The Constitution, what it says, what it means, and how its clear meaning has been usurped.

The Constitution, what it says, what it means, and how its clear meaning has been usurped.
 
 My love and respect for the Constitution began in my High School Civics classes, and I have been a student of it ever since. Having been born and raised in Alabama, and with the State motto being “We dare defend our Rights”, it was felt by my family, by the leaders of our School system (before the feds took it over), and specifically by our teachers, that in order to defend ones rights, one should know exactly what those Rights were.  Like many people in our community, when I was a young man I followed the family tradition and enlisted in the armed forces, and like all military members I swore my Oath, before God Almighty, to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies foreign and domestic”. What makes me a bit different than most of my brothers and sisters in arms is the fact that I felt it necessary to take the time to seriously study that dusty old document that I had just sworn to support and defend, and while I may have been discharged from my duty to the armed forces a quarter of a century ago, I was never discharged from my duty to the Constitution.
 
Given the fact that today there are several schools of thought on the Constitution, I should make it clear where I stand.  I am not a “RINO”, or Republican In Name Only, nor a “neo-con”, or New Conservative, rather I am what is known as a Paleoconservative, meaning Old Conservative, or in a term that most of you may be familiar with, a strict constructionist.  I do not believe that the Constitution is what Liberals refer to as a “living document”, and that we can therefore twist and contort it to fit the fad de jure, but rather that it means exactly what it says, and if there is some question as to what it means, that we must refer to the writings of the Founding Fathers to ascertain that meaning.  I also abhor the fact that the federal government, by way of Socialist liberals in the Legislative and Executive, and with the support of their likeminded sycophants in the judiciary, have taken it upon themselves to usurp the Rights of the States, and of We The People through legislative or executive fiat, because they know that there’s no way that they’d be able to foist their socialist claptrap on the American people if they tried to do it the right way, by following Article 5 of the Constitution and making an AMENDMENT to authorize whatever it is that they wanted to do.
 
This leads us to the main topic of today’s address, that being the role of the Constitution as it relates to the separation between Federal and States Rights.  When the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia in that hot summer of 1787 and hammered out the compromise that we know as our Constitution, we need to realize that it’s adoption and ratification were far from certain.  Chief among the objections raised by the Anti-Federalists, led by men such as Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, was the fact that it lacked a Bill of Rights, and that without it, that the new government could become even more despotic than England’s King George III had been even under the English Bill of Rights. On the other side of the debate were the Federalists, led mainly by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, who advocated strongly that a Bill of Rights was un-necessary, claiming that any enumeration of a Bill of Rights could possibly lead to them being interpreted to be our only Rights. The compromise reached by the Constitutional Convention was that the States would ratify the Constitution based on the promise that an acceptable Bill of Rights would be authored and Amended to the Constitution, thereby bolstering the guarantees in Article 4, including Section 4 which guarantees to the States a “Republican form of government”.  But what is this “Republican form of government”?  It means simply that each of the States is a Republic, that it’s government is to be elected by the people, and that those elected are to act as their agents in the government, and that means that those elected representatives are our employees; they work for us, not the other way around, and as such, it is incumbent upon us to tell them what we want them to do provided that it does not violate any of the Rights of the individual, or impinge on those Rights ceded to the federal government by the States in the  Constitution.  This is why, contrary to popular myth, the United States is a Constitutional Representative Republic, and NOT a “democracy”.  In fact, democracy was universally discounted by the Founding Fathers as the worst possible form of government, because they realized that in a true democracy, 50.1% of the population can utterly destroy the rights of, and then enslave, the other 49.9% of the population at their whim, or to put it in simpler terms, democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for supper.

When we read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and disregarding all subsequent Amendments, it becomes readily apparent that the vast majority of power was, as specified in the 10th Amendment, centered with the States, and the federal government was limited to only those things specifically enumerated in the Constitution, mainly concentrated in Article 1 Section 8.  Essentially, the early United States was not unlike the current European Union, with each of the States having their own autonomy, their own State Constitutions, and the federal government was to be limited to only those things that each of the States would be unable to efficiently manage on their own.  The federal government, through Congress, was to have to power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States”, and it is the words “general welfare”, or rather the willful and intentional misrepresentation of those words, specifically in the past 80 years, which have generated the greatest difficulty since they were written.  The common misconception among what I consider to be the deliberately ill informed electorate in our country today is that the general welfare clause means that the government can do whatever they want to in the interest of the general welfare, but nothing could be further from the truth.  When we read the words of two of our most notable Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and a staunch Anti-Federalist, and James Madison, the author of nearly half of the Federalist papers, we quickly discover that they both had but one thing to say about the general welfare clause, that being that the phrase “the general welfare” meant only those things specifically enumerated in the Constitution, and if it is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, then it must, by rights, be left to the States, or to We The People.  So in addition to laying and collecting taxes, paying our national debts, and providing for the common defense, Congress is supposed to be limited to the following 17 specifically enumerated powers;  
•      To borrow money on the credit of the United States;  
•      To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;  
•      To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;  
•      To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;  
•      To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;  
•      To establish post offices and post roads;  
•      To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;  
•      To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;  
•      To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;  
•      To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;  
•      To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;  
•      To provide and maintain a navy;  
•      To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;  
•      To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;  
•      To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;  
•      To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And  
•      To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.  
 
