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July 5, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:49
July 5, 2012, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
That is absolutely right, Johnny Donovan.
This is Walter E. Williams holding the fort for the vacationing rush limbo, and he will be back on Monday, won't he?
And you can be on with us.
Walter E. Williams, sometimes my mother told me it was Edward, but I think it's excellent.
But anyway, that was Bo Snerdley talking with me just there.
And I'm sitting there with Mike, and I have Allie.
She's going to screen calls today.
And you can be on with us.
Very charming young lady, too.
You can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
And then, as is very common when I'm in front of the golden EIB microphone, during the second hour, I'm going to have my very good friend and colleague, Dr. Thomas Soule.
And what we're going to talk about today is his excellent column in his excellent syndicated column, and it's titled Judicial Betrayal.
And for the next hour, I'll let you wonder what that's about.
Anyway, I kind of, in a related matter, I kind of anticipated what the Supreme Court might do.
If you don't believe me, you say, well, check out my column, my nationally syndicated column for May 16th, 2012.
And the title of the column is, should we obey all laws?
And if you go down, and as a matter of fact, the title is available at my website.
It's walterewilliams.com.
And anyway, the third paragraph says, soon the Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of Obamacare.
Then I ask, but if the court rules that Obamacare is constitutional, what should we do?
Okay, so and so I asked the question, you know, kind of getting into kind of the principle here.
Suppose Congress enacted a law.
This will help us think about it.
Suppose Congress enacted a law and the Supreme Court ruled it constitutional requiring American families to attend church services at least three times a month.
Should we obey such a law?
Or suppose Congress said, suppose you were a jury member during the 1850s and a free person was on trial for assisting a runaway slave in clear violation of the Fugitive Slave Act.
Would you have voted for to punish the person?
Well, in the column I say, a moral person would find each of those laws either morally repugnant or a clear violation of the Constitution.
That is, what I'm saying is that moral people cannot rely solely on the courts to establish what's right or wrong.
And in the words of Thomas Jefferson, He said, and I quote, to consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine and indeed one that would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
Now, so what should we do?
Well, I think James Madison, see, a lot of Americans, they're saying, well, whether it's a good idea or a bad idea, this Obamacare, but that's irrelevant, whether it's a good idea or a bad idea.
The question is, is it permissible under the United States Constitution?
Anyway, in 1798, Jefferson and Madison, they drafted what's known as the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.
And they said, now listen to this, folks, they said, quote, resolved that the several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government.
And whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.
Now, I think that makes it clear.
And I think that what we need to do, I think the American citizens ought to press their governors, their state governors, and legislatures just to nullify the law.
Just to plain nullify it and say the citizens of such and such a state don't have to obey Obamacare because it's unconstitutional, regardless of what the Supreme Court said.
And I might cite a statement in Marlbury versus Madison that was written in, that decision was written in 1803.
And it said, quote, all laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.
Let me repeat that.
In Marlbury versus Madison, in 1803, the court said, all laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.
Now, I said, well, American citizens ought to press their state governors and legislators just to nullify the law.
Well, maybe we have a governor with the courage.
And this is a story carried in the Washington Times, I don't know the date, let's say July 2nd.
And it's an exclusive interview with Florida Governor Rick Scott.
And here's what he said.
He said, I will not, referring to Obamacare, I will not implement this law.
Florida will not implement Obamacare.
Now, that, my friends, is a governor with guts.
Now, I wonder how many state governors or legislatures it would take for the Congress just to repeal Obamacare.
How many?
Do you think it'll take 30?
Do you think it'll be 40?
Or do you think that there are that many governors and legislators with the guts to stand up against the federal government?
And surely there's room for them to have the guts.
They have a justification for it.
And that's the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution that says the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.
Now, I think that's plain language.
And so I think we ought to just nullify it.
Now, some people say, look, Williams, you know, we had a problem with nullification in 1861.
It caused the war of 1861 when the Confederate States said they're going to nullify the unconstitutional functions of the federal government.
