Home > Uncategorized > (“In his book Our Secret Constitution: How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy, George P. Fletcher, a Marxist Columbia University School of Law professor, describes how the mission of Abraham the Destroyer was not to preserve the constitutional union, but rather to impose a new order – one created through aggression by the central government against the states that created it, and the people from whom it supposedly derived its powers.”) Obamacare and the Revenge of the ‘Secret Constitution’ by William Norman Grigg

(“In his book Our Secret Constitution: How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy, George P. Fletcher, a Marxist Columbia University School of Law professor, describes how the mission of Abraham the Destroyer was not to preserve the constitutional union, but rather to impose a new order – one created through aggression by the central government against the states that created it, and the people from whom it supposedly derived its powers.”) Obamacare and the Revenge of the ‘Secret Constitution’ by William Norman Grigg

July 19, 2012 Leave a comment Go to comments

 

Thus it was exquisitely appropriate that the Supreme Court’s ratification of “the most important piece of social welfare legislation since the 1960s” came in a majority opinion written by a Bush-appointed Republican conservative. After all, we should expect adherents of the Party of Lincoln to be doing the works of Abraham.

 

In his book Our Secret Constitution: How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy, George P. Fletcher, a Marxist Columbia University School of Law professor, describes how the mission of Abraham the Destroyer was not to preserve the constitutional union, but rather to impose a new order – one created through aggression by the central government against the states that created it, and the people from whom it supposedly derived its powers.

 

NEW YORK, NY - MAY 02: Judge Andrew Napolitan...

NEW YORK, NY – MAY 02: Judge Andrew Napolitano attends the Greater Talent Network 30th anniversary party at the United Nations on May 2, 2012 in New York City. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

 

 

“The new order inherits an operating Congress, Executive, and Judiciary,” writes Fletcher, and although federal institutions have been “recast in new functions, the forms remained the same.” Behind a change in federal functions is a new ruling ideology, in which the central government elite now acts on “the consciousness of setting forth a new framework of government, a structure based on values fundamentally different from those that went before.”

 

“The heart of the new consensus is that the federal government, victorious in warfare, must continue its aggressive intervention in the lives of its citizens,” writes Fletcher approvingly. The Founders’ Constitution was sold to the populace as an austere and proscriptive document that defined the few and specific things the central government would be permitted to do.

 

This arrangement was changed through Lincoln’s war of aggression, according to Fletcher, since “the liberty that comes to the fore in the intended postbellum constitutional order and under the Secret Constitution requires the intervention of government. Liberty is born in the state’s assertion of responsibility to oversee and prevent relationships of oppression.” (Emphasis added.)

 

That is to say that “liberty” is a revocable and highly conditional gift of the State, and that “oppression” exists anywhere there are limits placed on the exercise of federal power. One is “free” only to the extent he supports, and is subject to, the benevolent rule of the unfathomably noble beings who inhabit the Imperial Capital. Questioning their edicts and actions on “constitutional” grounds is intolerably impudent – nay, it is nothing less than blasphemy, since everything our masters do is blessed with the “presumption of constitutionality.”

 

In his recent book It Is Dangerous to be Right when the Government is Wrong, Judge Andrew Napolitano (one of the few jurists worthy of that honorific) underscores the importance of the Supreme Court’s United States v. Carolene Products ruling in 1938.

 

The case dealt with a federal statute banning the sale of a product called “filled milk.” The measure, which was passed as a favor to the dairy lobby, was devoid of constitutional authority – but the Supreme Court upheld it in the interest of “state-building,” and in doing so it promulgated a new doctrine of “presumed constitutionality.”

 

“The Court’s reasoning was that the statute should be presumed constitutional, and thus the burden was on the defendant company to prove that Congress could have no constitutional authority and no lawful basis for regulating the sale of the product – a nearly impossible showing,” recalls Judge Napolitano. “By requiring a presumption of constitutionality instead of a presumption of liberty, the Court permitted Congress to transgress economic liberties for almost any reason it wished.”

 

That presumption invests the federal government with something akin to constitutional infallibility: Between 1937 and 1995, as Judge Napolitano observes, the Supreme Court didn’t strike down a single piece of federal legislation on constitutional grounds.

 

Many people blessed with sound, sober, and subtle minds believe that all of this represents a “perversion” of the original constitution. Others, such as the ever-perspicacious Butler Shaffer, insist that the federal government has “never deviated” from the Constitution: The document was written in a way that encouraged government expansion and provided the means to accomplish it while sustaining the necessary illusion that its powers were effectively limited by law and its administrators were in some sense accountable to the people they rule.

