The ink was barely dry on the constitution when efforts began to change it.  Not all were in agreement with its original content and thought it could be improved.  Alexander Hamilton wanted more power in the central government.  Most others wanted the lions share of the power to rest with the states and the people.

Judicial tests of the constitution started almost immediately.  In 1801 a celebrated case was brought to the U. S. Supreme Court in Maybury vs. Madison and was the first time the Supreme Court declared something unconstitutional.  The court established the concept of judicial review in the U.S. (the idea that courts may oversee and nullify the actions of another branch of government).

But a paradigm shift took place in the 1880′s when the first dean of the Harvard Law school (Langdel) along with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, convinced the court that adjudication of constitutional issues should be ruled on legal precedent, rather than on strict interpretation of the constitution itself and the actual intent of the framers.  This new method became known as Legal Positivism

“Legal positivism is a conceptual theory emphasizing the conventional nature of law. Its foundation consists in the pedigree thesis and separability thesis, which jointly assert that law is manufactured according to certain social conventions. Also associated with positivism is the view, called the discretion thesis, that judges make new law in deciding cases not falling clearly under a legal rule. As an historical matter, positivism arose in opposition to classical natural law theory, according to which there are necessary moral constraints on the content of law. The word “positivism” was probably first used to draw attention to the idea that law is “positive” or “posited,” as opposed to being “natural” in the sense of being derived from natural law or morality.” (taken from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy website http://www.iep.utm.edu/legalpos/)

In effect, Legal Positivism removed ethics and morality from the law and yet America was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and morality, believing that the unalienable, inviolate rights of man emanated from a creator and that law was “natural”, not man-caused.  It was one of the first moves by America towards secularism.

The constitution has been beaten, battered and bloodied for almost the entire 200 plus years of its existence.  The Supremacy Clause has been so watered down by precedent law that it has been virtually eradicated.  We have supreme court justices advocating looking at the law of other countries when adjudicating constitutional issues.

American sovereignty has been severely diluted by treaties that are in contradiction to the constitution and by presidential executive orders that bypass the legislative process.

The three branches of the federal government, meant to prevent too much power increasing in any one branch, have been merged as a single power and each branch now supports the other branches, against the people and against the constitution.

During the presidential terms of Wilson, Hoover and FDR, the constitution was turned on its head.  President Wilson brought us the Federal Reserve and the IRS under the 16th Amendment, literally handing over our entire monetary system to un-elected money changers and power brokers and essentially repealing the collection-of-tax clauses of the constitution.

President Hoover started messing around with the private markets in response to the 1929 Crash of the Stock Market and his “tweaking” brought us the Great Depression.

In answer to the Great Depression, FDR assumed more power than any other president before him and created emergency powers in the executive branch that have not been repealed to this day.  He managed to “tilt” the U. S. Supreme Court in his favor by shifting the bias of the court to liberalism and socialism.  He bullied the Congress into passing the most sweeping set of socialist legislation that has never seen a sunset.  FDR issued over 3,600 executive orders, more than almost all the combined executive orders of his predecessors.

But the perceived power of the constitution and the unalienable rights it guarantees, still resides in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans.  They are not about to see our Constitutional Republic washed away in a sea of Socialism, Marxism or even Fascism, as the current administration and the U. S. Congress seem determined to do.

A major shift in American politics is under way, no matter how the media and the politicians choose to ignore or dismiss it.  There is a rising crescendo of opposition to the efforts by government to turn us in the direction of an Absolute Democratic Monarchy, ruled by a mob of people and special interests with their hands out for everything they can get from government and a vote for the politician who will see that they get it.

Americans are slow to rile, but in the end it will come down to millions of them preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States, thus their freedom and liberty, by any and all means.   What we are witnessing today is nothing less than an avalanche of freedom that has been triggered by a government who has lost all allegiance to the constitutional limits on its power and a collection of traitors who have thumbed their collective noses at the consent of the governed.  Whether by peaceful revolution or by force of arms, the traitors will not prevail, because the cry of freedom is its own invincible army, just as it was in 1776.

© Copyright September 17, 2009 - All Rights Reserved

~ The Author ~
Ron Ewart is the President of The National Association of Rural Landowners and may reached for comment via email at r.ewart@comcast.net.