Posted on 11/03/2009 5:29:31 AM PST by Kaslin
Does the U.S. Constitution stand for anything in an era of government excess? Can that founding document, which is supposed to restrain the power and reach of a centralized federal government, slow down the juggernaut of czars, health insurance overhaul and anything else this administration and Congress wish to do that is not in the Constitution?
The Framers created a limited government, thus ensuring individuals would have the opportunity to become all that their talents and persistence would allow. The Left has put aside the original Constitution in favor of a "living document" that they believe allows them to do whatever they want and demand more tax dollars with which to do it.
Can they be stopped? Some constitutional scholars think the Tenth Amendment offers the best opportunity. The Tenth Amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
In 1939, the Supreme Court began to dilute constitutional language so that it became open to broader interpretation. Rob Natelson, professor of Constitutional Law and Legal History at the University of Montana, has written that even before Franklin Roosevelt's court-packing scheme, it was changing the way the Constitution was interpreted, especially, "how the commerce and taxing powers were turned upside-down, the necessary and proper clauses and incidental powers, the false claim that the Supreme Court is conservative, how bad precedent leads to more bad court rulings, state elections as critical for constitutional activists, and more."
While during the last seven decades the court has tolerated the federal welfare state, Natelson says it has never, except in wartime, "authorized an expansion of the federal scope quite as large as what is being proposed now. And in recent years, both the Court and individual justices -- even 'liberal' justices -- have said repeatedly that there are boundaries beyond which Congress may not go." ... "Chief Justice John Marshall once wrote that if Congress were to use its legitimate powers as a 'pretext' for assuming an unauthorized power, 'it would become the painful duty' of the Court 'to say that such an act was not the law of the land.'"
It would be nice to know now what those boundaries are and whether Congress is exceeding its powers as it prepares to alter one-sixth of our economy and change how we access health insurance and health care.
Natelson makes a fascinating argument in his essay, "Is ObamaCare Constitutional?" (www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/08/18/is-obamacare-constitutional), using the Court's Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973. In Roe, he writes, the court struck down state abortion laws that "intruded into the doctor-patient relationship. But the intrusion invalidated in Roe was insignificant compared to the massive intervention contemplated by schemes such as HB3200. 'Global budgeting' and 'single-payer' plans go even further, and seem clearly to violate the Supreme Court's Substantive Due Process rules."
Constitutional Attorney John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, tells me, "Although the states surrendered many of their powers to the new federal government, they retained a residuary and inviolable sovereignty that is reflected throughout the Constitution's text. The Framers rejected the concept of a central government that would act upon and through the States, and instead designed a system in which the State and federal governments would exercise concurrent authority over the people. The Court's jurisprudence makes clear that the federal government may not compel the states to enact or administer a federal regulatory program."
Lawyers are busy writing language only they can understand which seeks to circumvent the intentions of the Founders. But it will be difficult to circumvent the last four words of the Tenth Amendment, which state unambiguously where ultimate power lies: "...or to the people."
Americans who believe their government should not be a giant ATM, dispensing money and benefits to people who have not earned them, and who want their country returned to its founding principles, must now exercise that power before it is taken from them. The Tenth Amendment is one place to begin. The streets are another. It worked for the Left.
I thought Obama was going to save us.
bump
No.
You are being paged.
‘fraid not. You know the Constitution is a “living document.” You can still “live” while you’re bound and gagged.
Anyone hear the last call to Hannity yesterday?
The lib caller was saying that Obama was Moses, leading the people out of captivity in Egypt, and that people like Hannity (and us) were simply the complaining Israelites that would never see the promised land.
I wanted to jump through the radio and choke the guy.
WHAT “CAPTIVITY”? Having to live by the fruit of your own efforts? probably.
WHAT “freedom” were we “led into”? What’s the “promised land”? Socialist Utopia?
No, but we can save ourselves by returning to the principles underlying the Tenth Amendment and the republic our forefathers bequeathed to us.
