I was listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio today. Honest, I only had him on because the same AM radio station carries Colorado Rockies games in the evening. I could only stand it for a minute before I turned him off. (And oh, if only we all could turn him off!)
Limbaugh's rant today had to do with the Constitution. According to Rush, the whole thrust of the Constitution is to create limits on the power of the national government, thus to prevent any tyranny from arising on our shores.
That's bad history.
The constitutional convention met not to limit the federal government, but to strengthen it. The Preamble says, "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union...." (Italics mine.) The delegates were dissatisfied with the first United States government, the Articles of Confederation for the very reason that it was inadequate. The Articles had no independent executive, no federal judiciary, and a Congress in which each state had one vote. It was a league of states, little more.
The same Preamble says the government is charged with providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Clearly, the framers felt the government of the Articles incapable of doing these admirable things.
The Constitution specifies what powers the new government would have, substantially greater powers than the Articles had provided to the federal government. Read those powers and you'll see what I mean.
After the Constitution was agreed upon by the convention, it was submitted to the states for ratification. Proponents of the new framework were known as Federalists and the opposition as Anti-Federalists. George Washington, who presided over the convention, was a Federalist. So were James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and a host of others. Patrick Henry led the Anti-Federalists in Virginia, but by and large the opponents of the Constitution could not match the numbers or abilities of the Federalists. Thomas Jefferson was out of the country, and though he said he had substantial reservations about the Constitution, he soon became Secretary of State, then Vice-President, and finally President.
It is true that the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, are meant to limit the powers of the national government. But we should not mistake the amendments for the body of the Constitution, the great organic document of our country. Neither should Rush.
This is true, though it should be pointed out that the Bill of Rights exists specifically because there were States that would not ratify the Constitution without it. So it's a little of both, but I'd agree it's disingenuous to say it's all about limiting federal power. It's definitely about adding a stronger Federalist structure to the nation. Though, one could argue that the thrust of it was to do so in a balanced way, which was structured that way to prevent tyranny; both the tyranny of a central government, and the tyranny of certain States having too strong a voice.
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