A "Negative Charter"

Atop the Stoa this day I again wish to discuss what words mean and the dangers of an uneducated electorate.

President Obama has complained over and over and over again that the Constitution of the United States is a "Negative Charter" that says what the Federal Government can not do TO you, but it is silent on what the Federal Government can do FOR you.

For a "Constitutional Scholar", and I use those words in their loosest forms, he sure does not understand the document or its writers very well.

Obama and the Congress have passed into law several pieces of legislation that should not have EVER made it outside of casual conversation over drinks. One was the Patient Affordability Act (ha, ha, it is to laugh). The second was a bill passed in November 2011 that allows the Federal Government to detain an American citizen on American soil without charges or trial.

The Framers made assumptions that EVERYONE would always understand some of the basic underpinnings of the Constitution. Namely the concept that ALL RIGHTS ARE GOD-GIVEN. The right to Free Speech is not specifically stated in the 1st Amendment. It was assumed that everyone would know that we have the right to speak our minds. The Amendment states that the Government can not control what we think via State Controlled Religion or other devices.

People must understand and remember that the United States is UNIQUE in the concept that power flows UPWARDS in our government. NOT down. ABSOLUTE power resides with the People, who give a little bit of it up to their State governments, who then in turn give up a little to the Federal Government. The idea that the Federal Government can dictate what it does today to the States and the People would have our Framers SCRAMBLING over each other for the "RESET" button.

The 10th Amendment makes that painfully clear to anyone in the Federal Government. Put simply, powers not SPECIFICALLY granted to the Federal Government under this document RESIDE with the States or the People therein. It is the People who elect their State governments, who in turn send their representatives up to the Federal Government. Those Representatives can ONLY pass legislation that does not interfere with State Constitutions or the Federal Constitution.

The first members of the Supreme Court were BOOOORRRREEED. And I mean out of their skulls BORED. The generation that wrote the Constitution understood, via the Federalist Papers, what the rules of the new game were. Legislators, for the most part, were citizens who served a term or two and then went back to their farms. There were very few to no political dynasties or people who openly tried to defy the intent of the Constitution.

It was only later, as the Framers began to die off that those moldy justices began to get some use. It was those folks who began to allow the Constitution to be nibbled at around the edges. A little here, a little there. Little by little the Federal Government began to encroach upon the States and the People, just as the Framers knew it would. The Progressive Movement was born about a century after the signing of the Constitution. The Progressives felt that the Constitution was not sufficient to run a nation as large and as complex as what the Unites States had grown into...and the people were simply too uneducated to change things themselves. There were many, many times that the Supreme Court saved our Republic by swatting the hands of would-be corruptors.

However, there have been more than a few blockbuster cases that began to truly erode our rights and liberties. You can figure out what those were for yourself.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Constitution, that flimsy little piece of paper protects us ONLY when there are people around who understand what it is all about. Unfortunately, the Federal Government took over the Education system and began to kill it in the 1970's. Then they took over the University system via the back door with grants and loans, eventually taking over the Student Loan Programs (the 00's). Now our Universities are dying too.

Those two bills will eventually be challenged, and they darn well better get challenged. They should never have been passed in the first place. Shame on the Republican House for not killing them. Shame on the Democrat Senate for not killing them. Shame on Obama for signing them. The Supreme Court had better get that call right as well.

The Constitution IS a document of negative rights. It is a shield against the corrupting power and encroachment of Local and State rights by the Federal Government. That is what it has ALWAYS been about.

President Obama may have known that if he had grown up in America. The American people may have known that if they had received a proper education in our schools.

Wake up folks and read the darn Constitution. It is under 100,000 words. You can get through it over a long lunch. Do it sometime. You might be shocked if you keep an open mind at what has been allowed to happen to our nation by a sleeping people drunk on pop culture.

Live well.

--Zavost