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By Root 264 0

retained “residuary and inviolable sovereignty” over all else.2 In Federalist 45, he asserted that the proposed federal powers were “few and limited” and the power in the states remained “numerous and indefinite.”3 Nonetheless, Virginia’s George Mason, among many others, insisted that more was needed to contain federal authority and safeguard the states’ plenary power. In order to secure the Constitution’s ratification, the Federalists eventually agreed to introduce a set of amendments in the 1st Congress, which had been widely accepted in advance, further delineating and underscoring the limits of the federal government respecting its potential abuse against the individual and usurpation of the states. They became known as the Bill of Rights.

Much has changed in America, and for the worse. I am not speaking of the natural change, evolution, and progress that flows from spontaneous interactions among free people, which is mostly desirable, essential, and regular. In fact, it is the disposition of the civil society. It is the reason for advancements and developments in new products, services, technologies, science, medicine, etc., and the source of the nation’s economic vibrancy and prosperity. Contrarily, the underlying factors and values that make possible the civil society, which center on the liberty and rights of the individual, have been and are being devitalized and stifled by utopian masterminds who substitute their preferences, objectives, and decisions—including rewarding their political allies and supporters—for a free people.

The means by which these utopians amass their power is through the federal government. The federal government has become unmoored from its origins. As a result, America today is not strictly a constitutional republic, because the Constitution has been and continues to be easily altered by a judicial oligarchy that mostly enforces, if not expands, federal power. It is not strictly a representative republic, because so many edicts are produced by a maze of administrative departments that are unknown to the public and detached from its sentiment. It is not strictly a federal republic, because the states that gave the central government life now live at its behest. America is becoming, and in significant ways has become, a post-constitutional, democratic utopia of sorts. It exists behind a Potemkin-like image of constitutional republicanism. Its essential elements and unique features are being ingurgitated by an insatiable federal government that seeks to usurp and displace the civil society.

Montesquieu warned of government’s threat to civil society unless it follows a moderate course. “May we be left as we are, said a gentleman of [a republican government]. Nature repairs everything” (3, 19, 6). Tocqueville believed that America had, effect, heeded Montesquieu’s counsel. “Nothing is more striking to a European traveler in the United States than the absence of what we term the government, or the administration.… The administrative power in the United States presents nothing either centralized or hierarchical in its constitution; this accounts for its passing unperceived.…” (I, 70–71) However, that was then. America has been transitioning from a society based on God-given inalienable rights protective of individual and community sovereignty to a centralized, administrative statism that has become a power unto itself. It appears nearly everywhere as a dominant fixture and intrusive force in daily life. If its interventions are with limits, the limits are increasingly difficult to define. The circle of liberty, which was once expansive, and within which the individual was largely unmolested in his manner and pursuits, is shrinking rapidly as less and less area is left for him to live without torment.

The architects of America’s unmaking are too numerous to list, let alone examine with particularity. However, the most prominent include Woodrow Wilson, who merits at least brief attention.

In 1908, as president of Princeton University and prior to ascending to the Oval Office in 1913, Wilson