Freedom-Fighters Forum

The Constitutional Broadside 

V1 N1 A PUBLICATION OF THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY COUNCIL
Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

PROBLEM

Should congress Pass the Welfare Bill Called the Family Assistance Plan, Originally Proposed by President Nixon?

CONSTITUTIONAL ANSWER

1. PRESIDENT NIXON’S WELFARE PROGRAM EQUALS STATE SOCIALISM

Although Congressman John R. Rarick, Democrat of Louisiana, does not discuss why the above bill is constitutional or unconstitutional, his remarks favor the United States Constitution, his remarks favor the United States constitution.

“The trend in this country since 1932, away from limited constitutional government toward welfare state socialism with the power concentrated in the central government in Washington, is of much concern to most thinking Americans…

“The Family Assistance Plan, or Guaranteed Annual Income feature, is the most controversial part of H.R.1. The Federal government would guarantee an income of $2400 to a family of four and $3600 to a family of eight which would qualify. . . It has been estimated that, not counting income that does not have to be declared, some families will be permitted to earn as much as $6000 a year and still receive welfare… It is incredible that President Nixon and leaders of both political parties are pushing for the Family Assistance Plan… It would guarantee a man-whether he works or not- an annual income equal to the amount the federal government thinks he should receive. (Congressional Record-June 10, 1971-page E5680)

2. HIPPIES DINE WITH YOU WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT

The following is included because it indicates an attitude which is, ever so slightly, in favor of the Constitution:

Hon. Charles H. Griffin (Dem.-Miss) says, “Mr. Speaker, along with several of my colleagues, I have protested the ruling of the Secretary of Agriculture in allowing a cash refund on stamps. It has led to abuse of the program as pointed out in the following editorial attributed to the Chattanooga News-Free Press and reprinted in the Ocala Star-Banner on May 17, 1971-as follows: We asked a non-working hippie recently, ‘How do you eat?’ He smiled and responded, ‘My friends feed me. I’ve never been hungry.’ ‘Where, we persisted, do your friends get what they give you?’ He smiled again, waved his hand and said, ‘Maybe they have wealthy parents.’

“That may be the story in some cases-but it’s not the whole story. Bill Fiset wrote recently in the Oakland, California Tribune about how you as a working taxpayer are financing hippies. Fiset gave the case of a specific hippie. He boasts that for 50 cents he buys $28 worth of stamps… Each week he uses the stamps to buy exactly $27.51 worth of groceries and gets 49 cents back in cash as change, the maximum amount of cash he can get on a purchase. Then he adds another penny to the 49 cents to get his $28 worth of stamps for the next week. The fourth week of the month he sells his food stamps to friends for $15 cash. Thus in a month he’s paid out 53 cents for $112 worth of stamps, for which he gets $83.53 worth of food and $14.47 net profit in cash. From the food stamp saleswoman: Can you imagine how this adds up when you have 15 hippie kids living in a commune house, all doing the same thing? No wonder they laugh at the Establishment. No wonder welfare programs are in trouble. You may be taking a hippie to lunch-without knowing it. And the hippies are certainly taking you for a ride:” (congressional Record-May 24, 1971 – page E4915)

3. WELFARE FOR NON WORKERS MEANS WARFARE ON WORKERS

A thorough reading of the United States Constitution will show that the Federal Government has no right under that Constitution to engage in “Welfare programs.” The phrase “general welfare” is used as an excuse to engage in “welfare activities.” However the only way government can engage in “welfare” for some is to engage in “warfare” on others. When taxes are taken from workers and given to non-workers the non-workers and the tax collectors may benefit but those who pay taxes lose. This does not contribute to the “general welfare,” instead it creates “special interest welfare” for some and creates losses for the producing taxpayer.

UNCONSTITUTIONAL ANSWER

1. INDEPENDENCE FOR THOSE WHO FAIL – SLAVERY FOR THOSE WHO SUCCEED

Sen. Abraham A. Ribicoff (Dem.-Conn.) says, “..The time has come for America to entact a welfare system designed to eliminate poverty in America by 1976, our Nation’s 200th anniversary. Achievement of this goal will truly be a declaration of independence for 25 million Americans now living in poverty. Passage of H.R. 1, as reported by the House Ways and Means Committee, together with the changes I am suggesting today will enable us to meet the goal…First, assistance for the childless couples and those who are single, categories not now covered by H.R. 1. Second, increased support under H.R. 1 for those on welfare by cashing out food stamps at an adequate level and requiring state supplementation. Third, fiscal relief for state and local governments by gradual Federal assumption of all costs of public assistance with payment levels reflecting regional variations in the costs of living. Fourth, greater work incentives by increasing the percentage of income earned that can be retained. Fifth, sufficient job training opportunities and actual jobs at the minimum wage for all those able to work. Sixth, expanded and enriched day care programs for mothers entering the working force. Seventh, uniform assistance and equitable treatment for all categories of those in need.

