"The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution ..."

The cry uttered by many a small-government advocate is, "Take our country back!" And so, they work tirelessly to elect small-government representatives to Congress. The assumption, especially among members of the Tea Party, is that these representatives can reform authoritarian Washington from within.

In 2010, the Tea Party handed President Obama and Nancy Pelosi a resounding defeat by electing more than eighty small-government representatives to the House - a political turnover not seen in eighty years. However, in the intervening years we have seen an explosive growth in government power.

It's not reasonable to believe those in Washington will diminish their extensive power. Consider how the phantom twinge of testosterone animates the eunuch John Boehner when the House Tea Party contingent threatens his meager influence as Speaker.

Small-government advocates make the mistake of thinking that by taking Washington they take the country. Washington is not America - it's a reclaimed swamp comprised of 68.3 square miles of overreaching conceit. Forget Washington - take back the United States Constitution.

I have written on this subject before, but it bears repeating. In the more than two hundred year history of our nation, the constitutional provision allowing two-thirds of our state legislatures to call a Constitutional Convention has never been invoked. A remarkable oversight on the part of those who advocate on behalf of "states rights."

The Federalist Papers were arguments in favor of ratifying the Constitution to create a national government that would represent the collective interests of the states - such as regulating free trade between them, negotiating treaties with foreign powers and to weigh the issue of war. The hard sell for Publius - the nom de plume of the document's various authors - was to calm fears the national government would usurp state power. Limited (enumerated) powers, the authors insisted, would prevent Washington from ever attaining such authoritarian control.

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined," argued James Madison in Federalist 45, "Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."

On the other hand, New York's Robert Yates was not so trusting. Expressing the Anti-Federalist position under the pen name Brutus, Yates wrote, "If the constitution, offered to your acceptance, be a wise one, calculated to preserve the invaluable blessings of liberty, to secure the inestimable rights of mankind, and promote human happiness, then, if you accept it, you will lay a lasting foundation of happiness for millions yet unborn; generations to come will rise up and call you blessed ... But if, on the other hand, this form of government contains principles that will lead to the subversion of liberty - if it tends to establish a despotism, or, what is worse, a tyrannic aristocracy; then, if you adopt it, this only remaining asylum for liberty will be shut up, and posterity will execrate your memory."

The supreme irony to all this is that Yates and his fellow Anti-Federalists agreed to support the ratification of the Constitution provided amendments to the document prohibited the new national government from infringing on certain, unalienable rights. The three most notable being the right to free speech, the right to worship God unmolested by the state, and the right to bear arms.

ObamaCare now infringes on religious values, with the Department of Health and Human Services sweeping aside sacred standards thwarting the interests of promiscuous college coeds in search of free contraception. The author of the medical monstrosity that bears his name is equally determined to sweep aside the instruments of self-defense and the fulcrum against entrenched, tyrannical government - arms.

So far, the monster has failed to attack the First Amendment free speech of the press, since most of it parrots the political talking points of the monster. But he may make an exception when the broadcast license for Fox News comes up for renewal.

Both Madison and Yates believed the law could restrain the tyrannical, killer instincts arising in those with power. They failed to understand that the laws limits are easily undermined when the powerful change the meaning of words - what one Supreme Court justice called "penumbras and emanations." This deconstruction of language allowed the nation's high court to discover a constitutional protection of abortion, and that Congress had the power to violate religious conscience in the name of universal health care, and the authority to infringe upon "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."

In its landmark 1801 ruling in Marbury vs. Madison, the high court claimed for itself a monopoly on the interpretation of the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson was appalled by the court's power grab, writing, "The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they may please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law ..."

34 state legislatures have the moral authority to take the "thing of wax" from the hands of the high court and carve it upon tangible stone tablets. That will happen when an "inherently independent" and free people demand it.

The Tea Party's greatest strength has been at the state level. Instead of changing Washington, its interests are better served changing state legislatures. Instead of requiring candidates for state office to sign anti-tax pledges, Tea Party support should be predicated on their signing pledges calling for a Constitutional Convention.

