http://www.populistamerica.com/the_constitution_and_foreign_policy
The Constitution and Foreign Policy
Future of Freedom Foundationby Bart Frazier
Protecting the country from invasion and securing individual rights are two of the vital functions of the federal government. At the same time the government is the greatest threat to our freedom. This was the subject of FFF's June conference, "Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties." An underlying theme, touched on by every one of the speakers, was the relationship between the state and the individual, for it is the individual who ultimately feels the effects of the government policies. For Americans, the rulebook for this relationship is the Constitution.
I
n the United States, the Constitution is the primary connection between the individual and the state. It is the law of the land and the document that trumps all others when determining what the state may and may not do.
The Constitution was designed to protect us, the people, from government. It is the government, however, that has advanced an overactive foreign policy for the past several decades, and it is the American people who now feel the adverse effects of the resulting blowback. It is the government that violates civil liberties, and it is the individual who feels the effects of government surveillance, detention, and torture.
The relationship between the individual and the state is a problem that is as old as history itself. Governments have been abusing and killing their citizens since men began to rule over other men. R.J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, estimates that between war, genocide, state-induced famines, and the like, governments across the globe were responsible for the deaths of more than 262 million people in the 20th century alone. As Rummel states, if all of those people were laid head to toe, they would circle the Earth ten times. If the state's treatment of the individual had to be described in one word, it undoubtedly would be "violence."
This leaves us, the individuals, with a conundrum; we want the state to protect us from invasion, theft, and murder, but we don't want it killing us or sending us to occupy another country to be killed by others.
That is a dilemma that the U.S. Constitution was devised to address.
How is the Constitution to do that? In a nutshell, the Constitution formed a national government that provided for the common defense while simultaneously protecting the individual from that very government it had brought into existence. It was acknowledged that individual rights, or natural rights, precede the existence of government and are inherent. Any government action that violated those rights was illegitimate.
**BUSH has SQUANDERED life and $1T....while bringing down our currency....and bringing up CHINA as a world power...well done!
D
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11 comments:
this sums it up well
: "The Constitution was designed to prevent the state from doing these very things, but it has ceased doing so. This does not mean that the Constitution is flawed in design. No constitution, no matter how well designed, will work as intended if the citizens do not care whether their politicians observe it, or even understand its very purpose. The Constitution is an excellent framework for government; it just needs to be understood and observed"
PUBLIC EDUCATION AND INTEREST HAS BEEN WANTON. AND SO GOES THE GREAT NATIONS OF THE PAST AS DOES OURS.
“The Constitution was designed to protect us, the people, from government. It is the government, however, that has advanced an overactive foreign policy for the past several decades, and it is the American people who now feel the adverse effects of the resulting blowback. It is the government that violates civil liberties, and it is the individual who feels the effects of government surveillance, detention, and torture.”
President Bush has done more for the United States than any leader in the last 50 years as by towards the principles in which we live as a nation of free people. He has incurred one of the most volatile presidencies in all American history, from the collapse of major energy firms and banking firms, an attack on American soil which has not happened from a foreign country in two centuries, a credit crisis affecting American individuals and families dating back to the 1930s as well as being forced to reconstruct a process of global enterprise.
Great men of history are forged by the moments of history that revolve around them and he has stood the test of time, in suggesting that the innocent of free people around the world should not be subject to those that create terror and tyranny.
The backlash and blowback you talk about is not about the principles in which government has fail the American people but in effect as to how the mass media is jeopardizing for personal hatred of individual right our way of life.
I have read your commentary for quite a while as suggest to you that positive developments have taken place during the Bush years.
As he is the first president since Franklin Roosevelt to institute state powers authority over federal power.
To unite a common goal in a region around the world that many thought could never have a process of any type of freedom or democracy.
To allow the American people and not government itself to proceed prior and preemptively act in the interest of innocent individuals.
You personally have fallen in to the sentiment chosen by the national media in this nation as well as the world media as to how one individual can remain steadfast with principles intact and not be shuffled into doing what so many other past leaders before I've done.
