Constitution Day

It is Constitution Day, and considering the massive amount of spending we have seen in Washington, the confiscation of private enterprises, as well as the increasing amount of regulation and loss of personal liberty ( including our freedom to produce and consume the foods we want or drive the kinds of cars that we prefer) that seems to be on the horizon, we should consider the role and the importance of the Constitution.

Democracy is a very arbitrary form of government ( see The Public Choice Revolution- from the Cato Magazine Regulation here for more) , and is the perfect vehicle for tyranny and collectivism. That is why our founders rejected such a flawed form of government and proposed a Constitutional Republic, ‘if we can keep it.’

In Judicial Activism Reconsidered, Economist Thomas Sowell describes our Constitution:

“The federal Constitution is "the supreme law of the land," not because it is more moral than state constitutions or state or federal legislative enactments, but because it represents a larger and more enduring majority.107 Minorities receive their constitutional rights from that enduring majority to which transient majorities bow, not from whatever abstract moral rights are imagined to exist as a brooding omnipresence in the sky.”

Once we start making heroic ‘modern’ interpretations of words in the constitution like ‘general welfare’ or ‘regulate commerce,’ the constitution is weakened, and minorities are forced to give up their liberties to whatever transient majority takes power. The short term gain from being able to bypass the amendment process ( which requires obtaining the consent of the governed) in order to expand the power of the federal government in order to pass some much needed legislation to help some worthy cause comes at a long term cost to our liberty and national well being. Every step we take away from the limited role of government defined by the specifically enumerated powers of the Constitution, we concentrate more power and wealth in our central government. This increased the incentives for large corporations and special interests to influence our lawmakers, and provides the means for ever more concentration of power and the entrenchment of elites. As stated in the public choice article I have linked to above

“The entire federal budget,” writes Mueller, “can be viewed as a gigantic rent up for grabs for those who can exert the most political muscle.”

As a result, problems of an overbearing government ( which results in the much maligned concentration of wealth and power) are mistakenly attributed to free markets and capitalism. What is seen is businesses lobbying for special regulatory protections (like bailouts, cap and trade or the minimum wage) but what is not seen or often overlooked is the role of an intrusive, expansive, unconstitutional government.

What did our founders have to say about the role of government and the constitution?

An interesting thing I found just today, comes from Federalist # 10. Madison states:

“In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.”

What are these diseases? Again from #10:

“A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project”

Wow! Even in the 1700’s our founders had the foresight to set up constitutional protections against an overbearing democracy and the evil it can bring. Think about the connection between paper money and the current financial crisis ( also blamed on capitalism), the abolition of debts and the bailouts, the equal division of property and our housing ( Fannie and Freddie) and our tax policies. Virtually all of the problems we are experiencing in today’s economy are related to our departure from constitutional principles.

More quotes from our founders:

“We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money.” – Davy Crockett

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." – James Madison

"With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." - letter to James Robertson from James Madison

Also by Madison in Federalist # 41:

"Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase ( like common welfare) and then to explain it and qualify it by a recital of particulars."

In Federalist # 45:

"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."

Thomas Jefferson also was an advocate of this position as he states in a letter to Albert Gallatin in 1817:

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."

“in questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution”
—Thomas Jefferson

Happy Constitution Day!