-----------------------------
The leftist tendency toward hyperbole is here on full display. "Utterly bonkers?" Some synonyms to bonkers are bananas, nuts, crazy, wild, ballistic, and cuckoo. In other words, according to the author, it is beyond any standard of normalcy of intellectual processes to think the way Fiorina does.
Let's see if the author actually demonstrates this.
-----------------------------
The minimum wage and Social Security are both unconstitutional, according to Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina — a view that puts her at odds with both longstanding precedents and the text of the Constitution. (It was a longstanding precedent that slaves were property. It was a longstanding precedent that women shouldn't vote. Precedent can be important, but the Left picks and chooses precedent at their convenience.
And as we all know, the Left, being "progressive," generally eschews precedent, tradition, and history.)
Fiorina revealed her unusual understanding of the nation’s founding text during Wednesday night’s Republican presidential candidates’ debate. ("Unusual." That is, uncommon, outside the mainstream. However, Fiorina's understanding can only be regarded as unusual if the author is defining unusual as "something I disagree with and none of my friends believe."
Fiorina's opinion is widely held and quite common.)
In response to a question on whether the federal government should help workers set up retirement plans, Fiorina offered two sweeping declarations about what the nation’s leaders can and cannot do. “There is no Constitutional role for the federal government in setting up retirement plans. There is no Constitutional role for the federal government to be setting minimum wages,” according to the former corporate CEO. (Will the author establish this? We shall see.)
These statements thrust Fiorina deep into the fringe of the most radical candidates on Wednesday night’s stage, as few candidates even among this field are willing to admit to similar views about the Constitution. (The author's sample size is limited to those who were "on Wednesday night's stage.)
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a libertarian who built his philosophy of government around the idea that governance typically is a bad thing, (Which he has not done. For the typical leftist, any limitation in government size or scope is characterized as anti-government. The Left cannot countenance any sort of confining apparatus to their beloved government. This is really why they tend to dismiss the Constitution as an ancient document of a bygone era.
The Constitution is full of government limits. And Rand Paul wants government confined to those limits. That has nothing to do with "governance is a bad thing.")
has called for the Supreme Court to repeal much of the modern regulatory state, but even he said during the debate that programs like Medicare and Social Security are legitimate tasks for the federal government to undertake. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has claimed that the federal Department of Education is unconstitutional, but he’s also likened lawmakers who want to cut Social Security benefits to robbers and muggers. (Thus the author is only able to demonstrate that there is diversity of thought within the slate of Republican candidates.
Fiorina’s two statements about the Constitution, moreover, suggest that she may hold other deeply radical views about the permissible scope of American government. ("Deeply radical." Isn't it interesting that the idea of constitutional limits and enumerated powers is viewed as extreme?)
Ms. Fiorina is not the first candidate to assert that the minimum wage is unconstitutional, for example, and those that have often claim that New Deal era Supreme Court decisions recognizing Congress’s power to set a minimum wage were wrongly decided — and that decisions in the decades leading up to the Great Depression that called for a more libertarian vision of federal power were correctly decided. (Let's see if the author can produce any argument whatsoever about these issues, apart from using words like "radical," "unusual," "fringe," and "bonkers." Because up to this point, he has made no argument at all.)
The vision of federal power that dominated this discarded libertarian era, however, swept much further than invalidating minimum wages. Among other things, that vision also invalidated the right to unionize and even child labor laws. So when Fiorina declares the minimum wage unconstitutional, she aligns herself with a constitutional tradition that would leave the most vulnerable workers helpless against rapacious employers. (The author's first attempt at an argument. Sorta. The author speciously attempts to connect Fiorina's opposition to government possessing the power to establish a minimum wage to two other unrelated positions. In other words, the author asks, "So you oppose the minimum wage? Well, that means you oppose unions and child labor laws."
And by inference that means Fiorina would purposely leave workers helpless. This is the so-called "logic" of the Left.)
Her statement that “there is no Constitutional role for the federal government in setting up retirement plans” has similarly broad implications.
Social Security, of course, is the most important federal retirement plan. Congress is permitted to set up retirement plans such as Social Security because the Constitution permits it “to lay and collect taxes” (I thought it was a "retirement plan." Now the author appeals to the constitutional provision to authorize government to tax. So SS is a tax and not a retirement plan?)
and to “provide for the . . . general welfare of the United States.” (Um, yeah. That convenient constitutional blank check. However, here's what James Madison, regarded as the father of the Constitution, thought about the "general welfare" clause:
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."Which means that the "general welfare" clause can only be interpreted in the context of the enumerated powers granted to government elsewhere in the document. You see, the Constitution doesn't detail delineating specific powers only to take it all back in favor of an unlimited general welfare power.)
The same provisions of the Constitution permit a broad range of federal spending programs, from Medicare to Medicaid to federal education funds to highway funding. (They do not permit any such thing. And what does the author mean by "broad range?" Does he recognize any limit at all? According to what criteria?)
So if Fiorina believes that the federal government cannot create a national retirement program like Social Security, it is likely that she also believes that many of these other programs are unconstitutional as well. ("Many of these other programs?" May we inquire what those might be? The author inadvertently grants that if Fiorina is correct, then there are many programs that are unconstitutional. That's what scares the Left, for they view government as the great, beneficent, compassionate Solver of Problems. As such, government must never be constrained by anything, let alone a quaint, old-fashioned, irrelevant document like the Constitution.
No, the Left's vision of the future is more government, more control, more power. Because it's worked so well already...
And we see that the author was simply unable to offer any argument at all against Fiorina's positions. Nothing.)
No comments:
Post a Comment