July 28, 1945. A Day of Infamy

On December 7, 1941 our federal government immediately began organizing the American people for the war ahead. On July 28, 1945 our federal government became the enemy an the on-going war. If there is a date that will live in infamy that day is July 28, 1945. On that day the US Senate voted to ratify the UN Charter —— in effect handing America’s sovereignty to the United Nations. For 67 years the enemies within and without won almost every battle.

In the interest of fairness to elected officials, I must point out that almost from the beginning some American senators understood the UN for what it is. Senator Joseph McCarthy was one of the good ones. In addition to being right about Communists infiltrating the government, McCarthy was right about the UN. Read the history of the Bricker Amendment in the link if you are interested in a fascinating topic and would like more background info; it will help you put the uphill battle to save America’s sovereignty into perspective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricker_Amendment

The details in Neil Snyder’s piece on the American Thinker warns of a new major battle shaping up:

“The United Nations is finally moving toward the creation of a world tax:”​

I have one obvious disagreement with the above quote. The United Nations tried to gain taxing authority over the American people many times since the Day of Infamy. Every United Nations treaty includes some form of taxing authority.

Before continuing let me say that I disagree with a lot more in Snyder’s piece. That is why I was surprised it appeared on the American Thinker; a well-respected conservative website. I am not surprised that Snyder is:

“. . . . a chaired professor emeritus at the University of Virginia.”​

For one thing Snyder appears to support a changed UN:

"Today, global governance is done on an ad hoc basis. It requires the U.N. to win unanimous support from the Security Council before taking any significant action and then to raise the money to do whatever the U.N. proposes to do. That prevents a lot of mischief, since getting a unanimous Security Council vote is difficult, and raising money is even harder. Under the governing system that I have in mind, a Security Council resolution will automatically mean that enforcement is on its way if "sovereign nations" don't abide by U.N. rulings."​

I’ve always contended the only way to deal with the UN is to get out. While I have serious disagreements with Snyder’s piece, I am delighted that he highlights the UN’s designs on the Internet. I am less delighted with this:

“. . . Security Council resolution will automatically mean that enforcement is on its way if ‘sovereign nations’ don't abide by U.N. rulings.” ​

“Enforcement” obviously means military intervention; a Socialist dream come true. To put it bluntly, there is no crisis that requires involving the United Nations —— there is no condition that can justify the US military fighting for the United Nations.

NOTE: Withdrawing from the UN does not seem doable at this time. My suggested stopgap measure until withdrawal is doable would change the UCMJ so that US military personnel could legally refuse to serve the United Nations in any capacity.

Since 2000 I have posted countless original threads, along with hundreds of responses, decrying the coming global government and the UN’s numerous attempts to acquire taxing authority. I’m happy to report that the chorus against US membership in the UN is growing.

This final excerpt goes to the purpose of every proposed global tax collected, and administered, by the United Nations:

“. . . governments around the world would demand the creation of an internet tax to fund various things such as a global welfare system like the one that we have in the United States,. . .”.​

As fate would have it, the Internet is leading the charge against the UN’s anti-America agenda.

The Internet is an important development because Internet commentaries is the first real resistance the United Nations ever encountered from average Americans. Since 1945 the media has led three generations of Americans into accepting reprehensible political objectives because they were wrapped in the UN’s flag. Most noticeably, the media supports officials who support UN treaties that put a utopian global village connotation on a totalitarian government ideology.

NOTE: I like to think the Internet is to global government what the Battle of Midway was to Japan. The Battle of the Internet has been won for the time being. The time has come to mount an all-out counterattack before the enemy regroups and acquires the taxing authority it must have to win the war.

I sadly admit the United Nations does have American supporters besides the ruling class. They are usually domestic parasites, or touchy-feely dilettantes who dart from cause to cause trying to convince everyone that a global village is the only way to go. Before the Internet provided a platform those among us who knew better were powerless to discredit the global welfare state even when they thought they were electing politicians who would stand firm against such a misleading utopian promise.

According to the wannabe tribe-elders, after their utopian village is firmly established everyone on the planet will do a global hug at least once a day while singing Kumbaya:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jjcxFGEysE&feature=related"]Kumbaya my Lord - YouTube[/ame]

The problem is: The touchy-feely huggers will be singing to a one government world, not Jesus Christ, irrespective of what individuals might believe.

