Ron Ewart
Freedom's Safety Valve
March 18, 2010

"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." -- The 10th Amendment to the US Constitution

You "gotta" love the framers of this great nation. Using 5,000 years of civilized history and knowing how rulers of men can morph into tyrants so easily, they crafted a blue print for freedom that so far has stood longer than most countries who colored the pages of history with liberty.

The Roman attempts at civilized rule went from the Roman Kingdom, to the Roman Republic, to finally the Roman Empire and then collapse. Its history was well documented and was a prime example of the evolution of a culture that could not withstand the ravages of human temptation, greed, avarice, arrogance, lust, insanity and the all consuming desire for absolute power.

Our Founding Fathers, flawed though they might have been, had many historical examples of civilizations that experimented with individual liberty and "certain, natural, unalienable rights", that were determined to be a gift from God, not from men. As they labored over the U. S. Constitution using the 13 colonies' Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence as their core principles, they set about to draft a document that would put specific enumerated limits and separation of powers on those holding federal power and granted all other rights to the states and the people. Never in all of the civilized history of man, had such a document ever been written with these multiple safeguards against government tyranny.

Still, even with all these safeguards, central control and power began to manifest itself by men who refused to honor their solemn oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help them God. The bonds of the Constitution began to unravel, even as far back as the middle 18 hundreds, as these dishonorable men took it upon themselves to "alter" that sacred document of freedom, and alter it they did in so many devious ways. But the major damage occurred in the 20th Century under the corrupt Presidents of Wilson, Hoover, FDR, Johnson, Carter and continuing in the 21st Century under Obama. Obama is on the way of taking the constitution apart altogether.

With what is happening in America today, as we get closer and closer to an Absolute Democrat Monarchy and one-party rule, many might think that all is lost and there is no hope of recovery from this overt and covert assault on freedom, by those who have succumbed to human "temptation, greed, avarice, arrogance, lust, insanity and the all consuming desire for absolute power." Not so, we say.

Remember the 10th Amendment? "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."

America is a country of 50 governments within one government and the 50 governments have 10th Amendment power, under the Constitution. That 10th Amendment power is much more powerful than limited Federal Power, because the 50 governments can tell the one Federal Government to go to Hell, by evoking 10th Amendment powers. Many are already doing so. Several states have evoked 10th Amendment powers to preserve the 2nd Amendment within their respective states. Some are saying that the people in their states are not subject to Obama care, if it passes. This is happening in spite of the fact that many state capitols have become just as liberal, progressive and left leaning, as has Washington DC.

Even if the states do not have the will to override federal power, there is always the last line of defense, the American people themselves, those who still believe in individual liberty and freedom and are willing to defend them. It may come to that, but this author is confident that the resistance at the state level will rise in opposition to over-reaching federal power and will, in the end, tell the out-of-control, arrogant and narcissistic inmates in Washington DC, in no uncertain terms, that the states and the American people are in control of the asylum, not the inmates in Washington DC, who are devoid of honor.

In no way are we saying that freedom-loving Americans can sit back and rest on the states doing their duty under the 10th Amendment. We must put over-whelming pressure on the state capitols to "nudge" them in the right direction and if "nudging" doesn't work, we shall then be forced to "push" them in the right direction.