To preclude legalized plunder by the federal government, the Founding Fathers provided for a balance of power not only between the three branches of the federal government – i.e., the Executive, the Legislative, the Judiciary – but also between the federal government and the States. This lineage (pecking order) must be strictly obeyed. Perusal of the founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, The Federalist Papers, and personal papers of the framers,(1) reveal an organization table, to wit:
· God is sovereign — over all.
· God created a man and endow-ed him and his progeny with certain prerogatives as delineated in His Word.
· Men created each State and gave each its delegated prerogatives as delineated in the State Constitution of each State.
· The States created the Union and gave it its delegated prerogatives as prescribed and circumscribed in the U.S. Constitution.
· So, God is to judge the actions of His creatures — us — to see if we meet the requirements He has set.
· We are to judge the actions of our creature — our State — to see if it meets the State Constitutional requirements we have set.
· Each State is to judge the actions of its creature — the Union — to see if it meets the U.S. Constitutional requirements the States set.
The Supreme Law of the Land is the U.S. Constitution, which reflects lineage in the balance of power. To this end James Madison, the Master builder of the Constitution, wrote:
“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, 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)
Moreover, wrote Madison, “Usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments. In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments [the states and the federal government], and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people.”(3)
Even Alexander Hamilton, the strongest proponent of the federal government, acknowledged the right of the people to revolt against federal usurpation:
“If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense, which is paramount to all positive forms of government; and which, against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success, than against those of the rulers of an individual state…Power being almost always the rival of power, the general government will at all times stand ready to check the usurpations of the state governments; and those will have the same disposition toward the general government. The people, by throwing themselves into either scale, will infallibly make it preponderate. If their rights are invaded by either, they can make use of the other as the instrument of redress…
“It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system that the state governments will in all possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.”(4)
In obeying this lineage, God alone has been steadfast and faithful. We, our States, and the Fed have not. Each entity below God has judged the correctness of its own actions in its own arbitrary eyes, resulting in a biased perversion of the requirements placed on each creature by its creator. Hence the present lawless tyranny by a gigantic government run amok.
In the present context this means that (although each branch of the Fed is to check on the other two to make sure they are obeying the Constitution) the final judgment of the constitutionality of the Fed’s actions is to rest with, not the Supreme Court of the United States — an internal and therefore partial organ — but with the creators of the Fed, the dominant States.
The Union is to defend and enforce the Union’s sovereign status in the world.
But the states are to defend and enforce the State’s sovereign status in the Republic they created.
And the citizens of a State are to defend and enforce the citizen’s sovereign status in the State they created.
Additionally, Hamilton wrote, “No legislative act contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy (agent) is greater than his principal; that the servant is above the master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people; that men, acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”(5)
It is axiomatic that a creature is never greater than its creator (whether the relationship be man vis-à-vis God; or the Federal government vis-à-vis the States). This is the belief — the faith — the security that was foundational to the Founders for themselves and their descendants.
References
1. Federer WJ. America’s God and Country. Coppell, TX, Fame Publishing, Inc., 1994.
2. Hamilton A, Madison J, Jay J. The Federalist Papers (#45), New York, New American Library, 1961, pp. 292-293.
3. Ibid., #51, p. 323.
4. Ibid., #28, pp. 180-181.
5. Ibid., #78, p. 467.
Dr. Caine is an anesthesiologist and a member of the Editorial Board of the Medical Sentinel. His e-mail address is [email protected].
Acknowledgement: The Medical Sentinel editors researched and added the citations of the Founding Fathers.
Originally published in the Medical Sentinel 2002;7(3):97-98. Copyright © 2002 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.
