55% Of Americans Favor Unconstitutional Regulation of TV and Radio

Sometimes I get my hopes up reading poll results that show how much so many Americans disagree with liberal principles.  Time and again vast majorities of Americans tell pollsters how much they are against so much of what liberals do.  But then there are polls like this one that deflate that hope I gain from those 8 out of every ten polls that give me hope.

Headline: “55% Favor FCC Regulation of TV and Radio”

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 55% of Adults believe the FCC should be allowed to regulate objectionable content on television and radio.

Ok, I realize that there is always that annoying 25% of Americans who think that unconstitutional government is ok.  So I can account for about half of the people in this poll who support the FCC answering the way they did.  But that leaves another 30% of Americans on top of that.

I mean, I know that the 25% who believe in unconstitutional government acts and liberalism have never read the Constitution but what about the rest of these yummy brains?  Do I really have to revisit why this is unconstitutional for the sake of these people?

I guess I must!

The money phrase of the United States Constitution which the left has bastardized to allow things like the FCC is the first section of Article I, Section 8.  It states, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”

The left has taken the term “general Welfare” to mean a broad right for their fellow travelers to regulate individuals and businesses within the United States.  That is how we get things like the FCC even though nowhere in Article I is there the power for government to regulate speech (in fact it is strictly forbidden under the first amendment), television, radio, the “public airwaves,” and all the other excuses liberals use to meddle in our lives.  If you doubt me, pull out your copy of the Constitution and look.  You will find no such power.

Time to quote the founding fathers:

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.” -James Madison

“Some who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed that the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,”amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.

Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms “to raise money for the general welfare.” – James Madison (Federalist 41)

“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” – James Madison

“The plan of the convention declares that the power of Congress, or, in other words, of the national legislature, shall extend to certain enumerated cases. This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd, as well as useless, if a general authority was intended.” – Alexander Hamilton (Federalist 83)

“the foundation of the Constitution is laid on this ground: “That all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved for the States, or to the people.” Whence it is meant to be inferred, that Congress can in no case exercise any power not Included in those not enumerated in the Constitution.” – Alexander Hamilton

“Our tenet ever was that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money. ” – Thomas Jefferson

“[Congress is] not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare” – Thomas Jefferson

Hey, I hate a lot of the things that are on Television these days.  I hate that I cannot let my daughter watch shows in prime time without her seeing repeated advertisements for Erectile Disfunction treatments or Victoria Secrets ads.  But I do not hold the government up as such a paragon of virtue that I would seriously trust them with regulating what is and is not said or displayed over the airwaves.  If I don’t find something appropriate I change the channel.

Problem is, it seems to me, that too many Americans have decided that such simple personal responsibility is too much for them to handle and want government to do these things for them. It is a lazy attitude that will, sadly continue to destroy this great Republic if people do not wake up and say no to a government that is too big and too intrusive.

One day however those of you who think that the FCC regulating speech is a good idea will wake up and realize that so many of these “good ideas” you have supported have stripped you of the most basic of your freedoms.  If the government can regulation some private citizens (which is all that corporations are) say then there is not a single roadblock left to them regulating what you say as well.  When the gestapo comes to collect you for inappropriate speech who will be left to speak up for you after you failed to speak up for your fellow citizens?