Academic

HISTORY: ?Where do you find in the Constitution any authority to give away the public money in ch?

By Glenn Reynolds

HISTORY:

“Where do you find in the Constitution any authority to give away the public money in charity?”

That question was asked not of President Obama nor of Sen. Max Baucus or Rep. Nancy Pelosi, but of the less well-known Tennessee congressman, David Crockett. . . . But back to our story, which comes from an 1884 biography, “The Life of Colonel David Crockett” by Edward S. Ellis, it is instructive to note the puzzlement of Rep. Crockett when he was challenged by his constituent Horatio Bunce while out stumping for votes. Bunce told Crockett in no uncertain terms that he could not vote for him again.

“You gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me,” Bunce said in the story, as allegedly recounted by Crockett.

By today’s mainstream-media standards, Bunce would clearly be known as a right-wing extremist, and if he expressed his concerns at a town-hall meeting this summer he would have been labeled “un-American.”

Even Crockett, before finding out what was on Bunce’s mind, said, “I had been making up my mind that he was one of those churlish fellows who care for nobody but themselves, and take bluntness for independence.”

But that was before the Tennessee farmer had asked his devastating question, which Crockett described colorfully as a ’sockdologer!” which roughly translated means a comment that could set a person to thinking.

Read the whole thing. More sockdologers, please. We clearly aren’t seeing enough thinking from Congress.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on September 06, 2009 (boomark / email).