{"id":15588,"date":"2021-02-12T15:09:22","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T20:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=15588"},"modified":"2021-02-19T21:51:29","modified_gmt":"2021-02-20T02:51:29","slug":"sovereignty-still-rests-with-the-people-not-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/12\/sovereignty-still-rests-with-the-people-not-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Sovereignty Still Rests with the People, Not Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"
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American Institute for Economic Research, February 12, 2021<\/h3>\n

Sovereignty Still Rests with the People, Not Congress<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
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\"JamesJames Bovard<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Politicians lustfully rejoicing at their own power is the ultimate \u201cdog bites man\u201d story that goes unremarked in Washington<\/strong>. The Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump included one such vivid vignette, an ominous warning that Congress recognizes no limit over its rightful sway over the economy and the lives of American citizens.<\/p>\n

House Impeachment Manager Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is being lionized for his speeches in the trial. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) hailed Raskin as \u201cAmerica\u2019s professor.\u201d<\/a> In his final pitch to senators on Thursday, Raskin included the usual hackneyed references to Abraham Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence. Then Raskin recited the first \u201cWe the People\u201d sentence of the preamble of the Constitution and declared: \u201cYou see what just happened<\/a>? The sovereign power of the people\u2026 flowed right into Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

That line may have caused some Founding Fathers to roll over in their graves, and we\u2019ll return to this point in a moment.<\/p>\n

Raskin continued, waving his arms and becoming more emotional as he recited the powers that Congress possessed: \u201cComprehensive vast powers that all of you know so well! The power to regulate commerce, domestically and internationally, the power to raise the budget and taxes and to spend money and govern the seat of government and on and on and on.\u201d Raskin then fervently declared that Congress was also entitled to \u201call other powers that would be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers. That\u2019s all of us!\u201d<\/p>\n

This \u201call of us\u201d makes Congress sound like a wonderful club; too bad you and I aren\u2019t in it.<\/p>\n

Raskin\u2019s spiel accurately portrays how plenty of legislators perceive their prerogatives.\u00a0 Congress is entitled to spend as much as it pleases (such as Biden\u2019s $1.9 trillion Covid \u201cstimulus\u201d) \u2013 because they were elected. Congress is entitled to impose any restriction it pleases on domestic or international trade \u2013 because they were elected. Congress is entitled to impose new taxes, seizing more of citizens\u2019 property \u2013 because they were elected. Because they won an election, legislators feel entitled to domineer the people who voted for them \u2013 and anyone else who falls under their sway.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Raskin can now pass for a \u201cpublic intellectual\u201d because a staffer inserted quotes from Voltaire and Thomas Paine in his closing speech<\/strong>. Unfortunately, Voltaire\u2019s epigram on the de facto job description of Congress \u2013 \u201cthe art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class<\/a> of citizens to give to another\u201d \u2013 did not make it into Raskin\u2019s speech. Nor did Raskin mention one of Paine\u2019s best known lines: \u201cGovernment, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like most members of Congress, Raskin ignored the most valuable parts of the Constitution \u2013 the \u201cshall make no law\u201d provisions, the dozens of \u201cDo Not Enter\u201d signs erected by the Bill of Rights. Legislators scoff at those paper blockades and instead rhapsodize over the powers that other parts of the Constitution award them. The Fifth Amendment protects property rights and due process but members of Congress don\u2019t even genuflect to those provisions of the Constitution any more.<\/p>\n

Instead, reckless legislating has been standard procedure on Capitol Hill for three decades<\/strong>. Members of Congress have become so arrogant that they brazenly spend trillions of dollars of other people\u2019s money without even reading the legislation they approve, such as last December\u2019s unread 5,593-page omnibus bill that will cost taxpayers $2.3<\/a> trillion. After the Obama administration and its allies pushed the 2,700-page Affordable Care Act through Congress, numerous legislators admitted they hadn\u2019t read the bill. Sen. Tom Carper, (D-DE),\u00a0explained: <\/a>\u201cI don\u2019t expect to actually read the legislative language, because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I\u2019ve ever read in my life.\u201d\u00a0But not nearly as confusing as the blizzard of new mandates and penalties inflicted on American citizens and private companies.<\/p>\n

