Increasing federal control reduces our constitutional freedoms

September 19, 2023

Actions by those in positions of authority to push the boundaries of that authority took a huge step recently when New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a public health order outlining efforts to combat gun violence in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County. 

“I’m going to continue pushing to make sure that all of us are using every resource available to put an end to this public health emergency with the urgency it deserves,” she said. “I will not accept the status quo. Enough is enough.”

A provision of that public health order temporarily suspended both the open and concealed carrying of firearms in Albuquerque and surrounding Bernalillo County by those who had been granted carry permits by the state government.

The violations would result in civil penalties, not criminal penalties, but the fines imposed could be up to $5,000 per violation.

This action attempted to suspend rights guaranteed to the people by the U.S. Constitution, and that action brought swift and harsh criticism from both sides of the political aisle, and resulted in law suits against the action.

In response, U.S. District Court Judge David Urias agreed with plaintiffs who pointed out the violation of constitutional rights. He granted a temporary restraining order to block the suspension of gun rights. The order will remain in place until an Oct. 3 court hearing.

The rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution cannot be suspended on the whim of a mere elected official, whether that official is the president, a governor, an attorney general or a mayor. Yet this woman believed she had that authority in order to combat a local problem, a problem that many of her constituents argue is really not that much of a problem.

Recently we have seen government mandates and restrictions on our freedoms during the Covid pandemic, and others ostensibly to save the planet from climate change due to too much CO2 in the atmosphere.

The actions taken during Covid, and currently to combat the climate change that many people believe in, may actually have been taken for the best of reasons. However, they also constitute restrictions on the personal freedoms that the United States is known for. And they frequently inconvenience people and raise prices on things they want and need.

We recently increased our level of energy independence, but it was wiped out almost as soon as President Joe Biden took office. That forced the purchasing of materials and fuels from other countries like China and Russia, raised fuel prices substantially, and put thousands out of work. 

And, by the way, American oil and natural gas are the cleanest in the world. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., noted recently that “If we replaced Russian natural gas in Europe [with American natural gas], for one year, just one year, that would lower 215 million tons of emissions because our natural gas is 41 percent cleaner than Russian natural gas.” Biden’s war on fossil fuels has negatively affected his goal of reducing CO2 emissions.

Biden’s efforts to kill fossil fuels now has him campaigning to do away with gas-burning stoves, furnaces, fireplace logs and grills; creating stricter specifications for common appliances like clothes washers and dryers, dishwashers, and others that will substantially increase the cost of those products.

There is the manic effort to decrease gas- and diesel-powered vehicles in favor of electric vehicles that cost much more, depend almost entirely upon China and other countries for the materials to build their batteries, and require fewer American employees to produce them than conventional vehicles. And then there is the needed enormous increase in our electric grid to be able to recharge these tens of thousands of EVs that Biden wants.

The Department of Justice not long ago involved itself in a local matter. When parents attended school board meetings to register their displeasure with some things that were going on in the school their children attended, the DOJ labeled them “domestic terrorists.” 

Even if the parents were behaving inappropriately, or even violently, it is not the job of the federal government to become involved in state or local matters. That is how our republic is designed.

This nation was formed by the several states that united for that purpose. They did not give up their right to control themselves in local matters by creating a federal government. The states still have a large degree of sovereignty that is protected by terms of the U.S. Constitution.

What we are seeing is an increasing effort by Democrats to empower the federal government to control virtually everything that goes on in our country. They are “fundamentally transforming” the country. 

That contradicts two of the primary goals of the Founders of the United States of America: a large degree of personal freedom, and a federal government limited in its power.

If this power-grab is allowed to continue, the once-great United States of America will some day in the future degenerate into just another Cuba or Venezuela, as the protections provided by the Constitution are gradually erased.  It will be a country whose citizens are at the mercy of autocrats who have complete control.

Democrats are working overtime to change our nation for the worse

The rule of thumb of the Joe Biden presidency must be to undo what Donald Trump did. That is essentially what has been happening since January 20.

Is it simply the idea that Trump was so horrible a person and president that everything he did must be undone? Or, is it that Biden’s carefully hidden leftist philosophy demands moving us away from the successful capitalist nation that we are?

The “it’s not a crisis” catastrophe on the southern border that has allowed tens of thousands of migrants to enter the country, heads the list. Many thousands of them are overwhelming the facilities for housing them, and thousands more of uncertain origin and motive just walked across the border and disappeared into the country. What else is on the list of equally poor decisions from this president?

The Club for Growth recently highlighted several proposals and their predicted negative results. These include Biden’s proposed hiking of the corporate tax rate by one-third, from 21 percent to 28 percent, and predicting that as many as one million jobs could be killed, that GDP would fall by 0.8 percent, and worker’s wages will fall by 0.7 percent or, on average, $2,500 per year.

Biden’s executive order ending construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has already put about a thousand people out of work and is expected to kill another 10,000 jobs, which represent $1.6 billion in gross wages lost to the workforce. Another executive order halted drilling on federal lands, and that is said to eliminate as many as 60,000 jobs.

The proposed hike in the capital gains tax may go as high as 43.4 percent. And the planned minimum wage hike to $15 per hour is predicted to put 1.3 million workers out of work by 2025. 

And last, but hardly least, two climate-related proposals are predicted to kill even more jobs. Ending the use of fossil fuels will take out more than a million jobs, and rejoining the catastrophic Paris Climate Accords could cost the U.S. $3 trillion and eliminate 6.5 million jobs by 2040.

Another of Biden’s executive orders, this one on his first day in office, rescinded the prohibition of critical race theory (CRT) training for federal agencies and federal contractors that Trump put in place.