Allow me to give one example: A Constitutional Amendment that declares states may individually nullify the imposition of congressional laws through state legislation (think ObamaCare). Furthermore, should two-thirds of the states do likewise; the national law is declared unconstitutional in its entirety. This preserves the integrity of republican government and ends the tyrannical stranglehold of Washington and the Supreme Court.

Here is the order of things: By taking back your state, you may take back your Constitution ... and then your country.

Those who love liberty must undertake a massive outreach to millions of fellow citizens who have been victims of the so-called "progressive" censorship of the principles and ideas underlying their Constitution's protections. Such an effort is possible now, however, given the gift of technology which makes available the writings and speeches of the Founders at the click of a mouse, in every household in America.

Remember, an arrogant man who trusts his own judgment, largely informed by late-19th Century ideologues and the university professors and "progressives" who influenced his thinking, is no match for the wisdom and genius of the Framers of the United States Constitution.

The words of America's Founders, its Supreme Court Justices, its early Presidents and Statesmen attest to the wisdom of its structuring of, and strictly limiting, the coercive powers of all who might be elected to serve under and by its authority. The following essay, quoted with permission, originally published in the Constitution's Bicentennial Year - 1987 - may be downloaded here.

Our Ageless Constitution

"The structure has been erected by architects of consummate skill and fidelity; its foundations are solid; its components are beautiful, as well as useful; its arrangements are full of wisdom and order...."
-Justice Joseph Story

Justice Story's words pay tribute to the United States Constitution and its Framers. Shortly before the 100th year of the Constitution, in his "History of the United States of America," written in 1886, historian George Bancroft said:

"The Constitution is to the American people a possession for the ages."

He went on to say:

"In America, a new people had risen up without king, or princes, or nobles....By calm meditation and friendly councils they had prepared a constitution which, in the union of freedom with strength and order, excelled every one known before; and which secured itself against violence and revolution by providing a peaceful method for every needed reform. In the happy morning of their existence as one of the powers of the world, they had chosen Justice as their guide."

And two hundred years after the adoption of this singularly-important document, praised by Justice Story in one century and Historian Bancroft in the next and said by Sir William Gladstone to be "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given moment by the brain and purpose of man," the Constitution of 1787 - with its Bill of Rights - remains. . . a bulwark for liberty, an ageless formula for the government of a free people.

In what sense can any document prepared by human hands be said to be ageless? What are the qualities or attributes which give it permanence?

The Qualities of Agelessness

America's Constitution had its roots in the nature, experience, and habits of humankind, in the experience of the American people themselves - their beliefs, customs, and traditions, and in the practical aspects of politics and government. It was based on the experience of the ages. Its provisions were designed in recognition of principles which do not change with time and circumstance, because they are inherent in human nature.

"The foundation of every government," said John Adams, "is some principle or passion in the minds of the people." The founding generation, aware of its unique place in the ongoing human struggle for liberty, were willing to risk everything for its attainment. Roger Sherman stated that as government is "instituted for those who live under it ... it ought, therefore, to be so constituted as not to be dangerous to liberty." And the American government was structured with that primary purpose in mind - the protection of the peoples liberty.

Of their historic role, in framing a government to secure liberty, the Framers believed that the degree of wisdom and foresight brought to the task at hand might well determine whether future generations would live in liberty or tyranny. As President Washington so aptly put it, "the sacred fire of liberty" might depend "on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people" That experiment, they hoped, would serve as a beacon of liberty throughout the world.