If we can muster our strength and our courage, our independence and our self-reliance, and bring ourselves to...hang on, American Idol is starting...
One of the biggest and mostly costly mistakes this country has ever made was the ratification of the Seventeen Amendment.
The Tenth and the Fourteenth are fundamentally incompatible. Legally, where there is conflict, the latter holds. Effectively, there has been a tension between the two principles since the Bill of Rights was introduced.
Yes, our country will only be saved and restored if God wills it. So pray about it.
Also:
Move to a state that is “saveable”.
Contact your state legislators and tell them to support 10th amendment sovereignty legislation.
Prepare for the day that you’ll have to back up your state “militia” in defending from invasion by federal forces that intend to subjugate your state.
Two words: Interstate Commerce.
One word: Nullification.
Now here is my question. I live in NJ and want to leave for obvious reasons. I really want to sell my house, but I would be moving to somewhere with no job guarantee. I have 3 children and one in college....I am wavering that if I move to a “Conservative” state would it simply just be buying time?
I’d rather be free with less money than under tyranny with a bit more money. However, my concern is packing up and moving and in 2 years Texas or Oklahoma or wherever turns into the next NJ!!! Now I’m really screwed...any input?
Amendment X died with the Doe v. Bolton decision.
First steps are investigation.
Without information you’ll have no idea how to make a decision.
Texas and Oklahoma are obvious destinations.
Texans have been complaining about the libs moving in and trying to make Tx like the place they fled from. I’ve heard nothing of that from Okies.
Demographic and voting information are available for any county/municipality.
Set up some job searches on Monster or Dice for your potential destinations.
The 10th Amendment, by itself, cannot help us, because Amendments (and not just Amendments) are powerless without “enabling legislation”.
A good example is the 18th Amendment, Alcohol Prohibition, which is very clear in what it did. But the political climate had changed by the time the enabling legislation was written, which made enforcement very weak.
Another example right now, while not an Amendment, is the part of the constitution listing the requirements to become the US President. They have no enabling legislation. This means that no one is tasked with enforcing them as law, and there are no penalties for ignoring them.
Since there is no enabling legislation for the 10th Amendment, it has been up to the courts to decide when and if it applies. And they have chosen for the most part to ignore it.
Far more important were two *additional* Amendments that were created in 1913. The 16th Amendment, which created the Income Tax, opened the door to the US federal government *directly* involving itself in the lives of individual citizens in a way other than the military draft.
This would have been and was an abhorrent idea to the founding fathers, who had a revolution over, among other things, the British Crown going after individuals as individuals, in a whimsical manner, with no intermediary government between the Crown and the people.
If you can imagine this today, the extreme would be if Obama was “offended” by Rush Limbaugh, and ordered him transported to Washington, D.C., to be repeatedly tried for what Limbaugh did in the past, that was not illegal at the time, but Obama had since decided should be retroactively illegal.
So the founding fathers put all sorts of protections against this sort of thing into the constitution, with the idea that the federal government should leave the individual citizens of the US alone, and instead deal with the individual States.
But in 1913, again, and just as important, the congress passed the 17th Amendment, calling for the direct election of US senators. Before, US senators were *appointed* by the individual States, which gave the States a powerful check against the expansion of federal power. One of only two ways the States could stop the federal government from going “hog wild”.
By stripping States of this power, the federal government became unstoppable, short of a constitutional convention. And by being able to run wild, of course they ran wild.
With the Great Depression, the federal government decided to take over control of ALL government in the United States. “Ol’ Frank” Roosevelt created an agency whose first act was to seize and destroy six million pigs from US citizens, and to destroy vast amounts of their other property, without compensation. The Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC).
And the individual States could not stand in the way of the federal juggernaut.
Soon, the federals, using the “Interstate Commerce Clause” of the US constitution, decided that almost *everything* done in the US involved interstate commerce in some way, and so could be controlled and regulated by the federal government.
