How Did We Get There?

The American Thinker ^ | May 29, 2010 | Dana Ferrell

[Scanian]

How did we get there? That is the question posed by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) to Supreme Court Justice Nominee Sonia Sotomayor during her confirmation hearing. The "there" Senator Coburn was asking about is the situation where the individual's right to bear arms is explicit in the Constitution yet unsettled in law, while a woman's right to privacy (to an abortion), not mentioned at all in the Constitution, is settled in law. Thus, the perfectly reasonable question, "How did we get there?"

The problem we face is that there are a lot of "theres" out there.

From an early age, we Americans are taught that ours is a government with limited powers designed to protect the liberty of the individual from powerful individuals, special interest groups, and tyranny of the majority imposed by government itself -- that the brilliance of our founders was in crafting a constitution that enumerates the powers of the federal government and that any power not specifically given to that government cannot be usurped from the states or the people. Today, it is estimated that two-thirds to three-fourths of federal government expenditures do not have a foundation in its enumerated powers, and nearly all of the regulatory agencies are without any Constitutional foundation. How did we get there?

[pepsionice]

You can reshuffle the deck of cards a hundred times...you still come back to the Constitution every single time.

[Carley]

The only ‘settled law’ in this country seems to be the right to kill your unborn baby.