Issues, Part 2: Size and Scope of Government

The Declaration of Independence spells out pretty clearly our belief that people have a Creator, and that our rights are given to us by our Creator, and not by any earthly power. Government is not the source of our rights, but rather, governments are instituted by the governed to protect those rights, which are intrinsic to our humanity. The main function of government is to keep us alive and free, protecting our rights, and those governments that seek to achieve more are precisely those governments most likely to achieve less.

Furthermore, it is our belief that we are all created equal. To be sure, the Declaration of Independence states "that all men are created equal"; the founders made no mention of women, and in the implementation, not all men were included in the category of those considered equal. My vision of the United States is a country in which all people are considered equal, but in what way? We are not all equally rich or talented, but we are all equally human, and thus endowed with equal rights. Again, our government is instituted to protect our equal rights before the law, and not to guarantee an equality of outcome. Each person has unique gifts and unique circumstances; different people have different motivations, different desires, different dreams, and put forth different levels of effort. A government that seeks to guarantee an equality of outcome is implicitly a government that seeks to stomp on our rights and deny us the humanity and individuality endowed upon us by our Creator; it is thus imperative to question the motives of those who tell us to celebrate diversity as they seek to impose upon us an agenda that destroys individuality.

Slavery, an abomination upon humanity, an abomination which is codified in Islamic law and one which still haunts us right here in America in the form of human trafficking for various purposes, was much more of a blight upon the people in America when this country was founded. People of African ancestry were forced to work as slaves, and this was legal in America at the time. For many years of American history, women did not have the right to vote, people of different ethnic groups were discriminated against in various ways... indeed, the promise of being equally human has been implemented in a manner that is far from perfect, and even today, we struggle with understanding how we are equal and how to legally define and protect our equality.

As decades passed, we struggled with these issues, and have made progress. Slavery is now outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment codifies that former slaves and people will not have their right to vote denied based on race, the Nineteenth Amendment guarantees that women will have the right to vote, and so on. We can see that there has been a process moving us generally in the direction of better laws to enforce our belief that all people are created equal. Indeed, when we consider the history of English-speaking people, the fight - well before the American Revolution - between the subjects of the British crown and the Kings of England over the rights of the people, the struggle in America for the rights of blacks and women from the time of our Revolution up until the present, and when we then further consider the struggle that our neighbors in Latin America had to wage to win their freedom from European colonial powers, and then consider the struggle worldwide and throughout the course of human history, we see that our American Revolution was part of an evolutionary (please don't take this word out of context) process for humanity to define and secure its God-given rights against those who would deny those rights from us, whether because they do not believe in God, as the communists officially do not, or whether they would deny us our humanity in the name of their god, as Islamic law even today seeks to do by codifying discrimination against women and non-Muslims in a political agenda known as sharia.

After a failed experiment with a weak confederation, our Constitution was written to give us a federal government that was strong, but which was very limited in scope. Certain powers were delegated to the federal government, and certain powers were prohibited from the states. Many of the founders of this country considered a Constitution delegating powers to the federal government to be inadequate, as it did not prohibit the federal government from infringing upon God-given rights of the people. Others argued that, since the federal government was not given these powers, it did not have them; what, therefore, was the problem? It was proposed that rights reserved by the people be enumerated so as to be specifically protected in a Bill of Rights. But then it was argued that our rights are too many to list (indeed, they are infinite), and that any attempt to list them would leave some out, and that future governments might attempt to infringe on those rights not listed; thus, the reasoning goes, it is better to not list rights, and not imply thereby that the government may infringe upon unlisted rights.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendments resolved the dispute. The main body of the Constitution spells out what powers are delegated by the people - with whom ultimate earthly authority exists - to the federal government, and what powers are prohibited from the states in order to ensure a strong federal government. Then, the First through Eighth Amendments specifically listed those rights that our country's founders did not want infringed. The founding fathers based their choice of which rights to list on their recent experience, fighting what was arguably the most powerful nation of the day in a long and difficult war, a war that erupted due to infringement of the very rights now being enumerated. However, the key was in explicitly stating that there are rights reserved which are not going to be enumerated, and powers not delegated to the federal government which are similarly not going to be enumerated; this was done in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, respectively. The net result was that the people delegated certain powers to the federal government that were appropriate for a national government to exercise; the people prohibited certain powers from the states which, if exercised by the states, would weaken the nation; the people enumerated certain rights that they wanted the government to specifically and deliberately avoid infringing; and the people concluded by reserving all other rights not enumerated to themselves, and reserving all other powers neither delegated to the federal government nor prohibited from the states, as powers of the states, of their political subdivisions, and of the people themselves.