Calling that “a sad reversal for Americans committed to colorblindness in public life,” the New York Post said of CRT: “Critical race theory understands the world by viewing everything — society, economics, education, family, science — through the lens of ‘whiteness’ and white racism. White people, according to CRT, drift in a kind of amniotic fluid of privilege and unearned gifts based on the brutal ideology of ‘white supremacy.’”

CRT considers long-standing American values like hard work, objectivity, deferred gratification, family and respect for the written word as intrinsically racist, and strongly suggests that these values relentlessly suppress “black achievement while boosting white mediocrity into advancement,” the Post article said.

Where will America end up if qualities that have been so important to the nation’s development and success — such as the family, learning, working hard to achieve success, and being the best you can be — somehow become viewed as racist?

We now are hearing cries to abandon the sensible concept that the most qualified, most talented people are the ones who should be selected to fill jobs, hold positions, or get access to some things — a merit-based system. Instead, the idea is to fill jobs or award things based on equity of race, ethnicity, gender/gender identity.

If the subject is the allotment of public housing or similar things, the result won’t be terrible if this new concept is put in force. However, this concept is not a prescription for the most efficient, highest performing companies, teams, organizations, or whatever, and it will weaken the United States in every area to which equity mania is applied. It is especially dangerous if applied to the military services.

Most people are far less concerned with the gender/gender identity, race or ethnicity of their doctor, lawyer, teacher, mechanic, home improvement worker, care taker, etc., than with that person’s knowledge and ability to do the job ably and professionally. That’s what really matters. If quality is assured and social quotas are also met, great. 

But equity among the different groups must not be the primary consideration when selecting the people who will do critical, important work. Quality is essential.

Why is the American Left so bent on changing everything that has served the nation so well for its entire history? Obviously, these folks do not like being part of the most successful, free, and unique nation ever. They seem compelled to change those important elements that made America great, and move it into the group of failed socialistic nations that limit freedom, and insist that everyone share equally in the misery.

Tens of thousands of people from other countries want to come here. And few if any want to leave here. Why? Because it is the bright light of the world.

And yet Congressional Democrats are working overtime to change it into something much less than it is now. Why?

Democrats determined to make government work better. For them.

This may be the first time in American history where so many long-standing elements of our government were targeted for change. Such important things as increasing the number of Supreme Court justices; imposing term limits on justices; getting rid of the Senate filibuster procedure; imposing more gun control constraints; and statehood for the District of Columbia and the territory of Puerto Rico are on the plate.

Critics of these changes cite political advantage as the motivation. Four more justices appointed by the current Democrat president and approved by a Democrat-controlled Senate certainly fits that idea. Two U.S. Senators each and some number of Representatives for DC and Puerto Rico also fit in. 

And doing away with the filibuster, so the Senate would make all decisions at 51 percent like the House of Representatives, would make appointment approvals easier for both parties, and would remove protection against the tyranny of the majority. Democrats, incidentally, made good use of the filibuster during the Trump presidency.

The bill to make D.C. a state was passed by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform last Wednesday, and will get a vote by the full House this week. 

One reason cited for this historic transformation of the nation’s capitol is to provide the taxpayers of the District of Columbia with voting representation in the Congress and full control over local affairs.

However, it is important to know just why the nation’s capitol was not a state to begin with, and that goes back to the establishment of the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in June of 1788.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to "exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of Government of the United States."

Founding Father James Madison, the nation’s fourth president, was concerned that if the capital doubled as a state, it would have greater power than the other states, creating an unequal situation, and he correctly believed that the federal government should be neutral in matters of the sovereign states.

An additional and more recent opinion about the nation’s capitol remaining an independent entity that is not associated with any state comes from Robert F. Kennedy when he was Attorney General in the 1960s. “It was indispensably necessary to the independence and the very existence of the new Federal Government to have a seat of government which was not subject to the jurisdiction or control of any State,” Kennedy wrote.

And regarding the perceived systemic inequality that has denied the full voting rights, citizenship and representation in Congress for residents of Washington DC, which some cite as justification for statehood, no one forces people to live in the District instead of a nearby state, where they would have voting rights and be only a short distance from the District. 

Further, DC statehood will definitely benefit Democrats. According to bestplaces.net, which got the following voter data from federal agencies, related that in the last five presidential elections, DC voters were heavily Democrat. And in 2016, DC voters voted Democrat 90.86 percent, against the 4.09 percent who voted Republican.

Virginia’s 9th District Republican Congressman Morgan Griffith addressed this situation in a recent correspondence to constituents. “Any measure giving the District statehood would need to go through the process of amending the Constitution. H.R. 51, the statehood bill the House will consider, does not do so. Instead, it shrinks the seat of the U.S. government to an area around the Mall, the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and other federal buildings, and admits the rest of the District as a state.”

“This approach suffers from an additional flaw beyond its constitutionality,” he continues. “The 23rd Amendment grants electoral votes to the ‘seat of Government of the United States,’ not the District of Columbia specifically, meaning that the handful of residents in this area, presumably including the president and his family, would have as much weight in the Electoral College as some states.”

“Giving the residents of the District of Columbia a voice in the Federal Government is a worthy goal,” he wrote, “but it must be done constitutionally.”

Offering a fair and sensible measure to satisfy this issue, Griffith has introduced H.R. 2614, the Compact Federal District Act. The bill recognizes the right of D.C. residents to be represented in Congress, and be able to vote for a U.S. House Representative and two Senators by transferring most of the District and its residents to Maryland in a process known as retrocession, which means returning the land to Maryland that it ceded to the federal government to form the District of Columbia. 

The proposed actions listed at the beginning of this commentary share a political desire, with the possible exception of term limits for Supreme Court justices. That desire is giving a clear and great advantage to one political party: The Democrats.

Apparently, they like this method of gaining power. If you cannot achieve your goals under the existing system, change it to meet your needs.