And you say, well, gee, Williams, that led to 600,000 lives lost in our costliest war.
Well, I think two, excuse me, I think two things are different this time.
First, most Americans are against Obamacare.
And secondly, I don't believe, and you call me up and tell me if I'm wrong about this, I don't believe that you could find a United States soldier who would follow a presidential order to descend on a state to round up or shoot fellow Americans because they refused to follow.
a congressional order to buy health insurance.
We'll be back with some of your calls after this.
And it's Walter Williams sitting in for the vacationing rush.
And you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
Now, before somebody calls up and says, or actually maybe it will be a judge or a legal scholar or someone else will call up and say, well, Williams, the reason why Congress can do this, it's covered by the General Welfare Clause.
Anybody who would say that is an idiot.
And I'll tell you why.
Let me just give you some quotations.
Because they don't know, maybe idiot is too strong a word.
They are just they just don't know anything about our United States Constitution.
And so Snerdley said, well, that qualifies for idiocy.
Okay, but here's what James Madison said.
In a letter to Edmund Pendleton in 1792, quotation, and these quotes are available at my website under waltywilliams.com under a whole bunch of government quotations.
Quote: 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.
I believe, let's see, Thomas Jefferson said the same thing.
He says that Congress does not have the authority to do anything in the general welfare, but only those that are enumerated in the Constitution.
And so I don't find any enumeration for health care in the Constitution.
I do not even believe that the word health appears in the United States Constitution.
So if it doesn't appear there, well, they can't do it.
And that's what the enumerated powers mean, ladies and gentlemen.
It means that if it is not among those 21 things that are listed in Article 1, Section 8, well, Congress cannot do it.
Anyway, let's go to the phones.
Let's go to Ryan and Kennewick, Washington.
Welcome to the show, Ryan.
Well, Ryan?
Yes.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
How are you?
Well, the world's wrong, and I'm right.
I agree.
The reason I was calling is a little while ago, or a few minutes ago, you talked about how many state governors or legislatures could we get together to band together to repeal Obamacare?
To nullify it, yes.
To nullify it, yeah.
Well, here in Washington, our governor, Governor Gregoire, as soon as Obamacare came about and the state exchange came about, she started bankrolling state money to pay for it.
So she is so far behind this, it's pathetic.
Well, I think that we find many Americans that way.
And matter of fact, many people who are in Congress, many people, the Republicans, I hear Republicans saying things like, well, we're going to look through Obamacare and keep the good parts.
Well, it's no good parts.
That's not the criteria for laws in our country.
The criteria is: is it permissible by the United States Constitution?
Exactly.
No, that's the rules.
And so if we do not, if we do not, if we look, if we look to questions of whether something is a good idea or a bad idea, we've just lost our Constitution.
We're losing our liberties.
Matter of fact, for example, let me ask you folks out there.
I don't bike as much as I used to, but I used to bike, oh, something like 2,000 miles between April and November when it started getting cold.
Now, I think that is a good idea.
And the reason why it's a good idea, I mean, even though I've been living one-third of the time our country has been in existence, my body is fine.
Matter of fact, at the gym that I exercise in, the ladies look at me like I'm eye candy.
Now, I think that that's a good idea for people to exercise like that, but should that become the law?
Should that become the law of our land, a law of the land, because it's a good idea?
No.
It's because it's not in the United States Constitution.
Let's go to Jerry from Dover, New Jersey.
Welcome to show.
Yeah, how you doing?
Okay.
The way I look at it is Roberts didn't do his job.
He basically told us that those are the people we elected, and they passed the law.
His job is not to tell us to redo an election.
His job is to rule if it's constitutional or not.
So he should go back at the Supreme Court saying, you didn't do your job.
Yeah, and I think you're right.
And I think we're going to have Professor Tom Sowell on in the second hour, and he's going to elaborate on it.
And I recommend it in the meantime, you should check out his column.
And his column's available all over the country.
Townhall.com carries his column.
And it's called Judicial Betrayal.
