Socialism or Democracy, an imperial or free government?
Amendment 1 – Freedom of Religion, Speech and the Press
Amendment 2 – Right to Bear Arms
Amendment 3 – Housing of Soldiers
Amendment 4 – Protection from unreasonable Search & Seizures
Amendment 5 – Protection of rights to Life, Liberty & Property
Amendment 6 – Rights of accused persons in Criminal Cases
Amendment 7 – Rights in Civil Cases
Amendment 8 – Excessive Bail, Fines and Punishments Forbidden
Amendment 9 – Other Rights kept by the People
Amendment 10 – Undelegated powers Kept by the States and the people.
The first 10 amendments to our Constitution are all designed to limit the power of the central government. The Bill of Rights is a unique document, even more so in 1791 when ratified.
In a time when kings ruled with an iron fist and emperors and czars ruled with absolute authority, the Bill of Rights was scoffed at. The “commoners” were just too stupid to rule themselves. The masses needed an imperial political class to control them and force compliance with laws they passed, all designed to aid the government, not the “commoners.”
One of the lessons I learned in serving in Asia was that the people in South Korea, especially the older people who remember the decades of the Japanese occupation and the days of the dynasties, was that there was a feeling of distrust of the government the feeling that the government existed to control the people rather than serve the people. Government was designed to protect the government and the ruling few; the absolute power was not vested in the hands of the people, but the few in power. The younger post-World WarII Koreans, educated and grasping democracy with both hands, held the new representative democracy in high esteem.
All we need to do is compare the South Koreans to the North Koreans; a better comparison of two forms of government will never exist. The people in the South are two inches taller and on average live three years longer than those on the North. This happened in just two generations because of diet and medical care; the genetically identical folks in the South are so much better off in a free market democracy than in the socialist dictatorship in the North.
Why social scientists do not study and publish volumes on the comparison is puzzling; however, it may be the academic move toward socialism in our nation finds it a pesky truth. A free market democracy works, a socialist dictatorship fails. The purer the socialist state, the more total the failure over time, Venezuela and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Our form of government was revolutionary when founded; however, we are seeing the power of government grow to a concerning level. As the “God Father” Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago, then in the Clinton administration famously said, never let a good tragedy go to waste. Laws passed in the shadow of tragedy are the ones that limit our freedoms the most, the Patriot Act being a good example.
Every time we legislate with our hearts and not our heads, we lose freedoms and chip away at the Bill of Rights. Those folks on both sides of the political divide who advocate for a stronger, more controlling government with power centered nearly exclusively in the central government tend to forget the foundation of our system of government is the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.
The folks who advocate for states’ rights and the 10th amendment in the sanctuary state/cities are unwittingly removing power from the central government; perhaps they do not realize how much they are arresting the move to socialism. Slowing the movement toward a socialist state is not their intent, but I applaud the move.
Perhaps the socialist advocates will remember their objections to an all-powerful central government in the marijuana and sanctuary cities issue, and join the movement to embrace the Bill of Rights and stop their race to a socialist state? OK, probably not.