 

English: Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth Presid...

English: Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. Latviešu: Abrahams Linkolns, sešpadsmitais ASV prezidents. Српски / Srpski: Абрахам Линколн, шеснаести председник Сједињених Америчких Држава. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Any governmental charter permitting seizure of property through “eminent domain” and the suspension of habeas corpus (the irreducible due process guarantee) for any reason is latently totalitarian at best; those provisions offer a glimpse of the “secret constitution” described by Fletcher, in which federal power is limited only by the ingenuity and brazenness of those who wield it.

 

Many conservatives reacted to Judge Roberts’ Obamacare ruling by giving voice to the same pious outrage they express every time the Supreme Court redefines the “social contract.” A healthier reaction would be to ask: Why should any individual be governed by a “contract” that he never signed, and that the other party can unilaterally revise at its pleasure?……..

 

EXCERPT

 

Reprinted with permission from Pro Libertate.

 

July 19, 2012

 

William Norman Grigg [send him mail] publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.

 

Copyright © 2012 William Norman Grigg

 

The Best of William Norman Grigg

 

via Obamacare and the Revenge of the ‘Secret Constitution’ by William Norman Grigg.

 

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  1. Gunny G
    July 19, 2012 at 9:02 AM | #1
    Quote

    We now know that Karl Marx himself wrote for the NY Tribune beginning in the early 1850s (for 10 years) through Horace Greeley, its editor.

    The marxist revolt in Europe in 1848 was widely reported in American writings during that time…no reason to think that dishonest abe was unaware of these writings…Many of these refugees from Europe made their to America soon after 1848….and their influence was soon felt…

    Semper Watching!
    *****

  2. Gunny G
    October 24, 2012 at 9:00 AM | #2
    Quote

    Reblogged this on CITIZEN.BLOGGER.1984+ THE.GUNNY.G BLOG.EMAIL and commented:

    “The new order inherits an operating Congress, Executive, and Judiciary,” writes Fletcher, and although federal institutions have been “recast in new functions, the forms remained the same.” Behind a change in federal functions is a new ruling ideology, in which the central government elite now acts on “the consciousness of setting forth a new framework of government, a structure based on values fundamentally different from those that went before.”

    “The heart of the new consensus is that the federal government, victorious in warfare, must continue its aggressive intervention in the lives of its citizens,” writes Fletcher approvingly. The Founders’ Constitution was sold to the populace as an austere and proscriptive document that defined the few and specific things the central government would be permitted to do.

  1. July 19, 2012 at 8:19 PM | #1
    Pro Libertate,,, Obamacare and the Revenge of the “Secret Constitution” « CITIZEN.BLOGGER.1984+ GUNNY.G BLOG.EMAIL
  2. July 19, 2012 at 11:08 PM | #2
    Our Secret Constitution: How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy: The Independent Review: The Independent Institute « CITIZEN.BLOGGER.1984+ GUNNY.G BLOG.EMAIL
  3. July 22, 2012 at 3:41 PM | #3
    The Mises Review: Unsound Constitution by George Fletcher « CITIZEN.BLOGGER.1984+ GUNNY.G BLOG.EMAIL
  4. July 25, 2012 at 1:38 PM | #4
    Gunny G: FEATURED POSTS… « CITIZEN.BLOGGER.1984+ GUNNY.G BLOG.EMAIL
  5. July 27, 2012 at 6:03 AM | #5
    Jim R. Schwiesow — That Horse is Already Dead « CITIZEN.BLOGGER.1984+ GUNNY.G BLOG.EMAIL
  6. August 1, 2012 at 12:49 PM | #6
    GUNNY G: FEATURED ARTICLES/LINKS !!!!! BEST OF THE BEST !!!!! « CITIZEN.BLOGGER.1984+ GUNNY.G BLOG.EMAIL
  7. August 17, 2012 at 12:08 PM | #7
    GUNNY G: FAVORITE ARTICLES… « CITIZEN.BLOGGER.1984+ GUNNY.G BLOG.EMAIL
  8. September 20, 2012 at 4:00 AM | #8
    “Lincoln increased the power of the federal government at the expense of the rights of the states and civil liberties. This opened the door to more unconstitutional acts by the government in the 1900s through to today.” « CITIZEN.BLOGGER
  9. September 20, 2012 at 4:00 AM | #9
    “Lincoln increased the power of the federal government at the expense of the rights of the states and civil liberties. This opened the door to more unconstitutional acts by the government in the 1900s through to today.” « CITIZEN.BLOGGER
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