> the statute he was accused of violating was beyond Parliament’s lawful
> authority to enact. Sir Thomas was there appealing to the natural law as well
> as to the common sense of his jurors: The government can’t change the laws of
> nature. As we know, he fared no better than those who today argue that
> Congress is not omnipotent, has natural, moral, and constitutional
> limitations on its power, and every day fails to abide them.
> Jefferson wedded the natural law to American law in the Declaration of
> Independence when he wrote that our rights are "inalienable" and come to us
> from "Our Creator." Not only does federal law recognize that, but the whole
> American experience recognizes the natural law as the ultimate source of our
> freedoms and as a restraint on the government. Thus, the traditional panoply
> of American rights is ours by birthright and cannot be interfered with by an
> act of Congress or order of the president, but only after due process.
> Two of those rights are speech and contract. A law enacted by Congress
> punishing speech (such as the Patriot Act provision that declares to be
> felonious speaking about the receipt of certain search warrants) is no law at
> all, since the law itself violates the natural right to speak freely, which
> is expressly protected in the Constitution. The Framers fully understood this
> as they wrote in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no laws …
> abridgingthefreedom of speech." I have italicized the wordtheto make my
> point. The framers accepted the natural law premise that freedoms come with
> and from our humanity.Thefreedom of speech obviously preexisted the
> constitutional amendment insulating it from government abridgement, and the
> Framers’ use of the articlethereflects their unmistakable acceptance of that
> truism.
> Similarly, a law changing the terms of a private contract is no law since it
> violates the natural right to make binding agreements. The Framers knew that
> as well. The Constitution specifically forbids the states and, by requiring
> due process and expressly forbidding taking property without just
> compensation, the federal government, from "impairingtheObligation of
> Contracts." This, too, is a personal natural right that pre-existed the
> constitutional clauses that bar the government from interfering with it.
> The Constitution sets forth just 17 discrete delegated powers on matters like
> currency, interstate commerce, the post office, the judiciary, and national
> defense. The Constitution also interposed two precise brakes on all federal
> powers: The Ninth and Tenth Amendments together state that the powers not
> enumerated in the Constitution as given to the federal government are
> retained by the people and the States.
> The whole purpose of the Constitution is, was, and has been to define the
> government, to impose restraints on the government, and to guarantee personal
> freedoms. It specifically diffused power between the States and the central
> government and, within the federal government itself, it separated powers
> among the three branches.
> It is elementary to state that the Constitution mandates that Congress writes
> the laws and decides how to spend tax dollars, the president enforces the
> laws as Congress has written them, and the courts interpret the laws as they
> have been written and enforced to assure their compliance with the Supreme
> Law of the Land.
> As elemental as this sounds, it is hardly recognizable today. After 230
> years, we have come to a point where a president declines to enforce laws he
> has himself signed, directs his Treasury Secretary to make laws interfering
> with private contracts, and signs executive orders that invade privacy,
> restrict speech, and appropriate property. Today, we have a Congress that
> delegates to the president its power to spend taxpayer dollars and money
> borrowed in the taxpayers’ names, has written laws regulating the air you
> breath, the water you drink, the words you speak, and relieving the persons
> with whom you have contracted or to whom you have loaned money from complying
> with their agreements. And our courts from time to time have raised taxes,
> run prisons, re-cast the boundaries of school districts, and declined to
> right obvious constitutional wrongs committed by the other branches.
> The oath to uphold the Constitution that everyone in government takes, though
> solemnly delivered and publicly sworn to, like an oath to tell the truth in
> Court, is simply not taken seriously. Notwithstanding the plain language of
> specific grants and general restraints, notwithstanding a careful compromise
> between the Hamiltonians who wanted all power to be in the federal government
> and the Jeffersonians who wanted all power in the States, and notwithstanding
> our inalienable rights from our Creator, the federal government today simply
> recognizes no limits on its power.
> But the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. We will have chaos if
> those in whose hands we repose it for safekeeping intentionally violate it
> with impunity. A government that violates its supreme law becomes arbitrary,
> and arbitrary rule becomes authoritarian, and authoritarian rule will trample
> our freedoms. Just six weeks into its four-year term, the Obama
> administration and its allies in Congress, just like the Bush administration
> and its allies, have acted like they never heard of the Constitution. They
> have attempted to control salaries of private banks, change the terms of
> private mortgages, enter the marketplace by nationalizing banks and the
> world’s largest insurer, and investing taxpayer dollars in companies whose
> products consumers reject and investors eschew. This is theft of liberty and
> theft of taxpayer property.
> Is freedom a reality or a myth? Are the rights guaranteed in the Constitution
> real or just a pretense? Isn’t the whole purpose of government in a free
> society to uphold rights rather than interfere with them? If the answers to
> these questions are no longer obvious, it is because we have a central
> government whose only self-acknowledged limitation is whatever it can get
> away with.http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/napolitano5.html
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