After calling for abolition of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) during a recent address, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) added, “And if we need to figure out what to do with the 110,000 IRS agents, we could always put them on our southern border.”
This was Cruz’s “slightly tongue-in-cheek” message to a rowdy Republican crowd gathered in Denver at the Western Conservative Summit held July 18-20. About 3,500 activists attended the meeting that was headlined by Cruz, but featured speeches by Sarah Palin and Dr. Ben Carson, as well.
During much of Cruz’s speech, he sounded like a presidential candidate tightening up his stump speech. “Education is too important to be dictated by bureaucrats in Washington,” said Cruz, calling for the end of the Common Core federal education standards. “Besides,” he added, “we already have a ‘common core’ in this country: It’s called the Constitution of the United States.”
Another unconstitutional act was also put on Cruz’s kill list. “The most important regulatory reform we ought to pursue, is we need to repeal every single word of ObamaCare.”
In calling for repeal of the healthcare act, Cruz blasted the provisions infringing on the right of Americans to freely exercise their religion. The president’s pet legislation purports to force companies to provide contraceptive services regardless of religious proscriptions against it. “Let me give you a simple rule of thumb,” Cruz said, “If you’re litigating against nuns, you’ve probably done something wrong.”
Cruz accused President Obama of abolishing something as well: the Constitution. “It seems like this president is going down the Bill of Rights, trying to violate each one, one at a time,” Cruz said.
Earlier this year, The New American’s Thomas R. Eddlem published “A Legacy of Violations of the U.S. Bill of Rights” with hyperlinked examples.
Cruz began by enumerating the president’s multi-front assault on the fundamental liberties protected by the First Amendment, including the IRS’s investigation into the reading and religious habits of conservative groups and ObamaCare’s attempt (albeit halted provisionally by the Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case) to force small business owners to choose between obedience to the tenets of their faith and obedience to federal mandates.
Next, Cruz criticized the president for his attempts to disarm the American people in direct violation of the Second Amendment. “In Colorado, like Texas, we define gun control as hitting what you’re aiming at,” Cruz quipped, to the roar of the audience.
He went on to chide the two Colorado state legislators who voted for strict gun control laws and were subsequently recalled by voters, saying those lawmakers define gun control as “involuntary retirement.”
Then, calling on Americans to “defend their Fourth and Fifth Amendment right to privacy,” Cruz asked audience members how many of them brought their cellphones with them to the conference. “I want to ask you to leave you cellphones on. I want to make sure President Obama hears every word we say this evening,” Cruz added, referring to the National Security Agency’s unconstitutional monitoring of cellphone conversations as revealed in several documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
The last in Cruz’s list of rights being revoked by President Obama were those guaranteed by the 10th Amendment.
Cruz referred to the 10th Amendment as the “fundamental statement in the Bill of Rights that the powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states or to the people.”
“That means,” he added, “that as the Framers put it, the powers of the federal government are few and defined.”
Cruz is referring to the statement made by James Madison in The Federalist, No. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
Speaking of the immigration crisis, specifically that of children illegally crossing into the United States by themselves, Cruz said that we are “a compassionate nation,” adding, “the compassionate thing to do is to solve the problem and to reunite them [the illegally immigrating children] with their families.”
Then, turning to the debacle that is American foreign policy, Cruz compared the current occupant of the Oval Office to one of his predecessors, saying President Obama has made a “return to Jimmy Carter.” Cruz said that in his estimation the two presidents pursued “the same feckless and naïve foreign policy, making the world much, much more dangerous.”
“In the last five years we’ve seen America recede from leadership in the world and into that vacuum have stepped nations like Iran and Russia and China. And the world is a whole lot more dangerous place.”
Then, sounding very much the presidential candidate in training, Cruz declared, “If there’s one principle from time immemorial, it is that bullies and tyrants don’t respect weakness or appeasement.”
“And when you have the president of the United States being openly mocked by leaders of nations like Russia and Iran, it is profoundly dangerous,” Cruz said.
Finally, perhaps pointing to his own unpopularity among GOP leadership, Cruz warned the audience, “If you see a candidate that Washington embraces, run the other way!”
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels nationwide speaking on nullification, the Second Amendment, the surveillance state, and other constitutional issues. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at [email protected].
