ObamaCare and UN Arms Trade Treaty

Beginning with the FDR administration's New Deal and increasing the population's need and misinterpretation as to what are entitlements during the LB Johnson administration's Great Society programs, too many Americans have become dependent upon the government being brainwashed into thinking government is better than private sector charity programs. 

If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost.
Barack Obama

 

As John Stossel wrote upon the subject:

I once thought there was too much poverty for private charity to make much of a difference. Now I realize that private charity would do much more—if government hadn’t crowded it out. In the 1920s—the last decade before the Roosevelt administration launched its campaign to federalize nearly everything—30 percent of American men belonged to mutual aid societies, groups of people with similar backgrounds who banded together to help members in trouble. They were especially common among minorities. Mutual aid societies paid for doctors, built orphanages, and cooked for the poor. Neighbors knew best what neighbors needed. They were better at making judgments about who needs a handout and who needed a kick in the rear. They helped the helpless, but administered tough love to the rest. They taught self-sufficiency. Mutual aid didn’t solve every problem, so government stepped in. But government didn’t solve every problem either. Instead, it caused more problems by driving private charity out. Today, there are fewer mutual-aid societies, because people say, ‘We already pay taxes for HUD, HHS. Let the professionals do it.’ Big Government tells both the poor and those who would help them, ‘Don’t try.’... When you rely on the government to help those who need it, you don’t practice benevolence yourself. You don’t take responsibility for deciding whom to help. Just as public assistance discourages the poor from becoming independent by rewarding them with fixed handouts, it discourages the rest of us from being benevolent. This may be the greatest irony of the welfare state: It not only encourages the poor to stay dependent, it kills individuals’ desire to help them.

And what Mary Katherine Ham wrote:

I don’t believe an individual’s commitment to helping the less fortunate can be measured by the amount of money one thinks the government should take from others. Having money taken from you does not make you charitable. Conversely, believing the government should leave people’s hard-earned money alone does not make one uncharitable. Rather, the charity is in the giving... I believe private charity could assuage most of the problems the government purports to solve with programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and welfare. And it can conquer Katrina, too... Federal and local government programs, of course, is making huge efforts and progress as well. The military and police, needless to say, are always invaluable in search and rescue efforts. I don’t mean to diminish the good work those public servants have done and will continue to do saving and rebuilding lives. What I do say is that private charity allows the generosity and ingenuity of Americans to meet the unpredictability of life head on in a way a staid government program never could.

The United States Constitution has two references of welfare and it is worded as: the General Welfare (of the People), one being in the Preamble and the other in the Taxing and Spending Clause. ⁱ

The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.
Thomas Sowell

The US Supreme Court, in the past, has upheld that the clause in the Preamble to the US Constitution –

has never been regarded as the source of any substantive power conferred on the Government of the United States or on any of its Departments. ⁱⁱ

In the Taxing and Spending Clause, the Supreme Court determined that it –

adheres to the construction given it by Associate Justice Joseph Story in his 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. ⁱⁱⁱ

Justice Story determined that the General Welfare Clause contained in the General Welfare Clause is not a grant of general legislative power, ^iv but a qualification on the taxing power ^v which includes it a federal power to spend federal revenues on matters of general interest to the federal government. ^vi

The result is that those clauses in the US Constitution are not for the government to be required to provide welfare to some citizens at the expense of other citizens and is not considered grants of a general legislative power to the federal government.

Alexander Hamilton, our first Secretary of Treasury, patriot and Founder, coincided with Joseph Story's commentaries and elaborated the taxing and spending powers in his 1791 Report on Manufactures.

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
Charles de Montesquieu

Within the US government archives and disclosed by the US Government Printing Office, p. 161 of the Constitution of the United States of America – Analysis and Interpretation, p. 161:

The clause, in short, is not an independent grant of power, but a qualification of the taxing power.

