A Few Words from George Washington on the Constitution and a Challenge

“The power under the Constitution will always be in the people. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes, and for a certain limited period, to representatives of their own choosing; and whenever it is executed contrary to their interest, or not agreeable to their wishes, their servants can, and undoubtedly will, be recalled.” George Washington (1787) The Writings of George Washington by John C. Fitzpatrick, GPO, 1931-44. Vol. 32:2

Notice what the hero of the American Revolution and President of the Constitutional Convention had to say about that document in the quote above. First, he reminds us that the power in our government was meant to always reside in the people and that it is only entrusted “for certain defined purposes, and for a certain limited period” to representatives of our own choosing.  We must study the Constitution for ourselves. It was meant for the people to read. We must know what the limits of the U.S. government are supposed to be so that we can demand that government not exceed those limits. 

Those “certain defined purposes” are spelled out in the Constitution itself. This is why as patriots we must diligently study its text. It was meant for us to understand and when he says “defined purposes” that means that if our government officials go beyond what is specifically defined in the Constitution as their powers, they are acting unconstitutionally. For over a hundred years now, progressives in congress and the white house have been doing just that, though usually trying to cloak their efforts in legalisms. Today, they often don’t even bother with those. We must hold them to account for their violations of the constitutional limits which our founders placed on the central government. Too long, we have allowed them to subvert the system and accrue power to the central government which by rights is and should be in the hands of the states and the people.

According to Washington, we have no excuse. We must stop voting back into office people who are working against what is in the best interest of the liberty of the American people. It is up to us to call government to account and some of us have started doing that. More of us need to. Remember the real power is in our hands not theirs. Don’t let them condescend to you, talk down to you, or try to intimidate you. Look them square in the eye and tell them that you intend to vote them out if they do not listen and that you will do your best to convince your neighbors and friends to join you in doing so.

Also note that George Washington felt himself as President to be constrained by the text of the Constitution. In 1790, he wrote that “The Constitution of the United States, and the laws made under it, must mark the line of my official conduct.” (Ibid. 31:9) He tried to live up to that. For example, he never appointed a shadow-cabinet of Czars who, thereby, avoided the need for the advice and consent of the Senate to hold office.

Washington also feared that people might try to twist the meaning of the Constitution to gain power. In 1796, he wrote “Towards the preservation of our government…it is requisite…that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus undermine what cannot be directly overthrown.” (Ibid. 35:225) For many years this is what many in our government, especially those on the left, have been doing. Washington was warning us, future generations, that we must “resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles.” We must roll back what the left has been trying to do in this country for over 100 years. Progressives want a managed society, not a free one. They do not trust ordinary Americans to run their own affairs. They crave the power to tell us how to live and what we can and cannot do. It is up to us to stop them. We must return to the basic principles of the Constitution and remove their disastrous innovations that have been slowly choking the life out of our freedom. We must root their weeds from the garden of American law. They have undermined the system for years and appear to be about to try and overthrow it openly. Now is the time to heed the first President to serve this nation under our Constitution. Now is the day of battle.

One of the most important sections of the Constitution is in Article I. Article I deals with the specific powers of Congress as related to the nation as a whole. It provides of list of those things Congress is allowed to do. 

First on that list is the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” These were to be the sources for funding the government. Of course you know what taxes are and you probably either know or can easily find out that duties are pretty much the same things as tariffs (taxes on imports) but what are imposts and excises? Imposts are taxes that deal specifically with goods and not persons and include such things as commodities, financial transactions, and estates. As used in the Constitution, it was understood to deal with form of taxation on imports. Excises were taxes on the manufacture, sale, or consumption of goods within the country.

It is important to remember that Congress is the government branch that has the power to tax. Presidents and judges were not given this power. According to the Constitution all national taxes have to be approved by the representatives of the people and the states. You should remember that whenever our media mistakenly calls a tax related action or national budget by the name of any president that they are misspeaking. Every budget ever approved in the United States is ultimately the responsibility of the Congress. Presidents can propose budgets and try to put political pressure on members of Congress but the budget is always ultimately the responsibility of Congress. The only thing a President can do is either try to veto the budget or spending bill and/or simply try to not spend all the money allocated for that budget or bill.

The next clause after the one about having the power to lay and collect Taxes stipulates for what the taxes are to be used. It says they are to be used “to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

It is clear the founders expected the country to pay its debts. Their insistence on this and the American record of paying its debts in the past is what gave this nation the best credit rating of any nation on earth. Now, our government is amassing debts that it may not be possible to pay. Congress, at the request of the President, is failing in this Constitutional duty.

The second reason for collecting the taxes is to “provide for the common Defence.” Military spending for national defense is one of the expenditures literally required by the Constitution. The founders understood the need to protect the nation from foreign enemies. All that talk about us needing to fund other things and make the military hold bake sales to get the weapons it needs would have sounded downright traitorous to the founders.

