A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties (5 page)

Our Constitution was established to ensure the permanent freedom of the American people, not to provide guidelines for management of the people by the government. The American people will decide the destiny of America, and that decision is a weighty responsibility. It is sobering when looking through the annals of history to notice how many free societies became subject to brutal tyranny in a short period of time because people were not paying attention or simply refused to believe that their freedom was in jeopardy. As former president and great patriot Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.”
⁴

Historically Americans have not been quitters. We may not always be right, but we have always fought for our beliefs with bravery and strength. It was that kind of bravery that allowed us to prevail over the Axis powers during World War II and to achieve an even less likely victory over the British in the Revolutionary War.

There will be ups and downs, but we can never despair or give up. We now are the keepers of the flame of liberty and
justice for all. As he left the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin was asked what kind of government the founders had created. “A republic, if you can keep it,”
⁵
he responded. By the grace of God, we will not only keep our republic and preserve our freedom but also enhance it for those following us and for all of humanity.

IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION

“A house is built by wisdom and becomes strong through good sense. Through knowledge its rooms are filled with all sorts of precious riches and valuables.”

Proverbs 24:3–4

U
nity improves almost every situation. I saw this firsthand in the medical field. I was fortunate to train as a neurosurgeon at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, where many of the neurosurgeons were some of the most highly regarded medical practitioners in history. The neurology department at Hopkins was well known, as was the psychiatry department. Each department had highly effective administrators and support staff who contributed to their greatness. In the seventies some of the new leaders in these departments began to recognize that if they combined their administrations, they might achieve significant cost savings and improvements in efficiency. The medical school and the university agreed, and the concept of a neuroscience center was born. The rest is history, as the neuroscience studies at Johns Hopkins achieved worldwide recognition. The strength that was gained
through unity was much greater than the individual strength of each separate department.

Recognizing the power of unity, the Constitution’s framers wrote in the preamble that they desired to “form a more perfect Union.” Our nation had begun as a loosely associated collection of states, each of which acted like a small nation unto itself. There was no central authority to coordinate the collective defense or to facilitate mutually beneficial commercial activities. This left the states vulnerable and directionless in a dangerous world of greedy, predatory nations.

One of the main purposes of the Constitution was to form an effective union that balanced unity and liberty. The founders of our country recognized that there was tremendous synergy and strength to be gained if the states were united in a meaningful way. Not only would they have a better chance of thwarting attacks by other nations, but they would also have significantly more power when negotiating treaties and trade agreements throughout the world. This union had to be strong enough to provide a united front.

The union also had to be weak enough not to deprive the individual states of the right to govern themselves. Large states and small states had different needs. Industrial states wanted different rules from agricultural states. Southerners and Yankees thought each other were inferior. A more perfect union would have to be weak enough to allow the states to make their own decisions on some matters.

But before the delegates could unite the states they would need to overcome their own disunity. Many of them disagreed strongly on the details of how the Constitution should be structured. If they could not stop bickering about these individual points, there would be no hope of forging any Constitution at all.

Fortunately, the delegates had two strategies. First, they made the Constitution as broad as possible, leaving out details that might cause disagreement. By doing this they made room for compromise and calmed themselves enough to work together. Second, they gave the federal government supreme power—but only in a limited number of areas. This would allow the states enough sovereignty to tailor their governing styles to their individual needs. By avoiding being bogged down in details and by balancing strength and liberty, the delegates created a true union—one more perfect than that effected by the Articles of Confederation.

Sometimes people get so bogged down in the details and risks of a situation that they miss the big picture that mandates action. I well remember the case of a little girl from Connecticut who fell off a swing in the schoolyard and hit her head, experiencing a postconcussive seizure as a result. No one was overly concerned until she started developing increasingly frequent seizures, up to sixty per day despite medications. After multiple medical consultations, she ended up at Johns Hopkins, where I and the neurology team concluded that she was a candidate for a major surgical procedure to stop the seizures.

After I explained to her parents the risks of surgery, they decided that they would try to live with the seizures. I understood their fear of the risks, but the decision to avoid these potential problems meant that their daughter would be stuck with guaranteed problems—and still not out of danger. I feared
that their concern over the surgical risks had kept them from seeing the big picture.

Then that Christmas she had a grand mal seizure. That was enough to persuade her parents to proceed with the surgery despite the risks. Although the surgery went well, she remained in a coma for four weeks, during which time her parents were beside themselves with grief and guilt. Fortunately, she awakened and made a tremendous recovery and even became a model student at school. This would never have happened if she had not had the surgery and if her parents had continued to focus on the risks instead of the big picture. Similarly, those who penned our Constitution focused on the big concepts rather than getting bogged down in minutiae that would have led to endless battles and inaction.

One of the outstanding features of the Constitution is its lack of details. The preamble declares the document’s purpose, and the body of the document provides the structures and mechanisms for governance, all without being overly concerned with every detail of implementation. The framers didn’t describe what “the general Welfare” looked like or set out exactly how national defense should work. They wanted to concentrate on broad concepts rather than minutiae, because they realized that the nation would change and that the little details would have to be changed frequently. Constant squabbling over such details would have been detrimental to our national interests.

