Curing the American Disease

Tenth Amendment Center: Constitutional Conversation

Some people seem to have the crazy idea that violations of the Constitution started just recently. And that things were pretty hunky dory up until January 2009.

Charles in Texas had this to say:

“If Barack Obama is elected for another term, the 10th Amendment will be obliterated.”

We recently posed this question to a number of supporters – “On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate Mitt Romney on adherence to the Constitution”

Janice in Georgia responded with this:

“And the point is? We r getting close to nov election & must fire Obama! Get it? You better!”

And finally, Mathis in South Carolina didn’t even beat around the bush, for lack of a better term, when he responded with this:

“Bring Back George Bush!”

Mathis, you either hate the Constitution or have no idea what it says. Until we got the current criminal in chief, Bush was quite possibly the Constitution’s greatest presidential enemy in history.

Charles…are you, what…five years old? Or maybe you just woke up from some kind of time-traveling coma. I don’t know. But, to think that Washington DC has respected any limits on its power in recent years, is pure blindness. The 10th has been obliterated for decades.

Janice, I don’t even know where to start with you. If Constitutional adherence is of no point to you, then Barack Obama should be just fine and dandy.

And to all of you – and everyone else of this kind of viewpoint – things didn’t get bad when Obama got elected. Obama got elected because things already were bad.

ALREADY THERE

For decades – and decades – people in this country have turned a blind eye to violations of the Constitution. They’ve allowed politicians of their favorite political team get away with things so the other team wouldn’t win. Or, they’ve allowed new program after new program to begin – in order to fend off some great, scary emergency.

The result of this has not been good. Why? Because politicians should never be trusted.

When you allow politicians to break the rules given to them, or even allow them to simply bend those rules, and you allow them to do it for years without punishment – eventually you’ll end up with politicians who feel that the rules don’t apply at all.

So, let me break it to you. We’ve been there for quite some time already.

Look, I’m not going to get into reciting a list of Constitutional violations by every modern president – that list would be far too long for any human to read. Instead, I’m going to share with you a personal thought – who’s fault is all this?

THE POLITICAL TEAMS

Amongst presidential voters in this country, there are two main teams.

There’s the people who claim to believe that government does a good job at improving society. This team scares people into believing that if the federal government doesn’t run your life, your world could collapse. These folks rarely spend time talking about Constitutional limits on power. Obviously. We’ll call this the Blue Team.

Then there’s the people who claim to believe that massive federal power is a bad thing. This team often talks about limitations on federal power. They praise politicians who talk about the Constitution, and regularly cite the principles of the founders to back their views up. We’ll call this the Red Team.

These days, the Blue Team votes for Barack Obama. Even though many people on that team are in favor of ending wars, opposed to the Patriot Act and indefinite detention, and find the escalating war on marijuana to be reprehensible – they’ll still vote for Obama. He’s on their team after all.

And, the Red Team these days votes for Mitt Romney. This is the guy that’s supposed to be leading the team that’s in favor of the Constitution. But, maybe that’s not really the case. The word “constitution” barely appears on Romney’s campaign website. The only issue where he makes any reference to it is in regards to the Courts. And there, he makes this statement:

“The job of the judge is to enforce the Constitution’s restraints on government and, where the Constitution does not speak, to leave the governance of the nation to elected representatives.”

Skipping over powers reserved to “the states, respectively or to the people”- it sounds to me like Romney has rewritten the 10th Amendment to read something like this:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, or spoken of in the Constitution, are reserved to Congress.”

Both teams have grown the federal government far beyond anything authorized by the Constitution. It doesn’t matter if it was due to a defensive strategy, or actually cheering things on, or just complete and utter ignorance about what the Constitutional limitations are. The end result is the same. The Constitution – and the 10th Amendment – have been obliterated for decades.

But I digress.

OUR DISEASE

People like Obama, and Romney – and Bush and Clinton. They’re all extremely bad. But they’re not the disease. And merely voting one out for the other has not been our cure either. These people are merely symptoms of our disease.

Think of it this way. You open a business that makes and sells cookies. In your hiring process, you probably won’t get too many lawyers or engineers applying for a job to bake the cookies. Instead, you’ll mostly get people who love to cook.

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For decades, the People of this country have allowed federal power to grow unabated – and many have even asked for it too. So what kind of people do you think would apply for a job leading Murder, Incorporated?

You got it – people who love power – and not your humble, friendly neighbor. Or even the jerk who lives a few doors down. Those are normal people. Only megalomaniacs want to steer the ship of the most powerful government in history.

If you want to know how we got into this mess. Look in a mirror. Until people change their line in the sand, things will never change. Today, people everywhere have a line in the sand – but on one side there’s a red team and on the other is a blue team. Like Barack Obama and Mitt Romney’s campaign websites, the Constitution is rarely – or ever – even mentioned.

What is needed a new line in the sand. On one side of that line is the Constitution, and on the other side – the type of government this country has had for a long time.

For me, there’s no team. And there never will be. There’s only one thing that matters – the Constitution. Every issue, every time. No exceptions, no excuses.

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