Posted on 01/31/2002 6:40:31 AM PST by FreedomWarrior
Constitution- Who Cares?
by W. James Antle III
COLUMN OF THE DAY!!
January 31, 2002
It goes without saying among the few of us who care about such things that the United States has veered off track from the constitutional republic envisioned by its Founders. From a system of limited government, where the federal government had a few defined powers expressly delegated by the Constitution (shown, right) with the remainder left to the states, we have morphed into a regime under which the federal government defines its own powers and progressively turns the states into its own administrative units.
So the question is: Why do so few people care?
Part of the answer is monumental constitutional ignorance. People don't seem to understand that the Constitution is supposed to limit government, not just establish procedures by which the government operates. It says that the president must be at least 35 years of age and native-born, but it also contains a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms that the federal government must not infringe upon. It enumerates the specific powers of the central government. The average American simply has no idea what the Constitution says or does.
Of course, it has long been the case that the Constitution was too radical for the American people. For a number of years, polls have shown majorities opposing protections afforded by the Bill of Rights when they were not identified as such. This doesn't even include the Tenth Amendment, but amendments that are ostensibly popular among liberals such as the First and the Fourth. So it isn't clear that a majority of Americans would support the Constitution even if they understood it.
This is tragic, because apart from constitutional government there is no basis for lawful government. In order for the law to act as a shield and not a weapon, the lawmakers cannot be a law unto themselves. We are devolving to precisely that point.
After all, we argue for and against various government spending programs or adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare on the alleged merits of these proposals. Nobody bothers to ask whether any of these proposals are constitutional. Those who support them are never challenged to show where in the Constitution the federal government specifically received its authorization to intrude in that area. The columnist Joe Sobran has quipped that anything called a "program" is unconstitutional.
Constitutional conservatives don't always help their own cause. The reality is that while a government unconstrained by the Constitution is in principle tyrannical, most Americans are still free to live their lives largely as they please. So talk about our tyrannical government produces nods of agreement from true believers, but causes the average voter to roll their eyes. Rather than educating people about the Constitution, many constitutionalists would rather reinforce "black helicopter" and "tinfoil hat" stereotypes and drive soccer moms into the arms of Hillary Clinton.
Yes, horrible things happened at Waco and Ruby Ridge at the hands of the federal government. But most Americans don't identify with lunatics who believe they are Jesus Christ and start bizarre religious cults. Nor do they identify with nutty white separatists who want to isolate themselves from modernity. This does not mean that any of these people deserved to die. What it does mean is that Joe Average is not going to look at the burning compound in Waco on TV and say, "Wow, those people were so much like me, I fear that I could be next." Sure, some pretty awful things have happened to fairly ordinary people on account of the drug war, but by and large, the federal government hasn't given ordinary people much of a reason to worry.
Most people live in nice homes and enjoy a nice standard of living. They are free to go to school where they want, work where and what profession they want, live where they want, marry who they want, etc. Millions of Americans no longer even pay income taxes. The federal government doesn't significantly impede them in anyway. Once in a while somebody forgets to pay their income taxes, or runs afoul of racial quotas, or has their livelihood ruined by some regulation like the farmers of Klamath Falls. But it doesn't happen to enough people to spark much of a popular uprising the way inflation-induced "bracket creep" did 20 years ago.
A welfare state is not this writer's idea of a free society, but it is a great deal freer than totalitarianism. The difference between the two is as great as the difference between Bill Clinton and Joseph Stalin. People who can't tell this difference are why advocates of limited government get tarred as alarmists and nutcases.
Of course, some of the power gained by the federal government has not actually led to a net increase in government power over citizens' lives. The Constitution limited the federal government, but did not originally offer any protections against the depredations of state governments, which were still free (subject to their own constitutions) to establish churches, knock people's doors down and otherwise deny their rights. Some of the powers the federal government has gained resulted from curbing anti-freedom policies enacted at the state level.
The fact that Americans still enjoy a greater degree of freedom than most of the rest of the world does not mean that concerns about unconstitutional government are unwarranted. Just because we have retained our freedoms after the limits on government were uprooted doesn't mean that unlimited government will never be exploited for evil means. Some people suggest secession as a means of combating big government that doesn't respect the Constitution. In principle, secession is a valid tool for escaping a rapacious central government. But who is going to secede from what? It is not as if there is one constitutionally pure section of the country that is being oppressed by another. The American people have democratically chosen to go down the path of big government, North, South, East and West. The differences are only in degree.
