Response to an email.

Our Constitution Views article drew a critical response (S. R. P. Marstons Mills, MA)

that deserves an answer.  Let’s highlight some of the more strident comments and respond to them.

The writer stated: 

1.      That document needs to be re-written in its entirety. Better yet, trash it and start over. Virtually every Constitutional scholar knows and has written that the document was purely an 18^th century codification of ideals that were held in earlier times and simply cannot in any way cope with the 21^st century world.

           

A rather large generalization without detail or substantiation.  While it is impolite to answer a question with a question, we must ask, “what part of the Constitution does he consider out of date?”  Free speech?  Freedom of religion?  Trial by jury?  We could go on but let’s leave that to the reader.

2.      His (Mr. Welch’s) states’ rights arguments led to the Civil War and still is in the forefront of impossibly complicated inconsistencies.

The state’s rights argument is one founded in the IXth  and Xth Amendments, part of the initial Bill of Rights.  Yes, the question is still open because the federal government continues to try and subvert the states, converting the country into a single national one rather than a federal one of sovereign entities.  The question is also, what is wrong with the original concept?  By keeping it alive, it reminds all that this country is a federation, not a single nation with an overpowering national government.  Anyone believing in freedom should respect that.

3.      If the Constitution was so perfect, it would not have needed endless amendments and the tens of thousands of federal lawsuits that bury the legal system in a flood of paper. 

A bit of hyperbole to try to make his point.  There have been only 27 amendments in the period from 1787 to 2012, some 225 years!  10 of those (the Bill of Rights) were passed in the year 1791 which means 17 were passed in the following 221 years.  Name another nation with a constitution that can say the same and has produced as much freedom and prosperity for the individual citizens.  When you can, everyone should listen.

4.      He just cannot stand an income tax—the source of pay for our military, Homeland Security, funding for scientific research, highways….

The income tax doesn’t begin to cover the costs of the items to which the write refers.  Other sources provide the bulk of the money and always have.  The income tax was a recommendation of Karl Marx as a way of “redistributing the wealth of a nation”.  If the writer will examine the multitudinous activities of our federal government today, he would undoubtedly decide that some, or many, of the activities are without merit and the money could be better left in the hands of the taxpayers who would invest it thereby creating jobs, an important result of savings!

5.      Mr. Welch would particularly like watching his neighbor Mrs. Brown getting legally beaten by her husband. Or having his 7 year old daughter working at a mill in Fall River.

This one leaves me wondering where the writer is coming from.  Sharia law, something foreign to the United States, is the only one of which I am aware that condones or supports his suggestion of a wife “being beaten legally” by her husband.  As for child labor, as the United States has progressed, it outlawed that as well, so what is the point?

In conclusion, it is difficult to determine the writer’s orientation.  Many of the comments seem Marxist or socialist in their content.  That leads to the comments made by two political individuals: Margaret Thatcher who said, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”   And Winston Churchill who had previously stated that “its [socialism’s] inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

and that’s This Law Abiding Citizen’s response to S.R.P. and those that have chosen to abandon what is still the law of the land, The Constitution. S.R.P.’s opinion seems to be that the secular progressive agenda is the road we should all take.  I strongly disagree.