Who are the Fascists?

The real "liberal" goal is a dictatorship of regulatory agencies filled with progressive experts who believe they can take better care of the people they govern than the people themselves.  "Liberals" don't even bother to ask for the consent of the governed, because they believe the governed are too stupid and ignorant to give informed consent.

In the US, the Constitution has a doctrine of separation of powers. However, regulatory agencies like the EPA, have rule making (legislative), law enforcement (executive) and administrative hearings on the regulations (judicial) all in a single agency.  There is no separation of powers in this structure, but "liberal" jurists use "living Constitution" interpretations to make the Constitution say whatever they want it to say.

When the dumb voters choose to vote for a rude crude  guy who promises more freedom and less regulation, "liberals" start a coordinated program to remove the duly elected president by unconstitutional means.  Who are the fascists?  The people who voted for Trump and won the election according to the Constitution,  or the people who lost and will use whatever means it takes to overturn the outcome of the election and overthrow the legitimate government?

Government by regulatory agencies is generally unpopular.  As these agencies intrude into more areas of life, diversity of ideas is surpressed by enforced country-wide regulated uniformity.  People may not know exactly what's wrong, but the Western Democracies all have the same regulatory overreach and the same unrest.  The ruling regulators are certain they know best.  The people disagree.  The voters will flail wildly until they find escape from the regulators.

Imposing Regulatory State is Causing the Decline of the West

I think decadence in the West is a result of a gradual change in the goals government pursues and the way government operates.  The basis of Western Civilization, and arguably any civilization, is the rule of law.  Without predictability, economic investments with long term payoffs are impossible to make.  Our current prosperity began with John Locke’s idea, from his 1690 “Two Treatises on Government,” that government required the consent of the governed and that government’s purpose was to secure the life, liberty and property of the people it governed. The way Western "democratic" governments operate today is to have experts make regulatory decisions for people without their consent.  Government makes people follow rules that it thinks are good for them, and redistributes property in the name of social justice, which usually means buying votes with entitlements.

English history from 1600 to 1700 was very important to the Founders who set up the United States.  The Declaration of Independence was the American Colonies’ formal withdrawal of our consent to be governed by King George III.  This was especially important because King George III was King of England by the Act of Settlement passed in 1701, which chose the Hanoverians over the Stuarts to be Kings of England.  In other words, King George II was King of England by consent of the governed.  There were several contemporary claimants to the throne of England with better rights of descent than George III.

The Constitutional requirement that the president see “that the laws be faithfully executed” was a reaction to Charles I (1600-1649) and James II (1633-1701), who ignored parliamentary laws whenever they found the laws inconvenient.  The 2nd Amendment right to bear arms was an attempt to prevent military dictatorship, like the one imposed by Oliver Cromwell from 1653 to 1658.

The economic enlightenment started by Adam Smith (1723-1790), which Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) extended, argued that economic prosperity required minimal government interference beyond a stable legal framework to enforce commercial contracts.  Common practice at the time they wrote was for the government to grant huge monopolies to private companies, like the British East India Company, which was granted India.  Government granted monopolies then are very similar to crony capitalism today.  Smith and Bastiat argued against government granted monopolies. They said the economy would do better without heavy handed government interference.

 

Starting in 1887, with the passage of the law creating the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate rail road freight rates, US government moved away from the rule of law and towards regulatory guidelines which could be micromanaged.  Starting with the New Deal, the US changed the function of government to constraining liberty and redistributing property.  The New Deal era also produced John Maynard Keynes’ idea that government spending stimulates the economy.  Prior to Keynes, governments limited spending and tried to cut taxes during hard times.  Ironically, one of Keynes most famous quotes is that politicians “are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”  Most Western politicians in power today are the slaves of John Maynard Keynes.

Today, Western democratic governments are not really democratic.  The most important decisions are made by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in regulatory agencies and judges who are changing rather than interpreting the law.  The governing philosophy is that the consent of the governed is no longer needed because the governed are too ignorant to know what’s good for them.  Only government experts can make the best decisions for the people.  Increasingly, governments pay people not to work, not to take initiative and not to even try to take care of themselves.  In responding to the incentives to become dependent on the state, people are contributing to their personal decline and also to the decline and fall of the West.  When a civilization’s bill for bread and circuses, now known as transfer payments, becomes so large that they can no longer afford an army to protect themselves, the decline becomes terminal.