2. WELFARE REFORM WON’T REDUCE BURDEN ON WORKERS

“As the welfare bill moves through Congress, we must remember that no welfare reform bill by itself will substantially reduce the welfare burden in this country.” (Congressional record – June 1, 1971 pages S7941)

THE MORAL RIGHT TO OWN PRIVATE PROPERTY

1. MORAL RIGHT TO PRIVATE PROPERTY COMES FROM TEN COMMANDMENTS

“Not all the Decalogue, as has been said, is directly relevant to the issue of the Welfare State. Its program is an economic one, and the only parts of the moral code which are directly and specifically relevant are these (1) Thou shalt not steal. (2) Thou shalt not covet.

2. STEALING IS EVIL BECAUSE OWNERSHIP IS GOOD

“Steal what? Covert what? Private property, of course. What else could I steal from you, or covet of what is yours? I cannot steal from you or covet what you do not own as private property. As Dr. D. Elton Trueblood has aptly said: “Stealing is evil because ownership is good.” Thus we find that the individual’s right to private property is an unstated assumption which underlies the Decalogue. Otherwise these two admonitions would be empty of either purpose or meaning.

3. STOLEN GOODS REMAIN PROPERTY OF OWNER

“The right to have and to hold private property is not to be confused with the recovery of stolen property. If someone steals your car, it is still—by this moral right—your car rather than his; and for you to repossess it is merely to bring its presence back into harmony with its ownership. The same reasoning applies to the recovery of equivalent value if the stolen item itself is no longer returnable; and it applies to the recompense for damage done to one’s own property by trespass or other willful destruction of private property. These means of protecting the possession of private property, and its use, are part of the mechanisms used to protect the moral right to private property.

4. ADMIRATION MAY STIMULATE WORK TO OBTAIN GOODS

“Another point of possible confusion has to do with coveting the private property of another. There is nothing morally wrong in the admiration of something that is the property of another. Such admiration may be a stimulus to work for the means with which to buy it or one like it. The moral consideration embodied in the Commandment has to do with thoughts and acts leading to the violation of the other Commandment, though still short of the actual theft.

5. PRIVATE PROPERTY CONSISTENT WITH ALL GREAT RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

“The moral right to private property, therefore, is consistent with the moral codes of all the great religious beliefs….

6. RELIGIOUS CODES DENOUNCED BY MARX AND LENIN

“Nor is it surprising to discover that two of history’s leading exponents of the welfare state concept found it necessary to denounce this moral code completely. Marx said ‘Religion is the opium of the people.’ And Lenin said ‘Any religious idea, any idea of a “good God”…is an abominably nasty thing.’ Of course they would have to say these things about religious beliefs. This is because the moral code these great religions, as we have seen, strikes at the very heart of their immoral economic scheme. Not only does their Welfare State scheme deny the moral right to private property but it also denies other underlying bases of the moral code…”

TO STEAL OR NOT TO STEAL

1. AS INDIVIDUALS, PEOPLE ARE BASICALLY MORAL

“As a means of specifically verifying my impression about the basic, intuitive morality of person, I would pose this test of three questions:

(1)Would you steal your neighbor’s cow to provide your present needs? Would you steal it for any need reasonably within your expectation or comprehension? It should be remembered that, instead of stealing his cow, you may explore with your neighbor the possible solution to your case of need; you might arrange to do some sort of work for him, or to borrow from him for later repayment, or perhaps even pay with him for an outright gift.

(2)Would you steal your neighbor’s cow to provide for a known case of another neighbor’s need?

(3)Would you try to induce a third party to do the stealing of the cow, to be given to this need yneighbor? And do you believe that you would likely succeed in inducing him to engage in the theft?

I believe that the almost universal answer to all these questions would be: “No.” Yet the facts of the case are that all of us are participating in theft every day. How? By supporting the actions of the collective agent which does the stealing as a part of the Welfare State program already far advanced in the United States. By this devise, Peter is robbed to “benefit” Paul, with the acquiescence if not the active support of all of us as taxpayers and citizens. We not only participate in the stealing—and share in the division of the loot—but as its victims we also meekly submit to the thievery.

2. COLLECTIVE ACTIVITIES IN GOVERNMENT TEND TO BECOME IMMORAL

“Isn’t it a strange thing that if you select any three fundamentally moral persons and combine them into a collective for the doing of good, they are liable at once to become three immoral persons in their collective activities? The moral principles with which they seem to be intuitively endowed are somehow lost in the confusing process of the collective. None of the three would steal the cow from one of his fellow members as an individual, but collectively they all steal cows from each other. The reason is, I believe, that the Welfare State—a confusing collective device which is believed by many to be moral and righteous—has been falsely labeled. This false label has caused the belief that the Welfare State can do no wrong, that is cannot commit immoral acts, especially if those acts are approved or tolerated by more than half of the people, “democratically.”

