Undermining the Constitution

bevo

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Oct 3, 2010
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Detector(s) used
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for you information.
a book by Thomas James Norton



The writing of this book was impelled (or compelled) by the very manifest

indifference of the people of the United States to the constitutional

doctrines of their country. This had been developing so rapidly that all

ideas of constitutionalism seemed to have passed out of the American mind.

That is, indefensible proposals and practices against the plainest

limitations on power set in the Constitution provoked no objections even

from the Bar. For two decades no great debate on a constitutional subject

had been heard in either House of Congress.



The National Education Association, theoretically representing the teachers

of the country, had for years been passing resolutions favoring whatever was

before the public of un-American import, especially for getting the imperial

Government at Washington, through "Federal aid," to take over the shaping in

school of American ideas. Under the cloak of "academic freedom" men in the

universities belittled those who wrote the Constitution and pronounced their

work faulty and outmoded.



The schools, while neglecting to give thorough courses in our history, and

especially in constitutional history or the history of Liberty, admitted

objectionable textbooks and periodicals.



Laws enacted by States after the Civil War requiring the teaching of the

Constitution in the schools became dead letters. Similar laws of more than

forty States enacted after World War I became dead letters too. So the

governmental chaos, as it appears to be, came not by chance. The Commission

on Organization of the Executive Branch of Government reported in 1948 that

in the President's Department there are 1,800 different administrative

units, and that the proposals of the Commission would save the taxpayers

"billions -- not millions, but billions." Plain lawlessness in taxation and

a brutal attitude toward the taxpayer were among the conditions that

compelled the writing of this book.



The principles of our Government are not outmoded, as some say. They are as

immutable as those of mathematics. The first of them, so well put by

Jefferson, is that the man to whom power is given must be chained. The

profound historians at Philadelphia who wrote the Constitution looked back

over the centuries and drew that principle from the recurring tyrannies and

unfailing breakdowns of governments. So, to prevent "the very definition of

despotism," as they termed the union of powers in one hand or body, from

coming to the New World, they separated the Legislative, the Executive, and

the Judicial powers, and then, by the most careful specifications, limited

the application of each class.



The States retained sovereignty in local affairs.



During the last three decades nearly every restraint upon the man in power

has been broken. Worse than that, lawlessness provokes no reasoning

objection.



In the Roman Republic there was an elaborate distribution of powers, but in

time all were gathered into one hand. First the Republic and then the Empire

fell. A historian tells us that "statesmen came to disregard all checks in

the [Roman] Constitution in order to carry a point."



What John Adams praised as the "checks and balances" in our Government also

will fail unless respect for them returns.



My book[1] explaining 196 clauses of the Constitution, showing their

origins, their uses, and their practical values in the development of

American "life, liberty, and property," had been received by the people to

over half a million copies, and it seemed my duty to prepare another volume

to explain the causes and the consequences of departures from constitutional

principle which had been in progress for many years.



As that is done by dealing with concrete cases, the presentation of

governmental philosophy is made the easier to understand.



The reader is admonished to approach this subject not with hesitance or with

the idea that it is difficult or abstruse, but with earnest expectation. For

no novel ever had a theme as engrossing as the story of "life, liberty, and

property," which is the Constitution of the United States.



Moreover, the reader is the ruler of this land, and it is therefore his duty

to himself and his descendants to learn and ably and righteously to execute

the law of our national being.



As the constitutional system of the United States was the first that man

through all the centuries was able to formulate for the one purpose of

controlling those in power, the American should know it as he knows the

alphabet. Its study has been recommended to him by its adoption in Canada,

Australia, Brazil, Argentina, and in other countries more or less fully. It

is "the last hope of the world," Daniel Webster warned us.



Communism and other alienisms can be met and overcome, not by dollars or

arms, but only by superior doctrines, as the teaching of the kindnesses of

Christianity overcame the ideas, the brutalities, and the power of the Roman

Empire.



