Title: The Big Government Sponge: Part 1
Original CoS Document (slug): the-big-government-sponge-part-1
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Created: 2023-09-03 13:16:29
Updated: 2023-09-12 03:00:01
Published: 2023-09-05 00:00:00
Converted: 2025-04-14T21:26:51.919769615
The Big Government Sponge:
We Americans love our freedom and liberty! Why, then, are we willing to give it away to a central government that absorbs power like a sponge?
In times of crisis, we have proven to be a people who prefer security to freedom – a sad truth of human nature, but a lesson to be kept at the front of our minds, especially when crises become convenient opportunities for the sponge to absorb power. Rom Emanual’s famous tagline, “Never let a crisis go to waste,” comes to mind.
We have faced numerous crises during our 248 years as an Independent “Nation.” We have ceded freedom and liberty to a central government numerous times. Sometimes for good – but not often.
In this four-part series, we will examine six major crises during which we willingly gave up personal liberty, freedoms, and/or state and local government rights to the central (Federal) government.
The Failure of the Articles of Confederation
Let’s get the good one out of the way so we can concentrate on the five other crises since the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Yes, the first crisis was existential and required the 13 sovereign states to yield substantial power to a central government to move from a dysfunctional Confederation to a Constitutional Republic under the current Constitution.
Indeed, from the first days of that hot summer in Philadelphia, there was a lot of debate and a lot of awareness of the loss of freedom that caused the Anti-Federalists to question and be wary of the power to be ceded to a central government. We had only six years prior successfully shed the yoke of a tyrannical empire. The new states were not anxious to replace one king with another centralized power structure. Few believed that the Confederation could be repaired without a bold plan, yet at each juncture during deliberations, the Anti-Federalists were there to question how the yielded powers were to be restrained. Famously, just days before the conclusion of the debate, Colonel George Mason rose to amend Article V to include the states’ ability to call an amendments convention rather than cede that right entirely to Congress. There was no debate in accepting the amendment. The Anti-Federalists were the conscience of the people.
In the end, most agreed with the genius and bold plan forwarded to the states for ratification, but several Anti-Federalists, including Mason, withheld support for the Constitution “as written” in favor of having more freedoms guaranteed.
The ratification conventions that followed in the several states became a sparring match between the factions that argued for speedy ratification “as written,” and those who required a “Bill of Rights” to be included. The votes were close, and the states of Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts, while ratifying the document, also insisted on immediate submission of amendments ensuring rights or they would repeal their ratification. Virginia followed up with the first Article V resolution for a Convention of States!
Madison initially argued that the freedoms and rights insisted upon by the opposition were understood in the Declaration and the Constitution that followed. Amendments were unnecessary and he preferred a “clean” document, “as written.” With pressure mounting, and indeed with the fear that an Article V convention would follow too soon upon the heels of his signature master stroke, he relented. Madison ushered a “Bill of Rights” including 12 proposed amendments through the first Congress and out to the states for ratification. The Anti-Federalists won the argument to limit the “gift” of our freedoms to the new Republic. Thank God for the Anti-Federalists!
The sponge was wrung out for the first time and yielded back a good portion of the absorbed power. Without the first ten amendments, how long would it have taken the central government to re-imagine our “rights”? These amendments were good, but as we know, they do not guarantee our rights today as they once did. We must be ever vigilant!
Since our founding, I would submit that we have had five major crises that have severely eroded our Freedom and Liberty, and we have, in the main, allowed these erosions of our own accord. In our next segment, we will explore the “mother” of all crises, The War between the States, and the rise of Marxism during the “Progressive Era.”