Life is really good in the United States. The downside is, while preserving the Constitution may keep it that way, things being so good make it more difficult to make that case. Yet it is important to understand why this is so rather than make all kinds of proclamations that insure that constitutionalism will simply be ignored.
© 2002 W. James Antle III
A little historical research reveals that at the time the constitution was written the term "regulate" had a somewhat different meaning than the more modern context of "to control". Hence the verbiage "well regulated militia" in the Second Amendment did not mean that the militia was to be tightly controlled by the government. The writings of the founders in the Federalist Papers and other documents clearly indicate that the interpretation of the commerce clause put forth by FDR was not what they intended when they wrote the clause. That you see this interpretation as a great thing places you squarely among those who view the Constitution as a "living, breathing document" whose words mean whatever we think they ought to mean.
Try to name or describe the last law passed by the federal government which was passed to benefit only the people of this country. The laws passed today by government are intended to either protect the government or to provide some competetive edge to some industry.
The net result of the 30's era interpretation of the commerce clause was to give the federal government control over any material object you might posess, on the grounds that it might someday be interstate commerce. The founders envisioned a federal government with strictly limited powers. Do you think that if this is what they intended, they'd have been a little more specific, and that their writings in the Federalist Papers and would have addressed this issue in more detail?
Granting of authority to the federal government entails more than declarations of a "self-evident need". That's why we have provisions for amendment.
Hey! As a boot-licking state gov't bureaucrat wasting tax money by posting on FR from work instead of doing my job, I'd like to point out that not all of us are stupid -- some of us are just lazy, evil sell-outs.
The power, as granted in the constitution, is a limited power. It is a clear principle, that when the means of executing any given power are specified in the grant, Congress cannot take, by implication, any other means, as being necessary and proper to carry that power into execution.
Yes, I most certainly do have a problem with the so-called conservatives in the House and Senate voting for unconstitutional legislation. The fact that Republicans control the House does make me any more of a fan of their votes for unconstitutional legislation. On to the next question.
Second, I don't think you have a complaint. I have repeatedly asked and not one of you have given a real concrete example.
OK. Where in the Constitution does the federal government get the authority to pass laws restricting firearms ownership? Federalizing state criminal laws, as is routinely done in anti-crime and anti-terrorism legislation? Where is the constitutional authority for education spending? For determining school class sizes? For Social Security? Where did the Supreme Court get the authority to strike down the abortion laws of all 50 states? Where did it get the constitutional authority to ban school prayer? Where did Congress get the authority to approve roving wiretaps?
I have repeatedly asked and not one of you have given a real concrete example. You asked me for an example and I gave you one, genetically altered seeds.
I think this is legitimately understood as interstate commerce that can be regulated under the interestate commerce clause. Yet some of the scenarios you outline don't simply apply to national versus local or state. If we should abandon limited constitutional government for this concern, we should embrace world government. After all, the federal government can't inspect the relevant facilities in Sri Lanka. It can only prohibit the genetically altered seeds from coming into the United States, a protectionist move.
Again, I see a contradiction in your logic. On the on hand, you insist that everything the federal government is doing is constitutional. On the other, you insist that a constitututionally limited government would be unable to perform its vital functions, functions even I and most of the constitutionalists on this thread feel it is authorized to perform.
I believe Ted Kennedy would agree with you, and Ron Paul would not.
How about something a little more contemporary:
"If we wish to be true to [the] Constitution . . . ,our Commerce Clause's boundaries simply cannot be 'defined' as being 'commensurate with the national needs' or self- consciously intended to let the Federal Government 'defend itself against economic forces that Congress decrees inimical or destructive of the national economy.' Such a formulation of federal power is no test at all: it is a blank check."
-Justice Clarence Thomas
The birth of "new speak" of course we call it SPIN.
...by Henry Wallace. ;^)
IIRC, the whole thing came down to a dispute between the FLSC and the Fl. Legislature over who could and could not create new laws. Wouldn't this be an issue for the USSC to decide?
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