As with the constant yammering by the globohomoleft that our immigration law is “broken,” (how would they know? It’s never been tried), I tire of the cant that our constitutional system can’t handle its modern load.
How would we know?
Pundits and professors yak all the time about our government of “limited powers,” but no one ever thinks to limit the power.
There’s this section of Article 1 that most people seem to miss and which no one in authority at any level seems to care about: Section 8, the enumerated powers. If put to its intended use, my guess is that it would solve most, perhaps all of our domestic controversies. But to not only not put it to use, but to proclaim against America’s foundational document as the only way to “save democracy” is the cry of those against self-government.
What is the purpose of the enumerated powers? To enumerate, or list, those powers the federal government has.
Do the feds have any others? Nope.
The enumerated powers define exactly - and only - what powers and authority the – superior – governments of the several States delegated to the – inferior – federal government when the States created that federal government to do specific, enumerated things... for them.
What about the idea that no document could hold all the powers and authorities needed by a complex government? The Ninth Amendment handled that issue:
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
What about the powers, then, listed and unlisted? These – all – are found in the Tenth Amendment:
Amendment X
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.
Notice the refrain? “The People.” It’s OUR government.
Is abortion in there? No.
George Carlin commented in regard to government: “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”
Well, the enumerated powers is a short list, and abortion ain’t on it.
What about the other social issues causing controversy throughout the land. Are they in there?
Marriage? No.
Bathrooms? No.
Gender
confusioninsanity? No.Sports? No.
Education? No. (See George Carlin, above.)
Energy? No.
Foreign Aid? No.
“General Police powers?” No. (FBI, ATF…)
“Executive Orders?” No.
Etc.? No.
If we enforced the law (the Constitution is “The Supreme Law of the Land”), and forced the federal government to abide by the enumerated powers, all of these issues not only would be absent from a federal agenda, budget, and campaigns, the people would demand and expect that these issues would be left to the States, rather than bitching and moaning and campaigning about the “need” for a “national” whatever this week, and a new whatever next week. And the States – much closer to the needs, wants and desires of the people - could and would handle these issues, while preserving the Rule of Law, rather than destroying it through federal over-reach and “a pen and a phone.”
Can we enforce the Constitution on people delusionally thinking themselves our masters?
Absolutely. Governors are the first line of defense against a “national” government for the simple reason that, with very few exceptions, governors have greater executive authority over their citizens than the president. Each time the federal government colors outside the lines of its delegated power, governors ought to – and can but refuse to – stand up and refuse to comply. That is their primary job: To defend their State authority from federal government overreach
Some will point to the Supremacy Clause to deny the above. They are mistaken. The Supremacy Clause is relevant in conflicts between State legislation and/or actions and the enumerated powers of the federal government – and no more. Why? Because, outside of the enumerated powers, the federal government has no authority. Legal discussion around the Clause hinges on federal legislation. But if the federal government legislates in areas in which the States delegated it no authority, the federal legislation is unconstitutional, and the Supremacy Clause, therefore, irrelevant.
Why do governors refuse to enforce their Constitutional role? One reason is party politics. The other is that governors all seem to think they are playing in Triple-A ball awaiting a call-up to the Show in the big stadium in the District of Corruption. We need to ensure they are held accountable to their primary role: Protecting the citizens of their States from an overweening federal government.
How else can we stop them? We can start by not funding the bastards:
If each governor reviewed the federal budget each year and struck any funding for activities not delegated to the federal government, divided the remainder by the number of taxpayers nationally, multiplied that by the number of taxpayers in their state, and collected that amount using their own taxation policies (state legislators an governors certainly can more intelligently focus on housing, prosperity, and families within their States than can 535 ‘HOA presidents’ in DC), forwarding the final take to the IRS along with individual taxpayer IDs, the 16th Amendment would not be violated as the citizens would be taxed federally, the citizens would pay for delegated authorities and not pay for stuff the federal government is not allowed to do, and the feds would be (slowly) forced back into their legal and legitimate box.
An added bonus would be the statutorily-mandated, on-time delivery of a federal budget, because if a governor had no federal budget to review on October 1 of each year, that governor would just refuse to tax his or her citizens for the feds – at all – as illegal funding could not be distinguished from legal funding.
A twofer.
But – what we have isn’t working and fixing it Constitutionally seems not on the horizon; any “fix” would limit the power of the blob, and they can’t have that.