Everyone opposing the global village is quickly branded “meanspirited isolationist.” Isolationism is a smokescreen. The thing bleeding hearts fear the most is losing their own welfare state. Without Big Brother’s handouts they’d have to strap on leaf blowers five days a week to make ends meet leaving them little time to save the world.

Last but not least, Associate Justice Ruth Ginsberg is one sad puppy. Listen to her tear down the US Constitution in the calmest of voices. Her delivery is far removed from the high-pitched hysteria one gets from radical hustlers expressing the same views. Note how she talks about “human rights” as though they are more important than the Rights in the US Constitution:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNC-kbmpscE&feature=player_embedded"]US Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg Tells Egyptians Don't Look to The Old US Constitution - YouTube[/ame]

Logically, if Ginsberg thinks the US Constitution is outdated, she must think the same thing about America’s freedoms.

Also, she probably knew better than to cite the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948 ) along with her examples. That would have exposed “human rights” as code talk for Rights somebody else has to pay for, while America’s constitutional Rights stand on their own; at least they will until judges like Ginsberg replace them with human rights.

Naturally, Ginsberg was lawyer-enough to throw a bone to free speech and the Right to publish free from government censorship. I do not doubt her belief in freedom of the press. She knows very well that freedom of the press is meaningless unless you own a printing press. She also knows the government owns all of the printing presses; so the need for censorship is almost non-existent. Not so with free speech. I’m not so sure she agrees with that one. ACLU liberals like Ginsberg love politically correct speech. That makes me doubt her commitment to freedom of speech.

Question: How do you like the idea of Ginsberg and fellow libs on the High Court ruling on UN taxing authority? And, by extension, deciding cases involving America’s independence? Before you answer the question listen to Michael Savage calling for Ginsberg’s impeachment:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q53-UU80uJo&feature=player_embedded"]Michael Savage: Impeach Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg!.wmv - YouTube[/ame]

Here’s the link to the article I quoted:

February 5, 2012
A World Tax? Keep Your Eyes on the Internet
By Neil Snyder

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/02/a_world_tax_keep_your_eyes_on_the_internet.html

 

Here’s a bit more on Ginsberg and the foreign constitutions she prefers over the US Constitution. This excerpt is right on the money:

The South African constitution is equally watery. Yes, it does include an independent judiciary and a long list of positive rights. Then there’s this:​

When interpreting the Bill of Rights, a court, tribunal or forum must promote the values that underlie an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom; must consider international law; and may consider foreign law.​

No wonder Ginsburg likes it so much: it more or less gives judges a blank check to look anywhere they want to reach any result they want.​

No doubt, the Democrats see Ginsberg as a howling success. I have to wonder how those Republicans who voted for her feel about Ginsberg today. They not only voted to confirm her they praised her as well. She was confirmed by a vote of 96 to 3 on August 3, 1993 —— another day that will live in infamy. If America had national days of mourning for holidays there would not be any days left on the calender to celebrate the good things.

NOTE: These three Republicans voted against Ginsberg: Jesse Helms, Don Nickles, and Robert C. Smith.

Posted on February 7, 2012 by
Steven Hayward in Books, Defending the Founders, Liberals
Liberals and the Constitution

Liberals typically erupt in outrage if you suggest they don’t respect or understand the Constitution, let alone defend it. But then they let slip that in fact they really don’t respect or understand the Constitution. Think of Ezra Klein remarking a couple years back on how the Constitution is too hard to understand because, like, it’s over a hundred years old man!* And this week Barack Obama proved himself once again the perfect epigone of Woodrow Wilson—the first president to criticize the Constitution and the principles of the American Founding—with his remarks to NBC’s Matt Lauer that one reason he hasn’t succeeded in fulfilling his campaign promises to transform the world is that “it turns out our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes.” It turns out? He’s just discovering this now? (Well, one thing that “turns out” is that the only constitutional law Obama actually taught at the University of Chicago was the equal protection clause. Apparently he skipped over that whole “separation of powers” stuff.)

But the prize for this week’s liberal obtuseness about the Constitution goes to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who told an Egyptian television audience that “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.” Instead, “I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary.” She added that “you should certainly be aided by all the constitution-writing that has gone one since the end of World War II.”

