An excellent article on the
futility of appealing to the Constitution by Tom DiLorenzo. A quote:
The government has had an iron grip on the American educational system for generations, and its not about to ease up on that grip by teaching American school children about the virtues of limited government. This is true of all levels of education, including – and especially – the law schools.
He's right. I just graduated from 3 yrs. of law school, and we learned NOTHING about the Constitution except how it actually authorises everything the government does or might possibly want to do, or will authorise it as soon as a federal court says so. Phooey!
The most galling decision that usually springs to my mind on the subject of the constitution is the
Wickard decision, handed down in 1942. This is the infamous "wheat case," defining the scope of "interstate commerce," the magic words used to justify most federal intervention. If anything can be remotely connected with "interstate commerce," then the feds can regulate it.
In
Wickard, a farmer objected to gov't limits on the amount of wheat he could grow. [Why was the gov't limiting the growing of wheat while people were going hungry during a depression? To raise the price, of course!] The farmer didn't sell any wheat, he just used it for his own family's consumption. Nevertheless, the learned justices decided that since growing and eating his own wheat meant that the farmer wouldn't need to buy as much from other people, this affected--that's right, you guessed it--"interstate commerce." Ta-Da! Now even
not engaging in commerce affects commerce!
If a butterfly in Florida flaps his wings, and it causes an earthquake in California, the feds can regulate it. It's the chaos theory of interstate commerce jurisprudence.
