Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
When the Constitution of the United States was being written to replace the original Articles of Confederation, a debate raged between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists on whether a separate statement of rights was needed. The Federalists felt that specifying our rights would also limit our rights to those listed.
The Anti-Federalists thought it was quite necessary to specify the rights retained by the people in order to keep the government from usurping those rights.
Both groups wanted us to have the rights denied us as colonies that caused us to separate from Great Britain in the Revolutionary War. The crux of the question was how specific we needed to be in naming those rights.
Enter James Madison, co-author of the “Federalist Papers” and Father of the Constitution, who would eventually become the fourth President of the newly formed nation.
He proposed including the specific rights, plus an additional statement reserving any unmentioned rights to the people. This became the Ninth Amendment.
Government Overreach
The whole point here is that we are not the servants of the government. It is our servant, and its powers come from the people. We the people have ratified the Constitution and set the boundaries of the government.
The government of the people, by the people, and for the people is reaching far beyond the boundaries set by the people in the Constitution.
In the name of public health we the people have been told to stay home, abandon commerce, abandon each other, and surrender our unenumerated rights:
- the right to travel
- the right to seek healthcare
- the right to participate in commerce
- the right to visit our friends and relatives, for crying out loud!
We have been told to stay home from church, avoid our elders, quit shopping for anything besides food, and order off Amazon rather than venture out into the sunlight, for fear we will encounter someone with a virus.
Those of us foolish enough to leave home are warned to wear a mask and wash our hands and every surface we touch. State and local governments are now making it mandatory to wear a mask, on pain of fines if you are caught without one.
The latest dictate from Anthony Fauci is to add goggles, just in case you touch your eyes! Do you think that kind of instruction might have any mental consequences after several months of isolation?
Your body is designed to take in an oxygen-rich air source and expel its waste in the form of carbon dioxide. According to merckmanuals.com, the publisher of medical manuals, each of us is breathing up to two gallons of air in and out of our lungs each minute.
About three tenths of a liter of oxygen will be exchanged with the same volume of carbon dioxide. Wearing a mask is retaining that expelled waste right next to your face.
Marxism and Socialism In Today’s Culture
In the absence of any sense of order or fairness, riots have erupted over police brutality, and the rioters have established their own regimes in the form of treasonous takeovers of small sections of large cities. A BLM leader openly admitted her Marxist training in 2015 in an interview according to this article in the New York Post. See my posts on Maoism, Socialism, and Rules For Radicals to study the strategies in use in politics today.
Where does it stop? Who is going to stand up and say no to the continual encroachments on our rights? While our cities are looted and sections are walled off by Antifa and Black Lives Matter, we obediently wear our masks and stay six feet away from each other. Something is seriously wrong here. The looters are not wearing their masks.
Are you going to stay home while the nation burns? Do you have a plan? Or will you just let your governor decide for you? Perhaps Nancy Pelosi or Dr Fauci will tell you what to do.
Amendment X
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
The Constitution came about because the Articles of Confederation made a central government so weak that it could not enforce laws, raise sufficient taxes, or regulate commerce.
It could make treaties and alliances, coin money, and maintain armed forces, but the individual states were sovereign, united by a “firm league of friendship.”
Fear of centralized authority made sense after wresting our freedom from the biggest empire on the planet, but gradually a sense of nationalism arose among the colonies.
The Constitutional Convention was called to revise the Articles of Confederation, but ended up drafting an entirely new document. Instead of a loose confederation, we became a true Constitutional Republic.
The central government was set up to deal with the details that could cause friction between the states, and to deal with international issues.
Where the Articles of Confederation provided only for a Congress, the new Constitution set up three branches of government.
How The Three Branches of Government Work
All legislative powers belong to the Congress, made up of a Senate and a House of Representatives. All bills for raising revenue originate in the House of Representatives, with input from the Senate.
The executive powers belong to the President, who signs bills presented by Congress or returns them with a veto. If the President ignores the bill for ten days, excluding Sundays, it becomes law. A veto can be overridden by a two-thirds majority of the House and Senate.
Powers expressly given to the Congress in Article I of the Constitution include:
- Imposing taxes, duties, imposts, and excises
- Borrowing money
- Regulating commerce with foreign nations, between states, and with Indian tribes
- Establishing rules for naturalization and bankruptcy
- Coining and regulating money and fixing standards for weights and measures
- Providing for the punishment of counterfeiting
- Establishing post offices and postal roads
- Promote the progress of science and useful arts with patent law and copyrights
- Constituting tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court
- Defining and punishing piracies and felonies on the high seas and offenses against the law of nations
- Declaring war, granting letters of marque and reprisal, and regulating captures on land and water
- Raising, supporting, and regulating armies, a navy, and the militia
- Exercising exclusive legislation over the nation’s capital and military installments
- Making laws necessary and proper for executing the above
- Declaring the punishment of treason
- Proposing Constitutional Amendments and Calling a Constitutional Convention on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the states
The President:
- Is the Commander in Chief of the military
- Makes treaties which must be ratified by two thirds of the Senate
- Appoints Ambassadors, Ministers, Supreme Court Judges, and all other Officers of the United States
- Fills vacancies that happen while the Senate is in recess
- Reports on the State of the Union and makes recommendations to Congress. Convenes and adjourns the House and Senate
- Takes care that the laws be faithfully executed
- Commissions all the officers of the United States
- Can be impeached along with the Vice President and all civil officers for treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors
The Supreme Court:
- Has the judicial power of the United States
- Holds office during good behavior
- Tries cases in law and equity under the Constitution and treaties
- Governs cases affecting ambassadors and other ministers and consuls, admiralty and maritime jurisdiction and controversies between states and citizens of different states.
- Has original jurisdiction over cases affecting ambassadors, ministers and consuls, and appellate jurisdiction over the other areas mentioned above.
The States:
- Shall give full faith and credit to the acts, records, and judicial proceeding of other states
- Shall give privileges and immunities to the citizens of other states
- Shall return fleeing citizens to the state of origin if they are accused of crimes or sentenced to service or labor
- Shall be added to the Union by Congress
- Shall be guaranteed a republican form of government and protection from invasion and domestic violence
That’s the whole list, folks, paraphrased for simplicity from the Constitution itself. Go to Archives.gov to see the whole text of the Constitution. If you don’t see it on the list, our founders did not intend it to be there. They wanted the people to have all the powers not given to the states or the central government.
What do you see the government doing that is not on the list? Do you want it to keep doing those things? Think deeply about what powers we are giving up every day as we slide away from the limited government intended by the people who fought and risked their lives to end the tyranny of Great Britain.
I have gone through every clause of the Bill of Rights. Read the rest of the series and find out what rights we are abandoning. Then go do something about it.
God bless America with some common sense soon. I pray it is not too late already. Call your representatives. Reach out to others. Vote!
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