Are you worried about the Democrats' plans for the First
and Second Amendments? You are right to be concerned. The
leftists who have taken over and transformed that political party have made it
clear that they intend to eliminate those two fundamental protections of
American liberty. Freedom of speech and "the right of the
people to keep and bear Arms" are in their crosshairs – along with the
Electoral College and much else besides – and they mean business.
But
have you noticed what has already happened to amendments farther down the list
that makes up the Bill of Rights? The Ninth and Tenth are already
dead letters. Here is the Ninth:
The
enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to
deny or disparage others retained by the people.
And
here is the Tenth:
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.
The
Ninth and the Tenth Amendments, the final two of the Bill of Rights, are best
considered as a complementary pair, each reinforcing the
other. Together they make clear the Founders' intent. The
Ninth says our rights are not limited to the
enumerated rights. The Tenth says the powers of the federal
government arelimited to the enumerated powers. Here
is the vision of the Founding stated in fewer than fifty words: a federal
government of strictly limited powers and a people guaranteed vast liberty and
consequently unbounded opportunity.
To
point out that the central government we now live under, the Beltway Leviathan,
is no longer a federal government of strictly limited powers is only to state
the all too obvious. A central government that can prevent a farmer
from plowing across a "vernal pool" (standing water after spring
rain) on his own land, can force schools to allow boys who "identify"
as girls access to the dressing rooms and showers traditionally set aside for
real girls, and can force you under penalty of law to buy insurance designed by
that same government is well on its way to being totally unlimited, if it is not
there already.
By
way of a reminder, here is what the American Founders meant by a federal
government of strictly limited powers, as described by James Madison inFederalist 45:
The
powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few
and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are
numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on
external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce[.] ... 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.
Farmers
plowing their fields in the spring, boys and girls taking showers at school,
and Americans weighing the costs and benefits of health insurance are far
removed from "war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce."
The
central government that rules over us today is not only virtually unlimited,
but no longer even "federal" in the Founders' meaning of the
word.
The
Framers' focus was defining and limiting federal power. They did so
by distributing power among the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches
of the federal government. They went even farther by dividing the
legislative power, crafting two legislative bodies, the Senate and the House,
with separate powers and potentially competing interests. In
addition, they created a zone of liberty around you, the individual American,
by means of the Bill of Rights. Perhaps their greatest limitation on
the power of the central government was preserving the political independence
of the states. The independent political power of the states was
what made the American system of government "federal." The
states' ability to counterbalance the power of the government created by the
Constitution was at the core of the federalism of the Founders.
Madison
and the other Founders put great emphasis on the importance of the independence
of the states to the preservation of Americans' liberty. Jefferson
put it this way:
What
has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever
existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares
and powers into one body.
Lord
Acton, the great historian of liberty and admirer of the Founders, gave us
this:
Federalism:
It is coordination instead of subordination; association instead of
hierarchical order; independent forces curbing each other; balance, therefore,
liberty.
The
Framers of the Constitution aimed to preserve our unalienable rights by
preventing the concentration of political power in the central
government. Their vision for America has largely been
abandoned. Our modern obsession with national politics, the natural
result of the centralization of enormous political power in Washington, is not
what the Founders intended for America.
It
makes sense to consider the Ninth and the Tenth Amendments, written by James
Madison, were to be the final acts of the original Founding and, at the same
time, also a summary statement of the Founders' work. Jefferson's
opening claim that begins with the words "We hold these truths to be
self-evident" is just over fifty words in length. Madison's
closing statement is just under fifty words. There is greatness in
those hundred words. If we set out to restore the Founders' vision
of American liberty, Madison's closing statement together with Jefferson's
opening one can show us the way.
Robert Curry serves on the Board of Directors of the
Claremont Institute and is the author of Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the
American Idea from Encounter Books. You can preview the
book here.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/how_to_destroy_the_bill_of_rights_start_with_the_9th_and_10th_amendments.html