And just check it out.
And he says the same things that you say.
Well, the recourse that we have, Bo Snerdley asked, what recourse do we have?
Well, we have a recourse is just to nullify the law.
To nullify.
For example, I mean, we're a nation of wimps.
Now, we just celebrated the Independence Day.
Now, back then, people say, well, King George said this.
He's going to impose the tea tax.
He's going to impose this tax.
And he's going to impose that tax.
What would you have told the founding fathers back then?
We say, well, it's the law.
We should just obey the law.
But the founding fathers said, no, we're not going to obey the law, and we're going to go to war with what was the mightiest nation on the face of the earth at that time.
They had courage.
And yes, I am advocating war.
I'm advocating, not picking up arms.
I don't think we need to pick up arms, not yet anyway, but I'm saying that we should, the state government should nullify the Obamacare.
And by the way, speaking of arms, the Second Amendment, what do you think?
Why do you think the founders of our nation gave us the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, the right to keep and bear arms?
How many people think that the founders gave us the right to keep and bear arms so that we can go deer and duck hunting?
No.
They specifically said they're giving us the right to keep and bear arms.
They're protecting the right to keep and bear arms to allow us to protect ourselves against our government.
Not King George, but our government.
Because the founders recognize that the essence of government is force and force is evil and we ought to be able to protect ourselves.
We'll be back after this.
We're back, ladies and gentlemen.
It's Walter E. Williams sitting in for the vacationing Rush Limbaugh.
And there's something else I want to talk about.
Anyway, it's related.
And that is that Benjamin Franklin, he's a statesman and signer of the Declaration of Independence.
He said that only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.
And John Adams, another signer, he echoed a similar sentiment.
He says our Constitution was made only for moral and religious people.
Jane, Mr. Snerdley has asked me, wasn't Franklin one of the greatest womanizers of the time?
Yes, he was.
I mean, but, well, I think he was helping out women.
So that's a virtuous.
But anyway, let's think about whether we are a moral people.
And let's think about it with just a few questions because I think at the root of our problems, ladies and gentlemen, is immorality in our country.
Now, let's start with a few questions.
Just kind of think about it.
Suppose I saw an elderly lady painfully huddled on a heating grate in the dead of winter in downtown New York.
She's hungry.
She needs some shelter.
She needs some medical attention.
And I suppose I walk up to one of you and using intimidation and threats demanded that you gave me $200.
Having taken your money, then I purchased some food and shelter and medical assistance for the lady.
Now, the question I ask you, would I be guilty of a crime?
I believe a moral person would say, yes, Williams, you're guilty of a crime regardless of what you did with the money.
You've committed theft because theft is taking the property of one person and giving it to another.
Now, see, ladies and gentlemen, most Americans can agree with me.
Now, here comes the hard part.
Would it be theft if I were able to get three people to agree with me to take your money?
I think so.
Would it be theft if I got 100 people to agree?
What about 100 million or 200 million people to agree to take by force somebody else's money and give it to somebody else?
Would it be theft?
Or what if instead of personally taking your money to assist a woman, I got together with other Americans and asked Congress to use internal revenue agents to take your money?
In other words, what is clearly immoral and illegal when done privately does not become moral when it's done collectively.
And we can think of many examples of that.
I mean, the Nazi Nuremberg laws, the apartheid laws in South Africa.
Now, don't get me wrong, ladies and gentlemen.
I don't want anybody call up and say, well, gee, Williams doesn't care about his fellow man.
I personally believe that assisting one's fellow man in need by reaching into one's own pockets is praiseworthy and laudable.
Doing the same by reaching in somebody else's pockets is despicable and worthy of condemnation.
Now, our economic crisis in our country is a direct result of immoral conduct.
That is, Roughly two-thirds, the three-quarters of our federal budget can be described as Congress taking the property of one American and giving it to another.
And look at the three programs that account for nearly half of the federal budget.
They are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Then there are corporate welfare programs, farm subsidies, and thousands of other programs such as food stamps that take money from one American and give to another.