 and other than establishing the rules and regulations for the operations of the Congress, Executive, and Judiciary, that is pretty much all that the government is authorized to do under the Constitution.

The limitations upon the States are likewise clearly laid out in the Constitution, and these are remarkably few in number, namely;
•      No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.  
•      No state shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection laws: and the net produce of all duties and imposts, laid by any state on imports or exports, shall be for the use of the treasury of the United States; and all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of the Congress.  
•      No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.  
and as I alluded to earlier, the 10th Amendment makes it perfectly clear that “The powers not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Generally, things pretty much worked the way they were designed to until the beginning of the 20th Century, first with the passage of the 16th Amendment which authorized the income tax, and then the 17th Amendment whereby the States surrendered their true control over the Federal government by allowing the popular election of Senators.  Beginning in 1913, the system of having a Senate, whose members were appointed by the States legislatures, and which represented the interests of the States, and a House of Representatives, who were elected by the people, and represented the interests of the people was altered. Now instead of the States truly being represented, for all intents and purposes we now have two houses of representatives who are elected by an uninformed electorate, and as a result that electorate votes for individuals who promise them the most “bread and circuses” as opposed to those who are committed to doing what is best for their State, and the nation as a whole, and as a result the federal government now expends approximately 70% of our entire $3.6 Trillion dollar national budget on social give away programs whose only purpose is to ensure a captive block of the electorate who will ensure that the people who deliver the most “bread and circuses” get elected time and time again.  
 
Add to this the spate of Humpty Dumpty Judges that decided that the very clear verbiage used in the Constitution meant what they wanted it to mean, when they wanted it to mean it, and for as long as they wanted it to mean it, and the list of usurpations of  States Rights throughout the 20th century grew to the point where States Rights, as well as individual Rights, essentially became nothing but a distant memory.
 
In Schenck v United States (1919), the Supreme Court handed down their infamous ruling that “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic”  yet the First Amendment is clear that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech”.  Fortunately for us, that ruling was at least partially overturned in 1969 in Brandenburg v Ohio, in that the Justices concluded  that speech which would be directed to, and likely to incite imminent lawless action could still be banned, but as the First Amendment makes no such exception, this is still a violation of the First Amendment.  Today we’re faced with “hate speech” legislation, and again this is a complete violation of the 1st Amendment, but Congress and the courts really don’t care about the Constitution unless it’s “politically expedient” for them to.
 
 It does not allow the government to regulate how much an employer in any specific State must pay his employees, or how many hours they can work, these are things that are supposed to be left open to negotiation between and employer and the employee, but the government has usurped that Right by constructing a “Department of Labor” which will fine any employer who isn’t in compliance with their totally unconstitutional rules.  
 
Where in the Constitution does it authorize the federal government to tax and spend your hard earned money for the purposes of providing “health care” to the population? Under what provision of the Constitution does the Federal government have the right to take YOUR money, and give it to an illegal immigrant, crack-head, welfare brood-mare in California? What part of the Constitution gives the federal government the right to take your tax dollars and give them to a bank, or an insurance company, or any other private institution?

Under the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, and contrary to the oft quoted myth based around the 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments, there is no Right to vote in a Federal election. The 14th Amendment makes it clear that if a State does deny anyone the Right to vote to anyone who is at least 18 years of age, and not a convicted felon, mentally challenged, or in some other way legally prohibited from voting, that the recourse is a reduction in the States enumeration for Representation in Congress, which at worst could reduce the number of Representative in the US House of Representatives. Simply put, the State allows us to vote, and as such it is up to the States to decide what, if any, qualifications a resident in their State must possess before being allowed to vote, yet Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in complete violation of the 14th Amendment, and pursuant to that Act, there are still 16 States, including North Carolina, that are under some form of restrictions, and must get federal permission prior to changing anything concerning the districting, or anything else related to voting, including areas that have no history whatsoever of discrimination against anyone.
 