This may be part of the source where Chief Justice Johnson used to make his decision not to decide that the so-called ObamaCare cannot be legislated because it is not in the power of the government according to the Constitution of the United States and declaring that the penalty provided in the clause of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act can only be constitutional if it is a tax. Or, in his decision, he was playing the “Devil's Advocate” and making way for the legislative branch to do its duty and repeal that unconstitutional legislation. But that is not the purpose or required task of a Supreme Court Justice – the nine justices are chosen (or should be chosen by proper appointment) on the basis that they protect the integrity of the articles and amendments of the Constitution and interpret it only to clarify judgment in individual cases brought before them for their decision. Instead, like the two other branches of government, the Supreme Court has become a legislative entity operating from the judicial bench instead of their sworn oath purpose; using foreign laws in their decisions as well as public opinion or current political philosophies.

The argument whether the penalty clause in the ObamaCare legislation is a tax is moot because the legislation in itself is unconstitutional and outside the prescribed limitations of the federal government within the law of the land – the Constitution of the United States and its amendments. American citizens are as much to blame as those operating OUR government on OUR behalf, for they have come to believe that entitlements established unlawfully are their right. Therefore, we must endeavor to encourage that all Americans know THEIR Constitution and its amendments in order to help safeguard its integrity and its implementation. The US Constitution, for the most part, is written in understandable language and does not require a law degree or a BA in political science to understand its articles and amendments. Therefore, it is every American citizen's duty to self educate themselves in knowing their Constitution in order to ensure that it is being adhered to by the elected officials in government, both state and federal, for the maintenance and preservation of the republic as a free nation For the People and By the People.

[See Also: Constitution vs. Modern Welfare State by Larry Elders, published by WND.

UN ARMS TREATY

Recently, another important issue has come to the forefront of discussion: the United Nations Arms Treaty that is to be decided during the month of July with a vote on July 27^th for national leaders of nation members to sign. In the United States, that treaty, as in all treaties, must be ratified by the Senate of the US Congress.

Before I begin my reasons of protest concerning this treaty, I would like to denounce chain email misinformation that has made the Internet circuit passed on by people who do not look for reputable sources before forwarding.

First, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while advocating US involvement in this treaty and agreeing with President BH Obama, has not signed the United Nations Small Arms Treaty.

Second, despite questionable actions of President BH Obama in circumventing constitutional procedures, no treaty can bypass the normal legislative process of Congress because it must be approved by a two-thirds vote of the US Senate before they are considered to be binding.

Thirdly, while it is feared that this treaty, if signed by the President of the United States and ratified by the US Senate will be a prelude to mass gun control violating the right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and in the 1957 US Supreme Court case of Reid v. Covert declaring that the US Constitution supersedes international treaties ratified by the US Senate.

And finally, there is email stating that Australia passed gun control that gathered up personal firearms and destroyed them with outrageous statistical figures that do not correspond to factual statistics. See Snopes on that subject.

Amnesty International, Oxfam, and International Action Network on Small Arms (leader of the Control Arms Campaign) advocating this treaty provided the effects of what the Arms Trade Treaty would interpret as:

• be used in serious violation of international human rights or humanitarian law, or acts of genocide or crimes against humanity;
• facilitate terrorist attacks, a pattern of gender based violence, violent crime or organized crime;
• violate UN Charter obligations, including UN arms embargoes;
• be diverted from its stated recipient;
• adversely affect regional security; or
• seriously impair poverty reduction or socioeconomic development.

Loopholes, according to this plan would be minimized because it would include:

• all weapons – including all military, security and police arms, related equipment and ammunition, components, expertise, and production equipment;
• all types of transfer – including import, export, re-export, temporary transfer and transhipment, in the state sanctioned and commercial trade, plus transfers of technology, loans, gifts and aid; and
• all transactions – including those by dealers and brokers, and those providing technical assistance, training, transport, storage, finance and security.

The treaty must be fully clear in its implementation, but considering the United Nations history, their effectiveness in enforcement and abuse of the treaty remains questionable. Indeed, there has been corruption and violation within the United Nations non-elected members where even they violated their own embargo and/or sanction mandates – as against Saddam Hussein in the Oil for Food Programme scandal.

