by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

"The War between the States established . . . this principle, that the federal government is, through its courts, the final judge of its own powers."

~ Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States, p. 178

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Jeffersonians warned that if the day ever arrived when the central government became the final judge of its own powers, Americans would then live under a tyranny. The government, they believed, would inevitably proclaim that there are in fact no limits to its powers. That day came in 1865 when citizen control over the federal government ended along with the rights of nullification and secession. Not surprisingly, a warmongering, imperialistic megalomaniac like Woodrow Wilson would then celebrate this fact several decades later, as the above quotation attests.

The so-called system of checks and balances is a farce and a fraud; the reality is that all three branches of the federal government work together to conspire against the taxpayers for the benefit of the state and all of its appendages. As Judge Andrew Napalitano wrote in his book, The Constitution in Exile, the Supreme Court failed to rule a single federal law unconstitutional from 1937 to 1995. The Court is essentially a political rubber stamp operation with all of its black-robed ceremony being nothing more than part of the circus that is employed to dupe the public into acquiescing in its dictates.

There is no such thing as an "American union." The original union was a union of the free, independent, and sovereign states. If that union still existed, then Wisconsin, Florida, Massachusetts, Alabama, and all the other states would have at least a say in the current discussion in the Supreme Court over whether or not the American system of healthcare should be Sovietized. They do not. Every television and radio talking head is feverishly awaiting the Pronouncement from Upon High from the black-robed deities of the "Supreme" Court on this issue.

Did Thomas Jefferson, who penned the words, "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," really think it was a good idea to place everyone’s liberty solely in the hands of five government lawyers with lifetime tenure? Or perhaps even one single government lawyer with lifetime tenure, i.e., the "swing vote" on the Supreme Court, thought by many to be one Anthony Kennedy? Not likely.

Now with perfect timing comes a great book that asks Americans to rethink the federal/judicial monopoly that is a primary source of their servitude to the state. Just published by Pelican Publishers is Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century, edited and with an introduction by Donald Livingston. It is a collection of essays by such authors as legal and constitutional scholar Kent Masterson Brown; Yours Truly; constitutional scholar Marshall DeRosa; philosopher Donald Livingston; Kirkpatrick Sale, author of the book, Human Scale; economist Yuri Maltsev; and Champlain College Professor Rob Williams.

A major theme of Rethinking the American Union is stated in Professor Livingston’s introduction where he quotes Thomas Jefferson as writing on August 13, 1800 that: "Our country is too large to have all its affairs conducted by a single government." Such a vast country detaches the people from their political representatives, which "will invite the public servants to corruption, plunder & waste," he wrote. In 1800! If "the principle were to prevail," Jefferson continued, "of a common law being in force in the U.S., (which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the State governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government) it would become the most corrupt government on earth" (emphasis added). This of course is exactly the kind of government that has been existence since 1865, when all states, North and South, became mere appendages of the central government in Washington, D.C. This relationship was cemented into place in 1913 with the advent of the income tax and the creation of the Fed, which gave the federal government the ability to threaten and bribe all individuals and all state governments to acquiesce in its dictates. As Frederic Bastiat sagely observed in his classic, The Law, "democracy" can become indistinguishable from socialism if it is characterized by governmentally-coerced uniformity, whether it is for socialized healthcare or anything else.

Continue: http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo228.html