3. THE IDEA THAT THE MAJORITY CAN DO NO WRONG IS WRONG

“This sidetracking of moral conduct is like the belief of an earlier day; The king can do no wrong. In its place we have now substituted this belief: The majority can do no wrong. It is as though one were to assert a sheep which has been killed by a pack of wolves is not really dead, provided that more than half of the wolves have participated in the killing. All these excuses for immoral conduct are, of course, nonsense…Thievery is thievery, whether done by one person alone or by many in a pack—or by one who has been selected by the members of the pack as their agent.

4. “THOU SHALT NOT STEAL, EXCEPT….”

“It seems that wherever the Welfare State is involved, the moral percept. Thou shalt not steal, becomes altered to say: Thou shalt not steal, except for what thou deemest to be a worthy cause, where thou thinkest that thou canst use the loot for a better purpose than wouldst the victim of the theft.”

5. “THOU SHALT NOT COVET, EXCEPT…”

“And the precept about covetousness, under the administration of the Welfare State, seems to become; Thou shalt not covet, except what thou wouldst have from thy neighbor who owns it.

“Both of these alterations of the Decalogue result in complete abrogation of the two moral admonitions—theft and covetousness—which deal directly with economic matters. Not even the motto, In God we trust, stamped by the government on money taken by force in violation of the Decalogue to pay for the various programs of the Welfare State, can transform this immoral act into a moral one.

THE WELFARE STATE

1. THE WELFARE STATE EQUALS FEDERAL AID EQUALS TYRANNY

“The concept of the Welfare State appears in our everyday life in the form of a long list of labels and programs such as: Social Security; parity or fair prices; reasonable profits; the living wage; the TVA, MVA, CVA; Federal aid to states, to education , to bankrupt corporations; and so on.

2. THE WELFARE STATE EQUALS COMMUNIST-SOCIALISM

“But all these names and details of the Welfare State program tend only to obscure its essential nature. They are well-sounding labels for a laudable objective—the relief of distressing need, prevention of starvation, and the like. But how best is starvation and distress prevented? It is well, too, that prices, profits, and wages be fair and equitable. But what is to be the test of fairness and equity? Laudable objectives alone do not assure the success of any program; a fair appraisal of the program must include an analysis of the means of its attainment.

“The Welfare State is a name that has been substituted as a more acceptable one for communism-socialism wherever, as in the United States, these are in general disrepute.

3. THE WELFARE STATE PROHIBITS PRIVATE PROPERTY

“The Welfare State plan, viewed in full bloom of completeness, is one where the state prohibits the individual from having any right of choice in the conditions and place of his work; it takes ownership of the product of his labor; it prohibits private property. All these are done ostensibly to help those whose rights have been taken over by the Welfare State.

“But these characteristics of controlled employment and confiscation of income are not those used in promotion of the idea of the Welfare State. What are usually advertised, instead, are the “benefits” of the Welfare State—the grants of food and housing and whatnot—which the state “gives” to the people. But all these “benefits” of the Welfare State are merely the other side of the forfeited rights to choose one’s own occupation and to keep whatever one is able to produce. In the same sense that the Welfare State grants benefits, the slave-master grants to his slaves certain allotments of food and other economic goods. In fact, slavery might be described as just another form of Welfare State, because of its likeness in restrictions and “benefits”

4. STATE PRODUCES NOTHING—PEOPLE PRPODUCE EVERYTHING

“Yet the state, as such, produces nothing with which to supply these “benefits.” Persons produce everything which the Welfare State takes, before it gives some back as “benefits.” But in the process, the bureaucracy takes its cut. Only by thus confiscating what persons have produced can the Welfare State “satisfy the needs of the people.” So, the necessary and essential idea of the Welfare State is control of the economic actions of the vassals of the state, to take from producers what they produce, and to prevent their ever being able to attain economic independence from the state and from their fellow men through ownership of property.

5. THE WELFARE STATE PRODUCES SLAVES—NOT GOODS

“To whatever extent an individual is still allowed freedom in any of these respects while living under a government like the present one in the United States, then to that extent the development of the program of the Welfare State is as yet not fully completed. Or perhaps it is an instance of a temporary grant of freedom by the Welfare State such as who a master allows his slave a day off from work to spend as he likes.; but the person who is permitted some freedom by the Welfare State is still a vassal of that state just as a slave is still a slave on his day off from work.” (from the article Morals and Liberty in THE FREEMAN July, 1971, by Dr. F.A. Harper)