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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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by Gordon Francis Corbett
Let's Discuss
Some Constitutional Amendments
Here is an idea. How could the members of the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, and the Right-Rebels of the Republican Party unite? Originally, the Tenth Amendment gave the States a lot of latitude. The Founders wanted to let the States compete economically and socially. The Fourteenth Amendment killed that, forcing on the States the restrictions of the Bill of Rights. In the wake of slavery's abolition, to Radical Republicans anxious to let newly freed black Southerners vote, this sounded good. Unfortunately, it was never passed legitimately, and it spawned the political cancer we face today. Originally, the closest that the Federal government came to an income tax was the capitation tax. Based on information from the census, a capitation tax forced each person living in a given State to pay the same amount of money. The Sixteenth Amendment let the Federal government collect income tax without regard to any census or enumeration. This permits today's graduated income tax. Originally, State legislatures elected United States Senators. This was an important part of the Founders' idea of "Freedom Through Gridlock." Legislature-elected senators were more remote from popular pressure than today's senators are, but because they represented their States, they opposed Federal encroachment more than today's senators do. The Seventeenth Amendment killed that, allowing the people to elect senators directly. This made of the Senate a kind of super-House, something the Founders never intended. Originally, the Constitution provided that when a president died, the vice-president would assume the president's duties. In practice, the vice-president was allowed to become president. This should not have been permitted, because he had not been so elected. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment created today's situation, which gave us President Ford and Vice-President Rockefeller without their having had to run for those offices. This widened the gap between the voting-booth and the Oval Office. Here are four situations that arise either from defects in the original Constitution, or which result from "innovative" interpretations of the Federal government's rightful powers. The first involves relations between the Federal and State governments. In 1798, the new Federal government passed the "Alien and Sedition" Acts. These Acts' un-Constitutionality led Thomas Jefferson to draft the Kentucky Resolution and, with James Madison, to write the Virginia Resolution. The Kentucky Resolution proposed the Doctrine of Nullification, which would have let a State find a given Federal law contrary to its citizens' rights. The Virginia Resolution proposed the Doctrine of Interposition, which would have let a State shield its citizens from a Federal law's oppression. These Resolutions would have refined the gridlock already in place. They might have prevented our Civil War. Today, they would give us a long step toward freedom. Second: Article VI of the Constitution says, "...[A]ll Treaties...shall be the supreme Law of the Land...any Thing in the Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding." This is not a crack in the Liberty Bell, but a chasm. Since World War II, the Federal government has passed many treaties, and our presidents have made many so-called "executive agreements." Some have weakened our national sovereignty and expanded Federal power at the expense of the States. Third: after our War Between the States, the Federal government passed the Thirteenth Amendment. It says, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines "to conscript" as, "To enroll into service by compulsion." Despite this, and regardless of the Thirteenth Amendment, the Federal government conscripted men for two World Wars and continued conscripting through "police actions" in Korea and in Viet-Nam. Fourth: for almost three decades, the Federal government has taxed to obtain money that it returns to the States in the form of "grants-in-aid." This not only lets the Federal government dictate how the States spend those monies, but enables Washington to make the States dance to their tune in ostensibly unrelated matters. Fifth: originally, the Constitution provided that, when the House of Representatives impeaches the vice-president, the Senate officer presiding over the Senate's trial is the president of the Senate: the vice-president. Here is my idea: a package of Constitutional Amendments around which the elements of the American Dissident Right could rally. Abolish the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby restoring the Tenth Amendment's full power. This would put abortion, drug use, firearms ownership, school prayer, and taxpayer defrayal of education where they belong: in the hands of the States. Republican Conservatives, Taxpayers, and Libertarians could present a United Front at the Federal level, while agreeing to hammer out their differences on those issues in their respective States. Abolish the Sixteenth Amendment, thereby dissolving the Internal Revenue Service and forcing the Federal government to depend on its original sources of revenue. Besides slashing Federal income, this would create a new era of psychological freedom. Citizens would no longer have to fear Federal tax audits, and would feel free to support unpopular political causes without fear of punishment from politically directed tax auditors. Abolish the Seventeenth Amendment, thereby restoring the power of State legislatures to elect U.S. Senators. This would bring back an important division of power. Abolish the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, thereby restoring the previous chain of succession. Its last previous statutory modification specified that if the president and the vice-president should die, their successors would have been the Speaker of the House and the Senate's president pro tempore. This would keep unelected men out of the top two Executive offices, unless Cabinet members were needed. Pass an Amendment embodying the essence of Jefferson's Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Pass the Bricker Amendment:
Pass an Amendment expressly forbidding conscription. Pass an Amendment prohibiting the Federal government from making "grants-in-aid." And, finally, pass an Amendment that would let someone else besides the vice-president preside over the Senate's trial of the vice-president's impeachment. This slate of Amendments would provide "The Dissident Right" a standard around which all freedom-loving opponents of small-d democracy could repair. The members of today's three groups could form a "United Front" to push these Amendments without compromising on their conflicting principles. They would offer candidates jointly. The Democrats and the Rockefeller Republicans would probably unite, letting our people choose between their collectivism and the new coalition's Jeffersonian libertarianism. At the Federal level, the Amendments would strip the Federal government of its usurped powers. At the State level, the coalition's parties' honchos could fight among one another and with the Democrats and Republicans at a level much closer to the people than is our District of Columbia. These Amendments would not end the disputes dividing "The Dissident Right," but the struggle to pass them would cripple the Left and give us all a new birth of freedom.
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