The Constitution was a document intended, in large part, to limit the federal government from expanding its powers and, in doing so, avoiding the same kind of tyranny that had led to the American War for Independence. Based on observations of government's natural tendency to expand its own power, the Founders imposed limits on the federal government which were to ensure that the States and people within the States retained their own self-government and liberty.

The Constitution essentially established an alliance of states and a strictly limited central government to secure the common interests of those states that chose to partake in it. This is important - the States would not have ratified it if they were to lose their sovereignty in doing so. To achieve ratification, arguments had to be made to convince the signers of the restrictions on the federal government. Promises had to be made to ensure the people and the States that the federal government would not encroach on liberty and self-government - the Bill of Rights was part of this.

Early Americans feared a large, powerful central government, and were very wary of the new federal government they had created. After just fighting a war for their independence, needless to say they wished to keep it, and to do this, they made certain that the Constitution was taken seriously. The federal government was to have no powers not expressly delegated to it in the Constitution - the federal government could not make laws regarding religious issues, limit freedom of speech, use federal money to create roads, baste turkey, et cetera. Under the 10^th Amendment, any powers not delegated to the federal government nor prohibited to the States were reserved to the States or to the people.

If the federal government were to overstep its bounds, there are several things that the States might legally do. A state can simply go along with the federal government (which doesn't tend to really solve anything). A state can nullify an unconstitutional law by declaring it “null and void†- this still happens today. And under dire circumstances, according to Thomas Jefferson and others, a state may give up its membership to the Union through secession, in order to preserve its independence.

When the federal government oversteps its constitutional bounds, it grabs at power. When, say, the president usurps the Congress' exclusive power to declare war, for example, we soon find out exactly why this was a power denied to the executive under the Constitution. In similar fashion we can see why the Constitution, though not perfect, is a far better authority to trust in limiting government power than the government itself. Ignorance of the Constitution and a lack of restraint on the federal government leads to the stripping of sovereignty and liberty from the people and the States.

But isn't the Constitution old and outdated? Don't we need a living, breathing Constitution that changes with the times?

Yes, the US Constitution is quite old, more than 200 years old. Wait, what's that? You want the Constitution to breathe? You want its text to change with the times? It's already bad enough when the meaning of the text is said to be different every month. You see, the British had exactly this - a breathing, ever-changing, unwritten Constitution - the government decided what it meant. This was a primary cause of the Revolution - the government was breaking with traditional rights in its constant and increasing usurpation of power. Thomas Jefferson once said that it is our peculiar security that we possess a written Constitution - and that we should not allow it to become a blank page by construction, because this reeked of British tyranny.

Dr. Thomas Woods tends to bring up the point that if this same concept were put to use in other parts of daily life, it would never be accepted. Playing a sport? Oh, you think that is a three point shot that should make certain you are in the lead? Too bad, the rules have 'breathed' today. Now that's a one point shot. We're sorry.

A breathing, changing Constitution whose meaning is decided by people in government is a perversion of the intent of the Constitution - it's like letting the other team decide the interpretation of the rules that are meant to keep them from cheating. It is reminiscent of the system early Americans died to separate themselves from.

But doesn't the government act in our best interests?

A primary observation that our system of government was designed with in mind was that people generally desire to serve their own interests and, secondarily, the people around them to degrees depending upon how much they can afford to do so. It was with this in mind that limits were placed on the federal government - the federal government is run by people. These people will naturally serve their own interests first when left unchallenged. The government was not meant to interfere in the economy to any large extent, because when left to its own devices, the free market (which depends upon this observation of human tendencies) would lead to the most prosperity, the best living conditions over time, and the fastest economic growth.

The government, though, even in trying to serve others, rarely makes good choices. Take, for example, the War on Drugs. Here we have an example of the government trying to make personal health choices for people - it is a disastrous program with good intentions. Its basic premise is that, say, marijuana is bad for one's health (and somehow leads to the use of other drugs), and thus, it should be illegal. Were the federal government to make it a crime to possess Twinkies® on the basis that they were bad for one's health (somehow lead to the use of more dangerous substances such as cake - gateway carbs, I imagine), people everywhere would not stand for it.

Prohibition is a government action that has negative effects for public safety. Prohibiting drugs leads to crime. Why? First off, the free market always will exist to some extent even when it is illegal. So when an item gets stolen because the thief cannot or does not wish to pay for it, the seller will naturally wish to have justice carried out - but he cannot call the police. So what does he do? He decides to carry out justice or revenge on his own. One can see where this leads. Prohibition is not a wise policy. So even when the government tries to act in your best interests, it rarely ever manages to do so effectively.

What is this about states being sovereign? I thought the USA was a single nation, not a bunch of little ones!

The United States of America were established as, in essence, a league of states. They were still 'free and independent states', as claimed in the Declaration of Independence. The States, as mentioned, would never have ratified the Constitution if they were required to sign away a large portion of their self-governing capabilities. They fought for self-government, and they were going to preserve their self-government.

This philosophy was seriously fraying at the edges around the time of the War Between the States. President Abraham Lincoln did not recognize the constitutional right of states to withdraw from the Union - under any circumstance (and Lincoln was certainly not alone). A war was waged by the United States over this principle, and since this war, the United States has drifted dangerously far from the Compact view of the Constitution and dangerously far from the original principle of a limited federal government to protect the self-government of the States and the liberty of the People. The States were independent - the Union was only to secure the common interests of the States. Nowadays they have increasingly signed away their sovereignty to the point where it is alien to suggest that they ever possessed it.

But the federal government needs to provide things like welfare and mandatory education because otherwise, the nation would be poor and illiterate, right?

