For the want of a nail, a shoe was lost. This is not a nail but a huge spike:
“The truth is that modern liberty depends on the power of the purse. All of the great battles in England in the 17th century between the Crown and Parliament turned ultimately on the power of the purse. The members of Parliament were elected at least in part with an eye to achieving a redress of grievances, and that redress was the price they exacted for funding the Crown. Our legislature has given up that power. Our congressional leaders claim – once the election is over – that they have no leverage. If that is really true, then elections do not matter, and a redress of grievances is now beyond the legislature’s power. Absent that capacity, however, the legislature is virtually useless. Absent that capacity, it is contemptible — and let’s face it: the President and those who work under him have showered it with contempt.” Which is why we have Trump.
Paul Rahe is correct – it is amongst the most powerful of the limited tools that the Legislature has over the Executive Branch. But over the last 100 years, we have seen the Progressives use “democracy” as a cudgel to pull nail after nail out of that document that kept the wall that protects modern liberty standing. Enacting the Seventeenth Amendment which provided for the general election of Senators was another one of those spikes – it ripped away the States having a say in Federal Government and removed one of the biggest checks on the reach of the Feds. It is coming to a head as we see talk about the Tenth Amendment more and more
Sidenote: even as these same Progressives lamely throw the race card when it happens trying to stop those discussions dead in mid-sentence. How low they must hold us to believe that we all are latent slaveholders-in-waiting, but then again, they project.
The other was the institution of income taxes (and furthered with the ability to extract it before we get our paychecks – so who has first hold on the fruits of our labors?).
Three spikes – rather simple ones but with huge ramifications on the rise of GOvernment for it release the chains that bound it. And we are reaping what Progressives has sown and it should be clear that with Government deciding that it HAS to make more and more decisions about our lives, our Liberty must, in course, diminish.
In no small part, we can blame our elected officials for not really understanding what our history and principles were and not holding fast to them. It as if they no longer care.
And neither does the general electorate – until it will become too late, I fear.
(H/T: Instapundit)