The Stay in Your Lane Rule

The Tenth Amendment

The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads as follows:

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.

This seems to say that the Federal Government should do what the Federal Government should do, and the States should do what the states should do. The worry is that too much power will coalesce in the Federal Government, leading to rule by a few elites. This would undermine the distributed power setup of the Constitution.

On the Tenth Amendment, from the left leaning Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Then as always there was concern about the possibility of slipping into a totalitarian nightmare. The writers of the Constitution were knowledgeable about history and saw it as no idle threat, so they tried to write the Constitution in such a way that there would be no concentrations of power sufficient to create one. Limiting the power of the central government was key, and the concept was called Federalism. One might imagine that a given state might slip into a dictatorship, but people could move to another, such as how presently people are moving out of California.

Also from the left leaning Wikipedia, on Federalism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism_in_the_United_States

You or I cannot easily contend with the federal bureaucracy in any sort of legal battle, since they can bring many more resources to the fight than any of us, but the states can and do face off with the federal government over various and sundry issues. It helps keep the centralized power under control.

"Considering the natural lust for power so inherent in man, I fear the thirst of power will prevail to oppress the people." ~ George Mason

The Federal Government is charged with the responsibility of protecting the borders, a responsibility that they have been not only neglecting but actively working against in the present administration. When individual states begin taking on that responsibility we are told that they must not do so since the Constitution states that it is the Federal Government's job. Can you say irony?

Have they actually exceeded their authority to an unacceptable extent? What, for example, is the Federal Government doing that it is not charged with doing?

Why is there a Federal Department of Education? The Constitution does not empower the Federal Government in that area, and somehow all of the states managed to produce school systems, complete with state universities, not to mention private schools and colleges, in abundance. (No one would quibble over the military academies, national defense being a federal prerogative.) Why would the Federal Government even want to? They would want to so as to increase their influence by molding the young into whatever ways of thinking that is fashionable among the inside the beltway class at the time. (They seem to have a desire to change the next generation of children into homosexual communists.) How would they get around the proscription? They would send matching funds to educational institutions who adopted their policies. Translation, they take our money and give part of it back if we do what they say. What if the American People disapprove? They would label all such persons as radical right wing extremists. After all, who else would not want to see power concentrated in the hands of a tight knit minority?

A major tool for undermining the Tenth Amendment has been the Commerce Clause, wherein the Federal Government has the power to regulate commerce between the states. This has been broadly interpreted to allow regulations on all sorts of things that they otherwise could not.

The Wickard vs. Filburn decision of 1942 expanded this power when the Suptreme Court found that a farmer could not be allowed to grow a small amount of wheat on his own land for his own use and not for sale, due to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 that allowed the Federal Government to control agricultural production. The argument was that if many individual farmers did such a thing it would affect the price of wheat. Well, duh. Why would such control be thought proper?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Adjustment_Act_of_1938

"To take a single step beyond the boundaries specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to definition." ~ Thomas Jefferson

The reaction of the leftists to the Tenth Amendment is that a person who takes it seriously is some sort of extremist, a “tenther,” no doubt because it stands in the way of their dreams of creating a top down utopia.

All of these things together can let the genie out of the bottle, or allow for a chance to create utopia, depending on your point of view.

The states often wrest back some control by nullifying federal law. An example would be the 2021 law passed in the State of Montana forbidding State law enforcement from enforcing federal firearms laws:

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/gun-nullification-montana/2021/04/23/id/1018821/

Hopefully actions such as this will help stem the tide towards totally centralized control. Having an armed populace is the final buffer against an overly powerful central government.

"I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons entrusted with the administration of the general government could ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that description. The regulation of the mere domestic police of a State appears to me to hold out slender allurements to ambition." ~ Alexander Hamilton

With all due respect to Alexander Hamilton, there seem to be many allurements towards such control. The allurement of power is just too tempting.

The concept of states rights has been less popular since the Civil War, with the concept being blamed for allowing the war to proceed, but I think we are seeing a resurgence in support with the administration's attempts at centralizing power.

We do not want to end up with a new type of feudalism:

Stay Brave, Stay Free