Natural Rights, the Declaration, and the Constitution

Natural Rights, the Declaration, and the Constitution
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Posted February 18, 2011

We live in a country whose economic system is a welfare state and a government-managed economy and whose foreign policy is now based on an extensive overseas military empire and perpetual war, along with ever-increasing infringements on the civil liberties of the people.

The economic consequences of the welfare-warfare state have been enormous. Federal spending and debt are soaring out of control, with no end in sight. People are struggling just to make ends meet. The possibility of hyperinflation looms on the horizon.

We live in a country in which the federal government's tax-collecting agency, the IRS, strikes fear into the hearts of the citizenry. It's a country where regulatory bureaucrats do the same to people in the business and banking communities.

We live in a country in which the president can send the entire nation into war without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war. It's a country whose government engages in invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, kidnapping, torture, abuse, sanctions, embargoes, and assassinations, all with impunity.

Could this possibly be the America that the Founding Fathers envisioned when they separated from England in a violent revolution? Is this the type of government for which they were willing to pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to establish?

I think most Americans would say, "No way!" This nation is as far away from what the Founding Fathers envisioned as they could ever have imagined. In fact, I think that most people would agree that as powerful as the British government was, the power it claimed and exercised over the British colonists paled in comparison with the type of powers claimed and exercised today by the U.S. government over the American people.

How did this happen, and is there a way out of this morass? Is there a way to get America back on the right track, the track toward freedom, free markets, and a constitutional limited-government republic?


The Declaration of Independence

To answer those questions, we need to return to fundamental principles. We need to examine the nature of rights and the role of government in a free society.

Let's begin with the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

The most remarkable thing about the Declaration of Independence is not the list of reasons it gave for the British colonists living in the New World to take up arms against their own government.

Instead, what was remarkable was the part of the Declaration that enunciated the rights of man and the proper role of government in a free society. The message set forth was one of the most radical that people had ever heard, one that struck concern and fear in the hearts of government officials all over the world.

The Declaration declared that all men have been endowed by nature and God with certain unalienable rights. In other words, rights did not inhere only in the British citizenry, including those living in America. They inhered in all men, everywhere. Equally important, they didn't come from government. They derived from nature and God.

The implications of such a declaration were earth-shattering. For centuries people had come to believe that their rights were really just privileges bestowed on them by the king -- that is, by their government. As such, they considered it entirely proper for the king or the government to regulate, control, manage, conscript, and rule over the citizenry.

Yet here was the Declaration telling the people of the world something totally different: Your rights don't come from government. They come from nature and from God.

And notice the question this claim raises: If rights pre-exist government -- if they are inherent in the individual -- under what legitimate authority does government regulate, control, or manage people, much less conscript them into serving it?

What is the nature of these inherent, natural, God-given rights that pre-exist government? The Declaration refers to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." But it makes clear those three rights are not exclusive, for it states that such rights are among others that are not enumerated.


The rights of man

What are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? What do they mean? What do they entail?

Some people might think that liberty simply means not being in jail. But to a libertarian, such rights mean much more than that. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly come to mind. If the government can put you in jail simply for saying the wrong things, then you're not free, even if you're not in jail. Or if the government can shut down newspapers, radio and television, or the Internet, then people in that society cannot truly be considered free. Or if government can order you and your family to go to church every Sunday, then you're not living in a free society. If government can prevent you from meeting with others, it's violating your freedom.

But even all that is not sufficient for a free society. What about the right to keep and bear arms? Isn't it necessary to ensure that people retain the right to resist their government if it becomes destructive of their rights?

What about economic liberty -- the right to sustain your life through labor, the right to engage in mutually beneficial contracts and exchanges with others, the right to accumulate wealth, and the right to do whatever you want with your own money?

Here is one of the fault lines between libertarians and statists. Libertarians hold that economic liberty is as critical as all those other aspects of freedom. Statists hold the contrary, maintaining that economic liberty isn't a right but simply a privilege bestowed by government, one that government can rightfully control, manage, regulate, or even take away.

Everyone would agree that each of us is born without governmental permission or involvement. It is evident our very lives come from nature or God. The government does not breathe life into anyone.

