Colonel
Dan, SASS Life #24025
"It
[democracy] can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote
themselves money from the public treasure.”
Alexander Tyler
These ballyhooed billions in disaster compensation coupled
with years of arrogantly undisciplined discretionary spending of your tax
dollars, regardless of how well-intentioned, really irritate me. The Congressional debate focuses solely on the
amount the Feds are giving, expected to or should give and who gets the pork. No
questions are raised about the constitutionality of these massive give-aways! Not one Congressman, Senator, Court or the President
that I’ve heard addresses THE ultimate but routinely ignored governing
document—the Constitution!
Below is a historic but relevant lesson concerning that Constitution
and the philosophy upon which
****
One day in the House of Representatives a bill was
proposed appropriating money for a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Speeches were made supporting it. The House was
about to vote when Congressman David Crockett of
"Mr. Speaker--I have as much respect for the memory
of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering as any man, but we must
not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathies to lead us into an act of
injustice to the balance of the living. I will not argue that Congress has not
the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member knows
it.
We have the right as individuals, to give away our own
money in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a
dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made that it’s a
debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the war; he
was in office to the day of his death, and I never heard that the government
was in arrears to him.
"Every man here knows it’s not a debt. We cannot
without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as payment of a debt.
We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as charity. Mr. Speaker,
I’ve said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I’m
the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I’ll give one
week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it
will amount to more than the bill asks."
He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was soundly defeated.
Crockett later explained:
"Several years ago I was standing on the steps of the
Capitol with some members of Congress, when our attention was attracted by a large
fire in
"The next summer, we began to think about the election. When riding one day in my district, I saw a
man plowing and coming toward the road. I spoke to him. He replied
politely, but coldly.
"I began: 'Well friend, I’m one of those unfortunate
beings called candidates and---
"I know you; you’re Colonel Crockett. I’ve seen you before,
and voted for you the last time. I suppose you’re out electioneering now, but
you better not waste your time or mine, I shall not vote for you again."
"This was a sockdolger...I begged him tell me why.
"Well Colonel, it’s hardly worthwhile to waste time upon
it.
I don’t see how it can be mended, but you gave a vote last
winter which shows that either you have not the capacity to understand the Constitution,
or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. In
either case you’re not the man to represent me. I intend by it only to say that
your understanding of the Constitution is very different from mine; but an
understanding of the Constitution different from mine I cannot overlook,
because the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly
observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power and misinterprets it
is dangerous.'
You voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to sufferers
by fire in
"Well my friend; I may as well own up. But certainly
nobody will complain that a rich country like ours should give the
insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering women and children,
particularly with a full and overflowing treasury, and I’m sure you would have
done just the same as I did.'
"It’s not the amount, it’s the principle. In the
first place, the government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough
for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing to do with the question. The
power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous
power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting
revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor
he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means.
What’s worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge
where the weight centers, for there’s not a man in the
If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give at all; and as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity and to any amount you may think proper. You’ll very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud, corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. 'No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity.'
"'Individual members may give as much of their own
money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public
money for that purpose.
"'Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what
I consider a vital point. It’s a precedent fraught with danger, for when
Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution--there
is no limit to it and no security for the people. I have no doubt you acted
honestly, but that does not make it better, except as far as you are personally
concerned, and so you see, I cannot vote for you.'”
****
Within this anecdote is a truth that’s been erased from
And from Madison who also dispels this general welfare
clause under which politicians hide whenever they expand government:
"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare,
and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare…everything from the
highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police,
would be thrown under the power of Congress. Were the power of Congress to be established
in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and
transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people
of
Every dollar Congress
gives away comes with conditions that steal freedom, thus…
"The real destroyer of
the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations
and benefits." Plutarch
And…"The federal government has taken too
much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too
much liberty with the Constitution." Ronald Reagan
Finally…"Remember
democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There
never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." John Adams
Although Congress makes decisions on our behalf, it’s bound to and limited by a Constitution that doesn’t authorize an insatiable desire to irresponsibly give away that which is not theirs to give.
Just the view from my saddle…
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