In the Beginning
The Founding Fathers would be shocked and appalled at how large the scope of federal power has grown since their time. When those brave men declared independence from the British Empire in 1776, they sought a form of government which would secure the natural rights of which they had been deprived as British subjects. The idea of natural rights originated in ancient Greece, but was rediscovered during the Protestant Reformation and Enlightenment. The War of American Independence, however, was when the idea was first transformed from theory to reality. Natural rights are rights which are considered inalienable or self-evident, and are universal among all human beings. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson justified the colonies' independence on the belief that all men are endowed with natural rights such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Fundamental to those natural rights is the right to self-government, or as Jefferson wrote, "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government." Mankind yields some base liberties to the government so that other noble liberties may flourish, but it never surrenders its sovereignty. America - no longer comprised of colonies, but now independent states - was invoking its fundamental natural right to self-government against the tyrannical rule of the British.
Top-Down versus Bottom-Up
Save for Classical Athens, prior to American independence the political fate of mankind had been one of servitude to religion or royalty, in which gods or kings were sovereign. In the United States, however, the people of the states were sovereign, and thus the fountainhead of all power. In Europe, the king had a "divine right" to rule, and granted freedoms to the people as he deemed just. By contrast, in the United States the people were entitled to their natural rights, and delegated power to the government as they saw fit. Accordingly, the preamble of the Constitution states, "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." In the United States, government derived its power from the consent of the governed, and was limited to whatever functions the people of the states enumerated. The revolutionary concept of power originating within the people rather than gods or government liberated humans from millennia of oppression, and set the United States apart from the rest of the world.
Since the people of all the states were sovereign, the states - as the principal political communities of the nation - naturally took precedence over the federal government. In the Constitution, the people of the states delegated specific powers to the federal government because it was more effective for the states to centralize those powers rather than keep them separated. As the Tenth Amendment clearly states, however, all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government were not only reserved to the people of the states, but also denied to the federal government. The federal government was entitled to exercise its constitutionally enumerated powers, but beyond those everything else belonged to the states. According to James Madison writing in the Federalist 39 and 40, "Each state, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body independent of all others," and thus, "the general powers are limited; and...the states, in all unenumerated cases, are left in the enjoyment of their sovereign and independent jurisdiction." Alexander Hamilton concurred in Federalist 32, "As [the Constitution] aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the state governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not...exclusively delegated to the United States." The reason the Founding Fathers devised this doctrine of states' rights was to balance efficiency and liberty. Because state governments had more knowledge of their local affairs than the federal governments, they would prove the most responsible and effective stewards of government power. Even more important than obtaining efficiency, however, was securing liberty. Ensuring that the states remained sovereign and in possession of all their rights guarded against the tyrannical centralization of power in the federal government. Jefferson, in his presidential inaugural address, called for "the support of the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies," as well as "the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad."
All of these checks and balances were intended to guard against tyranny, which Madison defined in Federalist 47 as "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many." As long as future generations of leaders respected the Constitution, limited government would protect liberty. Failure to uphold the Constitution, however, would spell the doom of liberty. The prophetic Anti-Federalists - men like George Mason and Patrick Henry - aware of the flawed nature of men and tyrannical nature of government, eerily foretold the growth of federal power at the expense of state sovereignty, violence against the states when the states resisted federal usurpation of their rights, and ultimately the subjugation of the states beneath federal supremacy. Tyranny was the destiny of the United States.
Growing, Growing, Gone
Today, there are no clear limits on the federal government. Years of progressive jurisprudence and pandering politicians have eroded the Constitution's constraints on federal power into mere formalities. Today, the Constitution is interpreted so liberally that it has become effectively meaningless, and - if politicians even bother to consider the constitutionality of their actions at all - can be cited to justify practically any action the federal government undertakes. For example, when asked if ObamaCare - an unconstitutional federal intervention into the healthcare business which sets the stage for total nationalization - was constitutional, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sputtered, "Are you serious?" The Founding Fathers were serious when they crafted the Constitution, a compact between the states in which limited powers were delegated to the federal government, and all else reserved to the people of the states. To current politicians, however, the Constitution is merely a frustrating impediment to their schemes. As Barack Obama said before becoming president, "One of the tragedies of the Civil-Rights Movement" was the failure to "break free from the essential constraints placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution...that the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties which says what the federal and state governments cannot do to you, but does not say what the federal or state government must do for you on your behalf." Unlike the statesmen of yore - Jefferson, Madison, etc. - Pelosi, Barack, and their kind have no respect for limited government, instead viewing with contempt any constraint on their power. Ultimately, in the United States, the rule of men - e.g. the discretion of Parliament and the Crown - has supplanted the rule of law.