There is no doubt Egypt needs a new and better constitution. The current Egyptian constitution proclaims Islam to be the official religion, and Sharia law “the principal source of legislation.” The previous constitution directly declared socialism to be the economic system of the nation; the current version merely declares “social justice” to be part of the basis of the national economy, which I suppose is accurate for a nation where the vast majority are equally poor. Perfect social justice!

But beyond the Egyptian context, most post-World War II constitutions that Ginsburg thinks are the bee’s knees are gravely defective. Most are much longer than our Constitution. (The draft EU constitution is the size of a phone directory.) Most install parliamentary governments with proportional representation, assuring the proliferation of parties and factions and increasing political instability. They all tend to confuse fundamental natural rights such as freedom of speech and religion with positive rights such as a right to housing and a right to health care. (The Serbian constitution is especially comical; it declares a right to a job and a right to health care, but then says these rights are subject to budgetary constraints. But if your rights depend on the government’s budget, it’s not much of a “right.&#8221

The South African constitution is equally watery. Yes, it does include an independent judiciary and a long list of positive rights. Then there’s this:

When interpreting the Bill of Rights, a court, tribunal or forum must promote the values that underlie an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom; must consider international law; and may consider foreign law.​

No wonder Ginsburg likes it so much: it more or less gives judges a blank check to look anywhere they want to reach any result they want.

The New York Times noted yesterday that:

“The Constitution has seen better days. Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.”

“The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.​

Read the whole thing. It gets worse. The U.S. Constitution is losing appeal because out liberal elites no longer believe in its principles. Is there any doubt that if liberals had their way, they’d junk the U.S. Constitution and install one that enshrines liberal ideology? (I’m only getting warmed up here. I used to teach a course on comparative constitutionalism as a visiting professor at Georgetown, and I usually took several weeks walking through various constitutions around the world—Lebanon’s is especially interesting—and explaining the theoretical and historical basis of why all the modern constitutions beloved of liberals and Eurocrats are defective.)

Fortunately, Justice Scalia shows up in the NY Times article:

“Every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights,” he said. “The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours,” he said, adding: “We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press. Big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests, and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!”​

“Of course,” Justice Scalia continued, “it’s just words on paper, what our framers would have called a ‘parchment guarantee.’ ”

Fortunately, a fresh antidote is just out: Larry Arnn’s new book, published yesterday: The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It. Remedial reading for Ginburg, Klein, and everyone else.

*Klein’s exact quote was: “The issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago.”

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/liberals-and-the-constitution.php

 

I’m posting two more articles for those who might be interest in the themes in this thread. The first piece is by Joseph Farah. You may remember him as the guy who sent shock waves through the eligibility question when he dared to tell the truth about Marco Rubio’s ineligibility on the Sean Hannity show:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/31/w...gible-for-vp-slot-not-a-natural-born-citizen/

What's next? A world tax!
by Joseph Farah
Published: 13 hours ago

Here’s another reason the U.S. must get out of the United Nations: In case you didn’t notice, the U.N. leadership is once again floating the idea of a global tax.

It’s all with good intentions, of course. The U.N. wants to ensure “universal access to basic social protection and social services.”

As Milos Koterec, president of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, explained: “No one should live below a certain income level. Everyone should be able to access at least basic health services, primary education, housing, water, sanitation and other essential services.”

And guess who gets to pay for it all? That’s right. YOU!

Did any of these dopes notice what is happening in Europe right now in nations that had the same idea? They’re going broke. America is going broke.

Of course they’ve noticed. What most people don’t understand is that’s exactly what is planned. The world is not going broke fast enough for these people. America is still standing, and that bugs them. So it’s time to push free enterprise off the cliff once and for all and replace it with global tyranny.

These ideas have been raised before, but it’s different now.

If Barack Obama is re-elected this year, you can take a global tax to the bank. It won’t be speculation. It won’t be an idea being floated. It will be a reality.

Let’s face it. Plenty of our hard-earned tax dollars are already being spent on these kinds of wacky ideas right now. Billions and billions of dollars are transferred overseas in vast wealth-redistribution schemes that feed no one, clothe no one, provide water for no one, provide health care for no one, but line the pockets of socialists like Obama all over the world.

