The following is an elaboration of a presentation I recently made at a local Tea Party meeting. My motivation is that the misunderstanding of our Constitution, indeed, of all aspects of our government, is not only appalling, it has become a threat to our very freedom.
As we well know, the most common misconception is that our government is a democracy. In the last week, I have heard at least 3 people make public statements to this effect, including two liberal pundits and one GOP Senator. I understand why the progressives push this idea… why a supposedly conservative Senator would do so is beyond me — unless he too is becoming brainwashed.
Obviously, we know better, as do those making such claims. The problem is that the intellectually-challenged citizens produced by our failed public education system don’t know better -and- given their crippled reasoning systems, most of them allow the media to do their thinking for them.
The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that, at a glance, democracy might seem a good thing. After all, what can be wrong with a situation where the people rule? It turns out, on closer examination, that there are some very significant problems. First, in a real democracy, there is nothing to protect the rights of minority groups from predation by the majority. Second, democracy lacks any semblance of stability. The majority can change the “rules” at any time, based on whims, emotional reactions and the like.
By contrast, a constitutional republic, which our founders intended us to be, is based on rules which provide protection for minorities as well as the stability required by a modern market-based economy, this last coming from the fact that laws established under our Constitution are intentionally difficult to change, requiring multiple levels of consideration and approval. In fact, not only did our founders NOT create a democracy, several of them rightly and openly referred to democracy as a form of “mob rule”.
However, despite this difficulty, our Constitution has been subjected to several ill-considered amendments, all of them coming soon after the advent of the progressive movement in America in the late 1800′s. I refer specifically to the 16th, 17th and 18th amendments which, between them, fundamentally altered the relationship between the American people and their government.
As we know, the 16th amendment allows an income tax, the 17th amendment provides for the direct election of Senators and the 18th amendment forbade the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages, with a minor exception for certain religious uses. We will look at each of these in more detail and explore how and why they helped change the relationship between citizen and government.
The 16th amendment, by allowing the federal government to tax citizen’s incomes, in effect reintroduced a form of slavery into the United States. By definition, slavery is a condition where a person or group of persons are forced to labor for the benefit of another. This means that, for those hours each of us must labor to earn the money required to pay our income taxes, we are effectively slaves of the federal government. This is especially true when the income taxes seized from one person are directly given to another (an act called “income redistribution”). The most dangerous notion introduced by the 16th amendment is that we work for the government rather than the government working for us. You may wonder why the American people would have allowed imposition of such an amendment. The answer is that they were assured that the income tax would only ever apply to the very richest among us. At the time of ratification, the income tax affected about 1% of Americans, the remainder having been convinced they were going to get something for nothing. Clearly, some things never change as similar arguments are being made today to raise taxes on “the rich”. Despite my modest income, every time we go through this, I soon find that I am among the “rich”!
The 17th amendment, in providing for the direct election of Senators, significantly (and intentionally) reduced the influence State legislatures have in the federal government. This had the obvious and intended effect of reducing the power of the States. As you might expect, the people were fed the line that they would gain influence in the operation of government with the ratification of this amendment.
The 18th amendment was the worst of the lot. From the initial ratification of our Constitution, up to the ratification of the 18th amendment, the purpose of our Constitution was to tell the federal government what it could and could not do. With ratification of the 18th amendment, suddenly our Constitution is being used by the federal government to tell the people what they could and could not do. It is hard to imagine a more effective way to pervert the very purpose and meaning of our Constitution. Even though the 21st amendment nullified the 18th, allowing a resumption of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages, the PRECEDENT set by the 18th remains. Why the majority of Americans consented to the passage of the 18th amendment remains a mystery to me.
Another aspect of our Constitution goes unacknowledged, even by many who totally support its meaning and purpose. That aspect is that no body of law, such as our Constitution, is any better than the vigor with which it is enforced. No words written on parchment, paper or digital media are self enforcing. Without unrelenting vigilance, those whose power the Constitution seeks to limit, will invariably stretch the envelope of their power. If this condition continues over time, the Constitution will be rendered meaningless – a condition that virtually exists today in these United States.
The Constitution of the United States of America is our Constitution. This means that it is the responsibility of each of us to insist that it be followed, as written. When we the people fail to do this, it is not our Constitution that has failed us. Instead, we have failed our Constitution. And, the inevitable result of that failure is something none of us wishes to contemplate. Yet, contemplate it we must if this Republic is to have any chance of survival.
Think about it.
Troy L Robinson
