Ignorance & American Liberty
By Deroy Murdock, syndicated columnist and senior fellow,
Atlas Economic Research Foundation. murdock2000@ibm.net
The future of American liberty rests in the hands of young people more
familiar with the Three Stooges than the three branches of government.
According to a 1998 Luntz Research survey, 59 percent of 13-to 17-year-olds
identified Moe, Larry, and Curly while only 41 percent correctly cited the
legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
As America celebrates 224 years of independence, one wonders if this nation'
s citizens are equipped to defend their freedoms against the state's natural
penchant for mischief.
The evidence should make your drop your hamburger.
The National Constitution Center interviewed 1,000 adults and found than 24
percent cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Only 6 percent can cite freedoms of speech, press, assembly
and religion.
52 percent do not know the Senate has 100 members. 1 in 6 believes the
Constitution created a Christian nation.
Even well-educated adults seem confused about America's experiment in
limited self-government. The Rev.Joan Brown Campbell of the National Council
of Churches explained during the Elian Gonzalez saga that Juan Miguel
Gonzalez planned "to simply ask now that the attorney general issue a court
order and that the boy be returned immediately to him."
Neither Campbell nor Brian Knowlton's April 13 International Herald Tribune
story observed that attorneys general may not issue court orders any more
than judges may prosecute suspects.
Indeed, no matter what people wished for Elian,one likely reason that 2/3's
of Americans applauded his abduction by a federal SWAT team is that they did
not grasp the case's basic legalities.
The Justice Department should have secured a court order to transfer Elian
from his great-uncle to his father. Instead, Justice used a fraudulent
search warrant that falsely called Elian "an illegal alien" and "a concealed
person," presumably hidden atop Lazaro Gonzalez's back yard jungle gym.
Unaware of what the Constitution entails, affluent and disengaged Americans
seem rather comfortable with a kind of elective monarchy.
Every four years,they pick a king who governs largely as he wishes. Members
of Congress - like an American House of Lords, breezily conduct their own
affairs.
The two divisions of the royal family occasionally cooperate, usually - but
not always - within the law. Every other
November, Americans decide which among them may keep their orbs and scepters
and continue ruling at their whim.
In August 1993, for instance, a Democratic Congress approved Bill Clinton's
proposed hikes in top income and estate tax rates retroactive to January 1,
1993, despite the Constitution's explicit instruction that "No Bill of
Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
Indeed, Clinton's measure actually raised taxes on moneys earned during the
final days of the Bush Administration, before Clinton's inauguration!
After the Senate Judiciary Committee failed to approve Justice Department
nominee Bill Lann Lee, Clinton defiantly named him acting assistant attorney
general in December 1997. Lee serves today as America's most powerful
squatter, without constitutionally-required Senate confirmation.
Although the Constitution unambiguously states: "The Congress shall have the
Power To lay and collect Taxes," the Federal Communications Commission in
1998 imposed the $2.25 billion-per-year "Gore Tax" on telephones.
Worse yet, the FCC forbids phone bills from separately
identifying this roughly 5 percent telephone tax as a tax, never mind the
phone companies' First Amendment freedom to communicate with their customers
as they like.
Congress voted last July 15 to accept a 3.4 percent salary
increase,effective January 1,regardless of the 27th Amendment's requirement
that compensation changes commence after "an election of Representatives
shall have intervened." Congressmen feathered their beds by dubbing this
unconstitutional pay hike a "cost-of-living adjustment." The media and
masses snored right through this shakedown.
America's public cluelessness begins in schools that teach little about
English and the sciences and less about government.
Sen.Joseph Lieberman (D.Conn.) joined members of the American Council of
Trustees and Alumni on June 27 to call on "educators at all levels to
redouble their efforts to bolster our children's knowledge of U.S. history
and help us restore the vitality of our civic memory."
A major overhaul of America's classrooms-through charter schools, vouchers
or total privatization - would boost the odds that citizens will learn why
this country is so special and how to keep it that way.
Meanwhile, Americans would be wise to heed the man who penned the
Declaration of Independence on July 4,1776. "If a nation expects to be
ignorant and free," Thomas Jefferson said, "it expects what never was and
never will be."