If you want to see more of it, just vote for Obama in November. We’re almost there.

Once a global tax is in place, kiss the liberty our ancestors fought so hard and valiantly for goodbye. It’s all over. If you think we don’t have accountability for how our tax dollars are spent now, just wait until they are spent by unelected foreign bureaucrats by the trillions instead of billions.

The details of the tax are beside the point. The Constitution is the point. We’re selling it down the river every day, and it’s all that stands between us and tyranny on a scale unimagined in the history of the world.

Americans would cease to have any say over anything.

Once you have a global taxing authority in place, you have not just bigger government, you have BIGGEST government. All national sovereignty breaks down. It’s statism on steroids. There will be new taxes on every financial transaction you make. There will be taxes on carbon emissions to “save the earth.” The Internet will not only be taxed but controlled. You will officially become a subject, not a citizen.

By the way, don’t be fooled as Americans were in the past by the size of the tax when it is proposed. You can be sure it will be pennies – just as the income tax was in 1913 at only 1 percent. That’s how it begins. Once the camel’s nose is under the tent, though, you can be sure you will be sleeping with the rest of the beast.

How do I say this without sounding like a zealot? It’s not time for political business as usual, folks.

We are moving rapidly toward a crisis of epic proportions literally unseen in world history. Too much is happening too fast – yet the American people have not awakened from their slumber.

It’s time for an uprising bigger and more sustained than the one the tea party started in 2010.

Things have gotten far worse, not better. Obama must be stopped, and we need a much more resolute and determined opposition party than the pathetic Republicans in Washington today.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/whats-next-a-world-tax/

This next article about Ginsberg is in two parts.

Ginsberg is not going to resign nor will she be impeached.

As I recently learned, federal judges take two oaths of office:

"I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

And:

The Judicial Oath
"I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as _________ under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."

Sometimes they are combined. If not, the second one does not include “. . . support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;. . .”.

I’m not sure which Judicial Oath Ginsberg took. Her comments in Egypt indicate she does not support and defend the US Constitution.

The following article does point out exactly how little Ginsberg understands the US Constitution.

Justice Ginsburg Should Resign
By William Tucker on 2.8.12 @ 6:11AM

If she can no longer support and defend the Constitution, as she is sworn to do, she should leave -- and take the New York Times with her.

Did you know that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg thinks the South African Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are preferable to the United States Constitution? You think I'm kidding? It's right there on the front page of yesterday's New York Times.

In a profoundly stupid and uninformed story entitled, "Around the World, 'We the People' Loses Followers," Times analyst Adam Liptak informs us that the United States Constitution is "terse and old" and "guarantees relatively few rights." Recent founding documents from other countries, on the other hand, are "newer [and] sexier" and offer "a more powerful operating system in the constitutional marketplace." "Nobody wants to copy Windows 3.1," quips Professor David S. Law of Washington University, author of a study documenting the Constitution's obsolescence and the source of many of these quotes.

So as you might expect, Judge Ginsburg is right there in the vanguard of a worldwide movement to dump the old U.S. document and go for the newer, sexier varieties:

In a television interview during a visit to Egypt last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seemed to agree. "I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012." She recommended, instead, the South African Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the European Convention on Human Rights.​

You probably already understand the problem here. Justice Ginsburg, despite her high rank, does not understand that the Constitution is a charter of limited government. She's of the old school (or is it the new authoritarian vanguard?) that believes government is inherently autocratic and doles out rights and privileges to its subjects only piecemeal, in the manner of royal decrees.

Somehow she has missed the whole era of Social Contract theory that occupied the 17th and 18th centuries -- Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and all that stuff -- which posited that human beings are "created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," and that they surrendered these rights only partially and in limited fashion when they contract for the organized protections of the state. To Ginsburg -- and to so many others -- the Constitution is a Bill of Rights and nothing more. And of course only certain portions of the Bill of Rights. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments? I don't remember them. Did they teach that at Harvard Law School?

