Agencies of Chains

Like no other time in U.S. history, states are standing their ground against an overreaching federal government. Their efforts have been led, in part, by organizations like the Tenth Amendment Center—the preeminent and most steadfast defender of the states’, and ultimately the people’s rights.

The main driver behind this push-back against the federal government in the last few years is the rightful reaction of citizens to mandates in the form of Obamacare and incursions against their privacy rights in the the case of the NDAA.  These are just two examples, but it is the sheer size and scope of the federal government that makes these unconstitutional forays possible. Over the decades politicians have created, enabled, and overfed the vast array of bureaucracies, departments, and agencies, only a few of which are actually allowable (legal) under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. I’ll refer to them all as agencies as they act as agents of the federal behemoth.

Federal agencies were/are created by politicians and influential constituents to address specific “needs.” But poor people didn’t take to the streets to demand an agency like HUD (housing) or Agriculture (food stamps). American Indians didn’t clamor for a Bureau of Indian Affairs. (A much simpler—and just—option would have been to leave them alone.) Yogi and Boo Boo did not take a break from their picnic raids to petition for a National Park Service. And I don’t remember ever hearing about schoolchildren skipping recess and demanding the creation of the Department of Education. These are but a few examples, the point being that only a few, “caring” people saw a “need” that needed to be addressed—at the federal level, of course.

Okay, so we have a long history of big-hearted people who have done their best to somehow make life better or more “fair” for certain groups of people. Just how did they do this? Did they first check with the U.S. Constitution to see if it allowed for their creations? I mean, it is the law of the land, created by the people acting through their states, to serve them and their states. Did the do-gooders check with the states to see if they were possibly doing the same thing as what the do-gooders were proposing at the national level? It wouldn’t make sense to have redundancies, now would it?

There are, of course, two short answers to the above: no and no. If the lawmakers had actually checked with the Constitution first, and had read it with honest intent, they would have found their answer. Every state has its own agencies that deal with housing, hunger, natural resources, etc. Not every state may deal with these areas equally, but that is no business of the federal government.

To fully cover the long history of agency creation in the United States would require volumes of books. But the mass violations of the Constitution that I am pointing out here are so easy to spot that an innocent high school freshman could do it. So it has been the purposeful, shameful, illegal shunning of the law—the Constitution that has gotten us to this mess, this point of our nation’s history. Thousands of people should be doing jail time for violating their oath and breaking the law. Think that’s too harsh? Get arrested for public intoxication (the small law) and go to jail. Violate the Constitution (the big law) and get accolades in some quarters and you certainly won’t get a fine; you’ll probably even get promoted.

So what’s the answer? How do we push back against an out-of control federal government? Go back to the beginning, to the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, and to their work—the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. When you go back you will find your way to the states, the creators of the federal government.  When you get to that point, you will then be home. You will be empowered, confident, and armed against those who seek to destroy our Republic—the greatest government established in the history of the world.