Even with the lack of details, there are still many in Congress who simply like to argue over everything without getting much of anything done. They do not seem to realize that some of the problems facing our nation currently, such as a
huge national debt, stagnant wages, a demoralized military, a failing public school system, poor access to medical care, and an abysmal business environment, to name a few, are so substantial that if we don’t address them adequately in the near future, the little details over which they are squabbling will become irrelevant.

As citizens, we need to get beyond squabbling with one another about tactics. For example, instead of arguing about how fast the debt should be reduced, we should unite on the common ground that it ought to be reduced at all. As we fight over details, our children’s future is worsening. It’s time to focus on common ground and take swift action based on our agreement before our nation moves beyond saving.

Once the framers agreed to work together, they had to figure out how to create a system that united the states without trampling on the rights of state governments. Arizona’s recent experience with illegal immigration illustrates the importance of this balance of unity and liberty. In 2010 the governor of the state tried to enforce already existent immigration laws, because the state was being flooded with illegal immigrants from south of the border. The federal government, deciding for reasons of its own that it did not want the border laws enforced, initiated a legal action against the state. It is questionable whether that kind of federal interference helps to establish a more perfect union. Fortunately, our system is designed to prevent the federal government from trampling on the rights of states with impunity. The state
could file a countersuit, have its legislative branch produce new legislation, or wait for the judicial branch to strike down unwarranted federal intervention.

The founders feared that the central government, once it had united the states, would become too powerful and would impose its will upon the people—or the individual states—without regard to their wishes. This “government knows best” model was one that they were quite familiar with from their extensive studies of other governmental models as well as from their personal experience with the British monarchy. They felt that their best defense against a tyrannical government was to divide the power three ways, with each branch of government having the power to check the other two. They also listed the powers that the federal government would have, being sure to leave the balance of power in the hands of the states and the people. They wisely concluded that the states would not be eager to give additional power to the federal government and limited its power accordingly.

Unfortunately, the founders did not realize that the time would come when the federal government would approve a federal taxation system that could control the states by giving or withholding financial resources. Such an arrangement significantly upsets the balance of power between the states and the federal government. As a result, today there are numerous social issues, such as the legalization of marijuana, gay marriage, and welfare reform, that could probably be more efficiently handled at the state level but with which the federal government keeps interfering. The states, instead of standing up for their rights, comply with the interference because they want federal funds. It will require noble leaders at the federal
level and courageous leaders at the state level to restore the balance of power, but it is essential that such balance be restored for the sake of the people.

As the founders feared, the federal government has become much too large and much too powerful. It has usurped responsibilities that belong to the state governments, and as a result it taxes and spends far more than it should. The lion’s share of the gross domestic output is consumed by the federal government and its many programs. For a large number of Americans, particularly those who are well-to-do, federal income taxes are their greatest annual expense, in many cases more than double their annual mortgage expense. This is a natural consequence of ever-expanding government. Legislators who feed at the public trough have no desire to curtail that feeding and keep the taxing and spending going. To compound the problem, our government is expanding by borrowing from the futures of our children.

The obvious problem of mounting debt should inspire our government to unity, but so far it has not. Although each branch of the federal government should bear some responsibility for our overwhelming federal debt, our leaders seem only to engage in finger-pointing and passing the buck. They need to understand that they all have different roles to play but that they are on the same team.

Our government can be compared to the game of chess, where on each side there are several kinds of pieces that move in different ways but are all focused on the same ultimate goal. I was on the chess team both in high school and in
college, and I learned a lot of strategies that combined the strengths of different pieces to win the game. Failure to understand these strategies frequently led to a stalemate or a draw when in fact there was plenty of firepower to win the game. Similarly, unless both parties and all branches of our federal government recognize that we have departed from the original intent of the Constitution and work together, true union and its attendant freedom and prosperity will be a distant reality.

Under an imperfect union, we have steadily increased the diet of taxpayer money and grown the government to an unmanageable and inefficient size. The federal government constantly attempts to control every aspect of our lives. Many politicians seem to feel entitled to take our resources regardless of how hard we worked for them, believing that they have the right to redistribute them to other citizens.

Thomas Jefferson would not have agreed with such ideas; he wrote, “The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property, and in their management.”
¹
He and, I’m certain, the rest of the founders would have been horrified to see a federal government trying to regulate the foods that we serve our children or the type of care that we can receive from our doctors, to name just two examples. This is not to say that government shouldn’t play some role in public-safety issues and civil matters, but the Constitution makes it clear that in most cases those things should be handled at the state level rather than at the federal level.

There was a specific reason for empowering the states rather than the federal government to deal with civil issues. Namely, a federal judge can, as we have seen recently, overturn
the will of the people without facing any repercussions. It is much more difficult for state judges to ignore the will of the people. Since our country was designed around the will of the people, this is an exceedingly important issue that will need to be addressed in the near future if the people are to retain power. Having a ballot referendum on an important issue is a farce if a federal judge can throw out the results and impose his or her own will in place of the will of the people. Unless these kinds of actions truly upset the populace, and unless the people are willing to actively involve themselves in restoring the balance of power, our carefully balanced union will turn into tyranny, and self-determination by the people will become only a distant memory.