2 Paragraphs 4 Liberty: #120 “The Most Important Function Of Government”

                At the moment I am finalizing a new musical entitled “Convention,” which is about our great country’s Constitutional Convention in 1787.  As a result, for the past few years I have been heavily involved with research about the thoughts, beliefs and principles of our Founders.  (In that group I include women like Abigail Adams.)  And, although the delegates obviously had different backgrounds, biases and beliefs, do you know what the most important function of government was for virtually each one of them?  The protection of individual liberties from the encroachment of government!  (The second most important was security.)  This thought might be somewhat controversial today, but it shouldn’t be.  And it has been the purpose of these “2 Paragraphs” editions for the past 119 weeks to help more people to think and focus about government in these terms, i.e. the terms of Liberty.

The Founders believed that the provisions of the Constitution were so clear that most of them felt that a Bill of Rights was not necessary.   For example, Alexander Hamilton (who never sang any rap songs in his life!) felt that if some rights were enumerated in such a Bill, it might mean that others which were not expressly mentioned were forfeited, and he didn’t want to take that chance.  So what are some of the liberties that we have lost to the government over time?  That list is long, but it includes no provision in the Constitution at all to justify the federal government’s intrusion into the fields of education, healthcare, or the prohibition of presently illicit drugs, not to mention Congress’ forfeiting of the issuance of declarations of war to the President.  And, of course, all of these intrusions have increased the cost of government by many levels of magnitude.  This lasted even up to the year 1913, when the architects of the 16^th Amendment, which allowed the federal government to levy income taxes, considered limiting the amount at five percent.  But that was determined it to be unnecessary, since they were sure the tax would never exceed three percent.  So in your deliberations about how our government should be acting, and how you should vote in our elections, please consider the Founders, and the Constitution they created for us all.  And then be sure to vote for Liberty.

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President,
along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

 

Please forward this on to your circle of friends for their consideration and to further the discussion.   And, by the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejimgrayOAI, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty!

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2rLjH0s
via IFTTT