Friends:

A short time ago I sent out an email to my distribution list detailing the move by the state of Oklahoma in passing a declaration of state sovereignty. Since that time, several additional state legislative branches are now in the process of bringing similar measures to the forefront. Below my brief comments is another important development along this same front which I have included in its entirety for your convenience.

It is important to note two things:

(1.) Legislation such as this does not arise unless it has considerable public support in those various states (elected representatives do not generally willy-nilly sponsor legislation which is wildly unpopular with the folks who vote) and

(2.) The fact that more and more states are moving in this direction is a sign that this movement is beginning to spread and could soon become a prairie fire

In my previous email (please let me know if you did not receive that and would like to have it) I argued that the states are the last line of defense against a creeping, no, strike that, surging tidal wave of socialism originating out of the Obama administration and his allies in the Democratically controlled Congress. Since we cannot count on either of those two branches voluntarily restricting their own power, seeing that both of them are now under the control of those who disdain the Constitution and our system of federalism, failure to assert their sovereign rights under the 9th and 10th amendments, will see the states inevitably become servile vassals of their would-be masters in DC.

Do not look for help from the Supreme Court in this fight because the deciding 5th vote in many such matters rests squarely on the shoulders of Justice Kennedy, whom many of you have come to rightfully understand as being notoriously unreliable when it comes to taking an originalist view of the Constitution.

It is becoming increasingly evident that the two systems of political theory that dominate the now United States are mutually exclusive of each other and that unless a bulwark erected by the states arises with which to check the rise of statism in this nation, Washington DC will soon more closely resemble the Brussels of the European Union than the center of the LIMITED federal government which our Founding Fathers not only envisioned, but bequeathed to us in stewardship for each successive generation.

I would urge all of you who love this nation and cherish the values upon which it was founded to not be lulled into a false sense of complacency and particularly not to become apathetic or indifferent to what is taking place around you. Remember, liberty is a rare, precious and fragile thing and is only one generation away from perishing. Do not let it be said by your children, that “my parents saw this happening and did nothing to prevent it”.

Might I urge those of you who might have never before actually taken the time to read through the Constitution of the United States to please do so? First time readers will simultaneously both be amazed and astonished. Amazed at the wisdom of our forefathers in devising such a marvelous system of limited government and astonished by the disdain of those now in power towards the very bedrock principles enumerated therein.
Sincerely,
Dan Norcini

Five More States Invoke the 10th

by A.W.R. Hawkins (more by this author)

Posted 03/04/2009 ET

Last week, HUMAN EVENTS reported that eleven states, Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas, had all “all introduced bills and resolutions” declaring their sovereignty over Obama’s actions in light of the 10th Amendment.

These actions are in response to the Obama administration’s faux-”stimulus” legislation which directly assaults the rights of states to reject the money coming from the federal government. So far, several Republican governors — among them South Carolina’s Mark Sanford and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal — have said they would refuse all or part of the stimulus money because of the constitutional infringements and because of the additional unfunded liabilities they impose on the states.

This week, HUMAN EVENTS is happy to report that five more states have decided to invoke the 10th as well.

These five — Tennessee, Kentucky, Kansas, Indiana, and West Virginia — have all begun their action under the 10th Amendment in a bid to protect themselves from what they view as nothing less than an unconstitutional usurpation of power on the part of the Obama administration.

On February 23, HJR 108 was put forth in the Tennessee legislature, indicating that legislators in that state decided “it [was] time to affirm state sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and demand the federal government halt its practice of assuming powers and of imposing mandates upon the states for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution,” according to Truman Bean.

The very next day, February 24, Kentucky State Representative John Will Stacy (D), “introduced House Concurrent Resolution 168… serving notice to the federal government to cease mandates beyond its authority.”

In declaring their sovereignty these states have joined what has come to be known as “the 10th Amendment movement.” It is a grassroots, conservative movement that seeks to defend the separation of powers as originally set forth by our Founders in the Constitution.

Through this movement, conservatives are throwing down the gauntlet against tyranny and the abuse of power. They are invoking the 10th Amendment at the state level against abuses of power by the federal government, and doing so with appeals to the extra-constitutional writings of our Founding fathers.

For example, Indiana’s resolution calls attention to the words of Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist and Founder who “expressed his hope that ‘the people will always take care to preserve the constitutional equilibrium between the general and the state governments.’” Hamilton “believed that ‘this balance between the national and state governments forms a double security to the people. If one [government] encroaches on their rights, they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from over-passing their constitutional limits by [the] certain [rivalry] which will ever subsist between them.’”

Kansas’ Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 1609 delves even deeper into the mechanics of the matter by reminding the Obama administration, as well as the House and Senate, that “the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the state.” In other words, the federal government exists by and for the states, not the other way around.

The resolution headed to West Virginia’s 79th Legislature couples its action under the 10th Amendment with a reminder directed to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.): “[The] United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states.” This reminder is followed by a pronouncement that “a number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from Congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States.”

In light of these violations of the Constitution, the stated purpose of West Virginia’s resolution is, in part, to “serve as Notice and Demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.”

Our rights as citizens are under assault by an administration of leftist ideologues with an insatiable appetite for power. There is little difference between them and the appeasement-drunken, government-expanding leftists in Lyndon Baines Johnson’s administration of whom Ronald Reagan said in 1964, “Inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government…and freedom is close to slipping from our grip.”

Every state assembly and legislature that has joined “the 10th Amendment movement” understands that Reagan’s words about freedom’s fragility in 1964 are no less true for our day when not only freedom, but also the America ideal, is “close to slipping from our grip.”

We must stand shoulder to shoulder with states like Tennessee, Kentucky, Kansas, Indiana, and West Virginia in demanding that the federal government immediately “cease and desist” its usurpation of our liberties.

HUMAN EVENTS columnist A.W.R. Hawkins has been published on topics including the U.S. Navy, Civil War battles, Vietnam War ideology, the Reagan Presidency, and the Rebirth of Conservatism, 1968-1988. More of his articles can be found at www.awrhawkins.com/. -END-