Quote:
Originally Posted by zimmy
You are right, it was definitely plain. I guess lack of representation is still an issue? I missed the part about the forefathers whining over taxation because they didnt like what their representatives were doing.
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You, apparently, missed a lot of parts that I have been saying here for a while. And you tend, as here, to interject strawmen into the conversation. There was no part about the Founders whining over taxation by their representatives beacuse their representatives did not have the power they do now (by design of those Founders) to tax. The ability of the federal gvt. to tax was so limited that it was difficult for it to expand its power beyond that which was enumerated in the Constitution. That's why progressives, among so many other things, instituted the federal income tax (which you may have missed has massively expanded beyond its original parameters). It is also why States were wealthy enough to run their business then--they had power beyond the fedgov and with closer representation to their constituents.
As well as the examples that Jim in CT gave, you apparently missed the part of my discussion in other threads about the administrative federal state, the real shadow government, that creates most of the federal regulations and associated taxes without our vote and in which we are not truly represented since the regulatory agencies and departments operate independently for the most part from the congress that appoints them. These agencies are akin to one of the complaints against the King in the Declaration of Independence--"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." And we are little informed about the formation of these well over 300 agencies. And the representatives that create and appoint these agences have more power over us in the aggregate now than they did or were given in the Founders' time.
There is no dispute that the fedgov has grown way beyond its original constitutional powers. The only dispute now is whether that is a better thing, or worse.
Though the Founders would be repulsed by what has happened to the Constitution and how power has been transferred from individuals and local and State gvts. to the central gvt., they would not be stunned. They understood human nature. It is that nature that inspired them to devise a gvt. that would protect the intrinsic human desire for liberty from the tyranny of a leviathan state. But they knew also the weakness in our nature, of the desire for security and comfort above the desire for freedom and the rigors it requires once that freedom was established. They understood that lack of virtue could or would be the downfall of the system they created. Madison and others opined that it would only last 100 years. And he was not far off in that prediction as the progressive era with its anti-constitutional, pro-administrative central state, anti-individual, pro-collective philosophies began to make inroads a little over a century later and took firm hold another generation later under FDR. The fedgov has continued since then to grow in power and in debt and in its need for taxes. And the virtue and freedom of our people has progressively decayed, sold out by more and more to a fragile and unsecured promise of security and comfort by a leviathan gvt. that has outgrown even its ability to pay for its gifts.
Perhaps you've missed, besides past myriad examples of central gvt. tyranny, the latest tyrannical version of taxation for not buying something, or the now limitless power of gvt. to tax everything. If that is not tyrannical to you, then let us just discard the word.
Or, rather, you approve. That this is better not worse. After all, it is NECESSARY to tax everything in order to make the government work. Yes, necessity is not only not the mother of invention, it is the dictate of tyranny itself. All tyrannical goverments do what is necessary to rule the people.
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