What's at Stake

Catch of the Day The Stakes in the Midterm Elections: Are We Citizens or Subject?

“ James Madison, referring to a bill to subsidize cod fishermen introduced to the First Congress said,     If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands;they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress…. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.” Prior to that, in Federalist 41, Madison wrote,   Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.” Madison’s incredible forethought underscores exactly what all Americans are facing today as we move into the November 2nd Election. [Big Government continued] The use of The New Yorker's January 26 2009 post-inauguration cover is also brilliant.  It at once underscores the mindset of those responsible for Obama's presidency, and reminds us that even now they operate in a state of deranged fervor and denial. [see Recession Election by Hendrik Hertzberg] This is a war of ideologies. TRPOF