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Thread: Founding Fathers Quotes on the Dangers of Centralized Power in the Ninth & Tenth Amendments

  1. #1

    Founding Fathers Quotes on the Dangers of Centralized Power in the Ninth & Tenth Amendments


    “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
    - Amendment IX, The U.S. Constitution

    “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.”
    - Amendment X, The U.S. Constitution

    If the Crown represented anything to the Founding Fathers, it was the danger of central power. So they took pains to avoid this when drafting the new Constitution. Indeed, the Articles of Confederation period of United States history shows just how entirely distrustful Americans were of centralized power. To that end, the Constitution gives broad powers to the states while intentionally limiting federal power.

    While “States Rights” have become almost inextricably identified with slavery and segregation, the actual answer is much more complex than this: The states – and private organizations – have all powers not explicitly delegated to the United States federal government. This means that virtually everything the federal government currently does is extra-Constitutional and properly the role of the 50 state governments. This is not just to provide for a decentralized government structure, but also to provide for people to be able to move from one state to another to live under laws closer to their own choosing. The Founders would never have imagined that places as far apart geographically and culturally as Alabama and California would have the same laws.

    “No position appears to me more true than this; that the General Govt. can not effectually exist without reserving to the States the possession of their local rights. They are the instruments upon which the Union must frequently depend for the support and execution of their powers, however immediately operating upon the people, and not upon the States.”
    - Charles Pinckney, “Plan for a Government for America,” Constitutional Convention, June 25, 1787

    “A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth.”
    - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, December, 1787

    “Gentlemen indulge too many unreasonable apprehensions of danger to the state governments; they seem to suppose that the moment you put men into a national council [federal government], they become corrupt and lose all their affection for their fellow citizens.”
    - Alexander Hamilton, Speech to New York Constitutional Convention, 1787

    “The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation.”
    - Alexander Hamilton to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 17, 1788

    “All power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people.”
    - James Madison

    “While the constitution continues to be read, and its principles known, the states, must, by every, rational man, be considered as essential component parts of the union; and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former to the latter is totally inadmissible.”
    - Alexander Hamilton to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 17, 1788

    “It is most important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free Country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective Constitutional Spheres; avoiding in the exercise of the Powers of one department to encroach upon another.”
    - George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796

    “No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass.”
    - John Marshall, McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819

    “The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.”
    - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Charles Hammon, August 18, 1821

    “It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected.”
    - Thomas Jefferson

    “Human affections, like the solar heat, lose their intensity as they depart from the center. … On these principles, the attachment of the individual will be first and forever secured by state governments.”
    - Alexander Hamilton, Speech to New York Constitutional Convention, 1787

    “The powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.”
    - James Madison

    Founding Fathers Quotes on the Dangers of Centralized Power in the Ninth & Tenth Amendments originally appeared in The Resistance Library at Ammo.com.
    "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” - Thomas Jefferson

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  3. #2
    "If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface."--Thomas Jefferson
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  4. #3
    The word terrorist can mean so many things nowadays. Anyone not agreeing to ones beliefs can now be considered terrorist. Well, for some I noticed.

  5. #4
    Unfortunately, a minority of Americans agree with those things anymore.

    The minority loses.

    This is the fatal flaw of the Constitution and Representative Democracy.



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