RE: Constitution and Contract [Was: CIA & FBI]

[Blanc Weber <blancw@microsoft.com>]

From: Black Unicorn

"If the federal government mixes the recipe with too much power, the
checks against tyranny established by the Constitution threaten to
topple.  It is this that worries me.  It is this that worried the
framers.  Should we dismiss their genius because it is old?  Because it
did not bear the unanimous mandate of the people?"

It is not that the genius or the their document should be dismissed; it 
is only to understand that written works do not produce automatic 
effects of their own power, and that therefore the Constitution cannot 
be looked to by the general population as an automatic savior which 
will release them from the grip of tyranny.

No matter what guidance the original document provides, each 
generation, each era, each individual must still do the work of 
thinking, reasoning, and determining their own fate, and they must 
again agree among themselves whether to accept that contract or reject 
it.  Or improve upon it.

The current structure of government is modelled after the Constitution, 
but the substance of it makes no sense accordingly.  If the federal 
government mixes the recipe with too much power, it is because they 
want it there and mean to increase it according to a self-benefitting 
bias towards it.

"One must remember that power was surrendered to the federal government
by the people and the states conditioned upon limits."

Patrick Henry warned everyone that once they had surrendered to it the 
power of the purse and the power of the sword, there would be no power 
left to them with which to save themselves from it.  So who would be 
respecting those limits?

Blanc