So what do I think of the next president? I didn’t like his predecessor’s “New New Deal,” so why would I like Barack Hussein Obama’s Great Great Society?

H. L. Mencken called elections “a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” Henry Hazlitt said that “government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn’t first take from somebody else.” But while robbing Peter to pay Paul is a philosophical given to the clowns competing for the commander-in-chief’s crown, it’s really much worse than that.

The nation’s treasury is empty. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the three musketeers plan on a whole lot of deficit spending. To keep running-up debt on an account that is not yours is fraud by any other name. It’s manifestly clear how close on the unconstitutional continuum Hillary, Hussein and McCain stand.

Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), in his treatise on the Principles of Politics, defined liberty as the people’s right to “enjoy a boundless freedom in the use of their property and the exercise of their labor, as long as in disposing of their property or exercising their labor they do not harm others who have the same rights.”

This writer holds that the sole role of a legitimate government is to protect only the inalienable rights to life, liberty and property, and the pursuit of happiness. Why life, liberty, and property, and not housing, food, education, health care, child benefits, emotional well-being, enriching employment, adequate vacations, ad infinitum, as promised variously by the remaining (viable) presidential contenders? Because the former impose no obligations on other free individuals; the latter enslave some in the service of others.

The Constitution is with Constant (and Mercer), with some variations. All the “giving” Hussein and Hillary plan to do is extraconstitutional. Obama’s Manna From Heaven Healthcare Plan, and Hillary’s Cuba Care—these are not inalienable rights.

The welfare clause, “and Congress will have the power…to provide for the general welfare”—Article I, Section 8—our overlords have taken to mean that government can pick The People’s pocketbooks for any possible project, even though the general clause is followed by a detailed enumeration of the limited powers so delegated.

Asks historian Thomas E. Woods Jr.: “What point would there be in specifically listing the federal government’s powers if the general welfare clause had already provided the government with an essentially boundless authority to enact whatever it thought would contribute to people’s well-being?” Woods evokes no less an authority than the “Father of the Constitution," James Madison: “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.” 

Yet Professor Obama, that “brilliant” constitutional scholar, vows to “make available a new national health plan to all Americans … to buy affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to members of Congress.” This is but a tiny facet in his Manna From Heaven Healthcare windfall, which is not dissimilar to Hillary’s exhumed health plan, with varying degrees of coercion.

First of all, it’s not Obama who is funding Cures for Congress; it’s Yo Mama. Taxpayers fund the health care of Congress members and federal employees. Obama’s pious, but specious, prattle, and Hillary’s honeyed words mean one thing: In addition to Congress, the taxpayer will now carry the entire country. Added to the existing deadwood will be many more bureaucrats demanding to be kept in the lap of luxury—pensions and perks in perpetuity.

Second, the multiplying government “projects” the Obama (and Hillary) cult calls for under the guise of “change,” involve unethical takings. But since a bit of stealing between friends is no cause for complaint, let us also point out—as do the better economists; the ones politicians don’t hire—that government projects are unsuccessful.

The inverted and perverse incentive structure that characterizes these endeavors guarantees failure. Unlike the private sector, which must constantly cleanse itself if it is to survive and thrive, wrongdoing and incompetence in government sectors are seldom punished. They are, rather, rewarded with budgetary increases. A government department accretes through inefficiency. Failure translates into ever-growing budgets and powers and a further collectivization of accountability.

Last, but not least, on the scale of destruction: McCain. The Senator recently absented himself from a vote on that obscene Stimulus Package. Nary a murmur did he emit about Bush’s $3.1 trillion budget. And he has promised a monstrous “Marshall Plan” for Iraq. What cuts to welfare he will deliver stateside, McCain will divert to Iraq in the form of massive government make-work schemes.

It’s all in the McCain manifesto. The global warmonger is also a global-warming wing nut, another unconstitutional mega expense account the three scofflaws intend on maxing out.

If only the high-minded Framers had written the Constitution with crooks in mind. But as Joe Sobran once quipped, “the U.S. Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.” It certainly doesn’t intimidate the Hillary, Hussein and McCain axis of evil.

©2008 By Ilana Mercer

   WorldNetDaily.com

    February 15