By Deroy Murdock, syndicated columnist and senior fellow,
Atlas Economic Research Foundation. murdock2000@ibm.net
The future of American liberty rests in the hands of young people more
familiar with the Three Stooges than the three branches of government.
According to a 1998 Luntz Research survey, 59 percent of 13-to 17-year-olds
identified Moe, Larry, and Curly while only 41 percent correctly cited the
legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
As America celebrates 224 years of independence, one wonders if this nation'
s citizens are equipped to defend their freedoms against the state's natural
penchant for mischief.
The evidence should make your drop your hamburger.
The National Constitution Center interviewed 1,000 adults and found than 24
percent cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Only 6 percent can cite freedoms of speech, press, assembly
and religion.
52 percent do not know the Senate has 100 members. 1 in 6 believes the
Constitution created a Christian nation.
Even well-educated adults seem confused about America's experiment in
limited self-government. The Rev.Joan Brown Campbell of the National Council
of Churches explained during the Elian Gonzalez saga that Juan Miguel
Gonzalez planned "to simply ask now that the attorney general issue a court
order and that the boy be returned immediately to him."
Neither Campbell nor Brian Knowlton's April 13 International Herald Tribune
story observed that attorneys general may not issue court orders any more
than judges may prosecute suspects.
Indeed, no matter what people wished for Elian,one likely reason that 2/3's
of Americans applauded his abduction by a federal SWAT team is that they did
not grasp the case's basic legalities.
The Justice Department should have secured a court order to transfer Elian
from his great-uncle to his father. Instead, Justice used a fraudulent
search warrant that falsely called Elian "an illegal alien" and "a concealed
person," presumably hidden atop Lazaro Gonzalez's back yard jungle gym.
Unaware of what the Constitution entails, affluent and disengaged Americans
seem rather comfortable with a kind of elective monarchy.
Every four years,they pick a king who governs largely as he wishes. Members
of Congress - like an American House of Lords, breezily conduct their own
affairs.
The two divisions of the royal family occasionally cooperate, usually - but
not always - within the law. Every other
November, Americans decide which among them may keep their orbs and scepters
and continue ruling at their whim.
In August 1993, for instance, a Democratic Congress approved Bill Clinton's
proposed hikes in top income and estate tax rates retroactive to January 1,
1993, despite the Constitution's explicit instruction that "No Bill of
Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
Indeed, Clinton's measure actually raised taxes on moneys earned during the
final days of the Bush Administration, before Clinton's inauguration!
After the Senate Judiciary Committee failed to approve Justice Department
nominee Bill Lann Lee, Clinton defiantly named him acting assistant attorney
general in December 1997. Lee serves today as America's most powerful
squatter, without constitutionally-required Senate confirmation.
Although the Constitution unambiguously states: "The Congress shall have the
Power To lay and collect Taxes," the Federal Communications Commission in
1998 imposed the $2.25 billion-per-year "Gore Tax" on telephones.
Worse yet, the FCC forbids phone bills from separately
identifying this roughly 5 percent telephone tax as a tax, never mind the
phone companies' First Amendment freedom to communicate with their customers
as they like.
Congress voted last July 15 to accept a 3.4 percent salary
increase,effective January 1,regardless of the 27th Amendment's requirement
that compensation changes commence after "an election of Representatives
shall have intervened." Congressmen feathered their beds by dubbing this
unconstitutional pay hike a "cost-of-living adjustment." The media and
masses snored right through this shakedown.
America's public cluelessness begins in schools that teach little about
English and the sciences and less about government.
Sen.Joseph Lieberman (D.Conn.) joined members of the American Council of
Trustees and Alumni on June 27 to call on "educators at all levels to
redouble their efforts to bolster our children's knowledge of U.S. history
and help us restore the vitality of our civic memory."
A major overhaul of America's classrooms-through charter schools, vouchers
or total privatization - would boost the odds that citizens will learn why
this country is so special and how to keep it that way.
Meanwhile, Americans would be wise to heed the man who penned the
Declaration of Independence on July 4,1776. "If a nation expects to be
ignorant and free," Thomas Jefferson said, "it expects what never was and
never will be."