Nowhere in the Constitution does it authorize Congress to tell the States what the speed limits on it’s State roads will be, or that the citizens of the States must wear seat belts or helmets, or what the drinking age, or the smoking age should be in their State, but that’s exactly what has happened, and if a State decides that it doesn’t want to adopt the federal guidelines, then they withhold their “matching highway funds” as a means of legislative blackmail to get the States to comply with their unconstitutional demands. More properly, this blackmail is what is known as a Bill of Attainder and those are specifically prohibited by the Constitution.
 
 It does not provide for the federal government to tell a farmer what or how much he may, or may not grow, and how much he can sell his crops for, but they do this through the Department of Agriculture every day, and God help you if you grow too much of something because they can arrest you, seize your farm and sell it right out from under you. Following the 1938 Agricultural Adjustment Act, a farmer by the name of Filburn overplanted his “allotment” of wheat, and was fined $.49 for each of his 239 excess bushels. Now, this may not sound like a lot of money, but we need to bear in mind that this is in the middle of the Great Depression, and the market price for wheat was only $.40 per bushel. Mr. Filburn readily acknowledged that he overplanted his allotment, but that the overage was for his own family’s personal consumption, and not for sale on the open Market, but the Supreme Court ruled that since his overage would be used by his family, that it amounted to wheat that they would not be buying on the open market, at market prices, and was therefore a violation of the “Interstate Commerce Clause” of the Constitution, even though the wheat would not only not leave his farm, it would never leave Ohio, nor would it ever enter commerce at all.  Again, in recent years the courts have corrected some of the excesses of the early 20th century, and the decision in Filburn was moderated in United States v Lopez, but as an exemplar of the total insanity of the “logic” used in the Federal Courts, in 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in Gonzalez v Raich, SCOTUS ruled that a California man could not grow his own medical marijuana, in complete compliance with California law, because “ home grown marijuana is a legitimate subject of federal regulation because it competes with marijuana that moves in interstate commerce.”  Now maybe it’s just me, but isn’t marijuana, to one degree or another, illegal in all 50 States, and isn’t the “interstate commerce” of marijuana a Federal offense?  Yet the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that California does not have the Right to allow it’s citizens to grow their own, for their own personal use, because it would have an effect on the “interstate commerce” of an illegal activity. If we are to interpret the decisions in Filburn and Raich literally, it would be a federal offense to grow a vegetable garden on your property, for your own consumption, because by growing your own food, you are interfering with the “interstate commerce” of vegetables grown somewhere else!

Perhaps someone will one day be able to direct me to the exact Article, Section and Clause of the Constitution that provides for a federal Department of Education, where government approved teachers inculcate our children with a government approved curriculum, in a government approved environment,  regardless of the wishes of the child’s parents, and if you object too much, the government will come and take your children away from you, and put them in a government approved Social Services program, with government approved Social Workers, who will then place your children with government approved Foster families, and you then have to go through the courts, not for the government to prove that you did anything wrong, but where you have to prove that you didn’t do anything wrong, and you may be required to complete a government approved course of “re-education” in order to get your own children back!. A NC judge recently ruled that a woman who was involved in a divorce had to put her kid back into public school because her home schooling included religious teaching and her ex husband didn’t like it, completely regardless of the First Amendments guarantee that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”.
 
And exactly where in the Constitution does it give the President of the United States the right to fire the CEO of an American automobile company, or for his personally appointed, unelected, and unaccountable to anyone but him “Czars” to determine how many dealerships will stay open or not?  Maybe it’s just me.  Maybe the various copies of the Constitution that I own have all been redacted, but I just can’t seem to find that in there anywhere.  
 
 In response to the many egregious usurpations of the Rights of the States, and of We The People by the Federal government, at least 35 States have either proposed at one time or another, or enacted 10th Amendment legislation in one form or another, to put Washington on notice that their days of abrogating the very clearly enumerated Rights of the States are over.  For example, the State of Montana has recently passed, and their Governor has signed legislation whereby any firearms, ammunition, or components that are manufactured in Montana, and which stay in Montana are not subject to any federal firearms legislation, and that any federal LEO that attempts to interfere with this law will result in their being arrested and charged under Montana Law.  I would also suggest that you contact your State Senator, and instruct them to either sponsor or support similar legislation in the Senate, and finally to contact your Governor and inform them of your support for this very important legislation so that we may once again regain our Rights as sovereign States, and to cease being a puppet of the overarching imperial power of the Federal government.  
 
There is an old saying that “those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it”, and it would do well for us to remember this admonition, for if we forget, or forego our Rights as a Republic, then we too are doomed to repeat the mistakes of Rome, and we will at that point deserve the same fate.

Your humble servant

John Smith