This week holds a unique anniversary in the U.S. that is unknown to most.
On May 15, 1800, then-President John Adams ordered the federal government to pack up and leave Philadelphia to its new location in the nation's new capital – Washington, D.C.
History.com reported that even the transition and move of the entire federal government went relatively easy and remarkably fast: "After Congress adjourned its last meeting in Philadelphia on May 15, Adams told his cabinet to make sure Congress and all federal offices were up and running smoothly in their new headquarters by June 15, 1800. Philadelphia officially ceased to serve as the nation's capital as of June 11, 1800."
Can you imagine, an entire federal government moving 150 miles away without modern trucks and equipment, and being "up and running smoothly" one month later? (Moreover, official documents and archives were transferred from Philadelphia to the new capital by ship over inland waterways.)
Most will find this next fact fascinating. At the time, in 1800, there were only about 125 federal employees! Today, just 223 short years later, the federal workforce is composed of an estimated 2.1 million civilian workers, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
Think about only 125 federal employees in the year 1800. Twenty-four years after declaring independence from England, 13 years after the U.S. Constitution had been written (ratified in1788 and in operation since 1789), 11 years after Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court were created (1789), and despite the two very active terms of George Washington's presidency (1789-1797), the U.S. had only 125 federal employees.
Again, can you imagine? Regardless that there were only 5.3 million people in the U.S. back then (according to 1800 census), doesn't 125 paid civil servants still seem like an almost impossibly low number, especially compared to today's bloated federal bureaucracy?
If one extrapolated that percentage to today's population of 331 million Americans, if we had the same ratio of feds to citizens, that would mean we would have only 7,750 federal employees in government today (compared to our present 2.1 million feds)!
So, what was our founders' secret? What did they know that we didn't about a small federal government?
Truth is, they never put their hope in government, especially the federal government. In fact, just the opposite. They believed the feds were there for two primary reasons: to protect the states (and its citizens) from foreign powers as well as to assure smooth commerce between the states and countries around the world. Bottom line, the feds existed to serve and protect the rights and power of "We the People." That is why the founders adamantly believed in the limitations of government, and especially the federal government.
The Annenberg Classroom, based upon the civics and passion of Leonore Annenberg, who served as chief of protocol of the United States, summarized these founding points well:
In every democracy today, limited government and the rule of law are embedded in the constitution. A turning point in the history of constitutionalism occurred in 1787–88, when the U.S. Constitution was drafted and ratified. The Preamble stated the purposes of the constitutional government:
"We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
In order to carry out its purposes in the Preamble, the government under this constitution was sufficiently empowered to protect the people. And the constitutional government was sufficiently limited so that the government would not be able to turn its power unjustly against the people. Thus, this simultaneously strong and limited government would "secure the Blessings of Liberty" to the people.
Article VI of the Constitution states the principle of constitutional supremacy that guarantees limited government and the rule of law: "The Constitution and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof … shall be the supreme Law of the Land." All laws enacted by any government in the United States must conform to the Constitution. As Alexander Hamilton explained in the 78th paper of The Federalist: "No legislative act contrary to the Constitution, therefore, can be valid." Moreover, any government action that violates the Constitution can be declared unconstitutional and voided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1787–88, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison claimed in "The Federalist" that limited government and the rule of law – principles essential to the U.S. Constitution – would guard the people from tyranny or unjust encroachments against their right to liberty. They feared equally any kind of unrestrained exercise of power. To them, the power of an insufficiently limited majority of the people was just as dangerous as the unlimited power of a king or military dictator.
Hamilton and Madison held that the best government is both constitutionally empowered and limited; it is "energetic" – strong enough to act decisively and effectively for the common good – and "limited by law" in order to protect the inherent rights of individuals. These principles of constitutionalism expressed by Americans in the late 18th century have become guides to the establishment of constitutional governments in many democracies of the world.
Particularly apropos here is the Tenth Amendment, which is also part of our Bill of Rights and was ratified on Dec. 15, 1791: "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."
