On November 2nd, 2010, Americans will go to the polls for the most important mid-term election in years. Politicians and professional punditry say this sort of thing every two years. However, things have changed.
With increasing frequency, elected officials are acting less like representatives and more like members of a Junta. Ask the Speaker of the House of Representatives where in the United States Constitution they get the authority to do X or Y and she scoffs at the question then arrogantly retorts with “are you serious?”
Yes, we are serious.
The Federal Government has effectively shed its Constitutional constraints and is relentlessly advancing its unchecked growth. It is absorbing an ever-increasing amount of money from the public sector economy and is now demanding, through provisions within the new ‘health care’ legislation, that private citizens must purchase ‘government approved’ health insurance or face a penalty.
With recent events as a backdrop, I re-read President George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796) . It is an amazing look at his views on the Constitution and human nature.
His prescience is astonishing. A few excerpts:
The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.
President Washington counsels that the legitimacy of our government is derived from the people. He also indicates that the legitimate way to implement changes in our governmental structure is through the amendment process.
However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
Popular ends such as global warming, ‘green energy’, economic crises, government-run health care are all thinly disguised power grabs. Each of these ‘popular ends’ our government pushes for involve mechanisms that funnel more money and more authority to the government and away from the individual.
It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.
Today, people read this and think President Washington is only describing the importance of the separation of powers within the various branches of the Federal government. However, he is also elaborating on the importance of the 10th Amendment and the concept of Federalism.
The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes.
To say that today’s Federal Government has overstepped it bounds is an understatement. This is why the upcoming elections are critical. We need to identify and elect Representatives who are committed to rolling back the scope and reach of the Federal Government.
