A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity. ---Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address.
The American principle of federalism (indeed, the whole American constitutional system) grew out of the philosophical doctrine (or, rather statement of faith) which Jefferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence:
"... all men are ... endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ..."
Men get their rights from God, not from government. Government, a man-made creature, has nothing except what it takes from God-created men. Government can give the people nothing that it has not first taken away from them. Hence, if man is to remain free, he must have a government which will play a very limited and negative role in his private affairs.
The United States is the only nation, ever, whose institutions and organic law were founded on this principle. The United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights; and the written and unwritten constitutions of every other nation in the world are all built on a political principle exactly opposite in meaning to the basic principle of Americanism. That is, the Constitution of every UN agency, and of all other nations, specify a large number of rights and privileges which citizens should have, if possible, and which government will grant them if government can, and if government thinks proper.
Contrast this with the American Constitution and Bill of rights which do not contain one statement or interference that the federal government has any responsibility , or power, to grant the people rights , privileges, or benefits of any kind. The total emphasis in these American documents is on telling the federal government what it cannot do to and for the people - on the ordering of the federal government to stay out of the private affairs of citizens and to leave their God-given rights alone.
This negative, restricted role of the federal government and this assumption that God and not government is the source of man's rights and privileges, are clearly stated in the Preamble to our Constitution. The Preamble says that this Constitution is being ordained and established, not to grant liberties to the people, but to secure the liberties which the people already had (before the government was ever formed) as blessings.
The essence of the American constitutional system, which made freedom in a federal union possible, is clearly stated in the first sentence of the first Article of our Constitution and in the last Article (the Tenth Amendment) of our Bill of Rights.
The first Article of our Constitution begins with the phrase, "All legislative Powers herein granted ..." That obviously meant the federal government had no powers which were not granted to it by the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment restates the same thing with emphasis:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Clearly and emphatically, our Constitution says that the federal government cannot legally do anything which is not authorized by a specific grant of power in the Constitution.
This is the one constitutional concept that made the American governmental system different from all others; it is the one which left our people so free and unmolested by their own government that they converted the backward, American continent into the land of freedom, the most fruitful and powerful nation in history.
And this was the constitutional proviso which created the American principle of
federalism. The Constitution made no grant, or even inferred a grant, of power to the
federal government for meddling, to any extent, or for any purpose whatever, in the
private cultural, economic, social, educational, religious, or political affairs of
individual citizens - or in the legitimate governmental activities of the individual
states which became members of the federal union. Hence, states could join the federal
union without sacrificing the freedom of their citizens.
Source: The Invisible Government, Author: Dan Smoot, Publication date:1962, pages: 107 -
110
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Last Updated on 04/20/98 by Darren Perkins 