Who Does the Constitution Protect?

A few weeks ago, my friend wrote that the Constitution is supposed to protect the states from Federal tyranny. It is ironic that at the beginning of their viewpoint, they said that another was mistaken about the facts. It is clear to me that my friend is no less mistaken on the facts than he purports his target to be.

I ask, where does my friend get the impression that the Constitution protects the states? The original Articles speak more about the requirements of the states than of prohibitions of actions by the Federal government. Is it the Amendments? That might be possible, if you accept that states have a right to jury trials in a criminal prosecution, to be secure in its persons, and to not house their own armed forces. In short, if you accept some pretty strange things.

No, if I remember my civics courses correctly, the portion of the Constitution that grants protections are meant to protect citizens from tyranny. Not just Federal tyranny, either; tyranny, full stop. If my friend wishes to say that I’m wrong, I will ask him, how would he react if Missouri passed a law against sharing viewpoints in a newspaper. Would he simply accept a ruling for the state and not appeal it? All the way to the Supreme Court if he must? If he says he would, his views of the Constitution are inconsistent. If he says he wouldn’t (and not for practical reasons), then I would say that he is the one who opposes the Constitution.

I will grant the 10th Amendment does reserve some powers to the states, but I will add that my friend, either willfully or negligently, left off the part of the amendment that adds “…or to the people.”

I don’t know about my friend, but I believe that questions regarding the family I want to raise (even if that means none), my capacity to be a parent, and many other questions that any soon-to-be parent must ask should all go to the people and not to the state, like it supposedly would in the Marxist countries. The Supreme Court forced us to comply with the ethics of people that don’t know us or share our views most of the time. When the people went to the Supreme Court and asked them to stop Mississippi from invading their decisions about what kind of family they want to raised, based on an already established right to privacy, the Supreme Court allowed every state to invade their peoples’ privacy, opening the door to more violations, if Thomas’s concurrence is to be believed.

In short, my friend, likely without realizing it, has written an article supporting another kind of tyranny. By saying that the Federal government protecting the rights of the citizens of the states is tyranny, which he is at least implying, he opens the door to tyranny of the states – something just as dangerous as tyranny of the Federal government.

Thomas Fisk,

Pilot Knob