• Brendan Golledge
    82
    I mean for this thread to be a running tally. I'll add more whenever I think of anything and I'm motivated to write about it.


    The Crisis of 1913:


    The constitution says that "The Congress shall have Power To ... To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;..."

    The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 delegates the authority to create money and regulate the value thereof to a private central bank with no oversight from congress (so said Alan Greenspan).

    It doesn't say it explicitly, but the fact that the constitution used the word "coin", and that they said in another section that states can only make gold and silver as payment, seems to imply that the founding fathers meant for US money to be gold and silver. The coinage act of 1792 defined a US dollar as 24.057 g. So, I don't see anywhere explicitly that US money is only supposed to be gold and silver, but the context of "coin", of individual states only being able to make those legal tender, and the first law defining the value of a dollar defining it in terms of mass of silver, all point heavily towards their intention that only precious metals were to be used as money.

    Contradiction 1: The intention of the founding fathers that only gold and silver were to be used as money is contradicted by the existence dollars backed by nothing.


    Congress delegated its authority to the Federal Reserve. If it is possible for congress to delegate its authority, then there are no more checks and balances. Congress could delegate all its authority to the president, for instance, and then there'd be no need for congress to exist at all. Also, if congress delegates its authority to unelected officials (as it does to the FDA, EPA, ATF etc), then there is no more representation by the people in law making, which is the whole point of the republican form of government.

    Contradiction 2: If the congress has the authority to delegate its authority (as it delegated it to the FED), then in practice, there are no more checks and balances, and neither is there any longer a republican form of government.


    The FED creates all currency through loans. All these loans must be paid back with interest. However, the money to pay back the interest does not exist. Therefore, the debt cannot be paid. What happens in practice is that when the rate of monetary inflation is greater than the rate of interest on the debt, the size of the debt relative to GDP decreases, and there is an economic boom, but bondholders (and all owners of debt) lose money. When the rate of interest is greater than the rate of inflation, then the debt becomes a larger percentage of GDP, and there is an economic contraction, because people are servicing the debt instead of doing other things that they want to do.

    The 14th amendment says, "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." However, as discussed above, our monetary system makes it literally impossible to pay the debt.

    Contradiction 3: The 14th amendment says that the validity of public debt shall not be questioned, but our monetary system makes it impossible to ever pay the debt.


    If the FED and other banks do not loan money at a faster rate than interest payments need to be made, then eventually, all dollars in existence will disappear in order to pay off the principal on the debt, but the interest on the debt will still exist. Therefore, in practice, no one can finance anything with dollars without the consent of the FED and other banks. But the constitution says, "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; ..." How can the constitution be the supreme law of the land, if the government defined by the constitution can finance nothing without the consent of private banks?

    Contradiction 4: The US government is not sovereign, because it can finance nothing (and neither can anyone else finance anything with dollars) without the consent of private banks.


    The FED has the power to print unlimited money to bribe politicians and buy media influence. The FED can print as much money as it wants, we have legal bribery (called lobbying) in the USA, and the FED has never been audited. I haver no proof that the FED or banks associated with it are bribing politicians, but if they were, there'd be no way for us to find out. If they were doing it, they would probably be doing it through proxies, so that it would not be easy to find out. They could also use this money, for instance, to buy all of the media in the country, so that they could control the information that Americans can see. If they were doing this, that would explain the state of the news.

    Contradiction 5: The US government is supposed to be sovereign, and there's supposed to be freedom of the press, but the FED has the legal right to spend unlimited money buying politicians and news outlets.
  • Brendan Golledge
    82
    All wars are illegal:

    The constitution says, "The Congress shall have Power To ... To declare War ... "

    The last time the US declared ware was during WW2, and yet wikipedia lists 33 separate armed conflicts that the USA has fought since WW2.

    If the founding fathers intended for the president to be able to wage war without a declaration of war, then the power of congress to declare war is meaningless. If they did not intend for the president to be able to wage war without congressional approval, then all of these wars since WW2 have been illegal.

    Contradiction 6: All US wars are unconstitutional.
  • Brendan Golledge
    82
    Slavery is legal:

    The 13th Amendment says, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

    Court ordered alimony is literally involuntary servitude, and in the case of no-fault divorce, it is not a "crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

    Contradiction 7: The constitution says that slavery is illegal, but alimony from no-fault divorce fits the literal definition of involuntary servitude.


