By Curtis W. Caine, Sr., MD
In a business or organization, an industrious person with ability and ambition may, by hard work, rightfully gain a position of authority over others who voluntarily submit.
But in this world, there are those who have an insatiable, inordinate desire to have power over and control of others without their permission. Such a person may resort to direct, one-on-one violence to gain his goal. Of course, in this situation there is the risk the intended victim may be the victor! Or, the aggressor may increase his odds by forming a gang to satisfy his lust for power. Tyrants throughout history have resorted to this tactic. In most areas of the civilized world, laws forbidding plunder stand in the way.
However, as Frederic Bastiat pointed out in The Law in 1848, the slickest way to overlord others is to get elected to the legislature (by hook or crook) and get a law passed (by means fair or foul) that makes the desired plunder “legal.”(1) Then, the armed force of the government imposes the tyranny the lone bad guy was unable to accomplish.
That is where we are today. Eighty percent of what the central government imposes on us is forbidden to it by the law of the land — the U.S. Constitution. That is why this column is presented — to point out that the States delegated to the Union at its founding no authority via the Constitution for it to be engaged in health, education, welfare, banking, power, et cetera. Thus, all federal activities in these areas are forbidden and are usurped abuses and injuries inflicted by the very entity whose basic duty is the exact opposite — to see that such never happen.
In the Declaration of Independence (America’s Charter), British citizen-representatives of the Crown’s Colonies listed 27 reasons why they were severing their subservience to the King, including: “He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.”
The Constitution (America’s ByLaws) was adopted 11 years later by American citizen-representatives of the States to preclude the new central government from ever again being guilty of any one of those 27 enumerated “Facts” of “absolute Tyranny.” And to make doubly sure the central government did not go beyond those enumerated powers, the Founding Fathers included the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution. They read: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” And, “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.”
And in The Federalist, No. 45, James Madison, the master builder of the Constitution, explained: “The powers delegated to 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, negotiation, and foreign commerce….The powers reserved to the States will extend to all objects of which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concerns the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.”(2)
But even a cursory scanning of the Constitution of These States that United under it on September 17, 1787 (after winning the bloody War for Independence from the English Crown precipitated on July 4, 1776 by the signing of the Declaration of Independence), reveals that “the supreme Law of the Land” (America’s Constitution) and present-day reality are poles apart.
So, subverters of the constitutional rule of law have made history repeat itself. By present-day “Acts of pretended Legislation” that are “foreign to our constitution” the Congress “has combined with [the bureaucracies]…giving (their) Assent,” thus “subject(ing) us to [their arbitrary forbidden] jurisdiction.”
To “end run around the Constitution” has required planning and conniving by people who willfully and intentionally do things the Constitution clearly forbids. Which squarely fits the definition of a conspiracy. Thomas Jefferson once wrote: “Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental
opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, unalterable through every change of ministers, too plainly proves a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery.”(3) And “WE THE PEOPLE of the United States” continue to be its victims 222 years later.
And, we will continue to “suffer” these “abuses and usurpations” which “evince(s) a design to reduce (us) under absolute Despotism” until we require our “servants” in government to obey their sworn oath and strictly obey the Constitution.
But Americans can not explicitly force their “public servants” to obedience to the Constitution unless we each individually know what its provisions are. A simple reading of the Constitution imparts that knowledge and equips us to order adherence thereto.
Let me recommend a “half-way through the New Year resolution”: read a portion of the Constitution every day right after you read a segment of God’s Word.
References
1. Bastiat F. The Law. The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., New York, Irvington-on-Hudson, reprinted 1995.
2. Hamilton A, Madison J, Jay J. The Federalist Papers. New Yori, New American Library, 1961, pp.292-293.
3. Thomas Jefferson quoted in “Socializing America,” The New American, May 17, 1993, p.79.
Dr. Caine is an anesthesiologist in Jackson, Mississippi, and a member of the Editorial Board of the Medical Sentinel. His e-mail address is: LandCCaine@ msn.com.
Originally published in the Medical Sentinel 1998;3(4):145, 148. Copyright © 1998 Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).
(This column on the Constitution appears in the Medical Sentinel to remind us that it is the unConstitutional (and thus illegal) activities in medicine and all other facets of our lives that have trampled on and outlawed our God-endowed freedom and liberty.)
