Refanging The 10th Ammendment (updated)

K T Cat: Refanging The 10th Ammendment

Though, as Mr Cat's commenter, Tim Eisele, points out, it's not that the 10th Amendment is inadequate or ambiguously worded, it's that the bureaucrats and politicians -- anf the People -- don't want to abide by the Constitution, including the 10th.

Here is my contribution to K T Cat's thread --

I think that one of the biggest reasons, and perhaps the biggest reason, that the current (and collapsing) behemoth is an anti-liberty behomoth is that people -- even senators and supreme Court (*) justices -- simply don't understand the Constiution, and mostly never try to rectify the lack. It's sort of like the case of the Bible ... everyone has one, and no one reads it.

The nearly universal misunderstanding of the Constitution starts in civics class, wherein we are taught falsehoods about the Constitution which a simple reading of it ought to dispell.

For instance, one of the first things drummed into us in civics class is that we have a federal government of three "co-equal" branches. Now, this claim is false in two ways: it's false by the Constitution (that is, it is fase de jure), and it is false by how the federal government actually operates (that is, it is fase de facto).

De facto, our rulers are various judges within federal courts. And just below the judges are the "permanent government" within the bureaucracy, which is ostensibly answerable to the chief executive.

De jure, the Constitution established the *Congress* as the supreme branch of government.

Another civics class myth is that the Constitution establishes an "independent" judiciary (which is "co-equal" with the other branches). It does nothing of the sort: the Constitution makes the federal courts, and specifically the supreme Court, creatures of the Congress -- the Constitution gives the Congress the authority to declare that almost every matter of law is outside the jurisdiction of the supreme Court (and thus all federal courts): so, for instance, if Congress were so minded, it could simply enact bills overturning both Roe and Obergefell and include provisions declaring these matters to be outside the jurisdiction of the federal courts.

Another civics class myth is that the Constitution grants the power of "judicial review" to the supreme Court, and thus to the federal courts under it. The Constitution does nothing of the sort; the Court's exercise of "judicial review" is an unConstitutional usurpation going back to 1803 -- John Marshall's power grab appealed to the then-current partisan needs of both the Federalists and the Democrats, and so the politicians cooperated [with the judges] in violating the Constitution ... as they have been doing ever since.


Isn't it odd that so many of the myths we are taught in civics class have the effect of making us blind to blatant violations of the Constitution? Really, it's not all that odd -- the tone of our nationalized education was set in the Progressive Era, and the Progressives were all about a stealth overthrow of the Constitution.


(*) interesting tidbit -- the Constitution never mentions any "Supreme Court", but only a "supreme Court"

Edit 2015/09/01:
The reason the "Bill of Rights" are amendments to the Constitution, rather than written into the original document as presented to the States for Ratification, is because at the Constitutional Convention itself the argument (*) prevailed amongst the Framers that if a "Bill of Rights" were explicitly written into the Constitution then over time Americans would forget that necessarily that "Bill of Rights" could list only a very small number of their rights. In the wider American society, this argument didn't prevail; and, in fact, a number of the States made their ratification of the Constitution conditional upon a "Bill of Rights" being presented to the States as amendments for further ratification.

So, this is *why* the 10th Amendment is included in the "Bill of Rights", and why it is worded as it is worded. The Constitution as originally presented to the States for ratification gives the federal government *only* the powers and authorities explicitly enumerated in the document. That is, the original document implicitly reserves all other powers and authorities to the People or to the States. So, in keeping with the rationale for not including a "Bill of Rights" in the original document, the 10th Amendment was written to make explicit that all non-enumerated powers and authorities are reserved to the People or to the States.

(*) And, as history has shown us, Hamilton, Madison and the others were right: Consider merely the current "Gay Wedding Cake" non-debate --
Here we have "gay" little fascists using the violent power of the state to attempt to compel others to approve and celebrate their choice to live lives of deviant perversion. Now, no government anywhere on earth has the authority to so compel its subjects. Yet, how are Americans trying to protect themselves from this illegal and immoral usurpation of their own rights? Why, by meekly looking for some wording in the Constitution which can be used as a basis to claim that on this particular point their inherent rights as human beings and as citizens take precedence over the (illegal and immoral) desire of other persons to enslave them.

A people who *really* believed themselves to be the inheritors of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" would say, simply: "Go the Hell! You don't have the *right* to tell me to do this."

Remember: there is no such being as "the government"; it is not "the government" that is deciding to use the threat of violence-unto-death to compel so-called citizens to participate in "gay" "weddings" whether they wish to or not. Rather, it is specific actual human beings making this decision.

So, just as the Framers feared, we Americans have degenerated to the point where we automatically behave as though those who wish to use us for their own ends have the right to do so and that *we* bear the burden of proof to justify that we have this or that right as an exception to that general rule. The whole point of the Constitution implicitly, and the 10th Amendment explicitly, is that the reverse is true -- *we* have the rights without needing to justify that we have them, and *they* bear the burden of proof to justify any and all attempts to impose upon us.