    There are no familial rights:

    The 5th amendment says, "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." If you have a right to liberty and to property, then how much more should you have a right to your own children? Yet many men are divorced for literally no reason and denied custody of their children. Child protective services can also take your children from you without "due process of law". The first amendment also grants freedom of assembly, and yet many fathers in the USA who have been convicted of no crime do not even have the right to see their own children.

    Contradiction 8: A person nominally has the right to assemble, to liberty, and to property, which cannot be taken away without due process of law, yet many fathers who have not even been accused of a crime are barred from seeing their own children.
  • Brendan Golledge
    82
    Welfare is Unconstitutional:

    The 10th amendment says, "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."

    Nowhere in the constitution does it say that the government can take money from one person to give to another person for private use. The constitution does say, "The Congress shall have Power To ... provide for the ... general Welfare of the United States," but the meaning of the word "Welfare" here is different from the modern usage. It is one thing to take money from both person A and person B in order to provide for common defense, or to build a road that they can both use. It is entirely another matter to take money from A to give it to person B, entirely to person A's detriment and person B's benefit.


    "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury." Alexander Fraser Tytler (not a founding father, but an educated person sharing an opinion from the time period)

    "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!” – Ben Franklin. This quote is directly applicable to the issue of modern "welfare"

    Personally, I hate social security in principle. In the best-case scenario, it is a way of forcing irresponsible people to save for their retirement. As it is actually implemented, it is a pyramid scheme which transfers wealth from the younger generation to the older generation. It exists to take food out of the mouths of the children so that the grandparents can be idle. IMO, one's elders are due honor because they made sacrifices in order to give you life which are impossible to repay. If, however, your elders try to force you to pay them back the debt you owe them, then they have voided all honor due to them.

    Anyway, looking up a pie chart of US government spending, it looks like roughly 50% of the federal budget is spent on welfare, which is 100% unconstitutional. Another 16% is spent on the military, which has only been used illegally since 1945. Also, as discussed in the first post, 100% of our money is illegal. So, we can see so far that 100% of our money, and roughly 70% of what the government spends money on is illegal.

    Contradiction 9: 100% of our money, and +70% of what the US government spends its money on are unconstitutional.


    BTW, Washington DC could disappear, and everyday life for most working people would change very little, apart from getting the equivalent of a 50% pay raise from reduced taxation. Most of the services that people use every day (like roads, police, courts, firefighters) are paid for by state and local taxes. There is very little that the federal government takes in taxes from a working person that he will ever see back again.
  • NOS4A2
    8.4k


    Nicely put. I would also the 16th amendment to your list. It relegates plunder and forced labor to a legitimate act of government.
  • Michael
    14.4k
    Welfare is Unconstitutional:

    The 10th amendment says, "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."

    Nowhere in the constitution does it say that the government can take money from one person to give to another person for private use.
    Brendan Golledge

    Steward Machine Co. v. Davis

    Steward Machine Company v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548 (1937), was a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the unemployment compensation provisions of the Social Security Act of 1935, which established the federal taxing structure that was designed to induce states to adopt laws for funding and payment of unemployment compensation.

    Helvering v. Davis

    Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937), was a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that held that Social Security was constitutionally permissible as an exercise of the federal power to spend for the general welfare and so did not contravene the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
  • Lionino
    1.7k
    This should go to the lounge tbh
  • Brendan Golledge
    82
    Yes, I really don't like the 16th amendment, but I decided to focus this post on unconstitutionality, and since the 16th amendment is part of the constitution, it is not unconstitutional.
  • Brendan Golledge
    82
    Somebody asserting that something is logical doesn't make it logical. I'd have to actually read their arguments to be able to judge their reasonableness. We do know that the supreme court can make mistakes, because it has reversed its decisions before. Considering that there is no precedent in the history of the USA prior to SS of arbitrary wealth transfer from one person to another, and that intellectuals during the time period repeatedly warned about the dangers of such things, I am still really skeptical that the founding fathers would have agreed with the modern conception of welfare. If you continue this principle, if white people wanted (or any majority), they could simply vote to have everyone else's property, call it "welfare", and it would be legal.
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