The way to reverse the decline is to remove the power from regulatory agencies and judges to make law without the approval of elected representatives.  We also need to stop paying people to be dependent on the state and encourage them to become independent and think for themselves.  If you give a man a fish, he’s hungry tomorrow.  If you teach a man to fish, he can feed himself by fishing every day.  If you give a man a fish every day, why would he make any effort to learn how to fish?

Taxation and Regulation Without Representation

The problem that everyone feels instinctively is that we have taxation and regulation without representation. The big decisions are made by regulatory agencies, federal courts and executive orders. Nobody elects the regulators and judges, but they unilaterally regulate the internet, declare war on coal and redefine marriage. The only individual who is elected is the president who delays the collection of the Employer Mandate tax for a year and issues executive orders on immigration. Congress gets to decide once a year whether to fund the government or shut it down. Harry Reid's success in smothering Congressional power is the reason we have Trump as a Republican presidential nominee.

The voters tried to work through Congress starting in early 2010. In response to the threat of Obamacare, the voters of Massachusetts elected a Republican Senator to replace Ted Kennedy. Obamacare passed anyway via parliamentary tricks. In 2010, voters elected a Republican House. Harry Reid made sure nothing of importance that the House passed reached the President's desk. In 2012 and 2014 Congress got more Republican, but it didn't change anything. Even with control of both the House and Senate, not one spending bill passed before the omnibus all or nothing vote was required.

Frustrated by Congressional victories that gained nothing, Republican voters decided that they needed to try something radical. That's why we have a choice of Trump Trash or Crooked Hillary.

A vote for Hillary is a vote for continued taxation and regulation without representation. Why bother with Congress now that President Obama has shown you don't really need them?

Congress Should Have to Vote On All Federal Regulations

The idea that the EPA can declare war on coal without Congressional involvement is ridiculous.  The idea that the FCC can regulate the internet like it's a copper wire telephone company, using a law passed in 1934 that does not apply to the internet, is absurd.  The whole idea that Congress can and should delegate its legislative power to unchecked federal regulatory agencies has proved to be utter folly.  But even worse, the president is delegating his power to sign legislation into law to these regulatory agencies.  A two step process to making legislation into law has been delegated to an agency without checks or balances and made into a one step process.  It needs to be changed.

The Constitution should be amended to end the legislative power of regulatory agencies.  Congress should have to vote to approve or reject every regulation. There could be a “fast track” procedure for regulations, that is an up or down vote with no amendments and no filibusters.  There should also be a provision in the Constitutional amendment that any member of Congress can call for a roll call vote on a package of regulations after they have been formally presented to Congress and been waiting 120 days.  Once the privileged motion is made, the vote has to be taken immediately.

The Constitution originally said all legislation had to come from Congress and be signed  by the president.  Veto overrides and pocket vetoes were specified. There is no reason to delegate legislative power to any other agencies with other procedures.  Congress and the president should be responsible for all laws and regulations.

Explain Trump's Nomination: PTSD or Outlaw Government?

For David Rothkopf, the Editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, “Donald Trump is the Symptom of Our PTSD.”  I would like to propose an alternative analysis.  The government of the US no longer cares about obtaining the consent of the governed and the government no longer bothers with preserving even the appearance of equal justice.  Since 2010, the Democrats' strategy has been to deadlock Congress and use illegal executive orders, rogue courts and regulatory excesses to get what they want without Congress.  The power of the purse has been negated by Harry Reid blocking every spending bill until the last minute, then giving Republicans the choice of giving Democrats more or less everything that they want or shutting down the government.  

The "living Constitution" doctrine, for example, completely removes the consent of the governed.  When the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, homosexual acts were illegal in every state.  The ratifiers did not ratify mandatory same sex marriage.  If same sex marriage had been explicitly part of the 14th Amendment, it would not have passed.

Regulatory agencies have no separation of powers.  They combine executive, legislative and judicial functions all in one shop.  Due to the Chevron doctrine, the courts defer to regulatory agencies expertise, so in most cases regulations get minimal judicial review.  It's clear that Congress has no power over regulatory agencies.  It's also clear that President Obama can get them to do whatever he wants, like regulate the internet as if it was a copper wire telephone utility in 1934, or maybe a steam locomotive railroad in 1887.  The Environmental Protection Agency declared War on Coal after Congress failed to do so.  Companies who sued to stop the regulations were told they had no standing to sue, because they had suffered no injury yet.

The courts generally vote a straight party line in deciding cases.  You can tell this because the news reports who appointed the judges when it reports how the cases are decided.  The 4 liberal justices on the Supreme Court are almost 100% predictable.  The judiciary is no longer independent.