There has been absolutely no violation of civil liberties towards the American citizen the items you suggest are purposely to engage an enemy that deems to harm innocent Americans. History has found these tactics to be unsavory towards our way of life but they had been utilized before in American history to protect innocent life.
What you suggest here each day as I have read throughout time is not of the average American but it is a mirror image of what the national media is bent on suggesting that the self-destruction of our people and nation is happening in one big bang.
Your next commentary should be personalized toward yourself and your family in which you've given exact examples how the Bush administration has made you suffer so badly as you suggest he is doing not only to Americans themselves but to the entire world.
Please list in chronological order the items in which you personally have sought for under the Bush years.
Did you have a loss in jobs because of globalization? Even though it was not part of his administration, his content is to make globalization work more efficiently and benefit Americans.
Did you use your health care program or was denied one for any reason whatsoever because of the Bush administration?
Did you or your children lose their education from the Bush administration are things so unaffordable in the education system that you were no longer educating yourself are your children?
Did you lose your home and you and your children are thrown on the streets living an abandoned car such as the media suggests tens of millions of Americans are doing so today?
Are you not able to eat food from almost any place in the world and attain this food from your local super market is this also a blame on the Bush administration?
Have gas prices risen so highly that you are unable to drive your car go on any type of vacation and possibly endanger your life because of this problem?
Do you see your neighbors next door suffering the way you are and proceeding through life that the Bush administration has created the greatest atrocities that the human race has ever known?
Have you lost any of your rights personally or rights to own a weapon to protect your family if need be because you have been arrested for terrorist activities?
Has the war in Afghanistan and Iraq affected your family in any way?
Have your children been drafted to help protect another nation that would like freedoms such as ourselves?
Is your wife serving in the United States military because of the draft or did she volunteer to aid and help fellow Americans?
I lay first to suggest that you cannot lay claim to any hurt whatsoever in the last eight years and that you are living most likely as well as you did in the Clinton years, and if you happen to have a mishap or a financial burden it was most likely created by you personally over speculating or investing in an instrument of high speculation, than just the mere fact that the Bush administration is an evil empire trying to pickpocket all your money.
Ask yourself these questions ask your wife these questions as well as your children you will find that you are in a better place and safer because of the Bush administration and President Bush overall.
You most likely did not live through the attacks of 9/11 as I have and many of my family so the effects of these attacks are nonexistence to your way life and your children's life.
In fact I will suggest you were one of the first as well as your wife and family to lay claim and attacked the Middle East for all America is worth just after 911, that we should use nuclear bombs and make a parking lot of the middle east and print in large letters made in the USA. President Bush a man of vision sound mind and interest for all Americans used undeniable tolerance not to do such a thing and I am proud that an individual such as he chose to do so instead of a bloviating and terminating millions of innocent Arab people.
You are concerned that America has entered a war based on false allegations towards another nation, but yet yellow cake uranium from the beginning days of the Iraq war found on Iraq territory was just recently delivered to Canada under armed guard.
This president has been under more scrutiny than any in the last 100 years he has had more turmoil created during his presidency not by his actions but by the previous actions of those before him. Because they chose to turn their heads to the problems that exist in the world towards America as a great nation.
President Bush has chosen to stand up and move a region of the world so in bitter in a way of life towards a structure of liberty that will be carried on for centuries long before you and I have left this world. In fact the Afghanistan and Iraq war will become one of America's greatest accomplishments in its history it equals to our own independence in these nations.
Your daily commentary has created a mindset within you and most likely with your family that is so negative and self-destructing that you can never see the good that America does throughout the world each and every day.
For America does more good than it does bad and you personally have lost the ability to not only see that as well as in every other American around you.
Good day.
I am registered Republican, I was FOR the war in Afghanistan, the war in IRAQ was based on LIES and faulty intelligence, and it hs wrecked havoc on our nation and our economy and has been a BREEDING ground for terrorist training and attacks on our GREAT FIGHTING MEN who I support in every way...they are HEROES.....they are doing as told.
