Joseph Smith Jr. Quotes
The Constitution is not a law, but it empowers the people to make laws... The Constitution tells us what shall not be a lawful tender... The legislature has ceded up to us the privilege of enacting such laws as are not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States... The different states, and even Congress itself, have passed many laws diametrically contrary to the Constitution of the United States.
Smith, Joseph. History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Vol. 5, Deseret News, 1909, p. 289.
This is a classic type of fallacious political logic. The author claims that there are no powers in the constitution to make laws in a number of important areas of our society. What is true, is that there is no explicitly and uniquely specified statements in the Constitution regarding the areas he specified (and some he didn’t like education). However the power to make laws in these areas comes from the “Commerce Clause” where the Federal Government was given the power to regulate Interstate Commerce. And that is what the Federal Government does make laws about. Food that is sold in the state where it is grown is regulated by the states. But interstate agriculture is. Medicines and weapons are also sold and transported in interstate commerce. Even housing is in part covered as financing and mortgages, building materials, working conditions of the building companies are part of Interstate Commerce. A succession of Congresses have recognized this and so has every Supreme Court in our history. McManus however believes that all these legislators and judges have been wrong and worse, part of a conspiracy to subvert the Constitution. See {630683} for his tendency to see conspiracies in politics.
This Cahier was the consensus of the Clergy of Blois in 1789. There were cahiers of several provinces of France—some by the clergy, some by the nobles. What is fascinating is the emergence of many of the pre-revolutionary French concepts. The example of the American revolution and its principles was known throughout the educated classes of France.
The Supreme Court which had found many of the New Deal laws unconstitutional, saw no Constitutional Problem with Social Security. However, the most popular legislation in American history had many right wing and in this case Fascist opponents. The Sentinels of the Republic was a group of wealthy right wing extremists who opposed FDR and all his programs of which Social Security was the most important. See {620798}.
There are many methods of voting in a legislative body. “Viva Voce” is Latin for “by Voice” and is often called a “Voice Vote”. Voting by ballot takes longer but had the advantage or disadvantage of secrecy. The theory was that if the New York Legislators could vote in a secret ballot, the lobbies and special interests would not be as influential since they would never know for sure—unless there were a unanimous vote—how any particular legislator voted. A further advantage is that Party Discipline could not be imposed and parties or “factions” as they were then called would be less powerful—a great concern of all the patriots who tended to distrust parties. The disadvantage was that the people who elected the legislator would never know how he voted. Note the frank admission that this was an “experiment”. Americans of the era realized that almost everything they were doing was a political experiment and this introduced a pragmatic force into structure and procedures of American politics.
Joseph Smith, Jr. was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was twenty-four, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death fourteen years later, he had attracted tens of thousands of followers and founded a religious culture that continues to the present.
