BETWEEN THE LINES: Our Founding Fathers would be disappointed

Last week I began a discussion of the foundations of the U.S. Constitution using W. Cleon Skousen’s exhaustively researched book "The 5,000 Year Leap" as my guide.  Determining original intent of the signers to the Constitution is crucial to understanding why the United States became so successful.

The more we stray from our roots, the more unrecognizable we become. Our country desperately needs to examine itself. As Socrates once observed, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

To begin, the representatives at the Constitutional Convention had a great deal of history before them to evaluate, and they were knowledgeable of the great political thinkers, not only of their day, but from the past as well. They feared political power because they understood it was civilization’s Achilles’ heel.

As Lord Acton stated so eloquently, “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Consequently, they designed a variety of mechanisms to curb its abuse. They created a republic in which political powers would be divided between a federal government and the respective state governments.

The central government’s powers would be limited, but powerful enough that they would correct the flaws of the Articles of Confederation. There would be separate powers and shared powers, such as taxation. However, our Founding Fathers made it clear in the Ninth and 10th amendments that the individual state governments were to be the main vessels of political power.

The Civil War marked the crucial turning point and the ultimate demise of state’s rights, although the greater damage to state’s rights was accomplished in the 20th century. If James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and their cohorts were around today, they would be shocked to observe the shift in power away from the states.

Next, the authors of our Constitution created a separation of powers by the various branches. Never before had a country drawn a clear distinction between the three branches of government, namely the legislative, executive and judicial.

Although others had written on the subject, the framers of the Constitution had no blueprint to follow. To their credit, they had the wisdom to see potential problems so they created a marvelous system of checks and balances.

Each branch of government has a check on the power of the other branches.  Unfortunately, they have been seldom used. Too few presidents have aggressively applied their veto power on bills that have allowed Congress to overstep its boundaries.

In addition, the Supreme Court overstepped its constitutional authority and has been guilty of judicial activism where they no longer judge the constitutionality of laws, but actually create them.

Perhaps the greatest damage to our republic was achieved in the 1947 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education in which the court created a "wall of separation" between church and state by reinterpreting the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Taking a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association out of context, the Supreme Court managed to remove religion from the public square in one fell swoop. The intent of the establishment clause was to prevent Congress from creating a national religion for the country, not to keep religious figures or terms out of public display such as a listing of the Ten Commandments inside public buildings.

The Founding Fathers were united in their belief that religion was a key component to the success of the new government.

Adams summed it up best when he said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

I will conclude my discussion of the Founding Fathers next week. Stay tuned.

Laughlin is a Christian Libertarian. He is an economist, teacher, father, husband and most recently a grandfather. He has written a weekly column for The Tribune for 12 years. He and his wife Gina reside in Meadowlakes. To contact him, e-mail ablaughlin@nctv.com. He is an independent columnist, not a staff member, and his views do not necessarily reflect those of The Tribune or its parent company