The Constitution was Deliberately Murdered

When State Senators such as Brad Hutto say that the Constitution can take care of itself, or that the Supreme Court will take care of it, they are saying that they don't care what the Constitution says. If it doesn't allow what they want to do than they just want it to go away. And people like him have made it go away.

Thomas Woods' new book, Who Killed the Constitution," points out the obvious, as he writes here, "United States government today is restrained not by the Constitution but simply by a sense of what it can get away with.

But ours is not the standard right-wing lament about the emasculation of the Constitution at the hands of liberal judges, though such judges receive in our pages none of the superstitious reverence Americans are taught to have for the judiciary. (Mencken once described a judge as merely a law student who graded his own examination papers.) To the contrary, we suggest that all three branches of the federal government, either separately or in collusion, have been responsible for turning the Constitution into just a museum piece, and that conservatives and liberals alike have much to answer for as well."

Here is another essay, this one by Kevin R. C. Gutzman:

"It is simple: the Constitution, as ratified, has no actual influence on them. It is just a totem toward which they bow, an arrow in the quiver of partisan argumentation, a trope for their use in crafting an intricate political argument. As an actual frame of government, in the hands of conservative pundits such as Mona Charen, the Constitution is dead. Conservatives’ favorite politicians and judges, as well as those of liberals, are among those who killed it. That is the verdict of Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush"

Below is a segment copied from Sarah Palin and SCOTUS posted by Bill Anderson at October 20, 2008 11:53 AM at the Lew Rockwell Blog.

The Constitution was not killed out of ignorance or because people truly misunderstood what it said. No, it was killed deliberately by people who did understand what it means. G. Rexford Tugwell, one of the main architects of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, wrote:

The Constitution was a negative document, meant mostly to protect citizens from their government.... Above all, men were to be free to do as they liked, and since the government was likely to intervene and because prosperity was to be found in the free management of their affairs, a constitution was needed to prevent such intervention.... The laws would maintain order, but would not touch the individual who behaved reasonably.

To the extent that these new social virtues developed [in the New Deal], they were tortured interpretations of a document intended to prevent them. The government did accept responsibility for individuals’ well-being, and it did interfere to make secure. But it really had to be admitted that it was done irregularly and according to doctrines the framers would have rejected. Organization for these purposes was very inefficient because they were not acknowledged intentions. Much of the lagging and reluctance was owed to constantly reiterated intention that what was being done was in pursuit of the aims embodied in the Constitution of 1787, when obviously it was done in contravention of them.