Rick Reuben wrote: If you look at what role the courts were given in the Constitution and then compare that to what their current role is, you can easily see that the Courts have usurped power from the other branches of government.

I specifically asked you to give examples of this. You might "easily" see it, but you will hopefully forgive me for being skeptical.

NerblyBear wrote:

Rick Reuben wrote: If you look at what role the courts were given in the Constitution and then compare that to what their current role is, you can easily see that the Courts have usurped power from the other branches of government.

I specifically asked you to give examples of this. You might "easily" see it, but you will hopefully forgive me for being skeptical.

The income Tax, Federal Drug laws, and public schools mandates, for example. Whatever is not explicitly covered in the constitution isn't automatically the jurisdiction of the federal government. They've overstepped so many times it's common to believe they have that right.

We might quibble about the validity of certain laws or legal trends, but just because they weren't given explicit legitimacy by the Constitution doesn't mean that they're invalid. The Constitution did not intend to set out explicit guidelines for future behavior. Rather, it set in place a set of very general restrictions, the specific ramifications of which would have to be left to later citizens to struggle with given the idiosyncratic exigencies of their own situations. These general definitions are things like "due process," "shall institute no religion," "cruel and unusual," etc.

The fact that courts have extrapolated from those principles in order to move along with the dynamism of a rapidly growing society is based on the notion that general definitions should not limit or force later interpreters. But this is an extremely complex issue which we could go on about all day.

Suffice it to say that many things we take for granted today, such as the welfare we do have, the right to a minimum wage, and the eradication of racial segregation, were undertaken in the face of exactly the sort of dumbed-down criticism offered by libertarians.

Skronk wrote:

NerblyBear wrote:

Rick Reuben wrote: If you look at what role the courts were given in the Constitution and then compare that to what their current role is, you can easily see that the Courts have usurped power from the other branches of government.

I specifically asked you to give examples of this. You might "easily" see it, but you will hopefully forgive me for being skeptical.

The income Tax, Federal Drug laws, and public schools mandates, for example. Whatever is not explicitly covered in the constitution isn't automatically the jurisdiction of the federal government. They've overstepped so many times it's common to believe they have that right.

Yeah, if youre going on a strict constitutional basis, if its not outlined in Article 1, section 8, Congress shouldn't be making laws concerning it. It should be left up to the states, as Amendment 10 specifies.

So thats most of what the federal government does today.

Skronk wrote:You really need to brush up on Libertarian ideas. How could it lead to a Dictatorship when they are against big government? You also seem to be forgetting that state and local government would still be a force in a Libertarian US.

If you want to pull apart an ideology that leads to a dictatorship, intended or otherwise, look at communism and socialism.

Libertarianism leads in injustice because its based around the false division of the public/private and seeks to abolish the "public" part of that.

In reality the libertarian agenda isn't about securing property rights (which some would disagree with anyway) but specific property rights that favour the "successful". i.e. property rights centred around inheritance, untaxed income, health and education, localised government and other things on the fence between public and private. It neatly knocks them all into the "private" section, and secures them for the rich, while the rest of use are saying "but its not that simple, there are more people involved than you think".

As Alex said, wealth isn't born out of a vaccuum. Our schools, our roads, our airwaves, our public domain, our taxes. All of these things have public and private dimensions, and libertarianism does not adequately account for this subtly with its "his or mine" idiocy. Therefore it has no practical use.

Besides unfettered control of one person over another going to lead to degrading situations by default, isn't it? We need government to prevent that because there can be no other system as effective. Tyranny in the workplace and in local government is going to be more likely a risk cartoonish 1984ish tyranny.

Gold standard is just another form of the dreaded "fiat" because the government has to establish how much each dollar is worth in weight of and people have to have "faith" in that. People wouldn't own the gold themselves. Gold doesn't instrinsically have a dollar value.

Another thing to realise that the transition and maintaining of the system would have to involve dual metallism to some extent and once we've got one equivalent in value, Gold :: Silver :: Dollar, congratulations, you're half way to a fluctuating market which were trying to avoid in the first place.

Currency is functional, not representational. It has to work first, and the law should reflect this.

Now, now Bob, I thought we had an agreement regarding stacked quotes. I wasn't really addressing you, I just noticed that no one here had mentioned dualism or the fact that gold standard needs to be set and agreed on. Nowt to do with the market value of gold, nowt to do with stability as you say it has.

That fiat directly represents debt, that fiat and liquidity are purely detrimental to assets and wage are all your general opinions I know, but they don't really change the facts that I posted.

Bob, am I right on any point as far as you are concerned?

Rick, have you read this?

Christopher J. McGarvey wrote:Rick, have you read this?

I have never been in debt. It's the key to happiness I tells ya.

Rick Reuben wrote:

alex maiolo wrote: Considering how we got into this war, I think *less* media consolidation and focused power is what we should strive for.
-A

From an interview with Ron Paul:

What about mass mind manipulation. Do you think that Clear Channel and other media outlets are intentionally trying to manipulate us?

RP -- I think they're propagandists, you know, and they're propagandists for the administration. That's pretty significant. But, uh, hopefully, we have to be careful exactly how you define it, because what if they want to make the same accusation against everybody on our side that resorts to radio and Internet. "Oh, see that Internet stuff. These are bad people, and they're lying, and they're passing this horrible propaganda." And, that's why we all have to try as hard as we can to stick to the facts and the things that we know.

But, throughout the whole 20th Century, even before Clear Channel, the media is owned by big business who own the corporations who make a lot of money. They always support the war: WWI, WWII. And they do. They control public opinion.

Maiolo could probably agree with everything Paul said there, but since it has Paul's name on it, he's not allowed to, I guess.

I have no doubt that Paul dislikes how the media behaves. So do I. Of course I agree with him on that.

However, if push came to shove, how would he handle deregulation?
That's my question.

The solid libertarian line is that preventing companies from owning as many radio stations in one market as they would like is hyper-regulatory and unfair. They all say it. It's practically printed over the door at the Cato Insitute.

That doesn't mean Paul believes it too, but if he doesn't, that would be in direct conflict to how he seems to feel about regulating *other* businesses.
I suppose he could see radio/media as different from other businesses, but I seriously doubt it.

-A