This speech was written to be delivered to a state legislature … hopefully your legislature … It is intended to stir the minds of your legislators onto the path, that our forefathers many of them legislators themselves, that was the proximate cause for the inclusion of the 10th Amendment in the US Constitution and that is: In the final analysis the Federal government, executive, legislative and judicial cannot be trusted to have the final say … and since the Federal government is the child of the States, the States collectively or individually must have, as a parent to child, the final say when those in the Federal government disregard or distort their clear and simple 17 clause mandate under Article 1 Section 1 ….
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Mr. Speaker and Honorable members of the House … I arise today, at the beginning of this session of the Legislature to speak to you about our mission here in the Legislature … to urge you to think about our place in the destiny of this the greatest experiment in human freedom; about our place in the genius of the American system; about that Republic called the United States of America.
Surely, our primary job here is to provide for the protection of the persons and property of the citizens of our great state. To provide a legal environment of mobility, safety, tranquility, and sense of hope and optimism for the future for our children … and a haven of comfort and satisfaction for our elderly and disadvantaged … but we also have a higher duty that has been sorely neglected, that duty of protecting the gift of human freedom bequeathed to us long ago by our Revolutionary Forefathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America.
Today the States our Federal Republic are being attacked from Washington, DC in seemingly the same arbitrary manner that King George III was attacking our forefathers from London in the late 18th century. King George would not tolerate self-government in the colonies and we are now confronted in a similar manner by an incomprehensibly enormous bureaucracy in that far away place, Washington, DC … a government that is clearly, day by day, year by year usurping the Constitutional rights of this state and its people to itself.
We are all familiar with the opening lines of the Declaration which states its intention … “When in the Course of Human Events it becomes necessary”… but how many of us can recall the reasons given for the separation? Let us review some of those reasons … the Declaration states:
- In one place, “We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us” … Have you ever given thought to the fact that the US Constitution grants the Federal Government 17 enumerated powers and only those powers alone?
- It states in another, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it” … You should be cognizant that most of the Federal Government and its intrusive bureaucracy is not authorized by the Constitution, but has been created by unauthorized laws or by fiat judicial decisions.
- In another it states, “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, It is their duty, to throw off such Government” … Our nation is a Federation of small self-governing Republics; when a central government erected to promote peace and harmony among equals and to protect the whole from foreign aggression itself becomes the aggressor of our freedom, it is our right … our duty to stand up to that aggression.
- Further it states, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance” … The bureaucracy to which we are subjected is so large as to be unknowable and is motivated by forces alien to, unresponsive to and un-informed of the exigencies of our State. Is our State subordinate to the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the case of the wolves? Or to the US Department of the Interior in the case of the Sage Grouse?
- And further, “He has combined with others (I would say the 3 branches) to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws” … Where in the US Constitution does it say that the Federal Courts have the right to nullify an article in our State Constitution defining marriage?
- And finally, “For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent” … The socialistic Obamacare outrage was sold to the Congress and us as providing for our healthcare, when in fact, when the 2000 plus unread pages of the bill were finally deciphered, we find it to be a tax.
All in all, the abuses by King George that propelled our forefathers to revolution and the abuses of the Constitution by the present Federal government toward the states are compellingly similar. We certainly do not want to overthrow the Federal government, but as free men, elected representatives in a federated Republic, sworn by solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution, we are honor bound to do as Jefferson so eloquently proclaimed: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter.. it” … We must alter any un-Constitutional infringements on our freedom!
So what does the Constitution say about it? First it is of fundamental importance to understand that our Federal government is not a Democracy, nor are the States Democracies. You will find no reference to democracy in either the Declaration or the Constitution. Our forefathers were uncommonly expert in comparative government. They, to a man, knew that democracies always fail; they fail because the masses cannot understand the issues and are therefore at the mercy of the demagogues… or more insidiously, compelled by the human failings of avarice and greed, they vote themselves largess from the public treasury until the polity is bankrupt. The forefathers also understood that there is a tyranny of the majority that will prove fatal to general government. Can the massive population majority of New York City efficiently govern Rhode Island, Vermont or New Hampshire or for that matter the rest of New York state? Shouldn’t those entities have the final say in their fate? The Revolutionary War had been about human freedom … the freedom of the individual. The writers of the Constitution understood that only a representative form of government would work to preserve human freedom. A government where the individual picked from among his peers a person who was an exemplar of his ideals with the integrity to represent his views in the next level of government. They understood that democracy only worked where people of good will met face to face and presented their solutions to problems of mutual concern to the judgment of their gathered peers. They knew that this worked in villages, townships, precincts, and legislatures and would work in the new Congress. Small bodies where men of good will meeting face to face presenting their views to their peers. The Constitution compartmentalized American government, giving due deference to the diversity of the States and to the general populace. That is why the Constitution plainly states in Article 4 Section 4 that the States are guaranteed a “Republican Form of Government.”
James Madison, the father of the Constitution, a scholar of comparative government, initially believed that the Federal government could be given a limited list of duties to circumscribe its powers and because of the propensity of men with power to strive to always take more power have it administered by three branches of government each with checks upon the other. He believed that the bare Constitution to be sufficient in itself. But when Madison took this beautiful handiwork back to his home in Virginia for ratification, he was met with a firestorm of opposition, most ardently personified in the thinking and eloquence of Patrick Henry. Henry objected to the Constitution because he was sure that the “unalienable Rights of Man” were not properly protected from the caprices of the document. He insisted that Rights of Man already codified in the Constitutions of the several States be re-articulated in the Federal Constitution so as to block any attempt by Congress to modify the inherent rights of the Individual so recently won by the blood and toil of the Revolution. Additionally, and the reason why Henry finally supported the Constitution, was his insistence that the States have the final say as to the validity of Federal law should the three branches attempt to overstep their Constitutional mandate. Henry’s amendment was the Tenth Amendment … “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” This powerful amendment allows the States to nullify or disregard actions of the Federal Government that are not granted in the enumerated powers. It may be, in final analysis, the most important of the “Bill of Rights.” Patrick Henry certainly thought so!
We as Legislators can disregard the mandate of the Tenth Amendment at the peril of our Federal Republic or we can re-affirm our oath to the people this State by standing against the usurpations of the Federal bureaucracy. As we watch the creeping tyranny descending upon our nation, we in this Legislature can, we must take action to preserve our sacred Republic. We must make it clear to the Federal Government, “This far and no further!” This Legislature must provide a vehicle to monitor and act upon the usurpations of the Federal behemoth.