I love the Constitution but there are 2 parts of it that I have been studying recently and I now understand more. So here is where I will put this information and I hope it helps you understand them better!
The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution
The preamble is the "introduction" to the Constitution and it lists 6 important reasons why the Founders wrote the Constitution.
- In order to form a more perfect union - they needed to set up a national governemnt so the states could unite and be one nation.
- To establish justice - this meant to set up laws & courts so that there could be fair treatment of everyone.
- To insure domestic tranquillity - they needed to set up a way to settle problems between the states to prevent fighting.
- To provide for the common defense - they wanted to set up a national army & navy to protect the country if it was attacked.
- To promote the general welfare - they wanted to make sure the people of the country were able to have a high standard of living.
- To secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves & our posterity - this was to protect the personal rights of the citizens and the posterity of the country.
The 10th Amendment
When the Founders first wrote the Constitution the people noticed that it didn't list the personal rights of the people. The people wanted their rights to be written into the Constitution and before the states ratified the Constitution they made it known that they expected a "Bill of Rights" to be added to it.
Originally 12 amendments were written but in 1791 ten of these were added to the Constitution and they are called the "Articles of Amendments" or "The Bill of Rights".
The 10th Amendment is one that is currently under attack. When the Constitution was written the majority of the power was supposed to be held by the individual and the Federal Government was supposed to have the LEAST amount of power!!
A lot of people today wonder how the Federal Governement ended up with so much power when they weren't supposed to have it in the first place. I feel there are 3 main ways that this power grab began - so let's look at these...(all of this information was gathered from the NCCS)
- Of course the Federal Government simply began taking more power and "We The People" did nothing about it!!
- In 1936 there was an edict by the Supreme Court (the Butler Case) and in the Butler Case Justice Roberts included in a decision his opinion that the Congress would no longer be restricted in its taxing and spending powers as long as it was in the "general welfare" of the nation. The problem with this is that it immediately opened up the U.S. Treasury to looting for all kinds of give-away programs & some politicians began using this to buy votes. But worse yet was the loose wording of this opinion - "general welfare" means different things to different people. And since the Butler Case our national debt has gone from $6billion in 1936 to $600billion in 1980 to $7trillion today!!!
- The 3rd and final thing that allowed the Federal Government to take power from the people also began in 1936 and it was the distortion of the Commerce Clause (found in Article 1, Section 8. Clause 3) The Commerce Clause began to be used to break down the restrictions the Constitution had in place and it expanded the Federal Government into hundreds of areas never intended by the Founders. The Commerce Clause was designed to give the Federal Governmenr sufficient power to insure the "free flow" of commerce between the states.
Just keep in mind that these are just 3 of the reasons that the Federal Governement is as powerful today as they are. Many things have happened since to give them even more power but this is where it all began to go south.
The Founders believed that "the more complex a society becomes the more it needs a free-market economy with the least possible interference from the government".
Adam Smith (a Scottish moral philosopher in the 1700s) said that "Government interference only adds to the complexity of the system & results in a serious deterioration of individual freedom". Please remember the 10th Amendment and let's take back our power so that our children's children can have a free America.
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