[90706] in Cypherpunks
10.5
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Sat Nov 22 17:55:34 1997
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 1997 15:42:23 -0500
From: Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org>
nobody since
Nixon was been impeached for violating his oath of
office by subverting the Constitution. This suggests
either that everyone honors the oath or that the oath is
meaningless.
Suppose, in a society with a normal level of
criminal behavior, there were no prosecutions for
burglary. Would you infer that there were no burglaries
in that society? Or would you infer, rather, that the
burglary laws just weren't being enforced?
When a
bill is proposed in Congress, our representatives almost
never ask themselves: "Where in the Constitution do
we get the power to enact this measure?" Instead they
presume that they have virtually any power they
choose to exercise. They simply feel no tension
between their will and the Constitution that is supposed
to restrain them. This doesn't look much like an ethos
of limited government.
