100 Treatises

Is This Whole Country Unconstitutional?

John Tamny, writing in Forbes, makes the fantastic claim that “The U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment is arguably the most important of all the amendments…” What? Ever heard of the first amendment? He’s basically saying that, given the choice, he would rather be free from a federal income tax than free to write his article. Makes perfect sense.

Nevertheless, he goes on to make several important points about the growth of the central government and the out-of-control nature of government spending. I part ways with him, however, when he starts preaching from the constitutional soapbox, a favorite hobby of the right nowadays. To these people, anything they don’t like must be unconstitutional in some way or another. Case in point:

Simply put, nothing in the Constitution allows for the existence of the Departments of Education, Commerce and Energy (to name a few), government-sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or ineffective bureaucracies such as the SEC and the FDA.

Nothing in the Constitution explicitly allows for me to have a turkey sandwich, either. Didn’t stop me from doing it. Not content to just criticize Obama and the congressional Democrats on substance (of which there is a ton), they have to connect everything to the foundations and inherent nature of the entire country.

Now, aside from the fact that this guy looks like the kid from Mad Magazine, and aside from the fact that his whole philosophy on state intervention in the economy is clearly wrong on the facts from history, I have a question: if all this stuff is unconstitutional, why haven’t they been abolished? That’s why we have courts, isn’t it? The FDA, for example, has been around for over 100 years! In all this time, nobody realized that its very existence is unconstitutional? Either this nation is populated by complete and utter morons, or Tamny’s argument is a dud. I wonder which is more likely.