American political parties come and go. We have had Know-Nothings, Barnburners, Free Soilers, Anti-Masons, Hunkers, the People’s Party and more. We now have the Tea Party. Their fixation is the federal government: It is too powerful, too grasping, too dominant. The states must be the true centers of government. The Constitution confirms that view, as (they say) the 10th Amendment demonstrates.
Adopted as one of the Bill of Rights by the First Congress and ratified in 1791, the 10th Amendment provides that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The Tea Party sees in the plain words of the 10th Amendment a denial to the federal government of the broad power it has exercised almost from the founding and confirmation of the right of the states to use reserved powers freely.
