The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, also known as Article X to the Bill of Rights, reads as follows:
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.
Our founding fathers knew that no nation or government is lacking for usurpers of authority. What they built for the people was a way to stop usurpers from taking away their liberties. The people of the United States took their freedom for granted, as if the Constitution and Bill of Rights had some innate powers of their own to be self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. They do not. They are the framework within which the people are to work at retaining their own liberty and freedom within the rule of law provided by our charter documents.
We had a built-in system of checks and balances, provided one branch of government did not take authority over another and divest it of its powers and duties. Unfortunately, such has happened.
If the Tenth Amendment were in force, it would be impossible for America to be meddling all over the world, because the people in the various states would stop such world intervention. It was solely the centralization of power in the federal government rather than in the states that gave the federal bureaucrats the means by which to illegally tax, take property, curtail freedoms, and build a military machine with which not only to defend our liberty but eventually to take away that liberty in the name of liberating other nations. In so doing, it is the work of the federal bureaucracy that has made America the most hated nation on earth, susceptible to being bribed for favors in exchange for billions of taxpayer dollars.
The government has no money other than the dollars it extracts from the incomes of the businesses and people who are supposed to be those consenting to be governed. I did not consent to most of the government that affected my life and neither did you. We just happened to be born into a system that was already on its way to becoming an oligarchy and has now unveiled the glorious statue it has built to itself, at taxpayer expense, the statue of fools who would play “god” and desecrate the name of God in so doing.
When affairs go wrong in a state, it is fairly easy even now to pinpoint the culprits and hold them accountable. When something goes amiss in the federal system (other than the work of the president and his staff, cabinet and political/media praetorian guard) it is difficult to know who to blame, or how to correct it. This is no accident and it did not occur because the US just “growed like Topsy” and became overpopulated. It occurred because forces at work since the 19th century have been systematically devising ways to undermine all that America stood for, even forty years ago. It surely is no accident that many of the quotes of a Democratic president elected in 1960 sound radically right-wing today. America shifted left, so whether the label is socialist, communist or fascist, the real label is totalitarian rule and restriction of freedom.
If states had insisted on retaining their rights over the central government, this could not have happened. False labels fall off phony faces quickly when the culprits are at the state level. And, as the saying goes, “throw the bums out” and it can be done rather quickly and effectively. State expenditures are lower than federal expenditures. But state governments are as guilty of universal greed and wanting to feed at the federal pork bin as are the charter members of Victims United and Nanny State Advocates in Action.
Should there be a “Minimum Acceptable Standard of Living” in any nation? Yes, there probably should. And it would be up to the residents of each state to determine what that would be for their state and its people. The federal do-gooders (who are not do-gooders but for themselves) would have all states maintain all things equal. That is not what the Declaration of Independence says. The Declaration merely asserts that all men are created equal (in the eyes of God) and entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit (not the attainment) of happiness. Each state, unique in its geography, demography and resources, is best suited to ascertaining and providing for its people that elusive “minimum acceptable standard of living” for those who reside there. Anyone who doesn’t like it can petition for change or move.
Since when does any truly free people, living under a constitutionally-restricted central government, have all manner of taxes extracted from them to bribe, support, and meddle in the affairs of other nations? What truly free people would allow a government to become the Orwellian state? What truly free people would feel absolutely helpless to stop the juggernaut of massive bureaucracy and international monkey business? None.
It is a sad fact that “states rights” became equivalent to “advocating segregation” because the Tenth Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights that limits what our central government can do. It is as good as useless now because the federal government does as it pleases regardless of which party is in power. And, to make its stronghold even more fortified, the Fed has attacked the Second Amendment, twisted the First Amendment, and abrogated the Fourth Amendment, using the judiciary as a tool of interpretation and intimidating Congress into surrendering the powers it holds to rein in the executive branch and challenge the judicial branch.
Our system of checks and balances is out of balance. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights are only “living documents” to be reinvented with each new regime and its mission to subjugate the people and steal their liberty … with or without their consent (and all too many thoughtless Americans give their consent).
If we want the Tenth Amendment back in our American way of life, along with Amendments One, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight and Nine, then the way appears to be the preservation of the Second Amendment.
Now .. do you get the picture?
Government is force. George Washington stated that at the nation’s inception. Either we the people must control that force or it will control us, as has been evidenced without the slightest shade of embarrassment since the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson and his Great Society, a Marxist utopia.
Now what do we have? An emperor and his court, warring to make the world like us when we are not anywhere near what we were intended to be. If we were, we would be leaving the world alone and it might just do likewise to us. If not, then the use of military force is justified without asking the world’s permission and consent.
The more credible the United States seeks to appear to the world, the less credible it becomes to the world and to the Americans at home who are being asked or coerced into defending the indefensible.
That could not occur if the Tenth Amendment were in its rightful place in our political structure.
The problem with analyzing times, trends and events is that the articles written are never read by the people who most need to be informed. They are useless and meaningless to illegal immigrants. And the juggernaut of massive welfare state government and meddling oligarchy rolls on, to the detriment of all and the demise of the original reason for having a United States of America.
Bring on the global village, it’s only a few more steps away. Then history will be rewritten to teach future generations how America was designed by Karl Marx.