'The Constitution is dead'
By Joseph Farah
Monday, June 30, 2008
I have just finished reading an eye-opening new book called "Who Killed the Constitution?" by Thomas E. Woods Jr. and Kevin R.C. Gutzman.
It is both sobering and frightening.
The title is not a rhetorical question. The authors provide the answer - in chapter after chapter of horrendous horror stories revealing government abuses of the very document that empowers them.
It should be required reading in every high school and college in America. But, of course, it won't be.
If you want to learn how a government strictly limited in its powers has devolved into a government retrained by little more than what it can get away with, you need to read this book. And while I have little hope it will be embraced by our educational establishment, I have every hope that WND readers will.
I will be writing more about the substance of the historical attacks on the Constitution discussed in this important book in the coming weeks. But, for now, I want to address the authors' alarming conclusion.
It is quite simple: "The Constitution is dead."
You might expect such a book to conclude with an upbeat message about how the oldest and best governing document in the world might be revived.
Instead, the authors leave us with this possibility: "But what if there is no solution? What if the experiment with a written federal constitution has proven to be a failure?"
I had recognized years ago the ways the Constitution had been subverted and undermined intentionally by those in government who sought to increase their own power illegitimately. I wrote about this in my own book, "Taking America Back," in which I offered my own prescription for returning our country to its roots of limited constitutional government.
I'm still faintly optimistic that can happen - if the American people awaken to the reality of how they have been sold down the river, robbed of their heritage of self-government, ripped off of their covenant with liberty.
What I never considered before was the possibility that constitutions that limit power grabs might be destined to fail precisely because of those limitations on something that cannot be limited.
"It is perhaps jarring to consider the possibility that constitutions are destined to fail," the authors write. "After all, we are indoctrinated from early childhood with the idea that the Constitution is the font of our liberties - even though Americans were free before it was written. And it is to the U.S. Constitution that every government official still swears his fidelity. But when we look beyond the grand rhetoric to the actual record, we must confront a troubling conclusion: Once an institution obtains supreme force, it is probably utopian to expect its powers to remain limited over time - especially when the one thing doing the limiting is a document that is interpreted and enforced by the very institution it is supposed to retrain."
So what is left? What do we as a people have for a foundation of liberty? How can we restrain government from rolling over our rights?
The answer from the authors is essentially the same answer I came up with when I began researching my own book: It's really up to the American people.
The Founding Fathers understood the Constitution was only a document capable of serving a people equipped for self-government - meaning a moral people, a people who could distinguish between right and wrong.
Whether we remain such a people is in doubt today.
Whether we can become such a people again is in doubt today.
Read this book.
Awaken to the way our heritage of freedom has been betrayed.
And decide if you are willing to sacrifice - the way our founders sacrificed - to leave your children and grandchildren one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.
http://www.worldnet daily.com/ index.php? pageId=68355
By Joseph Farah
Monday, June 30, 2008
I have just finished reading an eye-opening new book called "Who Killed the Constitution?" by Thomas E. Woods Jr. and Kevin R.C. Gutzman.
It is both sobering and frightening.
The title is not a rhetorical question. The authors provide the answer - in chapter after chapter of horrendous horror stories revealing government abuses of the very document that empowers them.
It should be required reading in every high school and college in America. But, of course, it won't be.
If you want to learn how a government strictly limited in its powers has devolved into a government retrained by little more than what it can get away with, you need to read this book. And while I have little hope it will be embraced by our educational establishment, I have every hope that WND readers will.
I will be writing more about the substance of the historical attacks on the Constitution discussed in this important book in the coming weeks. But, for now, I want to address the authors' alarming conclusion.
It is quite simple: "The Constitution is dead."
You might expect such a book to conclude with an upbeat message about how the oldest and best governing document in the world might be revived.
Instead, the authors leave us with this possibility: "But what if there is no solution? What if the experiment with a written federal constitution has proven to be a failure?"
I had recognized years ago the ways the Constitution had been subverted and undermined intentionally by those in government who sought to increase their own power illegitimately. I wrote about this in my own book, "Taking America Back," in which I offered my own prescription for returning our country to its roots of limited constitutional government.
I'm still faintly optimistic that can happen - if the American people awaken to the reality of how they have been sold down the river, robbed of their heritage of self-government, ripped off of their covenant with liberty.
What I never considered before was the possibility that constitutions that limit power grabs might be destined to fail precisely because of those limitations on something that cannot be limited.
"It is perhaps jarring to consider the possibility that constitutions are destined to fail," the authors write. "After all, we are indoctrinated from early childhood with the idea that the Constitution is the font of our liberties - even though Americans were free before it was written. And it is to the U.S. Constitution that every government official still swears his fidelity. But when we look beyond the grand rhetoric to the actual record, we must confront a troubling conclusion: Once an institution obtains supreme force, it is probably utopian to expect its powers to remain limited over time - especially when the one thing doing the limiting is a document that is interpreted and enforced by the very institution it is supposed to retrain."
So what is left? What do we as a people have for a foundation of liberty? How can we restrain government from rolling over our rights?
The answer from the authors is essentially the same answer I came up with when I began researching my own book: It's really up to the American people.
The Founding Fathers understood the Constitution was only a document capable of serving a people equipped for self-government - meaning a moral people, a people who could distinguish between right and wrong.
Whether we remain such a people is in doubt today.
Whether we can become such a people again is in doubt today.
Read this book.
Awaken to the way our heritage of freedom has been betrayed.
And decide if you are willing to sacrifice - the way our founders sacrificed - to leave your children and grandchildren one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.
http://www.worldnet daily.com/ index.php? pageId=68355
