Constitutional Restrains To Government Theft
Constitutional Restrains To Government Theft
Constitutional Restrains To Government Theft
Phillip G. Kayser
Phillip G. Kayser Constitutional Restraints to Government Theft Copyright 2009, 2007 Phillip G. Kayser All Rights Reserved. Published By Biblical Blueprints 13110 Birch Dr STE 148 #370 Omaha, NE 68164-4160 (402) 934-4619 www.biblicalblueprints.org Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New King James Version. Published by Thomas Nelson. 1994, 1982, 1980, 1979 Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by Permission.
I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. --Senator Barry Goldwater "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." --Edmund Burke
This booklet contains the transcript of a keynote address given before a 2008 Presidential Candidates Forum to which all presidential candidates were invited.
Contents:
Introduction ...................................................................................1 A Statement of the Problem.........................................................3 Are There Higher Laws to which Congress, the Judiciary and the President are subject? ....................................................5
The Constitution is the highest law of the land. ..............................................5 The oath of allegiance taken by public officials. .............................................5 The Ninth and Tenth Amendments make clear that the Constitution is a limiting document. .......................................................................................8 The Constitution declares our founding document to be the Declaration of Independence................................................................................................8 The Constitution upholds common law, and thus the Christian laws that our nation were founded on must continue to be upheld. ................................9
Conclusion ....................................................................................19
Introduction 1
Introduction
Ronald Reagan expressed the frustration of many people when he said, "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." He went on to say, "The current tax code is a daily mugging." And that is the topic of this booklet Constitutional Restraints to Government Theft. The title itself is shocking to some people how dare we accuse the government of theft? But it is my contention that it is not simply citizens who can be guilty of theft; governments themselves can be guilty.
They reacted with special anger against the practice of impressments of Americans who were then forced to fight against their own families, with attempted desertion resulting in death. These lords said in part, "we reject, with indignation, that clause . . . which, by a refinement in tyranny, and in a sentence worse than death, obliges the unhappy men who shall be made captives in this predatory war, to bear arms against their family, kindred, friends, and country; and after being plundered themselves, to become accomplices in plundering their brethren."
Of course, modern politicians redefine this theft as charity and compassion. But we must not let them get away with it. As Frederic Bastiat said in his masterful treatise, The Law, when a person takes a dollar out of his own pocket and gives it to the poor that is true charity and compassion. But when the same individual takes a dollar out of your pocket and gives it to the poor, it is theft. And it is theft whether a private citizen or a public servant engages in it. And this brings us to the statement of the problem or the dilemma. Many people believe that the civil government is incapable of theft by definition because the civil government is the one who defines the rules. If there is no higher law by which a government can be judged, then by definition there can be no such thing as tyranny, and we have no basis for complaint. This was precisely the argument that was used by the Nazi War Criminals at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. People recognized that these were war criminals, yet the civil servants defended themselves by saying that everything they did was legal. They were following the laws of the state. And who gives these judges the right to say that their laws were immoral? The judges had to resurrect the concept stated in our Declaration of Independence that Gods laws stand above mans laws. If this were not true, it would make no sense for Psalm 94 to complain about wicked civil magistrates who promote evil by law. A law can only be evil if there is a higher law by which it can be judged. The black economist, Walter Williams, places the problem where it presently stands when he says, Thou shalt not steal unless thou hast a majority vote in Congress. But as we will see in the next few minutes, Congress must be reigned in by higher laws
Are There Higher Laws to which Congress, the Judiciary and the President are subject?
The Constitution is the highest law of the land.
Unlike the war criminals in Nuremberg, our Congress cannot claim to be following the law. They dont even have that excuse. The highest law of the land is not the codification of the new laws constantly emanating from Congress. The highest law of the land is the Constitution. In the case of Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice Marshall said, "All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution, are null and void." Congress would not be able to pull the wool over peoples eyes if the people knew the Constitution backwards and forwards. And I highly recommend that you carry a copy of the Constitution with you at all times. Distribute copies of the Constitution to friends and associates. We need to use it as a tool to resist tyranny. And there are many books to help you study the Constitution. Firm Foundation Press has published, The Exhaustive Concordance to the United States Constitution with Topical Index and Rapid Reference Constitution. The Editor is Dennis Bizzoco. Its a great way to find your way around the Constitution. If you have a tough time reading the Federalist Papers, which give the original interpretation of the Constitution, you can buy the Federalist Papers in Modern Language Indexed for Todays Political Issues, edited by Mary E. Webster. There are many great tools to help you understand the Constitution and hold politicians feet to the fire.
