Jul

9

New Book: Who Killed the Constitution?

Filed Under History, National, The American Revolution, Thomas Woods | Leave a Comment

A dynamic duo of history, Thomas E. Woods Jr. and Kevin Gutzman co-authored a new book, Who Killed the Constitution?: The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush. If you are like me and want to delve into one the most heinous murder mysteries in the history of liberty, you can’t wait to find out who done it.

An introduction by Tom Woods:

Who Killed the Constitution?
by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Today is the official release date for Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush (Random House/Crown Forum), the book I wrote with Kevin Gutzman, the New York Times bestselling author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution.

In a sense, our book states the obvious: the United States government today is restrained not by the Constitution but simply by a sense of what it can get away with.

But ours is not the standard right-wing lament about the emasculation of the Constitution at the hands of liberal judges, though such judges receive in our pages none of the superstitious reverence Americans are taught to have for the judiciary. (Mencken once described a judge as merely a law student who graded his own examination papers.) To the contrary, we suggest that all three branches of the federal government, either separately or in collusion, have been responsible for turning the Constitution into just a museum piece, and that conservatives and liberals alike have much to answer for as well.

READ ON


Jul

4

Some Thoughts on Secession Day 2008

Filed Under Economics, History, National, Taxation, The American Revolution | Leave a Comment

“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity.” — Thomas Jefferson

I turned the TV on briefly this morning. CNBC interviews McCain and Obama, the two economic and constitutional illiterates running for President of the United States. They talk about their presidential plans on managing the economy, that is stifling “our own pursuits of industry and improvement” and tweaking the voluminous income tax codes, that is how much they will “take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

Obama says managing the economy is “too much for one man to wrap his head around”, so he relies on his economic advisers, leftist intelligentsia and captains of Wall Street. He says they meet the approval of CEO’s around the country. I suppose these are the same CEO’s whose excessive remunerations and corporate profits he wishes to control.
McCain was asked about Obama wanting to raise taxes to pay for U.S. wars and he wanting to cut taxes (which actually means borrow and inflate to pay for the wars, an important point which was not even touched upon), McCain ignores the question and says “but we are winning!”

Thomas DiLorenzo is right, Independence Day is not what Thomas Jefferson would be celebrating today.

Apr

27

Thomas Jefferson and the forces of reaction

Filed Under History, Libertarian, The American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson | Leave a Comment

In this clip from HBO’s miniseries “John Adams”, Thomas Jefferson expressed his fears about what might come out of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia. Always the champion of small decentralized government he feared whatever the federal constitution became, “it could prove a breach in the integrity of our revolutionary ideas through which would pour the forces of reaction”, and reinstitute the tyranny’s that they had fought to destroy. Sadly, he would be proven correct as we see today. The constitution has be trampled upon, its laws reinterpreted to centralize political power in Washington D.C. at the expense of our liberty and property.