Question for the Conservatives

JMC wrote: My HOA interferes in my life more than the Feds. You can't get much more local than that

Probably so, but I bet the HOA is probably just doing what they have been chartered to do. I bet they don't get a percentage of your payroll every two weeks and redistribute to your neighbors either.

residenttroll wrote:

JMC wrote: My HOA interferes in my life more than the Feds. You can't get much more local than that

Probably so, but I bet the HOA is probably just doing what they have been chartered to do. I bet they don't get a percentage of your payroll every two weeks and redistribute to your neighbors either.

No only a very reasonable annual fee. But they insist that the fence I want to put up meets some bizarre requirement. Perspective, $ vs rules. I know I chose freely to live here and deal with the consequences, I also vote and deal with the consequences. Sore losers piss me off

I didn't read all the responses but that is what the 10th ammendment says. ("According to the Tenth Amendment, the government of the United States has the power to regulate only matters delegated to it by the Constitution. Other powers are reserved to the states, or to the people (and even the states cannot alienate some of these)"). And yes states deserve individual rights over government. You have states like California who fight for illegal immigrants rights and then they want the federal government to step in and force all of the other states to pay into a federal health care plan that disproportionally funds states like California who allows all the illegal imigrants to have their health care paid for.

JMC wrote:

residenttroll wrote:

JMC wrote: My HOA interferes in my life more than the Feds. You can't get much more local than that

Probably so, but I bet the HOA is probably just doing what they have been chartered to do. I bet they don't get a percentage of your payroll every two weeks and redistribute to your neighbors either.

No only a very reasonable annual fee. But they insist that the fence I want to put up meets some bizarre requirement. Perspective, $ vs rules. I know I chose freely to live here and deal with the consequences, I also vote and deal with the consequences. Sore losers piss me off

I am not a sore loser. I appreciate Obama and the liberal democrats are getting a taste of the same medicine they feed to Bush. At the end of the day, Americans are doing what's in their best interests and not what's in the best interest of the country. It seems like everyone is following the example of Congress and the President and getting whatever out of the Treasury they can.

residenttroll wrote:

JMC wrote:

residenttroll wrote:

JMC wrote: My HOA interferes in my life more than the Feds. You can't get much more local than that

Probably so, but I bet the HOA is probably just doing what they have been chartered to do. I bet they don't get a percentage of your payroll every two weeks and redistribute to your neighbors either.

No only a very reasonable annual fee. But they insist that the fence I want to put up meets some bizarre requirement. Perspective, $ vs rules. I know I chose freely to live here and deal with the consequences, I also vote and deal with the consequences. Sore losers piss me off

I am not a sore loser. I appreciate Obama and the liberal democrats are getting a taste of the same medicine they feed to Bush. At the end of the day, Americans are doing what's in their best interests and not what's in the best interest of the country. It seems like everyone is following the example of Congress and the President and getting whatever out of the Treasury they can.

Exactly! And all administrations do this, History just moves by inches.

RivendaleFarms wrote: I would have to think there would have been provisions or intent to allow for "changing times." In the examples of women's rights to vote, abolishing slavery, civil rights, etc., while the federal government can't simply "proclaim" a change to the Constitution it is still only the federal government that can create or repeal an amendment.

I suddenly have an urge to do some homework.

There are provisions and intent to allow for changing times - it's called the amendment process, and there are two ways in which the desire to amend the Constitution can be realized, only one of which has been used thus far. The problem, from the total government perspective, is that it takes 2/3 of either the Congress or the states to actually get something to the voters and 3/4 of the states to agree that the Constitution should be amended. It is much easier, and more convenient for those seeking to usurp our liberty, to simply tilt their heads to the side, squint really hard and invent a new meaning for some of the text in the document. Thomas Jefferson warned of this when he said:

It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.

By which is meant that the ability of Congress to levy and collect taxes should be limited to that which is enumerated in the Constitution - such as providing for a navy. To expand, as has been done over the last 100 years, the power of Congress to do whatever they feel is within their power to do that is not enumerated, such as "Health Care Reform" which mandates that citizens participate in a certain area of commerce, is a universal power that the federal Congress was never intended to possess.

RivendaleFarms wrote: I suddenly have an urge to do some homework.

If you want a good overview of the intent of the Constitution, read the debates that surrounded what was included, what wasn't and why. You learn a lot that you never, ever would have known given what you were taught in school.

Example: The "three fifths of all other Persons" clause in Article I, Section 2. Were you taught that this was included to reduce the representation of those states in which slavery was so prevalent and reduce their power within the federal government? The debates make that quite clear. Initially the 1 Representative for every 30,000 sparked off a debate because one side wanted it to be freemen, and the other side wanted it to include the slaves as well. 3 states were ready to leave the convention over the matter. There is documented instances where delegates from the North said that if the slaves, which were considered property by delegates from the South, got to be counted as property, they would count all of their tables and chairs and all of their property to arrive at the number of representatives that they were to be allotted. Just one instance of how the beginnings of our nation have been, to put it kindly, reinterpreted by some to further an agenda.

Read the Federalist Papers, read the anti-Federalist Papers. Read the actual letters of such giants as George Washington (who headed the Philadelphia Convention), Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, James Madison. Don't read the history texts written by others about these men, read their words and decide for yourself what the Constitution was intended to be by the men who were instrumental in writing it.

Thanks, PrintSmith! On another subject but relevent to the time period, I must admit I always struggle with the opening of the Declaration of Independence in that "all men are created equal" was so not true at that time. Your thoughts?

A Jeffersonian phrase that was as true then as it is today. The key word in the phrase is "created". He did not say that all are born into equal situations, nor did he say that all were entitled to an equal outcome. He said that they were all created equal, and were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Rights that were bequeathed by that which created them, nor from a government, not from any other man.

But those inalienable rights, "among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" were not available to slaves nor to women. Granted, women weren't mentioned as being equal, only men, but male slaves were not granted those inalienable rights - or, if they were, they had been revoked by the men who wrote the Declaration.