(A glaring example of this abuse was control of elevator operators, because they might transport someone engaged in interstate commerce, and so should be under federal control.)
While the courts eventually decided that this was a *tad* too much, it still left the federal government involved in countless ways with the States, cities, and people forbidden by the constitution.
In recent years, the federals have diminished State and local power further by making laws redundant with theirs, so if they are interested, the federal government can steal jurisdiction, and punish individual citizens in federal court.
The utter contempt of the federal government for the States is best shown in federal takings of State lands. In many of the western States, the *majority* of the State lands have been taken on the whim of the presidents and congress, with no legal justification at all, and certainly no legal authority.
What value is the government of a State if it is reduced to having little more land than a glorified city?
For this reason, it is not the “restoration” of the 10th Amendment that holds promise, but the *repeal* of the 16th and 17th Amendments, so that the federal government can be forced back into its cage, in a much diminished form.
The constitution restored, and people like Nancy “Are you serious?” Pelosi retired, to live the remainder of their greedy and imperious lives annoying hippies in some idealistic commune in the desert.
At this point, only force of arms will stem the tide and save the Republic.
Yes. I really believe that. No, I don't plan on firing the next shot. I don't say the "first" shot as they have already fired a number of "first shots" and we have yet to respond in kind...
Yep.
I’m right here with you Mike. I’ve decided to hang on and let the wave of liberalism pass overhead. I’m just hoping I’ll be able to hold my breath long enough to see the calm when I pop my head up again.
The Nooyawkas that turned our purple state blue will have to move on to redder states to plunder their fortunes. Witness North Carolina already!
I’m hoping there will still be enough born and bred New Jersians that will remember when the state voted for Reagan; twice.
Probably not since it would require the Nazis in power to acknowledge that it and the Constitution has any force of law. If americans sit back and say that we can do nothing because we have to follow the Constitution then the democrat Nazi party will use the Constitution to throw out the Constitution, dissolve the republic and impose tyranny on us. I have come to believe that we are approaching the point at which americans will have to live up to the oath that many took to defend and protect the Constitution and take steps to restore it that will not be specifically dictated by the Constitution. The democrat party is the enemy as much as Hitler, Stalin or any despot has ever been.
History shows us that a group of people who are this far to the left, given the power, will have no trepidation about trampling the citizenry underfoot.
It's only a matter of time.
They are the enemy.
While I hear lots of talk around using the 10th with respect to health care legislation, I say why wait? Why not test the 10th right now with something like the No child Left behind Act that increased federal involvement in something that has always been the realm of the states - eduction?
eduction = education
We have to understand that history teaches us that collectivists, when given the power to do so,
KILL
their political/ideological opponents.
Yeah, that guy so surprised Hannity, that he blew it. And if Obama is Moses or Jesus leading his people into communal bliss, isn’t this the establishment of a theocracy.
I was jaw dropping floored (so I don’t blame Hannity)
at this guy saying that Obama, like Moses,
was leading the people into a new age, a “promised land”, and as if it already happened/is happening.
THIS is the utopia they seek? Really?
The same four words close the IX Amendment, a reminder that not all rights are enumerated in the Constitution. It is a shame that Scotus has unnecessarily twisted other amendments.
Only it the Supreme Court scratches the white-out off that they put on their during the 30’s.
Try to find detailed info about the “ratification” on the net. State-by-State data, that sort of thing.
Good FN luck!!
It was never ratified. It was “declared” ratified. Big difference.
I’m counting on the 2nd Am. to save us.
Excellent interview with Michael Boldin. Thanks for posting.
Thanks for taking the time to listen. He was a great guest. (I have AlfonZo Rachel today... yay!)
Yes indeed! Very articulate guy who seems to have a common sense understanding of the Constitution generally and the 10th Amendment in particular. The legalalists amongst us would have us believe our Constitution can only be interpretated by professionals. They're wrong about that of course.
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