But where is this in the Constitution? You can't assume that this whole issue was completely forgotten by the drafters of the Constitution. If welfare or education reforms were measures supported by the people, it was up to the state governments, not to the federal government, to carry them out. The point I make here is that the Constitution allowed experimentation with these ideas by the States, without having to constantly worry about federal interference. If the federal government were to take care of this, then you couldn't escape bad laws and policies by moving from state to state.

Does the 1^st Amendment protect freedom of religion for everyone? What about speech?

The 1^st Amendment starts out with the phrase “Congress shall make no law...â€. This, in my opinion, means that Congress shall make no law regarding religion, freedom of speech, et cetera. However, this power was not denied to the States, and under the 9^th and 10^th Amendments, this means that the States can, in fact, establish religious institutions, make laws regarding speech, and so on. But this is terrible, right? Well, it might be, but it was also assumed that state constitutions would have provisions that protected people's rights and kept state governments from interfering with these issues as well. You see, the Constitution protects against the federal government exercising local governing power because the federal government could not do such a thing effectively.

Doesn't the 2nd Amendment only refer to state militias?

It is true that the 2nd Amendment gives states the rights to possess their own militias, if I read it correctly. However, it also refers to the right of the people to bear arms - and that this right cannot be infringed upon. This is a restriction on the federal government and the state governments. It exists for a number of reasons. For one, an armed man is less likely to be attacked than an unarmed man - it provides a defense and deterrence against assault. Another reason is this - I believe that a certain World War II Japanese military leader felt that an attack on the American mainland would be foolish because there would be a weapon aiming from “behind every blade of grassâ€. But the most important reason is this: the right to keep and bear arms is an important check on government power. The right to bear arms is the right to defend all other rights. Thomas Jefferson once said that “the beauty of the 2nd Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take itâ€.

What do the 9^th and 10^th Amendments even mean - how are they related?

The 9^th Amendment basically says that just because a right is not specifically granted in the Constitution does not mean said right does not exist. The reason this does not give legitimacy to, say, the President declaring war, is because of the 10^th Amendment, which reserves rights not delegated to the federal government, and not prohibited to the state governments, to the States/people. This is relevant now because the federal government has been taking up powers not delegated to it in the Constitution.

Doesn't the Congress have the power to regulate interstate commerce?

According to Andrew Napolitano, in its original context, “to regulate†meant “to keep regularâ€. In short, the Commerce Clause was meant to establish a free-trade zone between the states, to keep, say, Virginia from imposing sanctions on Rhode Island - this clause could stop such an act which could potentially lead to interstate conflict. Unfortunately, the federal government continually abuses and distorts the Commerce Clause to regulate all sorts of things while making the argument that 'because so and so can somehow remotely affect interstate commerce, we can regulate it and pass laws on itâ€. So in some way, they could reason that the amount of food you buy or eat, the size of your swimming pool, the amount of money you spend, et cetera, can be regulated under this Commerce Clause. This also can be used to argue against the notion of having a 'breathing' Constitution that can be constantly reinterpreted - reinterpretation by the government can and will lead to expansion in government power.

Why can't the President declare war?

Though unconstitutional, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 technically grants the President to initiate war in the case of an attack or impending immediate attack on US soil. It is meant to allow defense to occur without having to wait for Congress. However, the necessity of such a Resolution is uncertain. In 1941, Congress took less than one hour to declare war on Japan after Roosevelt's “Infamy†speech. I'm not sure that an urgent attack would require 60 days of congressional deliberation if a declaration of war were truly justified. Every US war since World War II, however, has been declared unconstitutionally or not at all.

When the President can unilaterally declare war, he has no oversight. Nobody can stop him from doing it and nobody has representation. The President “stands where kings once stood†- he not only is commander-in-chief, but he is Congress. It is a blatant usurpation of legislative power, and is not only unconstitutional, but dangerous. The President can diminish national security by fostering foreign resentment - granted the President isn't the only person involved in this. But more importantly, when the President grabs power from other parts of government, and slowly steals people's right to representation in government, and people don't object to it, there is no longer any limit to his power - as long as he grabs it slowly. This ominous situation is one of the things the Constitution was specifically designed to prevent.

Is paper money really illegal?

In Article I, Section 10, it is prohibited of state governments to “make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debtsâ€. One might argue, then, that the Congress has the power to coin money, and that this brings legitimacy to the paper dollar. Here is the problem. The state governments are prohibited to allow anything but gold or silver coins legal tender. If Congress can coin money, that's fine, but one might imagine that Congress would coin money that would be legal to use. So it follows that, unless some horrible error was made in writing the Constitution, that only gold and silver coin is legal tender.

The Congress has the authority to keep the value of coined money - the only legal money - regular. The reason gold and silver coin is preferable to paper bills is because of how easily a system of paper money is abused. Paper money can be printed - you can create more dollar bills and give the illusion of more wealth - but unless you also have more, say, gold, the paper money will become worth less and less the more and more you print. It is harder to manufacture a mineral. I personally would rather have all competing currencies of all kinds legalized - it would allow the market to decide the best currency, maximizing prosperity.

Paper money is illegal according to the Constitution - only gold and silver coin is legal. Despite this, the US Federal Reserve prints more and more dollar bills without tying its value to anything. A main reason why gas today costs so much more than the 23 cents of years ago is because the dollar has lost its value. Early in 2012, the dollar bill was worth only 2% of what it was in 1913, according to Congressman Ron Paul.

It is bad for the federal government to expand beyond the powers delegated to it by the Constitution because such an act leads to the gradual decline of liberty and of state and individual sovereignty, and is a path which leads to federal tyranny and anathema to the founding principle of self-government. It helps to be careful and watchful of your government. Be wary.