Sheldon
Senior Member
- Apr 2, 2010
- 5,213
- 1,431
- 48
Under the U.S. Constitution the reason that killing, theft, blackmail are illegal is not for any considerations of 'morality' in any capacity. The Founders were extremely careful not to base ANY component of the federal law via the Constitution on any basis of morality or virtue.
The reason killing, theft, blackmail are illegal is because they violate unalienable rights that the Constitution was designed to protect, such rights being the unalienable right to one's life and one's legally acquired property.
Riche honorably acquired his property and, according to the Constitution, an unalienable right to use it for his own purposes short of infringing on the unalienable rights of any other.
Please point to the Constitutional provision that authorizes the government to take property from Riche so that Pauvre may have it.
Can we quit with the pretense about cows?
The government has the authority under the general welfare clause coupled with the 16th Amendment, confirmed by the body of SCOTUS cases specifically post-FDR.
SCOTUS interprets existing law or it is supposed to. SCOTUS did not have the jurisdiction to approve or disapprove of welfare but rather whether equal protection applies in the application of welfare.
But are you saying there is no unalienable right to the property that one acquires by honorable, ethical, legal means? That the government or SCOTUS can decree that we must give up whatever the government decides that it needs in order to do whatever?
Does the government have all power to make those decisions?
If not, where do you draw the line?
It's just like all the other rights. They're not absolute, at least not imo or in the opinion of the Supremes. There is an arbitrary boundary drawn by the government that society elects.
Congress has the power to tax. And consent to that taxation is given by continuing to live and do business in this country.
And yes, government--we--have the power to make those decisions about the levels of taxation and how those funds are spent.