pudge's Journal: P-I Columnist E-mails Me To Display His Ignorance

Joel Connelly in the Seattle P-I wrote about how people who don't want federal arts funding are like Nazis.

No, I am not exaggerating, read it yourself.

So I reply to him via e-mail:

You do realize, of course, that federal arts funding is a violation of our civil rights?

That would be the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. It says the federal government can only do what the Constitution says it can do. And there's nothing in Article I, Section 8 that states (or, as per the "elastic clause," implies) that the federal government has any authority to fund the arts.

You can compare people who want to get rid of all federal arts funding to the Nazis, but it seems to me that you're the one who favors taking away my civil liberties as enshrined in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.

His short reply was amazingly ignorant:

If what you said had the least bit of truth to it, the Supreme Court would have been asked log ago to rule on legality of NEA.

*headdesk*

I leave you with one of my favorite quotes on the subject, from James Madison:

If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.

Of course, many people today want an indefinitely powerful federal government, subject to particular exceptions. Their first response is often, "the Constitution doesn't specifically prohibit it, so it is allowed." They believe the Tenth Amendment does not actually mean what it says. This essentially unlimited form of government was deemed by Madison and his contemporaries -- as well as by me and most libertarians and conservatives -- as antithetical to liberty, and as blatantly unconstitutional.

Good quote

[Qzukk]

If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.

Have any laying around on governments assuming that whatever they do is right until somehow forced to admit otherwise?

So what are you doing about it?

[jdavidb]

Voting, blogging about it, and writing letters to the editor clearly isn't solving the problem. As you've asked me before, what are you, personally, doing to try to fix this?

Re:

[pudge]

Voting, blogging about it, and writing letters to the editor clearly isn't solving the problem. As you've asked me before, what are you, personally, doing to try to fix this?

Solve what problem?

Re:

[jdavidb]

The problem of people taking away our civil liberties as enshrined in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Re:

[pudge]

The problem of people taking away our civil liberties as enshrined in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.

I am not sure anything can be done to solve that. As Judge Bork wrote:

Almost all justices have agreed with Felix Frankfurter's observation that "the ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it." The obvious exception, of course, is that the nation has developed in ways that make some returns to original principles impossible. No judge of whatever disposition would, pace Senator Kennedy, plunge the nation into chaos by dismantling government as it

So...

[Bill Dog]

...why hasn't the NEA been ruled unconstitutional?

Re:

[Kymermosst]

I'd love to see it. Especially given what passes for "art" these days.

Re:

[pudge]

Apart from its having never been challenged, you mean?

Probably because of what Judge Bork said in the quote I put here [slashdot.org]. At this point, it may be a lost cause to expect the courts to do anything about this, unfortunately. But we can still impress upon voters and elected officials the reasons why it is important that the federal government do only what it is allowed to do, because, as I said on Ryan Dobson's KOR Kast, Local Is Free [korministries.com].