This is a war of Bush revenge, a war to control OIL (lot of good it did)and it all went haywire...OIL was $30 a barrel before the WAR began...untol BILLIONS are missing....Bush insiders have gotten WEALTHY off the war....now we talk big against Iran and Russia...yeah the world is safer place!
D
anonymous, this is one of the most ignorant statements i have ever heard, i would suggest you do some research so you can speak with some facts objectivly, i think your sense of patriotism is preventing you from understanding history. Do some research for god sake before you start uttering nonsense. It sounds to me that you couldnt even expound on things like the right to redress, any idea where that is found? Your though process's are typical of the mainstream, how sad for this country. Your mindset is what allows these criminals to kill millions of inocent people including the inside job at 911. you want the truth if you can handle it, www.ae911truth.org. Do some research for gods sake.
I can see my point is well taken by facts as the statements stand true to what is in America today.
None here has answer any of the questions outline if today they are better or worst off from the Bush leadership. They have avoid the question towards the post because the truth is as I have stated.
Also 'D' not not a member of the GOP and your buddy is another hate American crowd person just after.
In fact I read this site all the time and consider it one of the hate crowd towards Americans and America even though it trys to come off as something else.
Just telling it like it is, and now everyone to answer the outlined questions asked or you are still finding ways to suggest what wrong with Bush and America herself?
??
"A" it would be nice to leave an online moniker as we can determine which anonymous you might be, but I appreciate you taking the time to post your thoughts as this was never meant to be a one sided talk....dont have to agree with me on anything.
I AM a card carrying REP, being FREE in America means I can question the actions of my leaders....when I cease to be free to do that I have then lost my freedom mnay have fought to keep.
You will notice not much more than LIP service from the gov (Bush) towards countries that do not STRATEGICALLY meet our needs.....when it concerns RICH OIL RESERVES 2nd or 3rd largest in world....you see how swift we move.
Oil had QUADRUPLED under this ninny's (a dangerous ninny)plans....and BUsh has actually helped foster terrorism...and take freedoms (Patriot ACT) away from its people.....why kill here when we brought our young men to them and created a training ground for them.
The fight taken to Taliban I was all thumb's up for.
G BUSH told the Georgians "we got your back" as the Russian's took them down.....and I wonder if that US backed Gov had another reason for being the AGGRESSOR?
Now CHINA and RUSSIA thanks to Bush's lame policies hold ALL THE CARDS....both HOLD MILITARY MIGHT and ECONOMIC MIGHT...greater or equal to ours.
Under his guide we have created the largest credit bubble the world has ever seen and guess what...it has POPPED and almost 50% of those buying a house after 2006 are under the equity value of their home
During the last 8 years not ONE spending bill was vetoed.
During the last 8 years nothing has been done to do anything to shore up our unfunded liabilities.
When for that matter have we seen the last true Conservative President.
You are like the lemmings falling off the cliff...a YES MAN or woman....I will aplaud when done right and Iwill SPEAK OUT when I see done wrong....and it's all JUST MHO and at least I have one..
D
Again...
How has that effected you as outline towards my statements and question for you to answer?
As I suggest you have not been effected in any way, if so please answer my question I have outline and save the Lib talk for others.
Check with you next week, for I think you need time to think about what I suggested anyway..LOL
anonymous, did you check out ae911 truth.org? one way i have been affected, although you will probably dismiss it as innoccuous, when I called indonesia, i got a call inquiring why i call there from my telecom Verision. Do you see any potential incroachment into the 4th ammendment? Not that the 4th ammendment really exists any more. Do you see any facism around you? Do you know how to define facism? Do some research please, you liberty depends on it.
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Yes, America's economy is a war economy. Not a "manufacturing" economy. Not an "agricultural" economy. Nor a "service" economy. Not even a "consumer" economy.