The most damning element against this UN treaty and the United Nations itself is that nations that are guilty of human rights and violations of sanctions for weapons proliferation are part of this endeavor to control guns worldwide. So it is no wonder that the American people and people who believe in freedom and the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self defense and legal hunting are concerned that this is just a facade for the long-term goals of the United Nation member body. Indeed, being an international body in order to solve differences between nations and punish rogue nations who violate world peace and human rights, its original purpose, have nation members who are tyrants and against all the principles of freedom and human dignity as part of their legislative body.

The United Nations headquarters should be removed from US soil and notice be given to vacate within a prescribed period of time – and the US government, its legislative body and executive administration should seriously consider dissolving our involvement with that corrupt entity, especially in the form of funding. In an economic crisis this would be one of the prudent things to do in order to get a handle on the national debt, as well as standing up for principles that the United Nation non-elected members do not either understand or wish to comply.

It is clear why We the People of the United States and free-thinking people of other nations are concerned about this proposed international treaty when it comes to firearm/weapon control. Our Founders knew full well what happens when a government implements gun control that eventually leads to confiscation – every statistic points to the uselessness of such a political ideology; and indeed points to the ulterior motives behind gun control and outright banning of means of self defense from the citizens of any nation.

Crimes against humanity are not deterred or stopped because of gun control and/or confiscation by government authorities.

History provides clear results:

• 1911 – Turkey (Ottoman Empire) established gun control and from 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated.
• 1929 – Soviet Union established gun control and from 1929 to 1953 approximately 20 million dissidents or anyone considered dangerous to the government were unable to defend themselves and were exterminated and/or sent to Siberian work camps.
• 1935 – The Nazi regime of Germany established gun control and 13 million Jews and other ethnic and political people were exterminated.
• 1935 – China established gun control at the same time Nazi Germany did and the Chinese people were unable to defend themselves from tyranny at home and invasion by Japanese. From 1948 to 1952, when Communism was implemented, people were sent to political reeducation-work camps and/or exterminated.
• 1956 – In Cambodia, gun control was established and from 1975 to 1977 one million “educated” people were exterminated.
• 1964 – Guatemala established gun control and from 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan natives were exterminated.
• 1970 – Uganda established gun control and from 1971 to 1979, 30,000 Christians could not defend themselves and were exterminated.
• Today – North Korea has gun control in effect for some time, and now has the largest concentration camp in the history of the world, surpassing the size and scope of the Nazi death camps. I could not find sufficient data to reveal how many have died from the tyranny of North Korea's regime over the decades.

A government that insists that citizens not have the right to keep and use firearms for self defense against foreign and domestic enemies cannot be trusted. If the Second Amendment is dissolved, so then, in turn, will the other amendments of the Bill of Rights dissolve, one by one.

Our government was established by wise and visionary men who not only established a Constitution to limit the power of government and prescribe what its powers are, but included amendments that is called the Bill of Rights that is written to ensure that all citizens have certain rights and liberties, especially the basics of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In conclusion, I fully understand the desire and need to keep firearms out of reach, or less likely to obtain, by organized crime elements and criminals in general; however, gun control laws in American history has shown that harassing and violating rights of lawful citizens only creates the scenario where only criminals (and police/military) have firearms – and the police and military cannot be everywhere at one time. Self defense measures require quick consideration and action, long before any law enforcement agents can arrive on the scene. Most police reports are made of crimes after the violent act has been committed instead of writing a report of a citizen defending his/her property, life, and the safety of family and fellow citizens. It is long past due for the time for mainstream media to include with reports of crimes using firearms mixed with reports of citizens saving lives and defending themselves using a firearm.

It is the main problem with media bias and manipulation we have today, along with its manipulation of political news that results in misinformed voters.

It would be an hypocrisy of our government to sign a treaty that is against our principles of government and the articles and amendments of the United States Constitution.

ENDNOTES

i The Constitution of the United States of America—Analysis and Interpretation

ii Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11

iii United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1

iv Story, Commentaries, §919. "A power to lay taxes for any purposes whatsoever is a general power; a power to lay taxes for certain specified purposes is a limited power. A power to lay taxes for the common defense and general welfare of the United States is not in common sense a general power. It is limited to those objects. It cannot constitutionally transcend them."

v Story, Commentaries, §919–24

vi Story, Commentaries, §972–75