The depths the shills on the Left will go to impugn their enemies knows no bounds.
On Sunday, the George Soros-funded organization Think Progress falsely accused Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tx.) of comparing Social Security and Medicare to slavery (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Appearing on Fox News Sunday this morning, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) defended his longstanding view that Medicare, Social Security (and pretty much everything else) violate the Constitution. At one point, Paul even claimed that letting Social Security and similar programs to move forward is just like permitting slavery...
TP then provided a video and partial transcript of the "Fox News Sunday" segment in question. Let's look at the entire thing:
CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: You talk a lot about the Constitution. You say Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, are all unconstitutional.
CONGRESSMAN RON PAUL (R-TEXAS): Technically they are.
WALLACE: Why? Why?
PAUL: There's no authority. Article 1, Section 8 doesn't say I can set up insurance program for people. What part of the Constitution --
(CROSSTALK)
PAUL: The liberals are the ones that use the general welfare.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: OK. All right. Well, I don't know that I'm a liberal, but let's put it up on the screen, because that's exactly the point. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution: "The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes -- to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." Doesn't Social Security come under promoting --
PAUL: No. Absolutely --
WALLACE: -- promoting the general welfare?
PAUL: Absolutely not.
WALLACE: Why not?
PAUL: General welfare is a general condition -- maybe sound currency is general welfare, maybe markets, maybe judicial system, maybe a national defense, but this is specific welfare. This justifies the whole welfare state -- the military industrial complex, the welfare to foreigners, the welfare state that imprisons our people and impoverishes our people and gives us our recession.
So, no. Why would you have Article 1, Section 8? And why would you have the Amendment number 9 and 10? That means there is no reason for article 1, number 10 if you believe that? Revenue clause?
That is such an extreme liberal view point that has been mis- taught in our schools for so long. And that's what we have to reverse, that very notion that you're presenting.
WALLACE: Congressman, it's not just a liberal view. It was the decision of the Supreme Court in 1937 when they said that Social Security was constitutional under Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution.
PAUL: Yes. And the Constitution and the court said slavery was legal, too. And we had to reverse that.
So, I'll tell you, just because a court in '37 went very liberal on us and expanded the role of government -- no, I think the original intent is not a bad idea. I think limitation of government power.
If we aren't clear on this, we're going to get into a mess. Our government is going to get very big -- and we're going to have a very big deficit and we're going to have a financial crisis. And it's type of thinking that is leading to us to that very problem that we're facing today.
Anyone with even a room temperature intelligence quotient would understand that Paul's point was a court in 1937 finding Social Security constitutional doesn't necessarily mean that's the case.
There have been many laws that were upheld by one set of Supreme Court justices only to be overturned by another years later. Slavery of course was one of them.
With this in mind, Paul was by no means equating Social Security and Medicare to slavery. He was instead saying that in his view, the Supreme Court finding in 1937 was wrong, and used slavery as an example of when the Court was similarly so.
Just like many of the Court's controversial rulings - Roe v. Wade of course among them - the Constitutionality of Social Security has been argued for decades.
Historians - sadly unlike most Americans, particularly those on the New Deal-loving Left - are well aware that many of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's programs were struck down by the Court, and the expectation was that Social Security would be as well.
This is what led Roosevelt to propose the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 which would have given him the authority to add as many as seven justices to the Court thereby assuring approval of any program he could get through his Democrat-controlled Congress.
In the end, JPRB didn't pass, but it is believed the mere threat of such court-stacking led Justice Owen Roberts to change his view of the New Deal and vote in favor of FDR's programs from that point forward including Social Security.
Whether Social Security would have passed without FDR's court-stacking threat has been a point of historical debate for decades, one that Paul is clearly more aware of than the shills at TP.
Of greater import is how TP feels comfortable misrepresenting the words of a sitting Congressman. If only such an occurrence was a rarity.
What would one expect from an organization so heavily-backed by Soros?