I am not much of a legal expert, so my comments on the recent Supreme Court decision would be by analogy. US has had similar levels of idiocy before, in particular during WW2 and again during the 1970s. Remember “wage and price controls”? I don’t know history well enough to tell by what mechanism those specific impositions were dismantled back then, but it would make for a useful study.
My point is that this isn’t the end of the world, merely a gradual impoverishment of the population combined with a massive reduction of personal freedom. Much like East Germany, not quite on level with North Korea. The difference from East Germany is that emigration is still legal (though IRS wants to tax expats almost forever) but the similarity is that Fed agencies (particularly FBI, DEA, ATF) are trying to enlist gratuitous numbers of informants. The pernicious effect of providing monetary incentives for informing on fellow Americans to the Big Brother or the state-level “friends of the people” is going to be a longer-lasting, more detrimental cultural effect than the economic damage itself.
We’ve been through this before with the 1850-1861 events. We’ve also seen wartime laws against spies and alien sympathizers used to quash domestic dissent during both Wold Wars. Somehow, this country survived and even some of its culture. At this time, censorship isn’t yet in full swing, so we better use the opportunity to interest our friends and neighbors in that quaint notion of “live and let live”.
A book very much worth reading is “Restoring the lost constitution” by prof. Randy Barnett (Georgetown Law).
Anti-federalist writer “Brutus” wrote in 1787 (see http://constitution.org/afp/brutus05.htm) that the Constitution (or as it then was, the proposed constitution whose ratification was hotly debated) places no limit whatsoever on the power of taxation, which means that it places no limit on the Federal power, period. James Madison (in Federalist #41, http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa41.htm) casually dismissed that statement with the assertion that “But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.”
It’s rather bizarre for him to claim that, since the natural way of reading the text of section 8 is that each item marked off by a semicolon is a separate power, rather than the first being a general statement and the remaining being a more precise description. But in any case, it’s clear that Madison was wrong and the reality (at least as defined by modern courts) is that Brutus was right, the Federal government has no limits on its powers thanks to the unlimited power of taxing for any purpose whatsoever and to any amount whatsoever.
Clearly it’s time to throw the bums out.