Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Bad Year for Liberty
photo credit: Leo Reynolds I consider 1913 to be a very bad year for liberty because in that year the 16th and 17th amendments were both passed. Each of these amendments is a lever that loosened the moorings that had limited the power of the federal government for 126 years to that point. It’s true…
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Constitutional Amendment 17
Following close on the heels of the sixteenth amendment (both in terms of time and impact) comes what may well be the second most fundamental alteration to the public perception and operation of our government through the Seventeenth Amendment. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each State, elected…
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Constitutional Amendment 16
The longer I live and the more I study, the more convinced I become that the sixteenth amendment is the greatest assault on liberty in our Constitution. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census…
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Government Can’t Do Charity
Those pushing the need for health care reform spend a lot of time talking about the uninsured and the many unfortunate people who cannot or will not afford to pay for health care. (Mostly they talk about the “cannot pay” people except when they are proposing to have individual mandates, then they start talking about…
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All Things to All People
In a classic case of Federal-sightedness, President Obama is stepping in to mediate an altercation between a black professor and a white police officer. Normally I would be disappointed that the President had nothing better to do but lately I have had more of a mindset where this makes me happy – in fact, I…
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The Pledge of Allegiance
The Pledge of Allegiance may well be the most widely memorized bit of prose in the United States. In fact it is so widely known that I wonder how many people have ever stopped to consider where it came from or what it means (few I suspect). It was first written in 1892 but it’s…
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Facts From Honduras
One month after Manuel Zalaya was sent into exile we are hearing very little news on the situation. The crisis in Honduras is still not resolved however and now Roberto Micheletti, the interim President, is expressing his views in the Wall Streett Journal. The views that he shares sound like he is very much on…
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Honest Democrats in Congress
If we are ever to achieve any health care reform that will actually have a positive impact on our society it will require that we have honest Democrats in Congress. Not just any honest Democrats, but enough of them and in the right places that they can use their honesty to guide the debate. The…
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Constitutional Amendment 15
The 15th Amendment appears to be the first attempt to curb the efforts of those who were trying to deny blacks the right to vote as explicitly established in the 14th amendment. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any…
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The Cost Issue is MIA
Matthew Piccolo has a good summary of some of the major issues that are attached to the current health care proposal. That seemed like a good complementary article to what I wanted to point out about the Health Care Reform Freight Train™ speeding through the halls of Congress – there is a major issue that…
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