“The States should be left to do whatever they can do as well as the federal government”
Thomas Jefferson
“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.”
One of the most contentious points in the formation of a Federal government came from the individual states. The states didn’t want to lose the ability to make regional decisions nor to be subject to an overriding power from a distant national capital. The Tenth Amendment was written to reassure the states that they would remain largely in charge within their own borders. Until the mid-19th century, the Tenth Amendment was often cited by state governments to prevent Federal regulation of everything from taxation to interstate commerce. Since 1837, however, various rulings have mitigated the straightforward meaning of the Tenth Amendment, and such matters as a Federal income tax were subsequently upheld in the courts.
The key principle of the Constitution is quite simple: positive grant. Unfortunately, this is not a phrase that many of us hear in daily banter these days. But, it’s not a complicated principle at all.
What it means is this – the US federal government is authorized to exercise only those powers which are specifically given to it in the Constitution. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Period. End of story.
The founders felt so strongly about this principle that they codified it in law as the Tenth Amendment:
“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.”
Just a casual review of the activities of the federal government would make clear that there’s very little that it does which is actually authorized by the Constitution.
For many, many years, we’ve allowed our politicians to interpret and bend the rules of the Constitution; ostensibly for good reasons. But, we have to face reality. When you allow politicians to do this over long periods, eventually you end up with leaders who feel that the law doesn’t apply at all.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
If we are to have a free society for the future, we must reign in this out-of-control federal government, and return to our Constitution; with a special emphasis on the limitations imposed on government by the Tenth Amendment.