In the last 7.5 years the president has operated outside the law.  Obama decided not to collect the Employer Mandate taxes which he signed into law as part of Obamacare.  He has had the Supreme Court rewrite Obamacare twice rather than submit it to Congress for a rewrite.  He has unilaterally proclaimed and enforced the Dream Act by executive order after it failed to pass Congress.  

The Department of Justice has become a mockery of its name similar to George Orwell's Ministry of Truth.  Justice department lawyers have been cited for contempt several times because they presented facts to judges which later turned out not to be facts.  The Justice Department has not prosecuted Lois Lerner for setting up IRS harassment of Tea Party nonprofit advocacy groups. It has not prosecuted IRS Commissioner John Koskinen for obstruction of Congress and perjury in covering up the IRS harassment of Tea Party groups. 

The Justice Department has not prosecuted Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information.  FBI Director Comey said the crime requires intent to be prosecuted.  It most emphatically does not.  The Justice Department has not even investigated the Clinton Foundation's pay to play aspects.  The Chicago style fix is in.

The Justice Department has not prosecuted big Democrat fundraiser Jon Corzine, former Senator and Governor of New Jersey, for using customer money to pay corporate debts in the MF Global brokerage scandal, even when Mr. Corzine testified under oath to a Congressional Committee that his financial controls were not good enough for him to know that he was using customer assets.  Failure to have good controls is a violation of Sarbanes Oxley, and using customer money to pay corporate debts is the biggest no-no in the brokerage business under the securities laws.

I think Donald Trump's nomination is a desperate attempt by Republican voters to stop the corrupt mess in Washington.  After electing a Republican House in 2010 and a Republican Congress in 2012 and 2014, they have nothing to show for it.  Congressional Republicans seem to be intimidated by the mainstream media, who operate as the propaganda arm of the Democrats without even attempting to look unbiased.  Trump's one qualification was that he is not intimidated by the Pravda Press.  I'm not saying this choice was a wise decision, but I do understand the desperation.  If, as is very likely, Trump loses, the next step will be a Constitutional Convention called by the states.  People are fed up with the corruption of the Democrats in Washington, DC and their enablers in the mainstream media.  They are willing to look for any alternative that looks promising. 

[After posting the above, I got some pushback from a liberal commenter.  He said that the Clintons had maintained enough separation from the Foundation so that they were not in violation of a law prohibiting federal employees from receiving money from foreign governments.  He said a “living Constitution” was needed to keep the 2^nd Amendment as a valid part of the Constitution.  He said that Obama’s executive orders were sailing through the courts easily.  He said the deadlock in Congress was mainly the result of Republicans refusing to compromise.  My response is below.]

The reason for Hillary Clinton's private email server was so she could coordinate Clinton foundation donations with State Department favors.  Here's a good place to start on the Clinton Foundation:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/emails-reveal-how-foundation-donors-got-access-to-clinton-and-her-close-aides-at-state-dept/2016/08/22/345b5200-6882-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html

The purpose of the Second Amendment was to make military dictatorship, like the one Oliver Cromwell imposed on England after the English Civil War in 1653, impossible. Here's a link to the history of Oliver Cromwell:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell

This purpose is clearly explained in Federalist Papers Number 46.  This purpose, to prevent federal military dictatorship is still valid.  Even if it isn't, the Constitution's Article V specifies how to change the Constitution.  It says that 2/3 of each House of Congress must pass the Amendment and then 3/4 of the states must ratify it.  It does not say that a 5 to 4 vote of the Supreme Court is a valid way to change the Constitution to get rid of things we don't need anymore.  Here's a link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._46

Here's an account of the litigation around Obama's executive order implementing the Dream Act.  It's written by Illegal Immigration advocates, so it should be an acceptable source for you.  It doesn't sound like smooth sailing for Obama's executive order.  The ruling that currently stands is that the order violated the Constitutional provision that the president "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."  That provision should be called the King James II clause, because it was drafted to prevent the kinds of things he did to flout parliament.  Obama is merely imitating him.  Here's the link:

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/-legal-challenges-executive-action-on-immigration

Basically you are the victim of a "liberal" education.  Your effort to shout me down by stacking up manure is not going to work.  I grew up in Montana and I learned how to deal with lots of manure very young. 

[After my post above, the liberal commenter got upset.  He insisted I read a Politifact article about the Clinton Foundation.  He mentioned how many emails Bush deleted.  He said the 2^nd Amendment was obsolete because it was written when the US Army had only 5,000 men.  He said that the 14^th Amendment was too vague for anybody to know what it meant.  He mentioned Loving v. Virginia and Griswold v. Connecticut as two cases which would be overturned by my interpretation of the 14^th Amendment.  He complained about my insulting his “liberal” education.  My response to his response to my response is below.]