The Framers of America's Constitution were guided by the wisdom of previous generations and the lessons of history for guidance in structuring a government to secure for untold millions in the future the unalienable rights of individuals. As Jefferson wisely observed:

"History, by apprising the people of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."(Underlining added for emphasis)

The Constitution, it has been said, was "not formed upon abstraction," but upon practicality. Its philosophy and principles, among others, incorporated these practical aspects:

Recognition that love of liberty is inherent in the human spirit.
Recognition of Creator-endowed, unalienable, individual rights.
Recognition that meaningful liberty is possible only in the company of order and justice. In the words of Burke: "Liberty must be limited to be possessed."
Recognition that in order for a people to be free, they must be governed by fixed laws that apply alike to the governed and the government.
Recognition that the Creator has not preferred one person or group of persons as rulers over the others and that any government, in order to be just, must be from among the great body of the people and by their consent - that the people have a right to self-government.
Recognition of human weakness and the human tendency to abuse power; therefore, of the need to divide and to separate the power granted to government; to provide a system of checks and balances; and to make government accountable to people at frequent intervals.
Recognition that laws, to be valid, must have their basis and limit in natural law - that law which, as Cicero wrote, "is the highest reason, implanted in Nature, which commands what ought to be done and forbids the opposite."
Recognition of the need for structuring a government of laws, not of men, based on enduring principles and suitable not only to the age in which it is formed, but amendable to different circumstances and times, without sacrificing any of the three great concepts of Order, justice, or Liberty.
Recognition that the right to ownership of property is a right so compelling as to provide a primary reason for individuals to form a government for securing that right.
Recognition of the need for protecting the individual rights of each citizen, rich or poor, majority or minority, and of not allowing the coercive power of government to be used to do collectively that which the individual could not do without committing a crime.
Recognition of necessity for incentive and reward as impetus for achievement and growth.
Recognition of the need for a "Supreme Law of the land" a written constitution which, consistent with its idea of the sovereignty of the people, would provide its own prescribed amendment process, thereby circumventing any potential unconstitutional changes by any of the branches of government without the people's consent.

The Constitution of the United States of America structured a government for what the Founders called a "virtuous people - that is, a people who would be able, as Burke put it, to "put chains on their own appetites" and, without the coercive hand of government, to live peaceably without violating the rights of others. Such a society would need no standing armies to insure internal order, for the moral beliefs, customs, and love for liberty motivating the actions of the people and their representatives in government - the "unwritten" constitution - would be in keeping with their written constitution.

George Washington, in a speech to the State Governors, shared his own sense of the deep roots and foundations of the new nation:

"The foundation of our empire was not laid in the gloomy age of ignorance and superstition; but at an epocha when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period.... the treasures of knowledge, acquired by the labors of philosophers, sages, and legislators, through a long succession of years, are laid open for our use, and their collective wisdom may be happily applied in the establishment of our forms of government."

And Abraham Lincoln, in the mid-1800's, in celebrating the blessings of liberty, challenged Americans to transmit the "political edifice of liberty and equal rights" of their constitutional government to future generations:

"In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American people, find our account running ... We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth....We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them - They are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic...race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights, 'tis ours only, to transmit these...to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know...."

Because it rests on sound philosophical foundations and is rooted in enduring principles, the United States Constitution can, indeed, properly be described as "ageless," for it provides the formula for securing the blessings of liberty, establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquillity, promoting the general welfare, and providing for the common defense of a free people who understand its philosophy and principles and who will, with dedication, see that its integrity and vigor are preserved.

Justice Joseph Story was quoted in the caption of this essay as attesting to the skill and fidelity of the architects of the Constitution, its solid foundations, the practical aspects of its features, and its wisdom and order. The closing words of his statement, however, were reserved for use here; for in his 1789 remarks, he recognized the "ageless" quality of the magnificent document, and at the same time, issued a grave warning for Americans of all centuries. He concluded his statement with these words:

"...and its defenses are impregnable from without. It has been reared for immortality, if the work of man may justly aspire to such a title. It may, nevertheless, perish in an hour by the folly, or corruption, or negligence of its only keepers, THE PEOPLE. Republics are created by virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens."

Our ageless constitution can be shared with the world and passed on to generations far distant if its formula is not altered in violation of principle through the neglect of its keepers - THE PEOPLE.

Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part VII: ISBN 0-937047-01-5

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