The third reason for collecting the taxes is to provide for the “general Welfare.” Some in Congress today may think the founders were talking about charity. They were not. First, they knew charity is given to specific people and they insisted the money raised was to provide for the general welfare. In other words, it had to be used to equally benefit all Americans and could not be targeted to individuals no matter how worthy of help. The founders also did not think of Welfare as having the same meaning as charity. The dictionaries of their day used the term welfare to mean health, happiness, prosperity, or well being. For them it was not a synonym for the word charity. They expected the tax money to be used to help all Americans equally to achieve prosperity and well being. The concept of redistributing people’s wealth through government is totally alien to our Constitution.

Following this opening of section 8 there is a long list of specific powers. It includes the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States. This is a power specifically given to Congress not any Executive branch departments and certainly not to a Federal Reserve. Congress also was to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the states, and with the Indian tribes.

Congress was to establish a uniform rule for naturalization (how foreign immigrants can become citizens and a uniform set of laws regarding bankruptcies. Congress was also given the responsibility of coining our money, regulating its value, and establishing a national standard for weights and measures. It was also to represent the people and their will in providing for the punishment of counterfeiters.

Congress was given the responsibility for establishing post offices and post roads (mail routes) and setting up rules for patents to encourage authors and inventors by giving them exclusive rights to the fruits of their labor.

Congress was made responsible for setting up all the federal courts below the level of the Supreme Court. It was also up to Congress to “define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations.” The founders never expected this nation to turn over any of its sovereignty to other nations.

Next time I will continue through the list of Congressional powers found in Section 8 or Article I of the Constitution of the United States. Have you noticed how many of these powers and responsibilities Congress has turned over to Executive branch agencies or non-governmental entities like the Federal Reserve. No wonder Congress has time to pass so many bills it doesn’t take the time to read.

The second half of Section 8 starts with a bang. The Constitution also gives Congress (as the representatives of the people and the States) the responsibility and power for declaring war. They are also charged with granting “Letters of Marque and Reprisal.” This gave Congress the right to engage in issuing licenses, during time of war, to private parties to engage in warfare against the nation’s enemies on a for-profit basis. Letters of Marque and Reprisal were authorizations for private individuals to engage in warfare against our enemies under the legal protection of the United States. In naval warfare these military entrepreneurs were called “privateers.” In a sense, it was a legalized form of piracy and was engaged in by most of the maritime nations up into the 19^th century. It is also part of the reason the Congress was given the responsibility to “make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.” In the era, in which the Constitution was written, it was common to give sailors and soldiers a share in the profits of whatever was captured. Congress was given the job of putting together rules about what those shares would be.

It was also the job of Congress to raise and support armies. The need to “raise an army” came from the founders’ assumption that there would be no national army during times of peace. In fact, many founders saw the existence of such an army as a temptation to tyranny. Congress also had to limit its appropriations for the military budget to two years. This was another measure based on the idea that it was dangerous to trust even the representatives of the people and the states with too much power. It was also the job of Congress to provide and maintain a Navy and “to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” We call these rules, put in place and sometimes amended by Congress, the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

When soon-to-be-President Clinton promised pro-homosexual supporters that he would get rid of “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” by executive order, he was either knowingly lying to them, showing a profound misunderstanding of how our Constitutional government works, or he believed others would let him get away with this in spite of the clear text of the Constitution. Constitutionally, only Congress could change such a policy because they are the ones who set the rules for our military. The founders put this power in the hands of Congress because they are the elected representatives of the people and states and it was felt they would serve as an effective watchdog against a future commander in chief (the President) from trying to make the military an instrument of tyranny.

Congress was also charged with providing for “calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” In the Federalist, James Madison explained what the founders had meant by the “Militia.” He identified the militia as numbering three million; about the entire population of the United States at the time. In fact, when the Civil War came this is how the army that fought it on behalf of the Union was formed. Congress was actually to share the responsibility for the militia of the United States with the state governments. Congress was to “provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States.” Those of the militia called upon by the national government were to receive arms, organization, and training from the Congress but the states were given the right of appointing the officers (so they would be less tempted to suppress state sovereignty to a tyrannous central government) and the “Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.” So, during the emergency which required the raising of the militia, the militia was to receive its training in the home state according to some guidelines prepared by Congress. Sadly, our government has completely abandoned the idea of the militia of the United States and created the so-called National Guard system instead.

Congress was also given sovereign authority over the District of Columbia to legislate there in “all Cases whatsoever.” It was also charged with exercising a similar power within the District for building forts, magazines (ammunition dumps), arsenals (places to store weapons and ammunition), dockyards and “other needful Buildings.”

Finally, Congress was given the power and responsibility to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States or in any Department or Officer thereof.” It is this clause which has, perhaps, been the most abused by our Congress and previous Congresses. They have focused on the parts that say “make all Laws,” “all other Powers,” and “in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” They have failed to take seriously the language in the clause which put limits on the laws, powers, U.S. government and its departments and officers. It does not say they can make whatever law they wish but it does stipulate that they must make only those laws which “shall be necessary and proper.” Clearly, they have often overstepped these bounds. Many of their laws are in direct violation of the limited government philosophy which rings from every page of the Constitution. Also the only government powers which the Constitution authorizes them to enhance are those “vested by this Constitution.” When Congress invents new powers for our government or goes beyond what is necessary and proper it is acting in a tyrannical and un-Constitutional manner. When our Representatives and Senators do these things they are violating the sacred oath they took; the oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.