A Flag Amendment—what would be the effect? In one school of thought that goes back through Acton to Jefferson to Plato, the health of a society is inversely proportional to the amount of written law (and the number of lawyers) it has. A suspicion of lawmaking is even more justified in the case of constitutional law. How many amendments have actually done us any good? The Fourteenth is used routinely to destroy state and local government; the Sixteenth legitimated the income tax; the Eighteenth gave us prohibition. But, you will say, these were obviously bad ideas. What’s wrong with protecting the flag? Nothing. But there was nothing wrong in the first nine amendments guaranteeing due process and freedom of speech, press, and religion against the federal government. Unfortunately, by redesigning the Tenth Amendment to a dead letter, the federal courts have been able to use every one of those freedoms as a weapon against the very people and communities they are supposed to protect. The terrible truth is, the Constitution means whatever nine political appointees say that it means, and any additional provisions are only extra weapons in their arsenal. Not long ago I attended a conference on the family and heard a prudent and sensible politician ask if there shouldn’t be a constitutional amendment protecting the rights of families. What a nightmare. The justices would protect families in exactly the same way they protect religion—by making war on it.

If we have to discuss such dead issues as the US Constitution that once existed, the place to start is the Tenth Amendment. Since it has been effectively nullified by the usurpers on the federal bench, it is high time that someone like Senator Helms introduced it as a proposed amendment. Maybe if we passed it a second time, it would stick. Send us your name and address on a postcard saying, “Yes, Repass the Tenth Amendment,” and I will personally make sure it gets to the right people. (TF)