Tenth Amendment Center

“The purpose of this Resolution is to clearly affirm to Congress and the President our State’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution and to demand that the federal government halt the practice of assuming powers and imposing mandates upon the states for purposes which are not enumerated by the Constitution of the United States of America” said Representative Perry from the State House.

The very recent revival of the Tenth Amendment on both popular and political landscapes has underscored the ever-present demarcation between liberty and statism. It has also brought to light an interesting demarcation within the group of liberty-minded anti-statists.

The Tenth Amendment is not so much about “states’ rights” as it is about an individual right to be governed locally.

If Thomas Jefferson could come back and visit the United States for a day, would he recognize the government his wisdom and wordsmithing helped create?

We all are aware of the importance of the U.S. Constitution as the legal foundation of our republic, I do not have to tell you the dire implications of one level of government ignoring some, or all, of this document. Our Constitution has served us well for over two hundred and twenty years, in part, because of the great respect and adherence to it by both the federal government and the respective states. It is true that since it’s ratification in 1789, the U.S. Constitution has been interpreted by some of the most brilliant minds in our nation’s history.

On May 11, 2009, the Louisiana State Senate voted unanimously in support of Senate Concurrent Resolution 2 (SCR2), which “Memorializes Congress to affirm Louisiana’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America and to demand that the federal government halt its practices of assuming powers and imposing mandates upon the states for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution of the United States of America.”

As reported by The Ohio Republic blog last week, Senate Concurrent Resolution 13 (SCR13) has been introduced in Ohio – it’s goal is to “claim sovereignty over certain powers pursuant to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, to notify Congress to limit and end certain mandates, and to insist that federal legislation contravening the Tenth Amendment be prohibited or repealed.”

The resolution is sponsored by Senators Keith Faber (R-Celina) and Timothy Grendell (R-Chesterland), and cosponsored by Senators Gibbs, Buehrer, Cates, Hughes, Schuler, and Schuring.

On May 4th, the Tennessee State Senate voted unanimously in support of Senate Joint Resolution 311 (31 yay – 0 nay). The resolution, sponsored by Senator Randy McNally, is designed to send Congress a message that the federal government has overstepped its Constitutional bounds by mandating a massive amount of federal policies upon the states in violation of the 10th Amendment.

The recent rejuvenation of interest in State’s rights, nullification, and secession has been a welcome result of the explosion of federal power since the housing and credit bubbles burst last fall. The 10th Amendment movements and “tea parties” are, at least on one level, a pure form of “republicanism.” Unfortunately, there are those who call themselves Republicans who have little understanding about the history of the republic, namely how the Founding generation conceptualized the “united States” as Jefferson called it in the Declaration of Independence.