Kill the Electoral College

[David Horn]

(01-03-2017, 06:20 AM)Galen Wrote: I have a rather long list and the people that make that argument believe that the Amendment in question was not properly ratified.  Assuming that the Amendment was properly ratified then that makes the income tax immoral in the same way that armed robbery is.  If you have trouble with this concept then I suggest that you try not paying the IRS and see what happens.  In the end it will involve people with guns taking your stuff much like the armed robber does.

The current surveillance state and sobriety checkpoints violate the Fourth Amendment.  The Federal Reserve violates the constitution on the grounds that the power to charter banks or give them special privileges was not granted to Congress.  The use of the Commerce Clause to regulate things clearly are not interstate commerce.  The Wickard v. Filburn decision is a classic case of the Supreme Court interpreting the Constitution in such a way as to grant the federal government more power than it ever should have.

This is as nearly a perfect example of the foolish nature of ideological purity as I've seen.  Never mind that no modern nation with a 21st century economy could successfully exist in a world limited by hidebound adherence to Agricultural Age ideals.  judging by how quickly many were dispatched in the early period of the Republic, I'm not sure that even the 19th century would have prevailed.

There is simply a mandate for a commonweal, and that mandate must be enforced somehow.  A totally voluntary state may be possible if your expectations are kept very low, but even well accepted civic virtues, like highways and police departments, are nearly impossible to manage under a fully voluntary system.  Volunteer fire services do not exist outside rural areas for good reason, and they are even withering away there.