At the same time, each of us is born different from everyone else. Every person is unique. Everything about a person is different from everyone else. Skin color. Voice. Shape. Eyes. Fingerprints. Even the shape of your kidney is different from that of everyone else who has ever lived. Nature and God made each person one of a kind.

At the same time, it is evident that no one is born equal to anyone else. Sure, all are equal in the eyes of God, but they are unequal in every other respect. Every person is born with different characteristics, talents, and abilities, along with different handicaps and disadvantages.

Some people are born with great beauty, or with a beautiful voice, or with tremendous athletic skills, which enable them to become actors, opera singers, or football players. Others are born with other attributes and skills, enabling them to become farmers, mechanics, writers, lawyers, doctors, or homemakers. Some people are born with tremendous handicaps that they must overcome or learn to cope with.

One key to life is to discover what one's particular talent or ability or passion is. While man has not yet been able to figure out the mystery of life and death, it's tempting to suspect that it has something to do with developing as a human being. That process involves an inner journey of discovery, exploration, and development, a process that enables a person to mature, to develop, to grow into what he was naturally born to be.

That process necessarily entails figuring out where one's talents, abilities, and interests are, and then pursuing them. Some people figure all that out at an early age, and then spend their lives happily developing them. Others reach their deathbed never having made that discovery, having lived what Thoreau called lives of quiet desperation.


Educational liberty

Now permit me to digress here to discuss another aspect of liberty that separates libertarians from statists: educational liberty.

Unlike statists, libertarians are firmly opposed to all governmental involvement in education. We consider the right to pursue an education to be as fundamental and inherent as all the other natural, God-given rights. Such a right entails each person's choosing to pursue the education that best fits him, given his particular interests and passion. Most of the time this is done in consultation with one's family, but how many times have we seen children break out of the plans their parents had for them to instead pursue their own dreams in life?

Education is a natural process. It's not so much a cramming process, but rather a seeking process. A genuine education involves a person's seeking out what he himself is interested in exploring, not in the determination by someone else of what needs to be crammed into his mind. In fact, the word "educate" is derived from the Latin word "educere," which means "to draw out."

Think about children from birth to six years of age. All children are filled with an awe of the universe. You can see it in their faces. When they're awake they're scanning everything within their sight, amazed by everything and absorbing everything. When they begin to speak, the most popular word they come to employ is that giant three-letter word that comes to bedevil parents: "Why?" They want to know how the universe works, and no matter what answer you give them, it's never enough to dissuade them from hitting you with the next "Why?"

As the child grows older, the ideal is that he comes to discover what he was born to do -- what his talents and abilities are, what his particular role in the universe shall be. That's where the education comes in. That's where the seeking happens. The awestruck kid who discovers what he likes and what he's good at begins educating himself on how to get better. He's not so much educating himself as fulfilling his passion. That's what makes education exciting.

Now, jump ahead 12 years, when children are graduating from the public (i.e., government) schools that the law required their parents to send them to. How many such graduates have the same sense of wonder and awe for the universe they had when they were six years old?

I'd say very few of them. By that time, they hate everything they've come to believe is education: conformity, regimentation, cramming, memorizing, tests, term papers, and the like. They can't wait for the whole thing to end. The 12 years of enforced regimentation and conformity that come with state schooling have smashed all sense of curiosity and love of learning out of most of them.

Those children who fight mightily to retain their sense of individuality, creativity, and imagination are made to feel like outcasts or weirdoes. If they persist, they're put on such drugs as Ritalin until they come around and become one of the group. All too often, the 12 years of coercion have diverted many of them away from discovering and nurturing their own unique interests, talents, and abilities. Some discover their passion later in life. Some never discover it at all before they die.

In any event, it is evident that this part of life -- seeking, developing, growing, maturing -- is a gift that comes from nature and God, not from the government.

How does one engage in this process? Well, that's where freedom comes into play. Where people have the widest possible freedom, there will be the widest opportunity for personal development and growth.

Part of the process is the making of choices -- between bad and good, healthy and unhealthy, responsible and irresponsible, moral and immoral, ethical and unethical. Making choices saddles people with the responsibility of the consequences, a process that nudges but doesn't force them to make better decisions in the future.


Economic liberty

This is where the principles of economic liberty come into play. One person discovers that he's good at basketball. Another person senses a deep passion for English literature. As they both grow up, they revel in studying and developing their respective loves and passions.

