The Phantom Constitution

Can Someone Please Help Me?

I am always looking for good information to pass on to my readers. I write some, but not all of what you read. This was in my collection that I had from back in the early 1990’s. I scanned it off of a page and used an online image to text converter to get text so it wouldn’t take me an hour to type it all. I have also added a bit to the text to help make the point even more obvious. Not that it isn’t already. My additions are in italics. Read it and realize the insanity of NOT following the 1787 version of the United States Constitution. C.L.

Help! I need a copy of the United States Constitution. As some of you know, I'm working on a basic history of the United States, and in keeping with custom I'd like to publish a copy of the Constitution in the Appendix. If that sounds easy, let me hasten to explain the difficulty and interdict any precipitate action on your part. Do not, repeat do not, send a copy of the Constitution of 1787, the one that was devised in that famous summer in Philadelphia some years back. I yield to no man in my admiration of that remarkable document, but so far as I can make out it no longer fills the bill. In my case, I have oodles of copies of that Constitution scattered about my study. My problem is that, search as I will, I have been unable to locate a single copy of The Contemporary Constitution. You'll know the one I mean if you'll just think about it for a bit. I mean the one that the Supreme Court keeps quoting from and referring to, that one which contains such interesting terminology as "the wall of separation between church and state" and "one man, one vote”. I mean the Constitution that is alluded to on television; the one which provides that women can have abortions on demand and divides the period of pregnancy into "trimesters"; the one that says that "the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is"; the one that empowers the courts to lay down the bounds of school districts, requires the redrawing of legislative districts, and specifies the amount of space that must be allotted to each prisoner; that requires dayrooms for men and women in county jails, that limits the amount of water your toilet can flush, etc. and etc.

What I am looking for, in short, is a Constitution which enumerates all the powers now exercised by the federal government. Now, in asking for this, I am not being picky in the least. I do not expect to find a Constitution in which, when power has been granted, as in the original Constitution, "To raise and support Armies" and "To provide and maintain a Navy" a listing is provided in infinite detail of authority to buy military vehicles, rifles, cannon, ammunition, and so on and on. I understand quite well that the Constitution grants power to Congress "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers...." Thus, if power is granted to accomplish some object, I accept the position that the power also exists to do all those particulars which are essential for doing so.

What I am leading up to is this: The federal government made up of Congress, the President, the courts, and their agents is doing a great many things for which there is no warrant in the Constitution that I have available. Among those things which it is doing, but for which there is no grant of authority in the Constitution, are these:

1. Establishing minimum wages.

2. Establishing maximum hours and requiring payment at higher rates for overtime.

3. Collecting taxes for Social Security.

4. Producing electric power and selling it in the market.

5. Providing Medicare and Medicaid.

6. Building interstate highways.

7. Imposing labor unions on employers.

8. Subsidizing urban transportation systems.

9. Imposing a graduated income tax. (The 16th Amendment does not authorize a graduated income tax.) And it actually was never ratified, but that’s another story.

10. Providing housing.

11. Issuing paper money and forcing it into circulation by fiat legal tender laws.

12. Prohibiting child labor.

13. Establishing and enforcing fair employment practices.

14. Setting or regulating prices of various commodities, such as for natural gas, electricity, or any other.

15. Subsidizing free lunches for schoolchildren.

16. Making loans or giving aid to foreign nations.

17. Providing unemployment compensation.

18. Protecting the environment.

19. Subsidizing the building of hospitals.

20. Regulating occupational safety and health practices.

21. Regulating the production of farm goods or subsidizing their prices.

22. Providing banking insurance.

23. Providing aid to education.

24. Granting low-cost loans to students, and then forgiving those loans to garner votes.

25. Making loans to private businesses. Tesla? Ford? GM?

26. Maintaining a whole system of "banks" for farmers.

27. Endowing the arts and humanities.

28. Requiring private businesses and institutions to provide special facilities for the handicapped.

29. Insuring private mortgages.

30. Breaking up businesses which are alleged to be monopolistic.

Undoubtedly this is only a partial list of the myriad interventions of the federal government of which I can find no warrant in the Constitution. As a matter of fact the list is endless just in 2nd amendment violations which result in the murder of children, the murder of mothers holding their baby, the murder of someone who hadn’t paid a $200 fee for a license, the murder of 17 little children in Waco Texas and I’m just starting this list. But it may be enough to make this point: If the government is authorized to do these 30 things, what is it not authorized to do? In short, it is not a limited government if it can do these things. Or, if it is, what are its limits? If there is one thing upon which all who had anything to do with the Constitution agreed upon it was that it provided for a limited government. It should follow, then, either that we are not operating within the framework of that Constitution or it did not provide for a limited government. If I could see the new one, perhaps I could discern its limits and become familiar with its provisions.

If anyone has a copy of the Constitution under which we are now operating, please send it to me. I will be sure to include it in the new history book.

RIP Clarence B. Carson 1925-2003

---