[Back to the top from January 21, 2010. –GSS]
What a delight it is that the citizens of Massachusetts have risen up against the federal leviathan. All across the country, the tea party movement is furiously aboil, angry Americans anxiously awaiting the opportunity to pull some levers in a voting booth.
But if the current populist uprising is nothing more than yet another throw-the-bums-out movement, it will come to nothing. We threw the bums out good and hard in 1994, and yet the federal leviathan has done nothing but grow since then. By now the national government is so huge that it threatens to crush the nation and its people and productive plant beneath its enormous weight.
It is not enough to throw the bums out. To contain the federal government, we have to cut its powers. Nothing else will stop its long-term growth.
The United States was originally conceived of as a confederation of sovereign states. The states joined together for those common purposes that seemed to make sense to them, with each state retaining is sovereignty in all other matters.
That was the theory — the federal government was to be the hand-servant of the states. In practice, the federal government has usurped the power of the states from the very beginning, with the abuses becoming more bold and more comprehensive with each passing decade.
This turns out to have been a mistake — as we are discovering. Where each state is independent of all the others, each one can try different policies. The states can become the laboratories of democracy that the founding fathers envisioned.
But to achieve this, we will have to rein in the federal leviathan. The states and the people need to reassert their ownership of and control over the national government.
How? By constitutional amendment. Probably by constitutional convention, since it seems unlikely that sitting members of Congress will vote to circumscribe their awesome and terrifying powers.
But here, in a very short summary, is what needs to be done, if the head of steam built up by the tea party movement is not to be wasted. The text within the quotation marks is proposed amendatory language, followed by a discussion of the objective to be achieved.
1. “The words ‘general welfare’ appearing in the United States Constitution or its Amendments do not create any powers of the legislative, executive or judicial branches of the government of the United States. Any legislation authorized by the words ‘general welfare’ is repealed.” This gets rid of one of the most pernicious pieces of federal elasticity. The pretext for forcing people to buy health insurance under Obamacare — now dead, one may hope — was to have been the general welfare clause.
2. “Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution is stricken in its entirety. Any legislation authorized by that clause is repealed.” This does away with the power of the federal government to regulate commerce. The interstate commerce clause is second only to the general welfare clause as a means of enlarging the power of the national government.
3. “Amendement 16 to the United States Constitution is stricken in its entirety. Any legislation authorized by that Amendment is repealed.” Goodbye federal income tax. The federal government will have to return to taxation by capitation — the head tax.
4. “Amendement 17 to the United States Constitution is stricken in its entirety. Any legislation authorized by that Amendment is repealed.” This language puts the Senate back under the control of the states. This was a vital check on federal power. Its absence is what has permitted the most abusive usurpations of power by the federal leviathan.
5. “No governmental entity in the United States nor any office-holder or employee of any governmental entity in the United States is immune from criminal prosecution or civil litigation.” This eliminates the legal doctrine called sovereign immunity. The argument is that the people ought not be able to sue themselves. But when government officials commit crimes against citizens, they should be held fully accountable to the law. Americans fought and died so that no sovereign could tread on the rights of the people.
Taken as a whole, this language will eliminate much of the federal government. The power to defend the nation will be retained, but most of the alphabet soup agencies will be gone, as will be most of the taxes and regulations strangling our economy. The states will have to fill some gaps, but I think we will all be quietly amazed at how little value the national government brings to civic life — and how relieved we all will be to be out from under its enormous weight.
Jim says:
I do not think You can justify the majority of what the federal Government is supposed to do. It is mostly a parasite that will eventually kill the host.
We have become a nation of take care of the idiot. Don’t let him feel bad don’t make him work hard.
Rule followers are the one who get punished for others bad behavior.
example look at taking a trip on a plan we strip search grandma and let young men that might have come from a foreign country have a pass.
At this point I would rather take my chances and fly with out any checks.
January 21, 2010 — 7:33 pm
MIssy Caulk says:
Not sure a Constitutional Convention would work, it might open up a can of worms, if you have immoral men trying to change it.
But, I do agree we need to return to the limited powers of the Federal Government.
Heck, most of the folks talk about us being a Democracy and we are a Republic. When I hear this on TV I cringe.
A good reading of the Constitution would do wonders for everyone.
January 21, 2010 — 8:45 pm
Brian Brady says:
No argument from me but permit me to point out what Andrew Klavan illustrated in his “Night of the Living Gov’t” video; you shut the door and they come in through the window.
CA Prop 13, while unfairly nativist, was designed to “shut the door” on reckless spending by limiting the size of the pie. Seven years later, Prop 98 was passed so that they could “come in through the window”.
We have to drastically (legally)limit the power of the Federal government if we are to thrive again.
January 21, 2010 — 11:10 pm
Greg Swann says:
> We have to drastically (legally)limit the power of the Federal government if we are to thrive again.
I detest being in the role of a reformer, and my honest expectation is that the tea party movement will occasion about as much actual movement as a monster-truck rally. But the one reform on my list that would make the most difference, going forward, is the repeal of the 17th Amendment. The Senate was intended to jealously guard the rights and powers of the states, and, without that, as we have seen, the federal government has no brakes.
January 22, 2010 — 7:46 am
Teri Lussier says:
>my honest expectation is that the tea party movement will occasion about as much actual movement as a monster-truck rally.
Sadly, I agree. For me, the big epiphany on election night ’08 was that what the American people most want from their government is comfort. Real reform would be uncomfortable, painful. Ain’t gonna happen until people become so extraordinarily uncomfortable that the pain of reaction is less than the pain of inaction.
January 22, 2010 — 9:31 am
Robert Kerr says:
Teri: “what the American people most want from their government is comfort”
Teri, for many voters, it was not about seeking comfort, or embracing “liberalism,” it was about changing the guard that was apparently so inept and obtuse that it still thought ’06 was an aberration.
Had GWB and the GOP not been incompetent in so many ways for the prior 8 years: economics, spending, defense and intelligence, religion, torture and the law, and even fundamental honesty and international credibility, the results might have been different.
January 24, 2010 — 6:03 am
Teri Lussier says:
Robert-
>it was about changing the guard
Yes, Hope and Change, I know, I heard all about it. Oh Great Protector, save us. Comfort us in our hour of need.
GWB did the same thing on 9/11.
I see little difference between the two major parties, and both parties build power by appealing to one of our worst instincts- we prefer to blame someone else for our own pain, our own mistakes, our own bad decisions and our own bad choices.
So once again, left confused and angry because promises were not kept and Big Mother could not protect us from ourselves after all, we become angry and petulant, stomp our tiny feet, and throw the bums out only to replace them with new bums, creating the kind of change no one should believe in.
January 27, 2010 — 2:25 am
Robet Kerr says:
Teri, I assure you there was no tantrum nor stomping of tiny feet inside my booth. Nor any blaming others for my own bad decisions.
January 28, 2010 — 8:53 pm