At the end of the process, they enter the job market. The basketball player is offered $1 million a year. The literature major is offered $40,000 a year.

Is that fair? Sure it is, because it simply reflects the valuations of other people -- that is, how they wish to spend their money. The difference in valuations doesn't mean that the basketball player is a better person or that he worked harder than the literature teacher. It simply means that there is a greater demand among consumers for basketball than for English literature.

In the process of figuring out his future, a person might well choose a life of self-imposed poverty. Lots of priests and nuns do that. Most other people choose to enter the workforce, engage in economic exchanges with others and accumulate wealth. That of course is part of freedom as well.

As a person accumulates wealth, he's faced with a growing array of choices. Should he save his money or spend it? Should he donate to the poor or not? Should he help his ailing parents or turn his back on them? Should he invest the money or place it in a savings account?

The choices are often not easy, but often that is the way that people grow and develop. Sometimes the people who must overcome tremendous disabilities and handicaps in life become some of the most fully developed and fascinating ones.

A critically important aspect to all this is that it's all a natural part of being a person. The government did not create anyone. It does not endow anyone with any talents or abilities. Thus, no one has to be grateful to government for his life, his liberty, his wealth, his growth, or his pursuit of happiness. Those are all natural, God-given rights that inhere in all men, independent of government, not privileges that come from government.

So what do we need government for, anyway? The Declaration pointed out the reason: to secure the exercise of man's fundamental natural and God-given rights. In other words, to protect people from murderers, rapists, robbers, burglars, and thieves, while at the same time leaving everyone else alone.

How did our ancestors bring the federal government into existence? Let's now talk about the Constitution.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1010a.asp


Part 2

Throughout most of history, it was a given that government had the legitimate authority to wield omnipotent power over its citizenry. If the king wanted a person's land, he took it. If he wanted a share of its produce, he confiscated it. If he wanted to punish people for worshiping the wrong god, he did it. If he needed people to fight his wars, he conscripted them. If he wished to regulate people's economic activities, he did so. If he decided to punish a critic, he would incarcerate, fine, torture, or execute him.

Most people didn't consider such power to be unusual. It was simply assumed that the king was sovereign and the people subordinate. When the king issued an order, people complied. If they failed or refused to comply, the king's soldiers or agents would respond with force.

Few questioned or challenged any of that. The standard mindset was that those in government govern and rule, while those in the private sector obey and serve. Hardly anyone questioned the basic principle of government and citizenship: that the king's power over the citizen was in many respects omnipotent and that people were really nothing more than servants who were unconditionally subject to the king's laws, commands, and edicts.

One big problem was that total power meant tyranny. Sometimes the king was nice and would treat his subjects fairly well. Other times, he wasn't so nice, and people felt the full force of his wrath and power.

The mindset that Americans had in 1787, when the U.S. Constitution was proposed, must be considered in light of English history. It's sometimes easy to forget that the men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 were not Americans. They were Englishmen. They were as British as you and I are American. They were English citizens living in the American colonies.


The Magna Carta

The signers of the Declaration, along with other English colonists who took up arms against their own government, had not only experienced the heavy hand of tyranny at the hands of their own king, they were familiar with the tyranny that the English people had suffered at the hands of their own government throughout history.

Those English colonists, however, knew something important about tyranny: that there had been times in English history when English citizens had risen up against the tyranny and power of their own government.

The best example involved an event that took place almost eight centuries ago at Runnymede meadow, in the year 1215, when English barons forced King John, at the point of a sword, to acknowledge that his powers were not omnipotent but instead limited in nature. It is impossible to understate the significance of the Magna Carta. The impact it had on the English people was enormous, for it enabled them to realize that freedom entailed restrictions imposed on the powers of the king.

Indeed, what the barons accomplished at Runnymede was so powerful that it influenced our American ancestors in the year 1787, when they insisted on passage of a bill of the rights as a condition of accepting the federal government's being brought into existence with the Constitution.

What is considered one of the most important parts -- if not the most important part -- of the Magna Carta is clause 39, which states, "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."

In other words, no longer could the king arbitrarily seize people or their property. That power would be severely limited by the following restriction: "except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."

The "lawful judgment of his equals" would ultimately be enshrined in the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed...." [Emphasis added.]