Rather than viewing the Constitution as a whole, the entire impulse of liberal law is focused on the enumerations of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom against Search and Seizure. Thank goodness the Founders granted us these dispensations! Where would we be without them? But they didn't go far enough! What about the right to a clean environment? What about the right to co-ed bathrooms? Those poor guys from the 18th century had no idea what we'd be facing today. As Liptak explains:

[T]he Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care.… The Canadian Charter is both more expansive and less absolute. It guarantees equal right for women and disabled people, allows affirmative action and requires that those arrested be informed of their rights.​

 

PART TWO:

Alright, now for a little background. When the delegates assembled in Philadelphia in 1787 to attend the Constitutional Convention, there was no question in their minds that they were writing a charter for limited government. The states already had their governments and did not necessarily want another one. The Constitution was a means of bringing these units together on a federal basis. It was a document of enumerated powers. The government could only do those things outlined in the Preamble and the Articles and no more. That's how the Constitution was understood both by its advocates and its opponents

There were men at the Convention and in the country at large, however, who were long accustomed to tyrannical governments -- like the British regime just overthrown. They suspected that any central government would soon begin grasping for more powers and interfering with people's lives. And so they believed certain "inalienable rights" should be guaranteed in a special Bill of Rights.

James Madison opposed such a Bill of Rights on the grounds that because the Constitution stated in limited fashion what the government could do, there wasn't any need to start trying to list what it couldn't do. If it wasn't specified in the document, then the government couldn't do it. It was as simple as that.

But there was a problem. The Framers had already begun making a stab at enumerating a few special rights in the clauses that guaranteed the writ of habeas corpus and outlawed bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and titles of nobility. Critics of the Constitution immediately seized on this, pointing out that if it was necessary to prohibit these actions -- which weren't otherwise mentioned in the Constitution -- then there must be other "implied powers." And if it was necessary to prohibit these actions, then why not others as well? "Brutus" (probably Robert Yates) wrote in one broadside supporting a Bill of Rights:

If every thing which is not given is reserved, what propriety is there in these exceptions? Does this Constitution any where grant the power of suspending the habeas corpus, to make ex post facto laws, pass bills of attainder, or grant titles of nobility? It certainly does not in express terms. The only answer that can be given is, that these are implied in the general powers granted. With equal truth it may be said, that all the powers which the bills of rights guard against the abuse of, are contained or implied in the general ones granted by this Constitution.​

With the problem of implied powers laid bare, Madison decided the best thing would be to change his mind and support a Bill of Rights in the First Congress. Ironically, he is now honored as the Father of the Bill of Rights, even though he opposed it at first. (He would be better remembered as the Father of the Constitution.)

But the problem of enumerated rights and implied powers didn't go away. If certain rights had to be specified, what did that say about all the ones that weren't specified? Did that mean they weren't guaranteed? As one skeptical Congressman said, they'd better include a right for men to "wear hats, go to bed and get up when they please," because if they didn't, someone was sure to come along and say it "isn't guaranteed in the Constitution."

The solution was the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, as elegant a bit of programming as any Microsoft computer jock ever devised:

IX. The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.​

In other words, just because it isn't written in the Constitution doesn't mean it isn't permitted. The people and the states already retain these rights and powers and don't need to have them specified. There is a right to travel. There is a right to wear hats and put on shoes in the morning. We just don't have to write it all down. It's very simple programming logic.

So Justice Ginsburg and thousands of others like her have got it all wrong. She thinks her job as a Supreme Court Justice is to sit there doling out "rights" like Louis XIV doling out pardons or the Medieval clergy doling out papal indulgences. What she doesn't realize is that we're a free people who already have the "Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." We don't need any help from the Supreme Court. So in the matter of the health insurance mandate in Obamacare, for instance, we don't have to manufacture a "right" to be free from conscription into a government-run healthcare program. We simply have to ask, "Where in the Constitution does it say the government is entitled to force people to buy any commercial product?" Answer: Nowhere.

So let the rest of the world go on writing 1,000-page constitutions guaranteeing food, clothing, shelter, travel, freedom from government harassment and all the other things they don't intend to provide. We'll settle for our "old and terse" document that allows us to pursue our own happiness in whatever way we choose.

It's something else that Justice Ginsburg probably doesn't understand. It's called "American Exceptionalism."

William Tucker's play, Founding Fathers, is about the Writing of the Constitution.

About the Author

William Tucker is the author of Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey.

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/02/08/justice-ginsburg-should-resign