Do we need a dictator? Perhaps. Should he go all-Pinochet and throw the commies out of helicopters? He’d get lots of kudos from Americans if he did, but the commies might object. Why don’t we - at least try - what we have now, before devolving to dictatorship?
SCOTUS tried to put the enumerated powers that limit the authority of the federal government to use in Dobbs, but forgot – or didn’t know or care – to couch the decision accurately or in terms that multiple generations of Americans had never been taught by our abjectly poor “education” system.
Sure, Justice Thomas asked in orals, “where is that right?” but the final decision didn’t just net it out: Abortion is not among the enumerated powers, the Roe court had no authority to hear the case, and no part of the federal government of limited, enumerated powers has any authority to outlaw or legalize abortion. The Roe v Wade decision was a usurpation of State authority and a violation of the Tenth Amendment. Period.
By not concisely stating the result of the holding, demogogues on both sides of the aisle are free to proclaim their ignorance; Graham(R) demanding to outlaw abortion nationally, and Harris(D) demanding to legalize it nationally. Both are demanding to exceed the limits placed on the federal government by the Constitution each has, multiple times, sworn to “protect and defend.”
There’s a name for people like this: Liars.
As they are federal office holders, another name also applies: Traitors.
Putting the established, accepted, legal, Constitutional, 250-yr-old limits on our government that it was designed to have seems a bit less far-fetched than throwing it all out and starting over, which seems to be the direction the managerial class desires.
Why do they want to throw it out? It’s “too hard” to change on their whim; those silly sovereign people must be checked with rather than steamrolled-over. And if you think 1A, 2A, 4A, 6A, 9A or 10A would survive a new Constitution – call me about a bridge…
The purpose of the Constitution is to create a stable functioning government with the people the ultimate sovereigns; stability demands that it be hard to change. The globohomos dislike that and demand it be changed. The problem with their demand is that WE are in charge, and not THEY.
John Kerry and Hillary Clinton – each a former Secretary of State and major-party nominee for the presidency - want to terminate free speech. Yet each also took an oath to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Maybe you can square that circle, but I sure can’t.
Per John Kerry,
[O]ur First Amendment stands as a major block to our ability to just, you know, hammer it [“disinformation” – of which the regime is the major purveyor – by far] out of existence,
Mr. Kerry sees 1A as a block to “consensus” built upon what the globalists want, not what we want as a free people. A) no one asked him, B) no one cares what he thinks, and C) what we want is how our government is designed – if he doesn’t like that he can move.
In Hillary’s words,
“If the platforms — whether it’s Facebook or Twitter-X or Instagram or TikTok or whatever they are — if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control.”
In what fever-dream can a woman who was the Secretary of State and a major party nominee for the presidency think that anyone BUT the People have legitimate control over our government? How can she “lose” what the government never had?
Did anyone vote for the globalists to turn our world upside down? To tell us we need ‘consensus,’ or that we must be governed – rather than they – when we are the sovereigns?
Nope.
Did the nation – whose population ought to have been joyful at the fact of the Constitution being respected and power and authority placed as designed – celebrate this return of the Tenth Amendment in the Dobbs decision? No.
Why? They’d never been taught about the Constitution. They thought – and seem still to think – that we have a national, not a federal government. Heck – based on current reports, most of them can’t even spell “federal,” let alone understand it. Why can they not grasp this? Easy – the federal government was allowed to color outside the lines, create a federal “Department of Education,” and literacy, numeracy, critical thinking and historical knowledge have been dropping like a rock ever since.
“It’s the enumerated powers, Stupid.”
But the biggest question remains, no matter the choice made between our current and a new Constitution: If we allow the elites to ignore this one, what possible reason have we to believe they won’t ignore the next one, as well?
The PROBLEM is, as this bright, frustrated woman told a congressional committee years ago.
I'm not here as a serf or a vassal. I’m not begging my lords for mercy. I’m a born free American woman. Wife, mother, and citizen. And I’m telling my government that you've forgotten your place. It is not your responsibility to look out for my well-being and to monitor my speech. It’s not your right to assert an agenda. Your post, the post that you occupy, exists to preserve American liberty. You’ve sworn to perform that duty, and you have faltered.
And THAT problem is on us to fix.
So the REAL question is: What kind of government are we willing to accept and enforce?
It is, after all, OUR COUNTRY, not theirs.
And we don’t care what they think.
Their job is to care what WE think.
Another political science masterpiece that should be mandatory reading for every governor and ALL politicians. The tragedy is that governors have allowed their power to be mooted by Washington.