The phrase "law of the land" would ultimately evolve into the phrase "due process of law," which our ancestors incorporated into the Fifth Amendment: "[No person shall] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...."

Why is this background important? Because it places the formation of the federal government into an important historical context, one that involves the tension between government and freedom and our ancestors' recognition of that tension.


Weakening government

Ask yourself the following question: Why didn't the Framers simply call into existence a federal government with omnipotent powers? After all, everyone knew that the government was going to be a representative democracy, not a monarchy. What would have been wrong with simply calling the government into existence by means of a constitution containing the following clause: "To enable the government to advance the welfare of the citizenry, federal officials are delegated total power over the lives and property of the citizenry"?

Such a government could never have come into existence in 1787 because our American ancestors would never have stood for it. The fact is that they feared government. They understood not only what the king had done to his own people in 1775 and 1776, but also what kings had done to their citizenry throughout history. They understood that the freedom of the English people had involved centuries of struggle, sometimes violent, against the omnipotent powers being exercised by their own government.

And they didn't simply view it as a problem unique to monarchy. They considered any government, including a democratically elected government, to be the greatest threat to the freedom and well-being of the citizenry.

Therefore, when the Framers proposed that Americans replace the government under the Articles of Confederation with the federal government being called into existence by the Constitution, Americans were deeply skeptical. They were convinced that such a government would ultimately take away their rights and freedoms.

Therefore, the proponents of the Constitution did several things to assuage the fears of the citizenry.

One thing they did was to provide for divided government, one that had three separate branches -- executive, legislative, and judicial, each with its own delegated powers. The idea was that divided government would help ensure a weak government, given the propensity of government officials to fight each other for power.

Another thing they did was to provide a system of state and federal governments, each with its own defined sphere of power. The states would continue to be sovereign within their respective spheres, without federal interference.

The Framers also did something whose significance cannot be overstated: they expressly limited the powers of each branch of the federal government. If a power wasn't enumerated, it simply couldn't be exercised.

Recall that throughout history, people had become accustomed to living under omnipotent government, one in which the citizenry were servants and the king was their master.

That concept was overthrown with the Constitution's enumerated-powers doctrine. Drawing on the limitation-on-power idea that had been incorporated into the Magna Carta, and drawing on what Jefferson had written in the Declaration about fundamental rights, and drawing on their recognition that government constituted the greatest threat to the rights and freedom of the citizenry, the Framers were appealing to Americans to adopt the new government with what amounted to the following argument: "We the people will be calling this government into existence. We are the masters, and it will be our servant. Its powers will be strictly limited to those enumerated in the Constitution. If the power isn't enumerated, it cannot be exercised."


Further protections

That appealed to the American people. Yet, it still wasn't enough for them. As a condition for approving the Constitution, they demanded passage of a bill of rights that would expressly enumerate certain fundamental rights that the federal government could not infringe.

Some supporters of the Constitution responded, "But that's not necessary. Since this is a government of limited powers, an enumeration of fundamental rights is not necessary. If the power isn't enumerated, it simply cannot be exercised."

In other words, people didn't need to concern themselves with whether the government would punish them for what they read or spoke, or whether they went to church, or whether they protested government misconduct. And they didn't need to worry about any attempt by the government to seize their guns. And they certainly didn't need to be concerned about the possibility that the president would arbitrarily seize and incarcerate them or take their property.

Why was that? Because the enumerated powers in the Constitution didn't include the powers to do those things. Again, the only powers that could be exercised were those enumerated in the document. Since there was no power to, say, seize people's guns, a bill of rights to protect such a right was unnecessary.

That assurance was not good enough for our American ancestors. They simply didn't trust government, not even their own democratically elected government. They didn't even trust the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, or John Adams with political power. They were fairly certain that the government they were being asked to call into existence would ultimately break out of the Constitution's enumerated-powers straitjacket and end up doing some very nasty things to the citizenry, such as depriving them of their fundamental rights and freedoms.

They wanted more protection from this government, the federal government being called into existence by the Constitution. In an attempt to protect themselves as best they could from their own federal government the American people demanded passage of a bill of rights as a condition for approving the Constitution, which was calling into existence a federal government they deeply feared.