By neglecting to indoctrinate each new generation with a knowledge of the

superior philosophy of the American system of Government, we thereby left

the people weakened to attack. Hence so many of them are taken with the

false promises of Communism. And so many others want the Government at

Washington to do things beyond its power and outside its jurisdiction.



As the provisions of the Constitution dealt with in this volume are quoted

or stated, and as they are a very small portion of the Instrument, it has

seemed best, in order to keep down the size and price of the book, to omit

the Fundamental Law as an Appendix.



Also for brevity, titles of cases cited are omitted and only the volume and

page of the report are given, enough for one desiring to look further.



A thorough Index at the end of the volume and a complete Table of Cases are

commended to the careful study of the reader and the student.



THOMAS JAMES NORTON New York City September 27, 1950

the rest of the book
http://www.constitution.org/norton/norton_.htm
 

from ch II.
Men and women who will be living in later generations through children and grandchildren and their descendants owe it to their blood, if they do not feel that they owe it now to their country, to take this subject of constitutional education to heart and change existing conditions.
 

I think a quote from Pres Reagan is appropriate here,......"and by the way, the Constitution does not say...Government shall decree the right to keep and bear arms, The Constitution says..." The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed....."

Obviously he realized that the Constitution was the document that formed and defined our Nation, and not the Government who defined the Constitution......Gary
 

also from ch. II




The word Fascism indicates nothing respecting the operations of the government. It comes from "fasces," the name of the bundle of rods surrounding an axe and carried by the Roman lictor before the chief magistrate as a symbol of authority. Its being brought in by Mussolini was one more of those puerile attempts mentioned by Bryce to bring back somewhat of the Roman Empire. Mussolini set up 22 corporations. The first was the Corporation for Cereals, made up of designated numbers of employers and workers, and embracing growers, threshers, millers, bakers, commission and co-operative organizations. All the corporations were similarly divided. They were the Corporation for Fruits, Vegetables and Flowers; for Viticulture and Wine; for Sugar-beet and Sugar; for Edible Oil; for Livestock and Fisheries; for Timber; for Textiles; for Metals; for Chemical Trades; for Clothing Trades; for Printing, Publishing, and Paper; for Building Tools and Housing; for Water, Gas, and Electricity; for Mining and Quarrying; for Glassware; for Arts and Professions; for Inland Transportation; for Sea and Air Transportation; for Hotel Industry; for Credit and Insurance; for Entertainments.That defines Fascism. It is Socialism carried out by governmental corporations. It is at violence to our Constitution, but it has been coming for some years, and is now pretty well "dug in."
 

from ch. IV


"New Deal" a very ancient failureThe "New Deal" is a very ancient subterfuge for statecraft.Knowing the type very well, the historians who wrote the Constitution gave nothing that is in the "New Deal" any recognition whatever. Life, liberty, and property they left with men, to whom they belong, and for whom and by whom the Constitution was conceived for self-protection.The "New Deal" is thoroughly unconstitutional.
 

also......

Since graduation was contrary to constitutional principle, it should have been foreseen by statesmen that the Income Tax Amendment as applied by Congress would work badly. It enabled the central Government, like an octopus, to thrust a tentacle into the revenue supply of each State and drain it, leaving the State partially helpless to perform its essential functions and making it a beggar at the Capital for a share of its own money.
 

more from IV

...


In his radio address on September 7, 1942, President Roosevelt expressed this wholly unsound theory of the governmental power of taxation, which has been let pass without critical examination:"Taxation is the only practical way of preventing the incomes and profits of individuals and corporations from getting too high. I have told the Congress once more that all net individual incomes, after payment of all taxes, should be limited effectively by further taxation to a maximum net income of $25,000 a year."
 

and.........




Cooley, the great authority of his time, said in his work Taxation (2d ed., p. 215) that "it is difficult to conceive of a justifiable exemption law which would select single individuals or corporations, or single articles of property, and, taking them out of the class to which they belong, make them the subject of capricious legislative favor. . . . It would lack the semblance of legitimate legislation."[4]
 

sound familiar?
 