I read the Politifact article on the Clinton Foundation.  It was a whitewash followed by a split decision.  The polite fiction was that the Clintons did not receive any direct benefits from the foundation.  The foundation was used as a slush fund to support friends of Bill and Hill as a campaign organization in waiting, so the polite fiction was more fiction than polite.  The lawyers were of differing opinions.  Politifact, not surprisingly, chose to take the opinions most favorable to the Clintons as gospel.  Politifact is part of the media bias you've heard so much about.  Having "fact" in your name does not make Politifact any less biased that having "truth" in Pravda's name made Pravda any more truthful.

"All anybody got was a meeting" is LOL funny as a lame excuse. If George W. Bush was selling meetings through a Bush Foundation, would you still argue that?

On the 2nd Amendment, the point, which escaped you, is that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."  That's not a conditional statement.  It doesn't depend on the whims of local government.  It doesn't depend on a "living Constitution."  It's right there in plain English.  There is no room for wishful interpretation to accommodate modern conditions here.  Any other spin on this is organic fertilizer.  Heller was rightly decided.  If people don't like it, they can amend the Constitution using either of the two procedure specified in Article V.  Getting the Supreme Court to find another penumbra is not going to work.  Attempts to confiscate some of the 300 million privately held guns in the US will lead to widespread violence.  Any Supreme Court case which moves in that direction is really a big risk, considering how angry the Deplorables are right now.

The 14th Amendment was about RACE.  The Republicans who wrote it wanted to prevent state laws and state courts from mistreating recently freed black slaves.  To pretend otherwise is to back the Humpty Dumpty school of jurisprudence:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”

The great benefit of the rule of law is that it's predictable.  People can make long term investment decisions based on a predictable legal environment.  The great drawback of the "living Constitution" is that it's not predictable at all.  Supreme Court cases are more like NFL games.  On any given day, depending on what Justice Kennedy had for lunch, the Court can overturn thousands of years of tradition and law on a 5 to 4 vote.  It's even more ridiculous when you consider that the "full faith and credit" clause could have been used to rule that any marriage legally performed in one state had to be recognized in all states.  Stretching the Constitution out of shape wasn't even necessary to legalize same sex marriage.

Virginia v. Loving was a case about interracial marriage.  It was decided correctly based on the 14th Amendment.  The decision said that interracial marriage could not be outlawed by the State of Virginia.  This is exactly what the 14th Amendment was designed to do.  

Griswold v. Connecticut should have been decided using the 9th and 10th Amendment.  The states do not have the right to interfere in bedrooms just because the Constitution does not forbid it.  Inventing a right to privacy based on the 5th and 14th Amendments, when it was never there, opened the door to a slippery slope where the Court is finding all sorts of other things in the Constitution that weren't there.

My link to the Dream Act case shows that the courts have not upheld all of Obama's illegal executive orders.  You said, incorrectly, that they had.  "Obama's executive orders have been dismissed by the courts."  Ain't true.  Obama didn't just violate the intent of the Constitution.  He violated the letter of the Constitution repeatedly.  If George Bush decided not to collect taxes on oil companies until next year, would that be OK?  If not, why is it OK that Obama decided not to collect the taxes of the Employer Mandate passed in the Affordable Care Act?

As a straight white Republican male, I am assumed to be an ignorant uneducated racist sexist warmongering fascist pig.  Since I'm a Vietnam Era veteran, I'm also assumed to be a crazed trained killer who could lash out at any moment.  Since making these assumptions seems fair to liberals, I don't understand why any liberal would be upset if similarly broad assumptions were made about them.  None of them bother to notice my two Master's degrees or my black sister in law, the best thing that ever happened to my little brother.  I've just decided to strike first with insults.  It makes me feel better about myself.

I assume that "liberal" education leaves things out, like English history from 1600 - 1750 for example, because that knowledge would tend to undermine key liberal ideology.  You don't want people to notice the similarity between Divine Right Monarchy and being "on the Right Side of History" with the "Fierce Urgency of Now."  You especially don't want people to notice that Barry the Brilliant and King Charles I have a lot in common, both being tyrants who tried to rule without legislatures.  You also don't want people to read John Locke's Two Treatises of Government.  It wouldn't be good if people thought they actually had a say in consenting to government.  It's better for liberals if government just does what's best for people, because the people are too dumb to know what's good for them.

The original article I reacted to.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/13/trump-clinton-ptsd/