"You didn't build that ... "

IisJustMe said:

You're kidding, right?

Since it doesn't say to do so, end of discussion.

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Lovely Lane said:

end of discussion? we never had one.

You got to give Cesar what is his, and the government uses taxes in many ways that you and I have little say. I didn't want to fund any war's, but I did as a tax-payer. I didn't want tax dollars to be given to Wall St, but it happened.

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Publius said:

Yes, Jesus commanded us to render to Caesar. But there's just one small thing you're overlooking.

In our case, "Caesar" is the United States government and, unlike the literal Caesar Christ spoke about, the United States government is under the authority of the Constitution.

So the government is acting both illegally and unjustly when they act outside what the Constitution allows them to do.

While the Bible is clear that we are to render to Caesar, it is equally clear that the government is to act both legally and justly and that we are under no Biblical obligation to obey unjust or illegal laws.

That being the case, yes, we certainly can object to the government's actions, tax policies, and can work to get around them.

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Lovely Lane said:

Well like most things, it's a matter of interpretation.

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Publius said:

There's nothing to interpret.

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Is that a fact?

The Constitution tells us specifically what the government can do and anything that is not enumerated, they cannot do.

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Seriously? Loose constructionist, strict constructionist, it's all the same to me.

You don't extend your argument to other areas of your life, do you? If you go to court for running a stop sign, do you really argue that you were right to run the stop sign because the sign only said "STOP", it didn't say "DON"T GO"?

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That's funny. And how do you know about my life? That's strange.

All throughout our history, it's been enumerated powers, not implied powers or we-can-do-it-until-you-prove-we-can't powers.

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seems like the power comes from somewhere, the source maybe the Constitution but the interpretation comes from SCOTUS.

This idea that the government can do whatever they want until the Supreme Court says they can't and then they'll just do an end run around the Constitution and the SCOTUS ruling didn't happen until very recently in our history.

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You seem to be a scholar of the Constitution, so what was it that had the founding fathers create a judicial branch, (Article III)? And what role do you believe that Judicial Review has contributed to 'government of the people' since the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision?

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