...foreign and most importantly, domestic! Least we forget our oath.
From the Institute for Policy Innovation
Number 09.13
April 20, 2009
On Tea Parties and the Tenth Amendment
Allow us to make some informed observations about the “Tea Party protests” that have apparently escaped the mainstream media and those currently in political power in our nation’s capital.
(“Informed because IPI Resident Fellow Dr. Merrill Matthews spoke at the <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMB1K4wU5ZQ> Dallas Tea Party event <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMB1K4wU5ZQ> , and IPI president Tom Giovanetti spoke at the Denton County event.)
The Obama administration has dismissed the tea parties with feigned confusion. “We don’t understand what all these people are worked up about? After all, we gave 95% of them a tax cut, didn’t we?”
But people aren’t that stupid, and the tea party protesters aren’t just worked up about taxes. They understand that in the last 9 months or so, the growth of the federal government has reached a critical mass such that now almost everyone, regardless of political flavor, can agree that the federal government is out-of-control in its spending and in its grab for power over an even greater share of the economy. They may not agree precisely about how big the federal government should be, but they all agree that it shouldn’t be THIS big.
These voters seem angrier and more highly motivated than they were in 1994, we hasten to add.
It’s in this context that Texas Governor Rick Perry’s recent statements about reasserting Tenth Amendment rights come into play.
You wouldn’t know it from the last fifty or so years of federal government behavior, but the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—the tag end of the Bill of Rights, enacted in 1791—reserves to the states or “the people” those “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States.”
But these days apparently claiming the states have rights gets you branded as a secessionist, or worse.
Governor Rick Perry knows. A few days ago after he affirmed support for a legislative initiative urging states to reassert their Constitutional rights under the Tenth Amendment, he was widely praised by the tea party crowd, but roundly ridiculed by the powers that be, who have misread the power of Perry’s words as much as they’ve misread the tea partiers.
Perry, it seems to us, is defending the Constitution as much as he’s defending states’ rights.
Federalism has never been more important than it is today. We may all be Americans, but what plays in New York City and San Francisco may not play well in Dallas or Houston. And states should be able to reflect those differences. In an age that seems to value tolerance over virtually everything else, federalism is the answer. “They do WHAT in Vermont? Oh, well, that’s their business.”
We’d like to see other states follow Texas’ lead, telling the federal government: If it isn’t enumerated in the Constitution, you have no authority to make the states do it.
Sounds radical, you say? You bet it is. Even revolutionary. Just ask the Founding Fathers.
From the Institute for Policy Innovation
Number 09.13
April 20, 2009
On Tea Parties and the Tenth Amendment
Allow us to make some informed observations about the “Tea Party protests” that have apparently escaped the mainstream media and those currently in political power in our nation’s capital.
(“Informed because IPI Resident Fellow Dr. Merrill Matthews spoke at the <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMB1K4wU5ZQ> Dallas Tea Party event <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMB1K4wU5ZQ> , and IPI president Tom Giovanetti spoke at the Denton County event.)
The Obama administration has dismissed the tea parties with feigned confusion. “We don’t understand what all these people are worked up about? After all, we gave 95% of them a tax cut, didn’t we?”
But people aren’t that stupid, and the tea party protesters aren’t just worked up about taxes. They understand that in the last 9 months or so, the growth of the federal government has reached a critical mass such that now almost everyone, regardless of political flavor, can agree that the federal government is out-of-control in its spending and in its grab for power over an even greater share of the economy. They may not agree precisely about how big the federal government should be, but they all agree that it shouldn’t be THIS big.
These voters seem angrier and more highly motivated than they were in 1994, we hasten to add.
It’s in this context that Texas Governor Rick Perry’s recent statements about reasserting Tenth Amendment rights come into play.
You wouldn’t know it from the last fifty or so years of federal government behavior, but the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—the tag end of the Bill of Rights, enacted in 1791—reserves to the states or “the people” those “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States.”
But these days apparently claiming the states have rights gets you branded as a secessionist, or worse.
Governor Rick Perry knows. A few days ago after he affirmed support for a legislative initiative urging states to reassert their Constitutional rights under the Tenth Amendment, he was widely praised by the tea party crowd, but roundly ridiculed by the powers that be, who have misread the power of Perry’s words as much as they’ve misread the tea partiers.
Perry, it seems to us, is defending the Constitution as much as he’s defending states’ rights.
Federalism has never been more important than it is today. We may all be Americans, but what plays in New York City and San Francisco may not play well in Dallas or Houston. And states should be able to reflect those differences. In an age that seems to value tolerance over virtually everything else, federalism is the answer. “They do WHAT in Vermont? Oh, well, that’s their business.”
We’d like to see other states follow Texas’ lead, telling the federal government: If it isn’t enumerated in the Constitution, you have no authority to make the states do it.
Sounds radical, you say? You bet it is. Even revolutionary. Just ask the Founding Fathers.
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