Let's examine the Bill of Rights.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1011a.asp


Part 3

The Bill of Rights should actually have been called the Bill of Prohibitions because it actually doesn't give any rights to anyone. Instead, it expressly prohibits the federal government from infringing the fundamental rights of the people.

Our American ancestors understood that people's rights don't come from the government or from the Constitution. They come from nature and God. It is the responsibility of government to protect, not damage or destroy, the exercise of such rights.

Consider the First and Second Amendments. Notice that they don't give people freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, or the right to keep and bear arms. Instead, they expressly prohibit the federal government from depriving people of those important rights, all of which inhere in every human being by virtue of his humanity.

In other words, suppose the Bill of Rights had never been enacted. Would people still have, say, the right to keep and bear arms? Absolutely! Again, such a right doesn't come from government or the Constitution. Instead, like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press, the right to keep and bear arms is a natural, God-given right that preexists government and the Constitution.

Why did the American people consider it necessary and wise to provide express restrictions on the federal government, prohibiting it from violating people's important natural and God-given rights?

The reason is simple: They believed that the federal government was the greatest threat to their rights and freedoms. They believed that such express prohibitions would prevent or at least inhibit federal officials from infringing or violating such rights. And they were counting on an independent federal judiciary to enforce those constitutional restraints on power.


The Bill of Rights

Our ancestors understood what the Framers had claimed -- that the enumerated-powers doctrine would limit federal officials to those powers that were enumerated in the Constitution. But Americans simply weren't convinced that it would work. They knew that the federal government would inevitably attract power-lusting people to public office -- people whose love of power would lead them to come up with all sorts of rationales, excuses, and justifications for exceeding the limited powers enumerated in the Constitution.

Americans were certain that such power-lusting federal officials would end up punishing critics of government wrongdoing, would punish people for failing to worship God in the correct way, would prevent people from peacefully assembling, and would prohibit people from owning guns.

The First and Second Amendments were intended to make it clear: federal officials (i.e., the servants) were expressly prohibited by the people (i.e., the masters) from doing those types of things.

The Third Amendment prohibits the federal government from quartering soldiers in private homes without the consent of the owner. This amendment reflected the deep antipathy toward militarism and standing armies of our American ancestors. Since the federal government was the greatest threat to people's freedom and well-being, they understood that the way that such a threat materializes is through the government's ability to use force against the citizenry. And what better way to employ force than through the use of a standing army, especially one that could always be expected to be loyal to its commander in chief, the president?

James Madison explained that in the Roman Empire, whenever the citizenry threatened revolt or rebellion over the ever-increasing spending, debt, and taxation needed to sustain the empire, Roman officials and the Roman military would simply stir up some foreign crisis, at which point the citizenry would be expected to set their anger against the government aside and rally to the support of the troops and the government, in order to protect the nation from the external "threat."

After 20th-century Americans had brought into existence a gigantic military and military-industrial complex, retired U.S. Army Gen. Dwight D. Eisen hower, who was then serving as president of the United States, issued a warning to the American people, one with which our American ancestors would have certainly agreed. He suggested that the enormous military and military-industrial complex posed a grave threat to the democratic processes of the United States.

The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments concern criminal procedures -- e.g., the power of government to break down people's doors to search for evidence of criminal wrongdoing, to force people into confessing to crimes, and to take people into custody and incarcerate, mistreat, or even execute them.

What people feared is that the federal government would be a government in which federal officials could exercise the most omnipotent, totalitarian power of all -- the power to do whatever they wanted to people, especially their critics.


The ultimate dictatorial power

Ask yourself: what would be the greatest power that a dictator could wield over people?

The power to tax them to any extent he wishes? That would certainly be an enormous power over the citizenry -- the power to take their money and their property away from them.

The power to debase the money supply? That too would be a means by which to deprive people of their wealth and property.

The power to prohibit people from owning guns? That would be a tyrannical power, especially since its exercise could deprive people of the means to defend themselves from tyranny.

The power to control speech? That could prevent people from rallying others to the defense of liberty.

But all those powers pale in comparison to the power to simply send troops or the police into a person's home, search through all his belongings, force him to confess to crimes, incarcerate him, torture him, and even execute him without any judicial review whatsoever. The omnipotent, nonreviewable power to search, arrest, incarcerate, torture, and kill people is the ultimate dictatorial power. It is akin to the power to murder the citizenry.

