Original Intent in the Constitution and Chiropractic.

When it comes to political issues, original intent is an issue that tends to separate liberals and conservatives. The conservative viewpoint is that the original intent of the U.S. Constitution should be accepted and the liberal approach is usually that it is a document that needs to be flexible to the wishes of the majority.. The “originalists” believed that the majority is not the issue, that the framers of the Constitution, wanted not what the majority said but that there would be steps, enough steps to insure that 51% at any given moment would not change the direction of the country. To change the Constitution with amendments was not impossible but it was not something that could be done at the whim of the majority. Even if the Congress wanted to change the law of the land, it had to be in a certain period of time by the vote of ¾ of the states and there were restrictions on who could be involved in the voting process. The amendment that made slaves citizens and gave them the right to vote passed rather easily. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) on the other hand never got the necessary votes for passage and died as a result of the time limitations for passage. That’s the difference between a democracy and a republic which the U.S. was intended to be. That is what prompted Ben Franklin when asked shortly after July 4th what kind of government we had said” a republic if you can keep it!” Republics tend to devolve/degenerate into a democracy and a democracy opens up the voting franchise to everyone and ends up allowing the majority voting to rule (called in the Old West “lynch mobs”). That is why those that want a democracy work so hard to get a majority in the election process and then illegally use tactics like “executive orders” to get around original intent (“string ’em up before the ‘Law’ gets here”).
It is not so simple, cut and dried, when it comes to chiropractic. What was the original intent of chiropractic? The original intent of DD Palmer was to cure deafness or its cause. I don’ think his original intent lasted very long for a few reasons beside the fact that it probably did not work on the second patient.

1. In reality curing disease or its cause was the original intent of the practice of medicine. Granted they did not do it very well in the 19th century and that was perhaps the reason for chiropractic’s early success. Medical doctors were temporarily or effectively treating the symptoms (as a side note, they are getting better at it which seems to be relegating chiropractors to addressing musculoskeletal conditions).
2. There are multiple “causes” for a disease, not just a single cause. Actually we consider them to be “influencing factors” and given sufficient influencing factors a cause of disease is created. We maintain in chiropractic that the vertebral subluxation and limitations of matter are major influencing or contributing factors and no one intentionally corrects them but a chiropractor.
The original intent of the U.S. Constitutions and the chiropractic objective did not occur overnight. The Continental Congress did not meet overnight. Similarly, the chiropractic objective did not develop overnight. It went from curing deafness, to curing all disease, to correcting the cause of disease and ultimately a cause of DIS-EASE which was codified in 1927 in the 33 principles and,like the U.S.Constitution is continually being evaluated and refined.

10 thoughts on “Original Intent in the Constitution and Chiropractic.”

  1. If chiropractors would have paid attention to the teachings of the 33 principles of chiropractic’s basic science, at least our country, would perhaps be much more integrated than it is today. But it took until 1973 for Sherman College to make this quite clear and demanding. –

    – We have not honored the major premise and its 32 subsequent principles in the elemental, physical world of e/matter. We made them as small as our own constricted educated intelligence. We just picked and chose, saying, “Oh, the principles are really archaic and outdated.” Is there that little to chiropractic’s basic science? Do we have to be that indifferent with the 33 principles? As BJ put it “men are like crooked rivers, they follow the path of least resistance!” Why pretend we are chiropractors while not upholding chiropractic’s basic science? It just won’t sell any more. –

    – The law of organization is continually creating universal information and maintaining all e/matter in existence (pri.1). It is its ONLY function for everything that exist! All e/matter is expressing instructive information (pri.13). But we, with our small minds, can’t deal with that. We have to whittle the law of organization and its function into small parts that our minds can handle and portion out. Human capacity for accepting this single law is conditional and operates out of a scarcity model. There’s not enough understanding to go around. Chiropractors can’t conceptualize or even think that all they have to do is to LACVS. We cannot imagine metaphysical instructive information in the form of mental impulses that coordinate harmonious action within us (pri32). No, we have to add to it our educated therapeutic OIBU world view. –

    – We have not recognized the authority of the 33 principles of chiropractic’s basic science. Perhaps we just didn’t have the readiness or training. There is first of all the seeing, and then there is the recognizing. We cannot afford to be blind any longer. We must learn to see and recognize how broad and absolute the 33 principles of chiropractic’s basic science are if we, as chiropractors, are to truly care for people.

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  2. I am in favor of “Objective Straight” Chiropractors and believe in your right to practice as you wish. I own and have read most of your Blue books and find your thoughts interesting. But would like a chance to discuss the following with you. In the past any comment I have placed on your board seems to disappear before it is ever seen. Maybe it is something I’m doing wrong. I note for example there is always some sort of ms. That the board is “waiting for modification” or some such. I don’t know what that means.

    There is nothing wrong with the 33 principles, other than the confused, childish way they have been taught, which makes them hard for the average brain to understand and accept even though they are totally correct IMO . Bi rote memorization teaching never works for people who can think; it just turns them off, while those who can’t think just memorize the words w/o understanding and soon forget them, which is what has happened to the average chiropractor and the profession. There are much easier, logical ways to explain the Chiropractic principle.

    The real reason true Chiropractic is not practiced today is that the schools did not ever develop a procedure (technique ) that worked consistently to diminish nerve interference, was gentle and easy for the patient, was easy for the average chiropractor to learn and apply. This is not to say that such techniques don’t exist, just that they were not properly taught in the chiropractic colleges. A fellow classmate, who’s father was a long time Logan Basic doctor was sent for post grad training at Logan, came back with the statement that they apparently no longer knew how to teach Logan, and his father was disappointed that he had spent the time and money to send him for the training. And took him under his wing and trained him properly.

