The post title comes from a “townhall” meeting held with with U.S. Congressman Brian Baird.
In all the “health care reform” talk, I have yet to see or hear any citation of a constitutionally enumerated power that gives the “feddle gummint” any legitimate reason to be involved in such a thing. Sure, I’ve seen tortured, disingenuous or flat out lying citations of the commerce clause as justification, but nothing yet that has been at all persuasive to me. Of course, with well more than half the “feddle gummint” meddling in areas where it has no enumerated power to do so already, the challenge of the gentleman in the video I link below to “protect and defend the Constitution” resonates with me as I watch congresscritters violate their oaths of office on a quotidian basis.
http://media.causes.com/555066?p_id=60313119 (Sorry, no embedding link provided, and I haven’t dug into a way to download a facebook-only-embedded video.)
Ah, here it is from YouTube. Trust Woody to find it.
No, I am not despairing. Not as long as folks like the gentleman in the video can still speak. But Nancy “they’re un-American” Pelosi and her ilk seem to fully intend on completely gutting the First Amendment with the full cooperation of the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind.
A relevant aside: the folks at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute have a chilling presentation of American illiteracy on the subject of civics, as noted in a post below. The organization’s survey conclusions are no surprise to me or likely to any observant person with ev en rudimentary knowledge of American civics, but the information is nevertheless a disappointing confirmation of my private observations. One completeyl no-brainer observation:
“Of the 2,508 People surveyed, 164 say they have held an elected government office at least once in their life. Their average score on the civic literacy test is 44%, compared to 49% for those who have not held an elected office. Officeholders are less likely than other respondents to correctly answer 29 of the 33 test questions. This table shows the “knowledge gap” for each question: the difference between the percentage of common citizens who answered correctly and the percentage of officeholders who answered correctly.”
Just as with public school administrators, all the politicians I have ever personally known (save one U.S. Senator–and he was eventually corrupted by the political process–and one small town mayor) have been among the least qualified people for the positions they held.
I fear for the nation my grandchildren may have to live in as adults.