Exemptions prime cause of French Revolution
 

..........

The States, by proposal in Congress or by action of their legislatures under Article V, should amend the Constitution again by repealing the Sixteenth Amendment and resuming police Jurisdiction of the wealth of their people, as they repealed the Eighteenth Amendment after becoming convinced that they had made a mistake in giving to the Nation a burden of police which it was not -- and could not be -- organized to carry.Congress would then still have power to tax incomes, as it had before the Amendment, but it would be obliged to do so Justly -- for revenue only, not for the distribution of property, for leveling down possessions, for punitive purposes, or for stripping Americans for the help of Europeans who are antagonistic to our Government and our beliefs.
 

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....



1. Socialists have been charged with disagreement as to what they really stand for. From the platform of the National Socialist Party of 1908, following the very severe panic of the year before, a definition may be drawn. The writers of the platform betrayed a most comprehensive misunderstanding of the powers and obligations of our National Government. They called for: 1. Relief works through building schools and canals, by reforesting, by reclamation, and by extending all other public works; 2. Loans of money by the United States to States, municipalities, and for public works; 3. Ownership by the United States of railroads, telegraph and telephone lines, steamships, all land, and all industries; 4. Extension of the public domain to take over mines, quarries, oil wells, forests, and water power; 5. Extension of the graduated income tax and inheritance tax; 6. Abolition of the power of the Supreme Court to hold an act of Congress unconstitutional; 7. Creation of a Department of Health and a Department of Education; 8. Insurance against unemployment, illness, accident, invalidism, old age, and death; 9. Funds for the unemployed.
 

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Some of those matters are within the police power of the States, but none

lies within the jurisdiction of the Nation. The proposed taking over of

property by taxation and by seizure is Communistic.
 

Good Job Bevo!

There was some goofy member on here,, I can't remember who, that thinks Fascism is a conservative trait. How can someone that has no idea what they are talking about actually think that they make sense when trying to tell everyone how wrong they are about creeping Socialism?

I can't wait to see more of these posts.
 

no work today, so as I read I will post more.
 

ch v




According to the "Woman Patriot," a paper then published in the City of Washington, the promoter of the Child Labor Law had boasted that in her legislative drives she never let appear on the front of the movement the real intent of the propagandists. That is the basic strategy of Communism. The Child Labor Act had no relation to child labor, because there was in objectionable volume no such thing. After the census of 1920 the Department of Labor made a boastful report to the effect that since the taking of the last decennial census so many laws of States had lengthened the months of school required; had set such severe conditions for a youth to qualify for work during vacation, had so completely forbidden work by minors in theatres and like places and prohibited working with dangerous machinery, that the so-called child-labor evil had been all but wiped out.But even had the States been delinquent in the exercise of their police power to guard the health, education and welfare of childhood, that could not have conferred power on Congress to assume jurisdiction. It had no place in the field of the States. It has been shown from authorities that the States cannot abdicate their police powers and that Congress cannot take them over.Had there been a child-labor evil -- and there was none of magnitude -- it was for the people at home to make their legislatures take police action.But, as before said, the "ballyhoo" was so overwhelming and ceaseless that many good but uninformed people were taken off their feet, and they gave way to tears for the American child so victimized by his greedy and heartless parents.
 

.....1. This decision by Chief Justice Taft, that a pretended tax law which is
not for revenue is unconstitutional and fraudulent, disposes of the preposterous proposition of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Congress, namely, that taxes be made so heavy as to permit no income above $25,000 a year, and that all incomes be prevented from being "too high."
 

In 23 instances attempts were made in Congress to modify the resolution so

as to draw in some of its reckless implications, but they were voted down --

sometimes howled down without a record vote.
 

ch. VI


While the opinion has often been expressed by persons otherwise well

educated that if a State will not perform its duty, then let the Nation do

it, the Constitution is not changeable that way: an amendment is necessary

to a change. The idea, however, is startlingly prevalent. Multitudes believe

that the National Government should take over more often than it has done.
 

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