3 men who gave the federal government too much power

Last year, in a lecture at Purdue University, the great conservative writer and thinker George Will neatly summarized the Founders’ vision for the federal government thusly:

“When those 55 extraordinary people gathered in Philadelphia in the sweltering summer of 1787, they didn’t go there to devise an efficient government,” the author and columnist stated blithely. “The idea would have horrified them. They went to devise a government strong enough to secure our rights but not too strong to threaten them.”

“By the way, the most important word in the Declaration of Independence is ‘secure’ — ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and governments are instituted to secure those rights,’” he paraphrased. “Pre-existing rights — rights are not given to us by government…. [In] the language of the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, limited government is written in. It has the limited function of securing our rights, including facilitating our pursuit of happiness.”

“So,” Will continued, “in Philadelphia, they devised a government full of blocking mechanisms… all kinds of ways of slowing the beast down.” This, he argued, coupled with Congress’s enumerated powers — also known as the legitimacy barrier — shackled the federal government from involving itself in every area of public and private life.

Of course, it should be obvious that Washington has long since strayed from that ingenious blueprint. Today, the government involves itself in whatever it pleases, irregardless of any such antiquated notion as “enumerated powers.”

But how… and why? Here are three key moments that wrecked the Founders’ vision for the country, undermined self-governance, and increased our unreserved reliance on the “nanny state.”

1. Woodrow Wilson’s Darwinian Rebranding of Constitutional Theory

Woodrow Wilson openly rejected the Founder’s supposedly outdated model of constitutional checks and balances.

“The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can,” boasted the Progressive Era paragon. “His capacity will set the limit; and if Congress be overborne by him, it will be no fault of the makers of the Constitution.”

How did he arrive at this conclusion, given that the framers were clearly averse to the rise of any king-like figure? Simply by pronouncing himself wiser and more enlightened than the Founders.

“All that progressives ask or desire is permission—in an era when ‘development,’ ‘evolution,’ is the scientific word—to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.”

In other words, if, as Charles Darwin proposed in his theory of evolution, human nature is inherently and continually advancing, then the Constitution, no matter how remarkable it might have seemed at the time, would eventually become outdated. The 28th president of the United States verily believed that the expiration date of relevance had already passed; the U.S. Constitution may have been good enough for the Founding Fathers, but not so for Wilson.

2. Franklin Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights

Woodrow Wilson broke the dam of constitutional constraint; Franklin D. Roosevelt rode the ensuing wave. Although well-meaning, FDR retrained the American people to abandon the Founders’ ideal, articulated by George Will, that government exists only to preserve pre-existing rights. Rights, under the longest-serving president, took on a whole new meaning; negative rights (freedom from) transformed into positive rights (freedom to). Suddenly, we looked to government leaders like Roosevelt not only to preserve what God had, by nature, given us, but also to provide us with new rights. To that end, Roosevelt, inspired by Wilson’s scholarship about the insufficiency of the Founding, proposed a “Second Bill of Rights.”

“This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures,” he stated. “They were our rights to life and liberty. As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.”

He continued, “In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.” This new and improved bill of rights contained such generous offers as “The right to a useful and remunerative job,” “The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation,” and “The right of every family to a decent home.”

In short, FDR argued, the federal government should guarantee every American comfort and good fortune. “All of these rights spell security,” he pontificated.

But, while Roosevelt’s words may have sounded benignant, they ultimately served to make the nation more dependent on an aggrandizing nanny state.

3. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society

Like FDR, Lyndon B. Johnson likely had good intentions. But, good intentions and federal power do not often merge well. Such is the case with Johnson’s “Great Society.”

“[W]e have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society,” Kennedy’s successor famously remarked at the University of Michigan. “The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.”

LBJ’s signature package of government aid programs faced the same pragmatic drawbacks as those of Wilson’s and Roosevelt’s efforts. More than that, however, it dramatically restructured the governing “chain of command” in America. Rather than relying on sovereign local communities to resolve their own problems, decision-making power in America became dangerously centralized. Under this framework, it would fall to the federal government to involve itself in every area of public and private life, precisely the outcome the Founders hoped to prevent. While the government might occasionally wield its newfound power for good, often, the American people would discover, it would not.

Fortunately, it is not too late to heed the Founders’ wisdom. Utilizing the Article V amendment process, the Constitution’s built-in fail-safe mechanism, we can restore balance to our federalist system of government and preserve it for future generations. Join the Convention of States movement today to get started!