This past Sunday marked the 236th anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution. Most unfortunately for everyone living in the United States, the Federal Government has not followed the original meaning of the Constitution for many decades. This has caused tremendous harm to the freedom and prosperity of every American.
Few Americans understand just how far the Federal Government has strayed from the original understanding of the Constitution because they have been inundated with a mountain of misinformation about that particular document. This is quite dangerous because the American people are the ultimate final barrier that is supposed to ensure that the Federal Government lives under the restraints placed on it by the Constitution. The only way to reestablish the restraints is to bust the progressives myths that have kept the American people ignorant of true meaning and purpose of the Constitution.
Myth number 1 – The Constitution is a living document who’s meaning changes with the political and cultural climate.
This myth is very much false. These three quotes are proof of just how wrong that point of view really is.
The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me (as President) according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption – a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated, not those who opposed it, and who opposed it merely lest the construction should be applied which they denounced as possible.” – Thomas Jefferson Letter to Messrs. Eddy, Russel, Thurber, Wheaton and Smith, March 27, 1801
On every question of construction let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, let us recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed. From Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 12 June 1823
I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers. If the meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the words composing it, it is evident that the shape and attributes of the Government must partake of the changes to which the words and phrases of all living languages are constantly subject. What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense. From James Madison to Henry Lee, 25 June 1824
Myth 2 and 3– The Federal Government was granted complete control over the States and The Supreme Court is the only and final absolute arbiter of all things constitutional.
Thomas Jefferson set the record straight on both of these myths when he wrote the Kentucky Resolutions in 1798
Resolved_, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.
Myth 4—The Constitution granted the Federal Government unlimited powers to regulate all aspects of life inside the borders of the States.
As you can see from this quote from Federalist 45 by James Madison, that myth is false.
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negociation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.
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