Joe Levi:
a cross-discipline, multi-dimensional problem solver who thinks outside the box – but within reality™

Who Killed the Constitution?: The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama

This week’s recommended reading is a book called Who Killed the Constitution?: The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama.

Think it’s just judges who are trampling on the Constitution? Think again.

The fact is that government officials long ago rejected the idea that the Constitution possesses a fixed meaning limiting the U.S. government’s power. Going right to the scenes of the crimes, bestselling authors Thomas E. Woods Jr. and Kevin R. C. Gutzman dissect twelve of the most egregious assaults on the Constitution.

“If you want to know why the federal government regulates the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the words you speak, read Who Killed the Constitution? . . . When the history of these unfree times is written, Tom Woods’s and Kevin Gutzman’s fearless work will be recognized as the standard against which all others are measured.”
–Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News senior judicial analyst and bestselling author of The Constitution in Exile

“It’s about time someone shouted out that the emperor has no clothes.”
–Kirkpatrick Sale, director of the Middlebury Institute and author of Human Scale

“Woods and Gutzman (two bestselling authors in the Politically Incorrect Guide series) appeal to both left and right in this constitutionalist jeremiad. Liberals will agree about the unconstitutionality of the draft, warrantless wiretapping and presidential signing statements. Conservatives will agree about the unconstitutionality of school busing, bans on school prayer and Roosevelt’s suspension of the gold standard. The common thread is the authors’ brief for a federal government strictly limited to the powers explicitly granted by the Constitution. The authors’ exegeses of the Constitution and court decisions, heavy on original intent arguments, are lucid and telling, but not always consistently supportive of liberty: their reading of the First Amendment implies that state governments may restrict speech, religion and the press. Their attack on expansive federal power-even federal spending on cancer research-is perhaps too successful; it inadvertently supports scholars like Daniel Lazare who argue that the Constitution is too antiquated, constraining and hard to change to keep up with a modern consensus on civil rights and good governance.”
—Publishers Weekly

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2 Responses

  1. joelevi says:

    Who Killed the Constitution?: The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama http://www.syracuse08.com/index.php/2010… #utpol

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