And turns out that according to the Census Bureau in 2009, 130 million Americans, or 46% of us, receive handouts of one kind or another from the federal government.
And so look at what we're doing.
Look at what we're doing, ladies and gentlemen.
We're not talking about ending immoral conduct by Congress, stopping Congress from taking what belongs to one American and giving it to another to whom it does not belong.
We're talking about how should we pay for it?
Namely, let's tax the rich.
Not even realizing that even if Congress imposed a 100% tax on the earnings of people who make $250,000 or more, it would keep the government running for only 141 days.
Now, before I get to your calls, I got a number of letters in response to that particular column.
Someone said, look, I'm offended that you call Social Security handout because they've been duped.
And it's not their fault.
You know, the Social Security pamphlet of 1936 read, quote, beginning November 24, 1936, the United States government will set up a Social Security account for you.
The checks will come to you as a right.
Therefore, Americans were led to believe that some of the money that they put taxed for Social Security was put into an account.
But 1937, the Supreme Court read, the proceeds of both the employer and the employee taxes are paid in the Treasury like any other taxes, and they're not earmarked in any way.
That's available, matter of fact.
Click on my website and look for a dupe by Congressional Lies, and you'll see that.
And then on another case, Fleming versus Nestor, it said roughly the same thing.
So here's the question out there, people who do not believe they're being given handouts with Social Security and Medicare.
In order for a Social Security check to be written, where does the money come from?
Is it Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus?
No, the money comes from some other American.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're back.
And you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
One more thing before I get to the phones about the Social Security.
Now, on the Social Security website, and you have to go to SSA.gov front slash history.
Anyway, it says, entitlement to Social Security benefits is not a contractual right.
It goes on to say, there has been a temptation throughout the program's history for some people to suppose that their FICA payroll taxes entitle them to a legal benefit in a contractual sense.
Congress clearly had no such limitation in mind when crafting the law.
But the Social Security Administration site fails to recognize, fails to mention, that it was the Social Security Administration itself that created the lie that, that's in the Social Security pamphlet in 1936, the checks will come to you as a right.
That's Congress and your government lying to you.
Let's go to the phones and talk to Terry from Missouri.
Welcome to the show.
Dr. Williams, this is a big honor for me.
I have many of your books, and you're my favorite host.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you very much.
You're bringing up nullification, and I would commend to the listeners Tom Wood's book on nullification out of the Von Mises Institute.
An excellent read, and it puts what you've been saying in perspective.
I wanted to comment on a couple of Democrat presidents who I think really hit the nail on the head with what is and what is not within the scope of the government.
And the first one is a gent by the name of Franklin Pierce.
You may remember him, not personally.
He was confronted with an issue presented by Congress of authorizing $10,000 to set up care facilities for the insane.
And he vetoed this, saying that, well, while it may be a noble thing, it does not meet the requirements of the Constitution, number one.
And number two, if we do it for these folks, what's the next group coming forward?
That's right.
Franklin Pierce and another one.
I'm going to let you guess.
Well, the next one that I'm going to, oh, by the way, Franklin Pierce was not renominated by his party at the end of his first term.
Yeah, right.
Number two is a friend of mine by the name of Grover Cleveland.
Yes.
And he vetoed a $100,000 appropriation to help the drought-stricken in Texas, saying that he found no substantiation in the Constitution for that, and it's better done through private sources.
That's right.
And matter of fact, Grover Cleveland is my hero because I think he is the veto king.
I think he vetoed more acts of Congress than all of his predecessors combined.
And the veto message going to the Congress was, this is unconstitutional.
Well, you remember what Mr. Cleveland said?
He says, well, and this is just a shorthand version of it, but he says, well, he says, you know, the people should enthusiastically or cheerfully support their government.
It is not the role of government to support the people.
That is absolutely right.
You're absolutely right.
But we need people, more presence.
We need more people like that running for office.
Absolutely.
People who will recognize the limitations of the United States Congress.
