NEVER TOLERATE TYRANNY!....Conservative voices from the GRASSROOTS.

How can congress "legally" pass legislation which is opposed by the majority of Americans?

Because we have strayed far and wide from the original intent and directives of the Constitution.

The Founder's View on National Health Care

Monday, March 22, 2010 -

By Dr. Edwin Vieira

Confronted with the strident debate on national health-care legislation, one must be amazed at how often the opponents of the
monstrosity being cobbled together by the legislative Doktors Frankenstein in the Disgrace of Columbia fail to appeal to constitutional fundamentals.

In The Federalist No. 57, James Madison relied on a constitutional principle that, for all intents and purposes, disposes
of any and every argument in favor of the present bills before
Congress. Recall that a main purpose of The Federalist Papers
was to refute claims that the Constitution delegated too much power to
the General Government, at the expense of the States and WE THE PEOPLE.
In No. 57, Madison addressed the contention that "the House of
Representatives * * * will be taken from that class of citizens which
will have least sympathy with the mass of the people, and be most
likely to aim at an ambitious sacrifice of the many to the
aggrandizement of the few".

Madison offered a number of reasons why this argument was invalid. But most relevant here was:

a fifth circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them from oppressive measures, thatthey can make no law which will not have its full operation on
themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the
society. This has always been deemed one of the
strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the
people together. It creates between them that communion of interests
and sympathy of sentiments of which few governments have furnished
examples: but without which every government degenerates into tyranny.
If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from
making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular
class of the society? I answer: the genius of the whole
system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and, above all, the
vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America—a spirit
which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it. If this
spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory
on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be
prepared to tolerate anything but liberty. [Emphasis supplied.]

Precisely why, as a matter of constitutional law, can Congress "make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their
friends, as well as on the great mass of the society"? Because part of
"the genius of the whole system" and "the nature of just and
constitutional laws" require equality in all legislation that is
capable of equal application. The Preamble sets as one of the
Constitution's goals "to * * * promote the general Welfare" – which,
because every power of Congress must be interpreted and applied in
conformity with the Preamble, entails that no law that can be written
so as to reach Americans in general can be tricked out with "legal
discriminations in favor of [Members of Congress] and [any other]
particular class of the society". The Constitution deems the ruling
criterion of "the general Welfare" so important that it repeats that
requirement in

Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, which delegates to Congress the "Power to lay and collect Taxes * * * to pay the Debts and provide for
the * * * general Welfare of the United States". So, any legislation
which involves taxation, spending, or both must be equally applicable
to all similarly situated Americans.

Now, as is self-evident, a scheme for "national health care" – involving taxation, spending, or both – can be written so as to apply to everyone, on precisely equal terms, designed to provide precisely equal benefits for and to impose
precisely equal burdens upon Members of Congress, the President, and
public officials and employees of the General Government, as well as
"Joe Doaks", "Ma and Pa Kettle", and every other ordinary American. Yet
the national health-care bills before Congress do not provide for universal and equal benefits for and burdens upon all
Americans. No, indeed. Members of Congress—"and their friends", as
Madison so delicately put it – are excluded from these bills, and
allowed to retain for themselves especially favorable health-care
coverage unavailable at any price to average citizens.

On the face of it, then, the present national-health care bills, being (in Madison's formulation) "[proposed] laws not obligatory on the
legislature, as well as on the people", are the products and the making
of nothing less than tyranny. As the English political philosopher John Locke defined it:

Tyranny is the exercise of Power beyond Right, which no Body can have a Right to. And this is making use of the Power any one has in his
hands; not for the good of those, who are under it, but for his own
private separate Advantage.