This is not widely understood in America today. Since it is not widely understood, we have deviated from the intended implementation of our form of government. And, this deviation has resulted in a wide variety of problems, not the least of which is a government that now threatens the very liberties it was intended to protect.

The Constitution is the supreme law of our land. It needs to be studied and understood. Laws that are not Constitutional should not be passed and, if passed, they should not be implemented or enforced and, if implemented or enforced, they should be challenged and struck down in our legal system. This, in a nutshell, is the role of Congress, the Executive, and the Judicial Branches, respectively.

However, political expediency in an atmosphere of popular ignorance has given opportunities to politicians that are perhaps well-meaning but unwise, perhaps incompetent, and perhaps subversive to our way of life.

For example, the Constitution, which is essentially a contract wherein the people delegate certain powers to a federal government, gives the federal government the right to employ some people - a President, Senators and Representatives, Justices.... Implicit is the right to employ others to execute the laws of the land and administer the government. The government may contract with people to work for it, and it is reasonable and proper to have stipulations regarding pensions for those who have made a career in public service. But, where in the Constitution do the people delegate to the federal government the authority to have a pension program mandatory for nearly all citizens? The answer, of course, is that the Constitution does not delegate such authority to the federal government. If such authority is proper for government to have, it is reserved to the states or to their political subdivisions; otherwise, it is reserved to the people. Similarly, where is the authority to have a federally-mandated healthcare program for the general population? Any such program is in complete violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution.

This brings me to a practical matter of immediate importance in our nation's history, a matter that is timely considering that I write this in the first hours of a Presidential election year: that matter is Obamacare.

President Obama has been portrayed to us as a scholar of our Constitution.

First, I will address this portrayal in a manner that is generous to President Obama.

Obama is a fraud and an idiot, and any portrayal of him as a Constitutional scholar is a lie. I write this because, if Obama is indeed a scholar of our Constitution, he is a completely incompetent one; his attempt to implement mandatory nationwide healthcare for the general population is a very clear violation of the Constitution of which he is supposed to be a scholar. The Constitution does not delegate such power to the federal government. Therefore, such power is reserved to the states or to the people; or else the power is a right not enumerated in the Bill of Rights, and no government entity has any authority at all to establish a mandatory healthcare program for the general population. In trying to implement Obamacare, Obama proves that he obviously knows nothing about our Constitution, and is thus an incompetent idiot and a fraud. And now we have to question the motives and intentions of our media for not calling attention to this.

An alternative explanation is far less flattering to President Obama.

Obama is every bit as smart and knowledgeable about the Constitution as one might expect him to be. In this case, he knows full well that a mandatory federal healthcare program is not Constitutional, and he implements it anyway. This is a violation of his oath of office. For what purpose does he violate his oath and subvert our Constitution? He is moving us down the slippery slope of a totalitarian government, which, by offering us everything we think we want, will succeed only in taking from us everything we have (hat tip to President Ford). Why does Obama wish to move America down the slippery slope toward totalitarianism?

Barack Hussein Obama, alleged to be our 44th President of the United States (I have questions about his eligibility, and thus about the validity of his Presidency), is either 1) an incompetent idiot and a fraud, who is in way over his head, and who was thus likely placed there by people who wish to control him and, through him, control this great nation, or else he is 2) a conman and a "wannabe" dictator. I see no other option here. And I would like to point out that proof that one of these options is true does not exclude the possibility that the other might also be true.

As we read our Constitution, logical questions arise regarding matters such as education and the environment, both of which should generally be matters addressed more by state and local governments than by the federal government. The Clinton-Gore team, which in the 1996 election stayed on message through a chant of "Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment", ran on a platform that was not Constitutional - and won re-election!

This brings me to another matter. We have two Democrat Presidencies, both of which were founded on platforms that were not Constitutional, and both of which were, by the way, known for their illegal conduct and for cozy relations with foreign powers hostile to this country. What does this say about the Democrats, at least at a national level, that Clinton, Gore and Obama would win their primary elections? What does this say about the American people, that both Clinton and Obama would go on to win the general election, with Clinton going so far as to win re-election?

Many issues brought up peripherally in this post will be addressed more in-depth in subsequent posts. Meanwhile, if you would like to review our Constitution, may I suggest some of the many links in the sidebar?