    In fact the colleges, now run by people who were “educators” rather than practicing doctors, perverted the original methods of teaching to better fit in with the mystique that “college” education was thought to have. The original chiropractic training consisted of very little “book work”, and concentrated on developing the skills by an apprenticeship/hands on form of training. When I graduated from a very straight school, CCCLA under Carl Cleveland Sr. in 1969, I had so little learned skill that like almost all new graduates I immediately sought out technique seminars, (Gonstead, Toftness, Activator, etc. and Jim Parker’s how run the business end of a Chiropractic practice) in order to learn practical Chiropractic. Without these seminars we would never have been able to run a real Chiropractic practice. I actually learned Chiropractic technique long before graduating, from a book written in 1947 by Roy Ashton, called Fundamental Chiropractic. When Dorothia Towne, D.C. (teaching at Cleveland) and running the Clinic, developed a problem, she had me adjust her rather than one of the other D.Cs. at the school. I practiced Ashton’s technique and taught it to associate doctors very successfully for 45 years, seeing patients with all kinds of conditions, from acute appendicitis (some of whom were heading to the hospital and surgery), to heart patients and several who had been given up on by the medical doctors and told that they had only weeks or days to live, one was expected to die within 12 hours. That last one came out of his 8 day post stroke coma within 1 hour of his first adjustment.

    50% of all graduates from any school had left the Chiropractic profession within 5 years of graduating from college. The percentage number must be much higher in today’s economy. Of my son’s 1979 class of 49 students, he was the only one who was still in practice 5 years later.

    Yes I know and believe that no doctor including me has ever cured any one of anything, but with real Chiropractic 80 to 90 percent of patients seem to be able to cure themselves. Why we should hide that from the public eludes me.

    One last comment Joe. Why you keep saying the M.D. is more effective today, also eludes me. Yes they have developed advanced surgical procedures that are a big improvement over the past, but Medicine as a whole has not improved one iota since the early 1900s. Except for their propaganda machine. The public badly needs good Chiropractors. We are all brothers, not enemies.

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  3. Joe,

    Why do you say, “That is why those that want a democracy work so hard to get a majority in the election process and then illegally use tactics like “executive orders” to get around original intent (“string ’em up before the ‘Law’ gets here”).”?

    What is “illegal” about a Presidential Executive Order?

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    • A presidential “executive order” is designed “execute” or carry out a law created by the legislative body, the congress. It is something that was to be used infrequently and for specific purposes, not to replace the legislature. It was rarely used until recent years. Example: We have certain immigration laws of numbers allowed and procedure for coming into this country and becoming a citizen. That does not mean the President can let whomever he chooses to let in the country in whatever numbers he wants for as long as they want to stay by executive order. He is creating laws or setting aside legislative action.

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      • According to what I read concerning Presidential Executive Orders, they have been used extensively by some presidents and very little by others. I couldn’t find any basis for the purpose you stated, “A presidential “executive order” is designed “execute” or carry out a law created by the legislative body, the congress.”

        This description of presidential executive orders is provided by usagovinfo.about.com :
        “Presidents typically issue executive orders for one of these purposes:
        1. Operational management of the executive branch
        2. Operational management of federal agencies or officials
        3. To carry out statutory or constitutional presidential responsibilities”

        It goes on to quote, “Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution reads, in part, “The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America.” And, Article II, section 3 asserts that “The President shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed…” Since the Constitution does not specifically define executive power, critics of executive orders argue that these two passages do not imply constitutional authority. But, Presidents of the United States since George Washington have argued that they do and have used them accordingly.”
        It also states that their use has been as little as one order each by Presidents Adams, Madison and Monroe to 3,522 issued by Franklin D. Roosevelt , which one of his most notable orders was the one that placed 120,000 Japanese-Americans into internment camps. The same informational authority also states Presidential Directives and Memorandums are the same as Executive Orders and have exactly the same effect as executive orders.

        Concerning “Example: We have certain immigration laws of numbers allowed and procedure for coming into this country and becoming a citizen. That does not mean the President can let whomever he chooses to let in the country in whatever numbers he wants for as long as they want to stay by executive order. He is creating laws or setting aside legislative action.” Former NJ Superior Court Judge Andrew P. Napolitano writes, “But the Constitution itself—from which all federal powers derive—does not delegate to the federal government power over immigration, only over naturalization. Thus, when the government’s motivation for enacting immigration laws is to further genuine compelling foreign policy goals, the laws will be upheld. But when the government’s motivation is nativism or fear or hatred or favoritism, strict scrutiny will operate to defeat those laws.”

        According to the American Immigration Council, Immigration is controlled by The Immigration and Naturalization Act. They state, “U.S. immigration law is very complex, and there is much confusion as to how it works.” They list many categories of immigration and numbers they allow, but they are all subject to exceptions. Certain categories are set by the President and Congress on a yearly basis. But the numbers and the who are not controlled by the constitution.

        So, I guess the original intent of both the constitution and chiropractic has various viewpoints and arguments, as almost every other subject has, including those who doubt the “legality” of the powers of the president by the constitution and executive orders. The constitution, however, is the legal framework of a government that was collectively designed by many for their own fair governance. The 33 Chiropractic Principles listed in Stephenson’s chiropractic bible on the other hand, are a belief system formulated and laid down by its developer(s) and hold no authority over anyone except those who choose to accept them as gospel.

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  4. Who decides and if one person can (chief executive) then where are the checks and balances against powers of corruption collusion subversion and dictatorship. #MAGA with ADIO

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  5. Joe,

    I click on your comment on the sidebar, but then it doesn’t come up on the page. I only see the partial comment on the sidebar.

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