Lies the government told you by Andrew Napolitano (best e reader for epub TXT) 📗

for not practicing judicial restraint and essentially legislating from the bench. Here, however, the conservatives acted out of character. Until Bush v. Gore, neither the Supreme Court, nor any other federal court, had ever enforced a uniformity rule in the counting of ballots.63

Furthermore, every State has varying methods of casting and counting votes; this issue was not unique to Florida. Florida election law required that the votes be counted to determine the “intent of the voter.” The Florida Supreme Court, perhaps somewhat haphazardly, ordered manual recounts to ascertain voter intent. (You may recall the “hanging chad” and “pregnant chad” news stories of that time.) The United States Supreme Court, however, essentially overruled the Florida Supreme Court’s determination, claiming the recount process violated the Equal Protection Clause.

The more disturbing part is that the Supreme Court did not seek to remedy the Equal Protection violation. According to the Court, uniform standards could not be set before the federal deadline for Florida to certify its results. The deadline happened to be December 12th, the date on which the decision was rendered. Therefore, the Supreme Court deemed the recounts unconstitutional, yet in the end proceeded to ignore the 60,000 undervotes, rather than allow the Florida Supreme Court to attempt to resolve the situation.

As icing on the cake, the Supreme Court further stated, in its opinion: “Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.”64 The Court, however, is not supposed to decide complex issues that involve politics, especially when the State involved in the suit has already made a decision.

Furthermore, no Supreme Court decision is “limited to the present circumstances.” It is true that the Supreme Court decides cases, and does not actively make law, but its decisions establish precedent applicable to future cases. Moreover, even if the Court’s decision did not extend to future circumstances, it did damage to its own legitimacy and the legitimacy of the 2000 presidential election, and disenfranchised 60,000 American voters. And the winner of that election certainly did not confine his exercise of presidential power “limited to the present circumstances.” Bush v. Gore literally had limitless effect on the lives of six billion human beings; and the Court ought to have known that.

But Who Really Cares?

The Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore was a travesty, but even if we had discovered the true winner, the two-party system would still dominate American politics, limiting voter choice and the development of third parties.

No matter what they say, Democrats and Republicans in the United States do not control the government because they are best able to serve us and meet our needs. In fact, both parties couldn’t care less about us. The United States government, as stated earlier, is not a democracy. In fact, some would argue that it is not even a republic, since our leaders do not actually work for us. Some believe that the United States government is actually an oligarchy in which just a few thousand people, “mostly in government, finance, and the military-industrial complex, run this country for their own purposes.”65 These powerful people seek to preserve their power by manipulating the mainstream media, controlling campaign finance money, and thus nominating candidates who will work for them, regardless of their party affiliation.

Democrats and Republicans, controlled by powerful interests, work to preserve their power. Both parties promote “changing Washington,” but in reality, they like Washington just the way it is: little gets done that they don’t like, and none of our officials are truly held accountable. If we don’t seek to change the system, the Republican Party will always be the party that claims it does not want to govern, and the Democratic Party will always pretend to govern.

The 2008 presidential election is a great example of the two-party monopoly putting forth two candidates who were substantially the same. Senator John S. McCain, a “Republican” from Arizona, and Senator Barack Obama, a “Democrat” from Illinois, spoke ad naseum about the “fundamental disagreements” between them. After following the campaign closely, listening to the speeches, and watching the debates, it was still difficult for me to come up with issues on which the two candidates truly disagreed. Both candidates oppose gay marriage, at least so long as they are politicians. Obama hoped that the Iraq War would end during his presidency, while McCain ran on the idea that the “surge” was working. President Obama currently has plans to shift American involvement in Iraq to Afghanistan.

Both candidates supported bigger and more powerful government; not just Obama. McCain stated that he supported “smaller” government, but chose to “suspend” his campaign in September 2008 (He did no such thing; it was a PR stunt) after the fall of Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, to go to Washington and vote for the first of many massive, bailout packages. That package authorized the borrowing or printing and spending of over one trillion dollars on the same government-motivated, get-rich-quick schemes that produced the crisis.

Both Obama and McCain thought that it would be nice to decrease the national debt, and both viewed lower taxes as better for Americans than higher ones. Moreover, I do not think the Federal Reserve Bank was discussed publicly even once by either candidate during the campaign, let alone plans to audit, reform, or abolish it.

They both approved TARP funds for struggling companies and supported the federal takeover of education, Medicare prescription drug benefits, and the burdensome Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Moreover, Obama and McCain still endorse the unconstitutional, liberty-restricting Patriot Act, which, while not making us safer, invades our natural rights. Both candidates opposed the legalization of marijuana, although Obama stated he was open to the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

On abortion, Obama and McCain seemingly disagreed. Obama is pro-choice, and believes that having an abortion is “one of the most fundamental rights we possess.”66 McCain claims to oppose abortion. Throughout the campaign, he denounced the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, and vowed to nominate Supreme