Seriously, I looked into your eyes, America, saw deep into your soul. So let's get honest and officially call it "America's Outrageous War Economy." Admit it: we secretly love our war economy. And that's the answer to Jim Grant's thought-provoking question last month in the Wall Street Journal -- "Why No Outrage?"
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There really is only one answer: Deep inside we love war. We want war. Need it. Relish it. Thrive on war. War is in our genes, deep in our DNA. War excites our economic brain. War drives our entrepreneurial spirit. War thrills the American soul. Oh just admit it, we have a love affair with war. We love "America's Outrageous War Economy."
Americans passively zone out playing video war games. We nod at 90-second news clips of Afghan war casualties and collateral damage in Georgia. We laugh at Jon Stewart's dark comedic news and Ben Stiller's new war spoof "Tropic Thunder" ... all the while silently, by default, we're cheering on our leaders as they aggressively expand "America's Outrageous War Economy," a relentless machine that needs a steady diet of war after war, feeding on itself, consuming our values, always on the edge of self-destruction.
Why else are Americans so eager and willing to surrender 54% of their tax dollars to a war machine, which consumes 47% of the world's total military budgets?
Why are there more civilian mercenaries working for no-bid private war contractors than the total number of enlisted military in Iraq (180,000 to 160,000), at an added cost to taxpayers in excess of $200 billion and climbing daily?
Why do we shake our collective heads "yes" when our commander-in-chief proudly tells us he is a "war president;" and his party's presidential candidate chants "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," as if "war" is a celebrity hit song?
Why do our spineless Democrats let an incompetent, blundering executive branch hide hundreds of billions of war costs in sneaky "supplemental appropriations" that are more crooked than Enron's off-balance-sheet deals?
Why have Washington's 537 elected leaders turned the governance of the American economy over to 42,000 greedy self-interest lobbyists?
And why earlier this year did our "support-our-troops" "war president" resist a new GI Bill because, as he said, his military might quit and go to college rather than re-enlist in his war; now we continue paying the Pentagon's warriors huge $100,000-plus bonuses to re-up so they can keep expanding "America's Outrageous War Economy?" Why? Because we secretly love war!
We've lost our moral compass: The contrast between today's leaders and the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 shocks our conscience. Today war greed trumps morals. During the Revolutionary War our leaders risked their lives and fortunes; many lost both.
Today it's the opposite: Too often our leaders' main goal is not public service but a ticket to building a personal fortune in the new "America's Outrageous War Economy," often by simply becoming a high-priced lobbyist.
Ultimately, the price of our greed may be the fulfillment of Kevin Phillips' warning in "Wealth and Democracy:" "Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant and wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt, and ultimately burning themselves out."
'National defense' a propaganda slogan selling a war economy?
But wait, you ask: Isn't our $1.4 trillion war budget essential for "national defense" and "homeland security?" Don't we have to protect ourselves?
Sorry folks, but our leaders have degraded those honored principles to advertising slogans. They're little more than flag-waving excuses used by neocon war hawks to disguise the buildup of private fortunes in "America's Outrageous War Economy."
America may be a ticking time bomb, but we are threatened more by enemies within than external terrorists, by ideological fanatics on the left and the right. Most of all, we are under attack by our elected leaders who are motivated more by pure greed than ideology. They terrorize us, brainwashing us into passively letting them steal our money to finance "America's Outrageous War Economy," the ultimate "black hole" of corruption and trickle-up economics.
You think I'm kidding? I'm maybe too harsh? Sorry but others are far more brutal. Listen to the ideologies and realities eating at America's soul.
1. Our toxic 'war within' is threatening America's soul
How powerful is the Pentagon's war machine? Trillions in dollars. But worse yet: Their mindset is now locked deep in our DNA, in our collective conscience, in America's soul. Our love of war is enshrined in the writings of neocon war hawks like Norman Podoretz, who warns the Iraq War was the launching of "World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism," a reminder that we could be occupying Iraq for a hundred years. His WW IV also reminded us of the coming apocalyptic end-of-days "war of civilizations" predicted by religious leaders in both Christian and Islamic worlds two years ago.
