Defend Our 10th Amendment Rights

According to the Constitution, nearly 100\% of the power in this country is supposed to reside at the state and local levels, where the individual has maximum control over his own community and his own affairs.

The Founders were so certain that this new federal government they were creating would eventually turn on them and grossly exceed its extremely narrow and limited powers under the Constitution that they went out of their way to add an entire amendment emphatically denying any power to that federal government not specifically enumerated in the rest of the Constitution. This, of course, was the 10th Amendment.

But even with such overt clarifications on the limits of federal authority, its appalling appetite for tyranny has still managed to find a way. Largely based on a deliberate misinterpretation of the "General Welfare" clause of the Constitution, a tiny, unaccountable handful of elites in Washington have taken to dictating every aspect of our lives to us from on high, rather than taking their orders FROM us, as the Constitution unmistakably mandates.

The Federal Government has broken its end of the agreement.

James Madison--the architect of the Constitution--rejected the notion outright that the "General Welfare" clause in any way authorized Congress to do anything that could be construed as "promoting the general welfare." He said that to twist the Constitution this way would render "the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper."

He continued: "Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them."

In short, the bogus excuses for illegally exploding the size and scope of government on such an unprecedented scale are blatantly erroneous and fall apart under even a moment of serious scrutiny.

We hereby demand that the State of Illinois enact legislation defending our state's sovereignty from ceaseless federal intrusions and interferences.