Page 11 - America Unincorporated

From the book “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 more laws than our grandfathers did at the turn of the 20th 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.