The federal government is now empowered to intervene in almost any aspect of American life. No longer the agent of the states limited to a few core functions - such as establishing a sound currency or the national defense - the federal government has degenerated into a national government with unlimited power to act against any conceivable Americans face. Frighteningly, the only apparent constraint on the federal government are the pliable opinions of its politicians. The Founding Fathers never viewed the federal government as a utilitarian tool with which politicians should shape the nation - indeed, they emphasized the sovereignty of the states over the fictitious "American nation" - but as a means to ensure peace between the states. Yet modern generations of politicians view the federal government as an instrument of power to use force to reshape society according to their own values, thus overturning the premises of limited government. Originally intended to be an immovable shield of liberty, the federal government has been warped into an unstoppable sword of tyranny, menacingly wielding the threat of violence to coerce the people into obedience.
The Fate of the Free
For example, the greatest stand taken against the federal government's unconstitutional usurpation of power from the people of the states - the War of Southern Independence - resulted in a total war of death and destruction against the South, years of oppression and humiliation under federal Reconstruction, and generations of propaganda and indoctrination to discredit the Southern cause and shame Southerners into submission. Although the Southern states seceded on the same principles upon which their forebears declared independence from the British, Americans have been taught to revile the former as rebels but honor the latter as patriots. The vengeance of the federal government against its domestic critics continues to this day, though its methods have become subtler since the brute force of Abraham Lincoln. Today, any free-thinking, independent-minded citizens who dare venture an opinion hostile to federal power are viciously condemned as cold, corrupt, cynical, or crazy. Consider the way politicians and the media have marginalized men like Ron Paul or movements like local militia. For embracing the American tradition of limited government, they have been cast as dangerous, discredited radicals.
"Give me liberty or give me death!" - Patrick Henry
Liberty should be a conviction, not a campaign cliche. Liberty is the only thing to which humans are all truly entitled - a natural right - because it does not aggress against the person or property of others. Liberty is not merely a moral end in itself, however, but the means to great economic prosperity and personal virtue. The economy is really just the sum total of all the individual economic decisions which affect the allocation of scarce resources and growth of capital - production, consumption, saving, investment, etc. When people are free to make these decisions for themselves based on their own knowledge of their circumstances, resources will be allocated efficiently and capital will be grown most productively. By contrast, a government will always possess less knowledge than the entire market, and so will never be able to dictate the optimal outcomes spontaneously achieved in a laissez-faire economy. The Austrian school of economics - men like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek - first discovered this classic blessing of liberty, known formally as the "economic calculation problem." Besides material prosperity, however, liberty also enriches the personal lives of the humans it touches. Living free is far more fulfilling than living in thrall to authority. A life of liberty entails the thrill of risk and reward, the pride of achievement, and the satisfaction of contribution. A life in thrall, however, is stable, but stale and sad, without any of the peaks and valleys that make a free life so captivating. Furthermore, liberty is far more compassionate than any scheme of entitlement or redistribution, because unlike the latter, liberty respects the dignity of the individual, trusting him to empower himself rather than depend on the another for support. Liberty has faith in the power of the human spirit to prevail against adversity. Ultimately, liberty is the essence of human life; without it, life has no meaning.
Back to 1776
The Bonnie Blue Blog is dedicated to returning the principles of the Founding Fathers - and the Confederates who followed in their footsteps - to their former glory. After ratifying the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin told a curious onlooker that he and his colleagues had created "a republic, if you can keep it." Yet almost from the very beginning, Americans have been poor stewards of the Constitution, allowing the tumor of federal power to grow, slowly but surely encroaching on the liberties of the people of the states. How disappointed Franklin would be to see that the United States bears no resemblance to the federalist republic for which his generation fought so valiantly. The miserable fate of liberty, however, does not justify resigning to defeat in despair. The Founding Fathers refused to let the might of the British Empire deter them from declaring independence for the sake of self-government. Likewise, the tremendous military advantages of the North in manpower and munitions did not intimidate the Southern states from seceding to reclaim their rights from a tyrannical federal government. If our forebears refused to surrender in the face of such life-or-death risks, surely today we can honor their memory in taking a stand against the gargantuan growth of the government. Despite the federal government's best efforts, American culture still values independence and personal responsibility, which are essential to the blossoming of liberty and limited government. As George Washington noted, "Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." On the same note, Jefferson believed that, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." If liberty will ever blossom in the United States again, the people must take the advice of Washington and Jefferson to heart.
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