http://www.etherzone.com/2003/bish062503.shtml
'ENTITLEMENTS' ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL
TAXPAYERS GETTING SOAKED FOR 'FREE-BEES'
By: Gordon Bishop
No where in the United States Constitution can you find any "entitlements"
to taxpayers - or for any Americans, for that matter.
Then how did America become a social welfare state almost as hopeless as
Marxism and Communism?
You can trace it to the 16th Amendment that established our nation's first
income tax - an "illegal" tax that was never fully ratified by the States in
1913.
That was the beginning of the end of America as a free, independent,
sovereign State.
By taxing American workers whatever amount they wanted, the United States
Congress and the President were able to endlessly expand the federal
government and create a massive, uncontrollable welfare state.
The Welfare State began with President Franklin Roosevelt's irresponsible
"New Deal" program in the 1930s, followed by President Lyndon Johnson's
failed "Great Society" program in 1960s.
It has been all downhill since.
Because of soaring taxes at all levels of government, politicians forced
upon American families two-working parents.
Remember when mothers stayed at home and raised children?
Today, there's a 75 percent illegitimacy rate in Urban America, and over 33
percent illegitimacy rate nationally - millions and millions of babies being
born out of wedlock. No fathers!
And let's not forget a 51 percent divorce rate, largely due to family
financial problems and a liberal promiscuous society.
America has paid the ultimate price of socialist liberalism - decadence in
American society, and the destruction of the American family.
Let's compare America before the federal income tax in 1913, and before the
New Deal socialist program, and the Great Society $7 trillion failure.
I look at my own grandmother as the example of the "American Dream" for all
immigrants.
My mother's mother, Catherine Mertens, arrived in America at the turn-of-the
20th Century from Germany. To become an American, my grandmother had to be
in good health. If there was anything wrong with her, physically or
mentally, she would have been shipped back to Germany with whatever baggage
she had with her.
My grandmother was on her own. There was no welfare, no health care,
Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, no "entitlements" for food, clothing,
shelter, transportation.
Nothing.
My grandmother worked in a common restaurant scrubbing floors and cleaning
bathrooms and getting rid of the garbage.
When she could speak English, she was promoted to waitress and worked 12
hours a day, six days a week. No unemployment checks in those days. You
either worked, or starved.
Then she met my grandfather, of Belgium descent, got married and raised
seven children, my mother being the youngest. The family lived in Franklin,
Sussex County.
My mother and her sisters and brothers all married and raised their families
in North Jersey. None of them ever needed welfare. It was all about family,
work, church, and helping others. That's what neighors and friends did then.
Look at society today. God, ethics and morality are losing the war to
liberalism. Liberalism has made much of America dependent on the federal
government from the cradle to the grave. Most people today expect something
for nothing.
That's why the federal government is the largest employer in the United
States. And State governments, with few exceptions, are the largest
employers in their sovereign States.
In the real world of independence, accountability and responsibility, there
is no such thing as a free lunch. We've become a society of free lunches and
entitlements requiring a more than $2 trillion-a-year federal budget - and
massive, indifferent bureaucracies at all levels of government doing for
people what people are capable of doing for themselves.
The only humanitarian exceptions are those with documented mental and
physical disabilities. They are truly worthy of our help, but help without
vast and confusing bureaucracies skimming most of the tax dollars off the
top for themselves.
America must get back to before there was an income tax, before there was a
New Deal, or a Great Society - all liberal notions that undermined our
Constitution and Bill of Rights for freedom, independence and opportunity.
And George W. Bush can start today.
--
"[Liberty] considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as
the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom."
--Alexis de Toqueville
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