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It’s no secret that politics in the United States is growing increasingly acrimonious — to the point that a 2022 poll found 43% of Americans think a civil war is a least somewhat likely in the next decade.
But here’s what few people realize: The intensity of our division springs from a federal government operating far beyond the limits of the Constitution — fueling a fight for control over powers that were never supposed to exist at the national level.
To put it another way, if the federal government were confined to its actual granted authorities, federal elections would be of little interest to the general public, because the outcome would be largely irrelevant to their everyday lives.
America’s founders drafted the Constitution with great trepidation. Having just escaped British tyranny, the people of the separate states that would comprise the proposed union were wary of centralizing too much power at the federal level, and thus sowing the seeds of a new tyranny.
They therefore set out to create a federal government to which the states delegated only certain limited powers, with all other subjects of governance reserved to the states.
Those powers — only 18 of them — are listed, one by one, in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. They include such things as the power to raise armies, maintain a navy, declare war, borrow money, coin money, establish punishments for counterfeiters and pirates, set standards of weights and measures, secure patents and establish post offices.
Reassuring those who were considering the enormously consequential decision of whether to ratify the Constitution, James Madison wrote,
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. [Federal powers] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce…The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people.”
To win over those would-be ratifiers who still feared the proposed federal government would undercut state sovereignty and infringe individual liberties, ten amendments were drafted — the Bill of Rights. The 10th Amendment codified Madison’s previous assurance about the division of authorities between the federal and state governments:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
We arrive then at a hard fact: Today’s sprawling federal government, which involves itself in almost every aspect of daily American life, is almost entirely unconstitutional.
“When it’s cold like this, cars aren’t functioning well, chargers aren’t functioning well, and people don’t function so well either,” Javed Spencer, an Uber driver, told The New York Times. He said he’s worried about being stranded again with his Chevy Bolt.
For years, the Davos elites have pitched to the masses about a ‘green’ new world of EVs and how nothing could go wrong. But these elites are not fortune tellers and are sometimes very wrong in their predictions, as EVs are no match for a polar vortex.
The year was 2010 and my idea was to create a “dry creek bed” from the front porch extending “downstream” to curve around a circular planter I installed a few months beforehand at the corner of the house (with a juniper to hide cables “climbing” the structure in an unnatural way).
The functionality of the dry creek bed was to raise the elevation at the level of the east-facing external wall (with a small brick retainer extended vertically around the basement window to eliminate any low spot while preserving precious morning sunlight) so that water would not pool near the house and percolate its way into the basement, which was damp when we bought the house (the actual cause of which we did not find out until at least a year later and was – hilariously but expensively – totally unrelated to the elevation at the corner of the house).
The aesthetic of the dry creek bed was to provide something of non-grass visual interest in that small quadrant near the house and also to provide additional planting space for vegetables. In those days everything in this middle-class neighborhood was grass and lawnmowers and the usual stuff all around. We put in a garden in the front yard and could hear the clicking tongues of the passers-by that first year. Gypsies, to be sure, had moved into the neighborhood. But we only had good sun in the front, especially after the twin massive oaks fell on the house the year before. It was not a political statement, but rather a solar statement.
As it turned out, in the dry creek bed we had at least two large, heavily-producing tomatillo plants, some plucky and determined grape tomato bushes, and a very robust Japanese eggplant that fired off dozens of green torpedoes that one glorious summer.
*** On the appointed day the dump truck arrived with our dirt and two sizes of river rock. I saved money by combining them in one load. I lost money by being forced to spend valuable days separating two sizes of river rock from dirt.
In those days I had the added physical fortitude of a hearty daily commute importantly including several mad dashes to each leg of the journey. House down the hill to 17L bus stop. Pentagon Station rushing down to Metro. Change trains and run to catch the Orange line at L’Enfant. Finally…dash over from the Capitol Hill station to 203 Cannon. It seemed just like a daily routine, but in retrospect it was the kind of cardio workout that people pay for.
Still, when it came to extracting the sod and digging the channel for the dry creek bed I felt the exhaustion of one flaccidly thrusting behind a desk rather than a plow. As usual, I was out there alone as she cared for the small children. They popped their heads out a few times. Alas, the heat and the work digging sod produced a flame that could only be extinguished with a very cold half-liter can of Dutch Pilsner-style beer. From the photograph you can see one already discarded in what might soon become a pile. She came out, the youngest, with her sippy-cup to watch daddy with his sippy can. Cordless drill. Family man.
You spend part of your life building and another part of your life looking at what has been built. But there are no cues as to when one begins and ends and another takes its place. Sometimes when you look back you see yourself exhausted with a Dutch pilsner beer in your hand and a pile of dirt on your driveway. And that which you once cursed becomes a kind of savior.
Death comes as a shocking stranger, upsetting the order that you thought you have created. Upsetting your plan, which is anachronism. Holding a timetable, a ledger balancing what you have given and what has been given you. But at the same time brooking no argument or discussion.
What happened to the justice system that a president of the US finds himself the target of weaponized law used for racial, ideological, and political reasons, and there is not a peep from law schools, bar associations, judges, or media? How can citizens have confidence in the veracity of prosecutions, the veracity of judges, law schools, bar associations?
Both sides of that coin that is government has weaponized law, mainly against the citizenry.
Fani Willis, the incompetent and apparently corrupt black female Atlanta district attorney reportedly put in office by George Soros’ billions, is in more hot water than Trump is in from her fabricated case against him. Fani appointed Nathan Wade, who is believed to be her lover, special prosecutor to aid in Trump’s kangaroo trial. According to county records reviewed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Fulton County paid Wade $654,000 in tax payers’ money since January 2022. The money appears to be what financed the couple’s lavish vacations. The white liberal Democrats are disturbed that Willis was so stupid as to damage her case against Trump by destroying her credibility and public perception of her integrity.
Fani’s defense is, of course, that the race card is being played against her as she and her lover are black. There are two ways you can look at her self-justification. One is that blacks have learned from Jews that a claim of victimhood is a shield against being held accountable. The other is that she has no comprehension of acceptable behavior for public officials.
We have an interesting situation in which the prosecutions at the state and county level against Trump are in the hands of black women put in office by George Soros. Why is Soros doing this? Some people think that Soros himself got away with stealing his billions from the Bank of England via his manipulation of the British currency. Where was James Bond when the British needed him?
Criminal justice in America is in a serious situation when one billionaire can staff up state and local district attorneys with blacks taught to hate “white exploiters” who are sicced on Trump, his attorneys, and his supporters. The trials are unconstitutional, because a black jury consisting of people taught to hate “white racists” does not constitute a “jury of peers” for a white person.
The Biden directive also targets Bible buyers and Bass Pro Shop customers.
Serves you deplorables right for clinging to your religion and all that other stuff government doesn’t like.
The failing banking industry has been rolling over and reporting on customers since 9/11 and Dubya. Probably before that. They can’t survive without government handouts.