Let's go to, can we take another call or?
Okay, okay.
Take another call.
Let's go to, oh, what about, let's see, who do we want?
Do we want Mike from Columbus, Ohio?
Welcome to the show.
Hi, Mr. Williams.
It is a great honor and pleasure to be on the show today.
And I'd like to talk about something that very few people talk about.
I mean, you're going in the right direction with talking about governors nullifying the law, but very few people talk about how the juries have the power to nullify the law.
And jury nullification is something that, I mean, it isn't even told to juries that they have this power to say this law is unreasonable.
We're not going to find this person guilty.
You're right.
And matter of fact, any lawyer telling a jury he will be disbarred.
Right.
And I encourage people to go to Wikipedia and look it up.
Go to jurybox.org and look it up.
Go to fika.org and the fully informed.
But I think the reason that the founders gave us, or the reason for jury trials, was to protect ourselves against the king's men.
That is, because the trial by one's peers gives some protection against the government.
Thanks for calling.
We will next go to who shall we take?
Okay, let's take Keith in Morgantown.
Welcome to the show, Keith.
Oh, hey, Dr. Williams, it's a privilege to talk to you, and I appreciate you taking my call.
Another one of these kind of insurances that you don't ever need until you need it is unemployment.
And that has gotten to be like kind of a government sort of scam in its own kind of right, too, I feel.
Well, I think that, you know, since 1948, my colleague, I believe Jim Bennett, he's my colleague at George Mason University, I believe that he has statistics to show that since 1948, the duration of unemployment has virtually doubled, if not tripled, because of unemployment benefits.
That is, a person becomes unemployed, and so he can say, well, look, I don't have to take the first job that comes along.
I'll just sit on my butt and receive an unemployment check.
And I think that's devastating.
And matter of fact, some people say, well, look, you need some kind of unemployment compensation.
Well, we have to ask ourselves, when people say you need something, you definitely need something and you can't do without it.
We have to say, well, we've been a nation since 1787, after the Congressional, the Constitutional Congress Convention.
And we went from 1787 until the 1940s without unemployment compensation.
How in the world did we make it?
Well, people saved for a rainy day.
That is, they were more future-oriented.
You hear people say things like, well, we need food stamps.
Look at, we're having a bad time.
We need food stamps.
Here's the folks, his question, my question, you folks.
When the poor Irish in the 1840s were fleeing the potato famine and they arrived on New York's shores with just the clothing on their back, how in the, what's their food stamp program?
If not, how in the world did they make it?
We'll come to some of these answers for these questions after this.
Well, we're wrapping up the final hour.
And state, first hour, did I say final?
Yeah, right, yeah.
And next hour, Dr. Thomas Sowell is going to be on with us.
And, you know, I get letters.
Matter of fact, I have an email where a person is kind of angry at on referring to Social Security as handouts.
Well, yes, you were forced, you were forced, but that doesn't change the fact that your Social Security check does not come from Santa Claus.
It does not come from the tooth fairy.
The only way they can send a social security check is to force somebody who is 25 years old, 35 years old in the workforce to take their money and send it out to you.
Now, you might argue, yes, you're owed something because you were tricked and duped and forced into this bankrupt program.
But is it a 25-year-old that owes you?
Is it a 30-year-old person who owes you?
I think not.
I would like for somebody to call the show and tell me why somebody who is 35, 25 years old is somehow responsible for sending checks out to Social Security retirees.
Who is responsible?
Now, there's a solution to the program.
There's a partial solution.
But you people wouldn't go for that.
In other words, one of the solutions, for example, well, I'm told I have 30 seconds, but one of the solutions is for the government to get rid of all this land that it owns.
It owns 30 acres of land.
And what I would do if the government, I would tell them, you can keep all my Social Security checks.
Just give me 40 acres and I'll be satisfied.
And I think that give all of us 40 acres and we'd all be satisfied.
Well, anyway, the next hour we're going to have my colleague Thomas Sowell and he's going to talk about judicial betrayal.
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