Why did our American ancestors demand the enactment of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments? Because they were certain that the federal government would inevitably attract power-lusters to office who would do the types of things that those amendments proscribed. With the enactment of such amendments, the American people were making it clear that before federal officials would be permitted to enter into people's homes and search for evidence of criminal wrongdoing or arrest, incarcerate, and punish people, they would have to satisfy well-established procedural requirements whose origins stretched back into centuries of resistance by British citizens to the tyranny of their own government.

In fact, the phrase "due process of law," which is found in the Fifth Amendment (and Fourteenth Amendment) stretches all the way back to the year 1215, when the barons of England required King John -- their king -- to acknowledge publicly that he lacked the authority to take away people's lives, liberty, or property without following the "law of the land."

The Fourth Amendment enshrines the principle that federal officials may not simply force their way into people's homes and conduct searches of their belongings. They are required to first go to a magistrate in the judicial branch and seek a warrant. The magistrate issues the warrant only on a finding of "probable cause," which is established by sworn statements.

Moreover, the government may not simply go out and pick up people and incarcerate them, torture them, or execute them. Before punishing people, the government is required to follow well-established judicial procedures. For example, it must secure a grand-jury indictment that charges a person with a specific crime that is already on the books. That person is entitled to the assistance of an attorney, to ensure that the government doesn't railroad him into a conviction. He's also entitled to confront witnesses against him and cross-examine them, as a precaution against the government's use of false testimony to secure a conviction. The accused is entitled to elect trial by jury to ensure that ordinary citizens in the community decide the issue of guilt, not some jaded or corrupt judge who might be in the pockets of the prosecutors. The accused is entitled to a speedy trial so that the charges cannot be left hanging over his head indefinitely. When the government does secure a criminal conviction, it is nonetheless prohibited from imposing cruel and unusual punishments on the person convicted.

The Seventh Amendment guarantees the right of trial by jury in civil cases.


Protecting other rights

In this context, we shouldn't forget the important procedural protection of habeas corpus, which our ancestors understood was the linchpin of a free society. It was included in the Constitution itself. Like the procedural rights in the Bill of Rights, habeas corpus originated in the British people's resistance to tyranny at the hands of their own government.

Suppose, for example, the government decides to simply ignore the procedural requirements in the Bill of Rights. It just goes out and takes people into custody and jails them, intending to torture them to death for criticizing the government. That's what habeas corpus is all about. It entitles the aggrieved person to seek a writ of habeas corpus from a federal judge. The judge orders the government to produce the person and to show cause why he is being held. If the government cannot do that, the judge orders the prisoner's release. The custodian must comply with the judge's order.

Again, what is the point of all these procedural restrictions and prohibitions?

Our American ancestors were convinced that the federal government would inevitably attract the kind of people that all governments in history have attracted -- power-lusters who would come up with any rationale, justification, and excuse to satisfy their lust for power, especially with respect to depriving people of their lives, liberty, and property.

Were the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights all-inclusive? No. Some people were concerned, however, that by enumerating some rights, those in government would claim that no other rights were protected from governmental assault.

That was the reason for the Ninth Amendment. It says that the list of rights is not all-inclusive. Though some rights are enumerated it does not follow that the people don't have other natural, God-given rights.

To reemphasize the importance of the enumerated-powers doctrine, our ancestors demanded passage of the Tenth Amendment. It says that all powers not in that list of enumerated powers delegated to the federal government in the Constitution are retained by the people and by the states.

Today, nearly everyone acknowledges that our country is in a deep mess. Everywhere you look, there is a crisis -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federal spending, the national debt, the dollar, monetary policy, banking, Iraq, Afghanistan, torture, indefinite detention, terrorism, and on and on and on.

What are the causes of these crises? How do we get our nation back on the right track?

The answer to both those questions lies in the political and economic philosophy of our American ancestors, a philosophy that understood that people's own government was the greatest danger to their lives, liberty, property, and well-being and that freedom requires the constraint of governmental power through a constitution. To put our nation back on the right track -- toward freedom, peace, prosperity, and harmony -- requires a recapturing of the spirit of our ancestors.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1012a.asp