In contrast, this ideology has been challenged in works like Craig Unger's "American Armageddon: How the Delusions of the Neoconservatives and the Christian Right Triggered the Descent of America -- and Still Imperil Our Future."
Unfortunately, neither threat can be dismissed as "all in our minds" nor as merely ideological rhetoric. Trillions of tax dollars are in fact being spent to keep the Pentagon war machine aggressively planning and expanding wars decades in advance, including spending billions on propaganda brainwashing naïve Americans into co-signing "America's Outrageous War Economy." Yes, they really love war, but that "love" is toxic for America's soul.
2. America's war economy financed on blank checks to greedy
Read Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes' "$3 Trillion War." They show how our government's deceitful leaders are secretly hiding the real long-term costs of the Iraq War, which was originally sold to the American taxpayer with a $50 billion price tag and funded out of oil revenues.
But add in all the lifetime veterans' health benefits, equipment placement costs, increased homeland security and interest on new federal debt, and suddenly taxpayers got a $3 trillion war tab!
3. America's war economy has no idea where its money goes
Read Portfolio magazine's special report "The Pentagon's $1 Trillion Problem." The Pentagon's 2007 budget of $440 billion included $16 billion to operate and upgrade its financial system. Unfortunately "the defense department has spent billions to fix its antiquated financial systems [but] still has no idea where its money goes."
And it gets worse: Back "in 2000, Defense's inspector general told Congress that his auditors stopped counting after finding $2.3 trillion in unsupported entries." Yikes, our war machine has no records for $2.3 trillion! How can we trust anything they say?
4. America's war economy is totally 'unmanageable'
For decades Washington has been waving that "national defense" flag, to force the public into supporting "America's Outrageous War Economy." Read John Alic's "Trillions for Military Technology: How the Pentagon Innovates and Why It Costs So Much."
A former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment staffer, he explains why weapon systems cost the Pentagon so much, "why it takes decades to get them into production even as innovation in the civilian economy becomes ever more frenetic and why some of those weapons don't work very well despite expenditures of many billions of dollars," and how "the internal politics of the armed services make weapons acquisition almost unmanageable." Yes, the Pentagon wastes trillions planning its wars well in advance.
Comments? Tell us: What will it take to wake up America, get citizens, investors, anybody mad at "America's Outrageous War Economy?"
Why don't you rebel? Will the outrage come too late ... after this massive war bubble explodes in our faces?
Please list in chronological order the items in which you personally have sought for under the Bush years.
Did you have a loss in jobs because of globalization? Even though it was not part of his administration, his content is to make globalization work more efficiently and benefit Americans.
Did you use your health care program or was denied one for any reason whatsoever because of the Bush administration?
Did you or your children lose their education from the Bush administration are things so unaffordable in the education system that you were no longer educating yourself are your children?
Did you lose your home and you and your children are thrown on the streets living an abandoned car such as the media suggests tens of millions of Americans are doing so today?
Are you not able to eat food from almost any place in the world and attain this food from your local super market is this also a blame on the Bush administration?
Have gas prices risen so highly that you are unable to drive your car go on any type of vacation and possibly endanger your life because of this problem?
Do you see your neighbors next door suffering the way you are and proceeding through life that the Bush administration has created the greatest atrocities that the human race has ever known?
Have you lost any of your rights personally or rights to own a weapon to protect your family if need be because you have been arrested for terrorist activities?
Has the war in Afghanistan and Iraq affected your family in any way?
Have your children been drafted to help protect another nation that would like freedoms such as ourselves?
Is your wife serving in the United States military because of the draft or did she volunteer to aid and help fellow Americans?
I will stop by next week on this answer all the question as how Bush has effect your life these pass 8 years.
http://money.cnn.com/POLLSERVER/results/41477.html
1. Are you better off than you were seven years ago during the last economic downturn?
Yes 43%
No 47%
About the same 11%
Total responses to this question: 27994
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