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56 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Where, and when, did government in America go wrong?, August 30, 2009
This review is from: Who Killed the Constitution?: The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama (Paperback)
There's a reason that our federal constitution is short. It was so the average American could be intimately familiar with it. It was also because the federal government was supposed to be small. As James Madison described in the Federalist No. 45:
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."
So what changed? Woods and Gutzman persuasively document a selected array of federal power plays and Supreme Court decisions over the course of the 20th century that radically reshaped the federal government in ways the Framers of the U.S. Constitution never imagined nor the Constitution's Ratifiers ever intended.
From the unconstitutional persecution against World War I dissenters by the Wilson administration; through Harry Truman's attempted 1952 power grab, the phony case for broad presidential war powers, and the startlingly perverse use of presidential signing statements by the Bush administration to undermine the rule of law; to the tragic consequences of Commerce Clause jurisprudence run amok beginning with the New Deal and continuing to this very day: "Who Killed the Constitution?" serves as an eye-opening guide to how exactly, and how far away, we've managed to stray from the limited-government vision of our forefathers bestowed upon us in the Constitution. Woods and Gutzman cite several Founding Era authorities to prove exactly this.
Hopefully the abuses of the past administration, and the continuation of those abuses by the new one, will awaken Americans to explore their own constitutional heritage and incite them to start demanding their government adhere to the supreme law of the land: the Constitution of the United States.
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Required Reading for All Americans, Adults and High Schoolers, February 13, 2010
This review is from: Who Killed the Constitution?: The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama (Paperback)
What amazes me about this book is that there have been only three reviews to date. Obviously, this book is not getting the attention it deserves.
This is perhaps the most important and depressing book I have read in the last twelve months. The question is not "Who is killing the Constitution," but rather "Who killed the Constitution." For truly, the Constitution as originally written in dead and buried. The question that is not asked in this work, but should be uppermost in the reader's mind is, "Can the Constitution be resurrected and the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution be restored?"
Clearly the answer from extending the litany of constitutional abuses and re-interpretations contained in this work would be "No." That's why it is so depressing. In fact, this work makes clear the fact that the Constitution is being ignored and subverted by Congress, the President and the Federal Bureaucracy, and not the least, by the Supreme Court and Judiciary, with ever increasing frequency, openness, contempt and disdain. Since Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement at the end of the 19th century, the Constitution had been shredded by precisely those individuals who have taken an oath to protect and preserve it.
The book starts with President Wilson who was arguably the most evil (although well-intended) President in U.S. history, although some might wish to put more recent Presidents before him. Unfortunately, the authors ignore Lincoln who was the first President to completely ignore the Constitution in meeting an emergency situation. Apologists for Lincoln cite his measures as being necessary -- a refrain to be repeated as an excuse by Congress, the President and the Judiciary every time they further disembowel the Constitution. Teddy Roosevelt, who once said "The Constitution is what I say it is," is also mentioned only in passing.
Lincoln and Roosevelt were used as precedents later by Progressive Presidents like FDR and every subsequent President with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan.
What may come as a shock to many readers is the presentation of many actions, bills, and judicial decisions that readers may feel were good that were also clearly unconstitutional. That is a measure on how thoroughly citizens have been conditioned through the massive Progressive propaganda campaign since the 1890s in our schools and media, and most particularly, since the end of World War II. Today, the Constitution is only invoked politically by one party or the other when their ideological opponents do something unconstitutional to which they are opposed. Unfortunately, both sides commit unconstitutional treason almost daily and whatever moral high ground might have been present under Harding or Cooledge is long gone. Equally unfortunately, there is no longer any check on these activities other than the grinding certainty that a catastrophic collapse is nearly upon us and our government will fall into chaos. Maybe at that time the Constitution can be re-instituted, but history indicates that a dictatorship is more likely.
The authors indicate that Obama, our current Congress and Supreme Court may be the most egregious offenders, but only because the groundwork has been so thorough. Yes, we have seen the tipping point where State sovereignty guaranteed by the 10th Amendment was gutted, and all rights to citizens not expressly granted in the Constitution are now denied. State sovereignty indeed disappeared in 1936 in the case of "United States vs. Belmont." Presidential power increased dramatically under Teddy Roosevelt through "Executive Orders" having the same effect as a law passed by Congress, and this was further increased through George W. Bush's use of "signing statements" to make law. Barack Obama has followed Bush's lead and used signing statement to circumvent Congress, but more importantly, to hide his unconstitutional actions from the American citizenry.
Perhaps the most interesting case discussed by the authors is that of the Supreme Court when it decided to discriminate against some to stop discrimination against others. Once the Court went down that road and assumed executive powers for the enforcement of its rulings, the system of checks and balances was completely neutralized. Congress got into the act through micro-legislating with "riders" and "earmarks" to increase their own power as executives. With all three branches now legislating and all three exercising executive powers, the Federal Government has become truly dysfunctional and the Constitution altogether meaningless.
That's where we are today. Read and weep. This book is a terrfying litany of cases and examples of how the Constitution was destroyed as a meaningful basis for American law. Progressives have truly brought change to American, and they have done it by increments over the last 120 years. To those who sit by silent or merely gripe, this book should be an eye-opener. The tipping point we have already passed is readily visible, and one way or another, a massive change is coming.
Absolutely recommended to all.
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Murder I tell you ... it's murder., December 30, 2009
This review is from: Who Killed the Constitution?: The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama (Paperback)
Its death was ingloriously slow that only a few men know to cry. Thomas E. Woods Jr, Senior Fellow of the Mises Institute and Kevin R. C. Gutzman, Professor History Western Connecticut State University, lay out the evidence in a remarkably easy to read book proving once an for all that the United States Constitution is dead. The authors offer no finger pointing at Democrats or Republicans, left or right, they provide twelve "The Dirty Dozen" examples of Supreme Court decisions (Judicial Branch), Presidential abuses (Executive Branch), and Congressional excess (Legislative Branch), that "bear no resemblance to what the Constitution's ratifiers intended, and in fact run directly counter to the plain text of the Constitution". This they argue is the key to understanding that the United States Constitution is dead.
Messrs Woods and Gutzman note that the death of the Constitution is not partisan. The authors point out that the great Virginian John Taylor of Caroline noted,
"the problem is not the character of members of one party or the other, one section of the country or the other, but the effect of power on the human ego, regardless of party or section. People in power exercise all the power they can get, even after they have howled in the wilderness against legislating judges, imperial president, and the death of states' rights."
The spectre of the United States Constitution can still be of value. The authors suggest that we call attention to the Constitution and alert our friends, family, and the young people how dramatically their fundamental rights have been betrayed.
This book is fascinating, well written, and academic. It should interest anyone with a keen interest in Constitutional history and good ole fashioned Who Dunnit's.
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