The Confusing Constitution
Mood:  bright
Topic: Constitution
"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

- Thomas Jefferson


Ask someone on the street, "What do we have a constitution for?' and you are likely to get a variety of answers. When I walked the streets of my quaint little piece of suburbia I expected my neighbors would know quite a bit about our founding documents. I was surprised to find the opposite to be true. Answers ranged from, "It freed us from England" to "It gives us our Rights."

A few people I asked at least understood that the constitution outlines how our government functions, and many people I talked to knew quite a lot about the circumstances and history surrounding the birth of our nation (presumably avid History Channel watchers) but still did not have a very clear understanding of the purpose of the Constitution of our country.

One common problem I ran into was that people often confuse the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights. These three documents which make up our national foundation serve separate and completely different purposes. The first, The Declaration of Independence isn't even part of The Constitution. Many People, however, continue to invoke various phrases from the Declaration and other works by our founding fathers as proof that this or that action is unconstitutional.

The document that we call the Constitution is made up of three parts. The first is the actual Constitution, The second is made up of the first ten amendments ratified by the constitutional convention, which is commonly known as the Bill of Rights, and the third are all the amendments passed since that time.

The Constitution is a document that enumerates the powers of our government. You can think of it as a numbered list of Things the Government Can Do. If it is on the list, the government can do it, if it is not on the list the government can't. It really is that simple.

The founding fathers knew better than anyone the dangers of an unchecked and powerful centralized government. They feared such a government so much, in fact, that in their first attempt to create a federal government under the Articles of Confederation they gave the federal government (if it could be called that) almost no power at all.

Under the Articles of Confederation the country had no President, and no Supreme court (or any Judiciary Branch to speak of). Amendments to the Articles could only be made with the unanimous consent of the member states. The new nation could raise a navy but only the states would raise armies and only the states were allowed to collect taxes.

Of course the founders of our nation soon realized that such a weak confederation of states could quickly be torn apart by internal strife or external threats. They needed a stronger alliance among the states but they still wanted to ensure that the United States remained a republic and not a centralized Nation State.

So our Founders carefully penned the Constitution to Unite the States in a stronger union yet maintain the republican form and libertarian values on which the union was founded. And just to make sure that future generations did not forget. They attached the Bill of Rights.

Now this is the confusing part. Because while the Constitution was meant to be a list of things the government CAN do. The Bill of Rights seems to be a list of things the government CAN'T do. Why would the founders write a constitution enumerating the powers of government, withholding from government all powers not given it by the constitution, and then turn around and make a list of things that the government can't do anyway. The founders discussed this very issue and the confusion it bring later. One important reason for adding the bill of rights was to make sure these rights were protected in the individual States.

Still there was a concern that the Bill's addition to the Constitution would confuse the enumerated powers to which the Fed is restricted. In part to allay any fears of that confusion, the 10th amendment was added to the Bill of Rights in order to cement the intention that the Constitution be an enumerated list of government powers.

What does that mean? Well, for one it means that even if there were no Bill of Rights, no First or Second Amendments, you would still have "freedom of speech" and the "right to bear arms" simply because the government does not have the constitutional power to take those rights away. So it is helpful to remember that the Bill of Rights is really directed at the States not the Feds.