Page 18 - Fruits from a Poisonous Tree

2 Fruit from a Poisonous Tree
CITIZENSHIP IN MODERN AMERICA

In 1798, Thomas Jefferson instructed that “Congress has not unlimited
power to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically
enumerated.”
Wilson Nicholas, a delegate to the Virginia convention that ratified
the Constitution, said, “Congress has power to define and punish for
counterfeiting, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against
the laws of nations; but they can not define or prescribe the punishment for
other crimes whatsoever without violating the Constitution.”
Chief Justice Marshall said: “The police power unquestionably remains,
and ought to remain, with the States.”
Until this past century, federal courts upheld the view that the federal
government could deal only with crimes specifically mentioned in the
Constitution. In 1911 the Supreme Court said:
“Among the powers of the State not surrendered – which powers therefore
remain with the State – is the power to so regulate the relative rights and
duties of all within its jurisdiction as to guard the public morals, the public
safety, and the public health, as well as to promote the public convenience
and the common good.”
At the founding of this Republic, there were only four federal crimes:
treason, counterfeiting, piracy, and crimes against the law of nations. Now
there are three thousand federal crimes, three hundred thousand federal
administrative regulations, many of which are punishable as crimes, and about
eighty-five thousand local governments with five hundred thirteen thousand
elected officials, or one in every five hundred people. We have an estimated
forty-five million laws – state, federal and local. God, the Creator of the
universe, gave us only ten laws with which to live our lives, and although I
fail often, I try to conduct my life by those Ten Commandments. It would be
impossible, however, to obey forty-five million laws.
Those millions of laws and the government enforcers are destroying our
Republic.
In 1900, one in every fifteen dollars went for government use; in the year
2000 it is nearly one in every two. We must contend with sixty-five times
th
more laws than our grandfathers did at the turn of the 20 Century, the most
cruel and unjust of those being the tax laws.
Every federal program takes on a life of its own, so it will be extremely
difficult to transfer power from the federal government to the states. It is
difficult to change, much less kill or transfer a federal program once it has
been established, even after it has outlived its usefulness. The New Deal view