Back in the 80s, Nancy Reagan championed a War on Drugs campaign that featured as its slogan Just Say NO! From what I could determine, the only people who took the slogan seriously, who imagined it would do anything to stem the use of drugs, were the drug warriors themselves. Everyone else pretty much laughed at or ignored it. But Nancy was right. She was just right about the wrong thing.
The real target of her Just Say NO! campaign should have been the Federal government itself.
There are two ways a government can control its citizens by using guns or by using money. Money, of course, is the preferred method here in the USA. Congress passes some useless legislation designed to make themselves look good, or to address a manufactured or imagined problem, then threatens the states with loss of some type of federal funding if they do not comply. State legislatures and local officials, sheep that they are, scurry to comply lest their neighbor get more money to waste than they will.
And the people are slightly more oppressed.
If it only happened occasionally, we could almost live with it. But such laws are not occasional things. They make up the bulk of legislation passed by the self-serving professional busybodies we keep electing to govern us. It doesnt matter that most of the laws are blatantly unconstitutional. Ive searched and searched through my copy of the Constitution, over and over again, looking for the clauses that give Congress any authority over education, drug use, health care, housing, disaster relief, firearms, or any of the myriad areas into which they seem to relish sticking their collective noses. But I cant find a single word enabling them to do what they do.
What was that? The Supreme Court said they could? So what? Ive also searched for the clause that gives the Supreme Court the authority to decide what is constitutional and what is not. I cant seem to find that one either. Does anyone really believe the Founding Fathers of this country wanted the government to pass judgement on itself? In fact, what they wanted, and what they designed, was a system whereby the people, through local government and through jury trials, were the ones who decided whether or not laws were constitutional.
Which is why it is time we American citizens got together, individually and on the local and state level, and Just Say NO!
August 17, 2009