For example, the Senators take the following oath: "I do solemnly swear (or
officers arent being forced to take these jobs against their wills. They have voluntarily bound themselves to follow the Constitution. Yet very few do. Many experts have estimated that somewhere between 62% (that is the lowest figure I have seen) and 90% of the Federal expenditures and programs are grossly unconstitutional. According to one scholars analysis, 62% of President Bushs 2006 Budget involves taking money from one group of citizens to benefit other citizens a form of socialism; redistribution of wealth.3 And we need to ask these men why
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." Presidents take the following oath: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." (See Article II, section 1 of the Constitution.) 3 Mr. Cantoni, founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (www.haalt.org) listed many forms of government theft, but consider the following samples: DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE $176 billion in farm assistance $359 million in loans to companies that install broadband in rural areas $5.5 billion for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children $214 million for USDA-financed multifamily housing $33.1 billion for the Food Stamp Program DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE $3.7 billion for the Strengthening America's Communities Grant Program, including the Minority Business Development Agency, the Advisory Commission on Asians and Pacific Islanders, and the International Trade Administration $47 million for the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION $13.3 billion in Title I spending $1.1 billion for Reading First and Early Reading First $412 million to help states test students under No Child Left Behind $500 million for Teacher Incentive Fund $2.9 billion for Teacher Quality States Grant program $40 million for the Adjunct Teacher Corps $50 million for the Choice Incentive Fund
they have perjured themselves in doing unconstitutional things. If they say that they have not, all we need to ask them is to demonstrate that their pet policy is authorized by the Constitution. The Constitution is a limiting document. The burden of proof is on them to demonstrate that they have not violated their oath. If the biggest crisis of the hour is a government not subject to the Constitution, then one limit is to
$219 million for Charter Schools Grants $37 million for Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities $1.2 billion for High School Intervention Initiative $250 million for High School Assessments $175 million for Striving Readers program $269 million for Math-Science Partnerships $12 million for State Scholars Program $12.2 billion for all IDEA programs $4.3 billion to retire Pell Grant shortfall $17.9 billion in Pell Grants $125 million to improve access to community colleges $299 million for Historically Black Colleges and Graduate Institutions DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT $161.5 million for the American Dream Down-payment Initiative $40 million for housing counseling $2.5 billion for the Single Family Home Ownership Tax Credit $4 billion for homeless programs and grants Unspecified amount for Housing Opportunities for Persons With Aids (HOPWA) $74 million for Prisoner Re-entry Initiative $20.8 billion in rental assistance $5.7 billion for public housing $583 million for Native American Block Grant DEPARTMENT OF LABOR $4 billion for job training SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION The entire budget of $593 million is theft SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION $9.5 billion in discretionary spending and $564 billion in mandatory spending THE CORPORATION FOR NATIONAL AND COMMUNITY SERVICE The entire budget of $921 million is theft NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS The entire budget of $121 million is theft NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES The entire budget of $138 million is theft
remind officials that they need to abide by their oath. We desperately need a Constitutionalist President who is willing to veto unconstitutional laws and to remind Congress of its vow to uphold the Constitution.
The Ninth and Tenth Amendments make clear that the Constitution is a limiting document.
Another Constitutional limit is states rights. There is no reason why States cannot band together to resist unconstitutional mandates from the Feds. The Tenth Amendment says, 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. States have a vested interest in telling the Federal government to back off; to tell them that the Constitution is not a suggestion it is a limiting document. In other words, if you cant find it in the Constitution, the Federal Government cant do it. Thats the tenth amendment. Call your state representatives and ask them to use interposition to resist unconstitutional Federal mandates.
The Declaration adds three inalienable rights life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It also condemns much of what is going on in Washington if people would only read it.
Thus the laws of nature and of Natures God are the laws of the land.
Further, the Declaration indicates that our nation is subject to the laws of nature and of natures God. It makes the laws of God the basis for our Constitutional republic. The constitution was not a scrapping of the Christian republic, but a perfecting of it. We need to be bolder in using the Declaration of Independence.
The Constitution upholds common law, and thus the Christian laws that our nation were founded on must continue to be upheld.
A fifth major restriction that the Constitution places upon our elected officials and judges is the common law. And its not just the Constitution that mandates common law. The Northwest Ordinance, signed at the same time, said of all future states that might join the union, The inhabitants of the said territory shall always be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, and of the trial by jury; of a proportionate representation of the people in the legislature; and of judicial proceedings according to the course of the common law. Constitutional expert, James McClellan, says that the language of both the Federal and State constitutions in the United States cannot fully be understood without reference to the English common law.4 Amendment VII to our Constitution says, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-
James McClellan, Liberty, Order, and Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional Principles of American Government, p. 33. On page 35 McClellan says, Some provisions of the Constitution, such as the one referring to contract in Article 1, Section 10, presume the existence of common law and cannot be understood properly without reference to it.
examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of common law. It was mandated. And what is common law? The United States Supreme Court itself said, ...Christianity, general Christianity, is and always has been, a part of the common law not Christianity with an established church but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men.5 Chief Justice Story said, There never has been a period of history, in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundation.6 This is why on September 17, 1796 (seven years after he signed the Constitution) President George Washington, said, it is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.7 Making Common Law the law governing all the state and federal courts makes Gods law the law of the land, just as the Declaration of Independence did. And we should not be ashamed of this. The only way we can restrict tyranny is if there is a higher law. Our modern Congressmen for the most part does not see themselves as being guilty of theft because they do not see themselves as subject to a higher law. They have become above the law just as the Parliament in England had during the War for American Independence. William Blackstone described the state of affairs in Parliament back then when he said, the power of parliament is absolute and without control. It hath sovereign absolute, despotic power.8
Quoted in William J. Federer, Americas God and Country, (Coppell, TX: Fame Publishing, 1994), p. 600. 6 Federer, Americas God and Country, p. 574. 7 Federer, Americas God and Country, p. 660. See also James K. Paulding, A Life of Washington, 1836, Vol. II, p. 208. 8 Cited in John Allen, Inquiry Into the Rise and Growth of the Royal Prerogative in England, (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849), p. 35.
