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Sarah Palin is the other whom Yoda spoke about.

calendar   Saturday - July 17, 2010

A Post Gone Awry

Spending far too many hours in front of the computer again, looking stuff up, reading, learning. I’ve dug down into the Tea Party movement, delved into the Tenth Amendment folks, read the history and studied to my eyes crossed. I’ve concluded that the vast majority of issues we have with government today all started with a deliberate misinterpretation of one word in our Constitution. I was inspired. I saw the whole post in my head and how I’d make my points and so forth. Even the title:


Root Causes: The Worst Word In The Constitution




And that word is “regulate”.


reg·u·late –verb (used with object), -lat·ed, -lat·ing.
1. to control or direct by a rule, principle, method, etc.: to regulate household expenses.
2. to adjust to some standard or requirement, as amount, degree, etc.: to regulate the temperature.
3. to adjust so as to ensure accuracy of operation: to regulate a watch.
4. to put in good order: to regulate the digestion.
[definitions 2 - 4 all mean to normalize]

Do not confuse “regulate” with “regulation”, though the definitions can be quite similar at times.

reg·u·la·tion –noun
1. a law, rule, or other order prescribed by authority, esp. to regulate conduct.
2. the act of regulating or the state of being regulated.
3. re: Machinery . the percentage difference in some quantity related to the operation of an apparatus or machine, as the voltage output of a transformer or the speed of a motor, between the value of the quantity at no-load operation and its value at full-load operation. (setting a nominal value and the accepted tolerance limits)
4. re: Electronics . the difference between maximum and minimum voltage drops between the anode and the cathode of a gas tube for a specified range of values of the anode current. (setting a nominal value and the accepted tolerance limits)
5. re: Sports . the normal, prescribed duration of a game according to the sport’s regulations, exclusive of any extra innings, overtime period, etc.: The Knicks tied the score in the final seconds of regulation, sending the game into overtime. (setting a nominal value and the accepted tolerance limits [in this case the limits are +/- 0])

reg-u-lation –adjective
6.prescribed by or conforming to regulation: regulation army equipment.
7. usual; normal; customary: the regulation decorations for a halloween party.

Regulate and regulation appear just 8 times in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights:

The Constitution of the United States
Article 1
Section 4 - Elections, Meetings

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of Chusing Senators.

Section 8 - Powers of Congress
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

Section 9 - Limits on Congress
No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

Article III, The Judicial Branch
Section 2 - trial by jury, original jurisdiction, jury trials
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Article IV - The States
Section 2 - state citizens, extradition
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.(This clause is superseded by the 13th Amendment.)

Amendment 2 - Right to Bear Arms
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I looked into case law, trying to determine when things started to go bad and of course the answer was FDR. Of course. Obama the First, a power mad Socialist. While the Progressive movement had started in the late 19th century, it wasn’t until the turnover of the Supreme Court that began in 1937, shortly after many parts of the New Deal legislation had been shot down and FDR’s attempt at packing the court with sympathetic justices (he wanted 15 Supremes!) failed, that the first federal power grab started with NLRB vs Jones. Up to that point, the word “regulate” in the Commerce Clause had clearly meant “to normalize”. From that point forward it began to mean “to control through rules”, and thus the Legislative Branch managed an end run around the 10th Amendment and achieved nearly unlimited power. And FDR eventually got to pack the court anyway, since he was President For Life. He put 6 robes on that bench. That new usage of the word is still with us, and it only gets worse as the years go by. And from it all modern federal power flows at the expense of the states. But we’re used to it. It’s been around since the time my parents were born. It isn’t right, but it’s normal to us; we don’t know any different. You and I would not even recognize the limited federal government that existed in 1927. We live in the nanny state and have never known another world.

From there I was going to go into the more recent deliberate misuse of the word, the “regulate” involved in the Second Amendment ... and how it took 71 years to get to McDonald v. Chicago, and we still aren’t out of the woods yet on that one.

But along the way, and it was a long way, from legal formalism (conservative originalism) vs. legal realism (proto-progressivism) to US v. Darby to Wickard v. Filburn, recent usurpations of the Commerce Clause like ObamaCare and many readings at The Tenth Amendment Center, that I ran across a prolific writer and constitutional scholar named Robert Greenslade, and through him I found the website The Price of Liberty. Nearly all of Greenslade’s writings are archived there, and every one is worth reading. Price of Liberty may be a Libertarian blog, and I’m fine with that if it is. Many of the hundreds and hundreds of essays there are very thought provoking; I’m hooked.

The road to taking back our nation is going to be long and difficult. It’s going to have to be piecemeal sometimes, because once in a while something good came out of this wrong definition. But I think I’ve located the very core, the one single word, that the Tea Party movement is all about. I’m not claiming ownership, just a shared epiphany: dozens of other folks have made the same conclusion and written extensively about it. And now I want to try and read all of them ... including every opinion that justice Clarence Thomas - who should be one of the saints of the movement - has written. Antonin Scalia too. God bless them both.



No, the word regulate isn’t bad in and of itself. The way the Constitution was written, it’s meaning is very clear. It’s the deliberate misconstruing of that one word that has caused the problems, and up until very recently, each and every single law based on that lie has been put in place by the left. And if by chance you don’t think that this rape of the word and the consequences of that is nearly universal, allow me to quote Robert Greenslade quoting Alfred Clark:

Today, in a very real sense, law no longer governs the American people. They are governed by regulations, orders and directives issued by one or the other of our multiple Federal bureaus. I am not now referring to war regulation and the like, but to conditions existing before the war, and which, unless the trend is checked, are likely to continue and to intensify after the war is over.

This has been accomplished, to a very large extent, through a new and, in many aspects, a startling interpretation of the commerce clause of the Federal Constitution, which is now being used to obliterate the States and convert our system into a highly centralized form of government, exercising uncontrolled police power in every State, over all, or nearly all, local affairs and industries.

...

This may sound to you like a soporific nursery rhyme. Not so. On the contrary it is modern judicial logic…Indeed, if Junior decides to emulate Popeye and insists upon a double portion of spinach at the dinner table, thus increasing the demand on the market, and lessening the supply to meet the demand, his act may so affect interstate commerce as to bring him within the ambit of Federal control.

And it’s true; the federal government has unlimited powers over everyone and everything. And it’s far worse now than what Clark saw in his day: the above quote is from 1943. So much for limited government; the very concept Clark held out as an extreme example then is current politics and policy today (see Bloomberg and trans-fats, Michelle Obama’s campaign against obesity, Obamacare and diet, pending legislation to outlaw Happy Meals, et al).


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