Of course, the feds' rebuttal today to anything that constitutionally prohibits their agenda is: "That doesn't apply here." They are not alone. Many progressives today say that the Tenth Amendment is irrelevant and nothing more than an implied suggestion or general rule of practice.
Often cited is the United States v. Darby (312 U.S. 100, 124–1941), which reads: "The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers. ..."
But I believe Thomas Jefferson would have had a word for the wise here – and the foolish in Washington D.C., too.
Just a couple years before his death on June 12, 1823, roughly 15 years after his presidency, Thomas Jefferson wrote about constitutional interpretation to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson: "On every question of construction, [we must] carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
So, returning to 1791, the year the 10th Amendment was ratified, Thomas Jefferson declared, "I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.' [Tenth Amendment.] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
Of course, Jefferson's concern against an overreaching bloated federal government was representative of most of the framers. That is why the Tenth Amendment exists.
A decade later, during his presidency, in 1802, Jefferson still shared about his earlier passion to inhibit an overreaching federal government: "I was in Europe when the Constitution was planned, and never saw it till after it was established. On receiving it, I wrote strongly to Mr. Madison, urging the want of provision for … an express reservation to the States of all rights not specifically granted to the Union." (Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, 1802. ME 10:325)
The point is, based upon the Tenth Amendment, the federal government shouldn't have the power it does today. Thomas Jefferson simply and forthrightly declared, "Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." (Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. ME 17:380)
"Undelegated powers" obviously refer to those powers not granted by the Constitution. One example of "undelegated powers" is the federal government's enacting of health care laws. According to Jefferson, such acts would be "unauthoritative, void, and of no force."
We unfortunately live in the age of the nanny state in which far too many Americans expect the feds to solve their personal problems. That's why entitlements have grown into a gargantuan government overreach.
We've allowed the feds to overstep their constitutional limitations. We've taken their bait – we've eaten their carrots. We've believed their lies by drinking from the troughs of their political Kool-Aid, like when former President Obama continually taunted with the mantra that "only government" can save us. Not a single American founder or framer would concur with his notion!
The abuse of federal political power to intervene in areas such as Americans' private health care or myriad of other areas could exist only in a nation that no longer holds its leaders accountable to its constitution and a governmental leadership that regards itself as above its people and its constitution.
Sadly, I was recently listening to an interview with former President Obama, who described the Constitution as "an imperfect document … a document that reflects some deep flaws … an enormous blind spot … and that the framers had that same blind spot."
In so doing, Obama established a rationale and justification for disregarding, disavowing and disposing the Constitution from oversight and interplay in his administration and decisions. Even worse, he placed himself above the Constitution and those "blind framers" who just couldn't see the big picture as he does today, or so he thinks. After all, he's the constitutional scholar, and the framers were just, well, the creators of the document and the country! (Unfortunately, Mr. Biden follows on Obama's same constitutional track.)
Obama and Biden both would do well to learn from America's third president, Thomas Jefferson, himself a source greater than any living constitutional lawyer. In fact, it would seem that Jefferson was speaking directly to Washington today just a few years before his death, when he wrote these following words at roughly 80 years of age in 1823 to Supreme Court Judge William Johnson. I so wish we could resurrect Jefferson to speak these words today to a joint session of Congress with the president in attendance, too.
Imagine Jefferson sitting there, a ripe old and wise sage, in the very middle seat between all Democrats and Republicans. He listens to all the proceedings without uttering a word. And then right near the end, he respectfully calls upon the president and others gathered, and politely but sternly utters these words:
"The States supposed that by their Tenth Amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers. They [have not learned from the past], nor [are] aware of the slipperiness of the eels of the law. I ask for no straining of words against the General Government, nor yet against the States. I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers established by the Constitution for the limitation of both; and never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold as at market."
It couldn't be any clearer than that.
(I would encourage my readers to go to www.tenthamendmentcenter.com and learn more about your Tenth Amendment rights, and then fight for those rights by holding all your representatives accountable to them, including the other 2.1 millions feds we the people employ.)
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