Politicians believe they are so superior to common folks that citizens will be better off even when politicians have little clue of what they are dictating to the American peopl<\/strong>e. Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) urged his colleagues to vote for a massive unread omnibus bill in 2014: \u201cHold your nose and make this a better world<\/a>.\u201d No wonder federal spending is out of control and the federal debt is a growing threat to our future.<\/p>\n

Legislators also occasionally make stark how they view themselves as a superior caste.<\/strong> This week\u2019s Senate impeachment trial was spurred by 800 pro-Trump protestors swarming into the Capitol on January 6. Some of the protestors clashed violently with police and some legislators tearfully testified about their personal trauma. But some members of Congress have no hesitation to throw other Americans to the wolves at the same time they demand unlimited police protection themselves.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last April, shortly before the nation\u2019s homicide rate began skyrocketing<\/a> after the death of George Floyd, Raskin urged the Department of Homeland Security to \u201cremove gun retailers<\/a> and manufacturers from the list of essential businesses in its guidance to local and state officials in containing the spread of Covid-19. Firearm distributors provide no proven public health benefit, and in fact, the proliferation of guns pose added safety threats to communities.\u201d As city after city was ravaged by violent protests and police protection collapsed, Raskin did not cease his efforts to block Americans from access to firearms to defend their own lives.<\/p>\n

In his final speech to the Senate, Raskin recited warnings about tyranny but seemed oblivious to how his own philosophical conceits lead to elective despotism. A 1937 Senate report aptly declared that \u201cthe Constitution\u2026 is the people\u2019s charter of the powers<\/a> granted those who govern them.\u201d The Bill of Rights recognized the rights of American citizens\u2014it did not bestow those rights on a conquered populace. But Raskin claimed \u201cthe sovereign power of the people\u2026 flowed right into Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

That notion should be heretical in a free society. As Sen. John Taylor of Virginia wrote 200 years ago, \u201cIf the people are sovereign,<\/a> their governments cannot also be sovereign.\u201d As a federal appeals court declared in 1973, \u201cSovereignty remains at all times with the people<\/a>, and they do not forfeit through elections the right to have the law construed against and applied to every citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Taylor observed in 1820, the Constitution \u201cwisely rejected this indefinite word [sovereignty] as a traitor of civil rights,<\/a> and endeavored to kill it dead by specifications and restrictions of power, that it might never again be used in political disquisitions.\u201d Politicians do not become entitled to boundless power simply by poaching the inalienable rights of people they claim to represent. Though modern historians have buried the phrase, the Founding Fathers were intently aware of the danger of \u201cSlavery by Parliament<\/a>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Only 25% of Americans now approve of Congress<\/a>, though legislators take solace in the flattery heaped upon them by MSNBC, CNN, and much of the Washington press corps. No amount of selective quotes from the Constitution by Raskin and other righteous legislators will curb the contempt that politicians have richly earned. Many Americans instinctively recognize that, as Thomas Paine declared, \u201cThe trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals<\/a> of mankind.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American Institute for Economic Research, February 12, 2021 Sovereignty Still Rests with the People, Not Congress James Bovard Politicians lustfully rejoicing at their own power is the ultimate \u201cdog bites man\u201d story that goes unremarked in Washington. The Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump included one such vivid vignette, an ominous warning that Congress recognizes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1281,15,1291,45,2343,280,5,2661,445,2665,2663,811,1206,2664,2662,2298],"class_list":["post-15588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-affordable-care-act","tag-congress","tag-dhs","tag-freedom","tag-george-floyd","tag-gun-control","tag-impeachment","tag-jamie-raskin","tag-john-taylor","tag-public-intellectual","tag-sam-farr","tag-slavery","tag-sovereignty","tag-thomas-paine","tag-tom-carper","tag-voltaire"],"yoast_head":"\nSovereignty Still Rests with the People, Not Congress - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Legislators claim they have all the "sovereign powers" to dictate new laws. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15588"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15620,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15588\/revisions\/15620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}