Virtue Magazine

There was a time (it seems almost like a dream compared to what we have now) when the Federal government was not viewed as the god of the land. It was one sphere of government for the nation, and the state and local governments were another sphere. The Federal government was assigned specific duties to help exacerbate cooperation among the states, and provide for a national defense. All other rights, as the 10th Amendment informs us, were preserved to the states, or to the people, which I would say includes not only private individuals, but town and county governments.

Keep in mind why the Constitution was created in the first place. The original governing document of the country, the Articles of Confederation, basically left the national government incapable of accomplishing anything without the consent of every state. Obviously, a national government needed some authority to raise taxes, raise a military, and perform other tasks, if there was going to be any kind of cohesiveness among the national body. Thus twelve states sent delegates to Philadelphia to amend the Articles of Confederation. Instead, they created a new “supreme law of the land,” what we now know as the Constitution. In the Constitution, the specific duties of the three bodies of the new Federal government were delineated clearly and specifically. One only needs look at the list of powers granted to each house of Congress, the president, or the Supreme Court to see how often they have been violated. For instance, Congress is given the authority to declare war. The United States has fought many wars, including Korea, Vietnam, and both Iraq wars, without any kind of declaration from Congress. The right of Congress to abdicate its power in favor of the president is another argument for another time.

The 10th Amendment establishes that any right that is not specifically granted to any of the three ruling bodies of the Federal government are reserved to the states. It is no great leap of logic to assert that the Federal government has no right to interfere in the business of a state, so long as that state is not attempting to assume a power that was delegated specifically to the Feds. Unfortunately, today we see the Supreme Court riding roughshod over any area of state power that it does not see fit to approve. Just in the past few days we have seen the Supreme Court ruling that certain local courthouses cannot post copies of the Ten Commandments. Would someone be kind enough to point out to me where the Supreme Court has authority to rule on what a local courthouse, or for that matter, a state-owned building can do? The ACLU can holler “Separation of church and state” all they please, but nowhere is the Supreme Court given authority to enforce “separation of church and state,” a phrase that is not even found in the Constitution. It stretches the powers of credulity to see how having a copy of the 10 Commandments in a courthouse is an “establishment of religion,” which any serious student of the Constitution knows was designed only to prevent creating a state church, such as was seen in England. In fact, nowhere in the Constitution is there any regulation that would prevent a state, if it so chose, from creating a state church for the people under their jurisdiction. If my home state of Oklahoma, for instance, wished to make their state government a Presbyterian government, they would be fully within their rights. Only Congress is prevented by the 1st Amendment from making a law respecting the establishment of religion. No such prohibition is placed upon the states. So long as a state Presbyterian government was not preventing non-Presbyterians from the free exercise of their religion, the state would be fully within its rights. It would be one of the powers which is not delegated to the United States by the Constitution. Of course, in our modern secular age, it is impossible to imagine our dictatorial Supreme Court allowing any state to create such a government. It seems most of their rulings have more to do with their personal whims, and international precedent, than with what the Constitution really says.

The “Bill of Rights” was adopted because of fears by the anti-Federalists that, without any specific limitations placed upon the authorities of the Federal government, the national governing body would eventually usurp every right the state and local governments ever had. Some, such as the eminent statesman Patrick Henry, refused to sign the Constitution even with the Bill of Rights, believing it did not go far enough to secure the rights of the states against a powerful central government, which was favored by men like Alexander Hamilton. Henry feared the differing views of the powers of state and central governments, these differing views mainly existing in the Southern and Northern states respectively, would eventually lead to rupture, and civil war. His fears would prove only too well grounded. Whatever else the War Between the States have decided, it established forever the supremacy of the Federal government over the states. This Supreme Court justice Salmon P. Chase acknowledged when he remarked, “State sovereignty died at Appomattox.”

I will not get into the issue of the War Between the States at this present time, saving that argument for perhaps a future article. However, a quote from The South Was Right, by James and Ronald Kennedy, provides what I believe to be a very solid argument for the necessity of the 10th Amendment. “We must remember,” they assert, “that there is no magic in the word ‘constitution.’ Even communist Russia had a constitution that guaranteed human rights and religious freedom. Yet, it availed the people very little! The current United States Constitution may resemble the original, it may be titled the same, it may contain certain identical clauses, but it does not effectively limit the power of the federal government, nor does it allow the people of the states an avenue to effectively defend their reserved rights when these rights are trampled upon by an all-powerful central government. Therefore, beware of your liberties, for indeed there is no magic in the word ‘constitution’! Absent the sovereign state, the individual citizen stands naked and alone, unprotected against the might of a centralized federal government-a government that has assumed unto itself the right to be the exclusive judge of the extent of its own powers. What monarch has ever asked for more?”

This is the sad and sorry condition we see the nation in today. I could multiply dozens of areas where the Feds are infringing on the rights of the individual states, and the people. Suffice it to say that citizens and states alike are now completely at the mercy of a federal government, which is now assuming even more authority to pry into our private lives, and assert their dominion over state governments, in the name of protecting the nation against terrorism. Be aware, as wise men of old warned us, that those who will sacrifice liberty for security will have neither. The states, and we as the people specified in the 10th Amendment, must work hard to regain the powers reserved to us by that amendment, if we would secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.