My friend
Darren Doane, creator of the film Collision and producer of
many of my videos on eschatology, posted the following on Facebook:
Here was my
response:
The fact that
the Federal Government has not been able to stop the spread of a virus means
it’s not essential.
My comment
seems to have hit a nerve. Someone made a meme out of it:
Defining someone’s job as “non-essential” is the
epitome of political messianism. There are many things the Federal Government
does that are not only not essential; they are downright destructive.
Can you imagine what shape we would be in if the
Federal Government had overseen our nation’s food supply during this virus
lockdown? It would have been a disaster. Governments are not essential to keep
store shelves stocked. The shortages that we experienced were the result of the
government’s stay-at-home mandate. Billions of economic decisions are made by
hundreds of millions of people every day. It works outside the direction of
government edicts. See my article “The Economics of Toilet Paper Shortages.”
Governments
can’t cure poverty or income inequality, but they can make them worse.
It’s
legitimate to ask how essential the Federal Government is in particular areas.
The constitutional framers thought it was essential for only some governing
areas. They were so clear on this point that they listed them. If a power is
not listed, the Federal government doesn’t have it.
God and Government
If you are looking for a biblical, historical, and
constitutional explanation of government, a term broader than politics, then
the 30-chapter God and Government is the place to start. It
has become a standard work among homeschoolers and others who want to know how
the Bible applies to everything from God’s government and self-government to
church and state issues and economics.
The states were insistent on further limiting the
power of the national government by adding a Bill of Rights. Note the Ninth and
Tenth Amendments:
Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain
rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the
people.
Amendment X: 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 Founders did
not believe control of education was an essential national government power.
The word is not found in the Constitution, and yet we have a Federal Department
of Education. The people are taxed at the state level. The money is sent to the
Federal Government. The Department of Education is given some of that money.
They money is then sent back to the states only if they follow federally
mandated educational laws:
There is no
authority/power given to the Federal Government for Social Security, Medicare,
wealth redistribution, a Department of Energy, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack, the
Federal Reserve, foreign aid, or wars against non-aggressive nations.
Consider the
Federal Reserve. Although an instrument of the US Government, the Federal
Reserve System considers itself “an independent central bank because its
monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone
else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not
receive funding appropriated by Congress, and the terms of the members of the
board of governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms.”
When the national government assumes powers by
legislative fiat, like redefining marriage and designating unborn children as
non-persons, it is defying the constitution, and those who take an oath to
uphold it violate that oath every time they pass a law or fund a program that
does not line up with the Constitution’s enumerated powers.