Civic Theft 11
Inflation9.
The first example of theft and despotism is inflation. The economist, Hans Sennholz, has demonstrated that inflation is theft in that it covertly transfers income and wealth from all creditors to all debtors,10 (our government being the biggest debtor and the biggest recipient of this transfer of wealth). Ronald Reagan said, Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man. The economist, Milton Friedman, said, Inflation is taxation without legislation.
Inflation can be defined as "An increase in the supply of money and credit caused by government action. Inflation usually results in a rise in the general price level for all goods and services, and, in popular usage, inflation has come to mean any rise in the general price level." (George Edward Durell Foundation) 10 Hans Sennholz, Inflation is Debt June 24, 2005 blog at http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/sennholz6.html.
"If the novel view of the General Welfare Clause now advanced in support of the tax were accepted, this clause would not only enable Congress to supplant the states in the regulation of agriculture and all other industries as well, but would furnish the means whereby all of the other provisions of the Constitution, sedulously framed to define and limit the powers of the United States and preserve the powers of the states, could be broken down, the independence of the individual states obliterated, and the United States converted into a central government exercising uncontrolled police power throughout the union superseding all local control over local concerns." - United States v. Butler (No. 401) 78 F.2d 1 affirmed, 1953. Succeeding years have proven that court to be absolutely right. We have a despotic Federal government that has stolen away States rights.
Government Waste.
Government waste is another form of graft, corruption and theft. In the Johnny Hart comic strip, B.C., this famous line was written. Waste not -- want not': The motto of absolutely no
11
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell030204.asp.
Civic Theft 13
government agency whatsoever." Herman E. Talmadge said, "Virtually everything is under federal control nowadays except the federal budget."
Eminent Domain.
I already mentioned the tyranny of eminent domain that is destroying businesses and peoples lives in many cities across our nation. Eminent domain is no longer for government use. It is taking away land from one business to give it to another business that will produce more taxes. Or in many cases, it is being used to give land to large corporations for Ball Parks and other ventures.
Regulatory confiscation.
Then you have regulatory confiscation. The Wilderness Act of 1964 stole vast tracts of land from the states and from private individuals. Then there was the Clean Water Act, The Clean Air Act and the most astonishing land grab of all, the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
Graduated Taxation.
Karl Marx considered a progressive (graduated) income tax to be essential to establishing socialism in a country. Several of his socialistic principles have been wholeheartedly embraced by the USA. We began with Ronald Reagans comment that the current tax system is a daily mugging and I love his insight on communism. He said, "Communism works only in heaven, where they don't need it, and in hell, where they've already got it." - Ronald Reagan, June 1983.
- Chief Justice John Marshall, in McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 at 323, 1819, United States Supreme Court. The Bible defines any taxation over 10% to be tyrannical (1Sam. 8:15). Some people object to using the Bible as a standard, but without it, there is no limit to which we can be taxed. At one time, Englands highest tax rate was around 90%. R. J. Rushdoony quotes Luigi Barzini saying, the late Luigi Einaudi, Italys foremost economist and ex-President of the Republic, calculated that, if every tax on the statute books was fully collected, the State would absorb 110% of the national income.12 Without a Biblical maximum for taxation, taking 100% of our income (also called slavery) cannot be objected to. But according to the Bible and the Declaration of Independence, that is tyranny.
12
Luigi Barzini, The Italians (New York: Bantam Books, 1965), p. 109 as cited by Rusdoony, Institutes,vol. 1, p. 35.
What We Should Do 15
Read the Constitution and be prepared to talk about it with the candidates
Fifth, read the constitution and be prepared to talk about it with your candidates. This will do more to restrict unconstitutional behavior than most anything else that we do.
Support candidates who will seek to dismantle all unconstitutional departments and agencies.
Seventh, support candidates who will seek to dismantle all unconstitutional departments and agencies. President Ronald Reagan said, There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts." But as he discovered, the president cant do it alone. He will need all the support he can get from Congress and Senate.
Promote the abolishing of the unjust graduated income tax and the IRS.
Ninth, promote the abolishment of the sixteenth amendment and the abolishment of the IRS.
What We Should Do 17
Get to know your representatives & resource them with good literature.
Fourteenth, get to know your elected officials and resource them with good literature. Treat them as a friend you can help and you will get farther than if you treat them as an enemy.
Pray
Finally, pray again. "Unless the LORD build the house, they labor in vain who build it." (Psalm 127:1) Unless the Lord guard the city, its watchmen will keep awake in vain.
Conclusion 19
Conclusion
Let me end by giving a brief quote from Barry Goldwater. He said, "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."13
13
Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1990), p. 17.
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