"Do not punish the masses for the sins of the few"
This applies to any and all rights and privileges stated in the Constitution of the United States.
For example “The Right to Bear and Keep Arms”. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. There are many more.
Nowhere does the Constitution give the President or the Congress the power to federalize state crimes or enact gun control legislation -- not even in a national emergency. One reads the Constitution in vain for such a delegation of authority by "We, the People" through the several states. Very instructive on this point are the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 which were written by Thomas Jefferson.
The federal government in 1798 enacted a law making it illegal to criticize a federal official (the Sedition Act).
Kentucky and
Virginia passed resolutions declaring that the national law was unenforceable in their states.
These are among the arguments that Jefferson made in the
Kentucky resolutions:
...whensoever’s the general government assumes un-delegated powers, its acts are un-authoritative, void, and of no force: ...that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself;...each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.
Jefferson went on to spell out that the only powers to punish crime delegated to the federal government were 1) treason, 2) counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, 3) piracies and 4) offenses against the law of nations. In this context,
Jefferson cited the Tenth Amendment as providing a limit to any expansion of authority for punishing crime by the federal government. He quoted it verbatim in the
Kentucky resolutions: "the 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."
Anyone who has observed children will recognize that, ironically, they often demonstrate a more stringent and uncompromising sense of justice than the adults around them. A small child who must divide a piece of cake, for example, will be excruciatingly precise in cutting it lest the "chooser" glom on to a larger slice. Whether the issue is whose turn it is to clear the dishes, take out the trash, or who broke that lamp, young people appeal to an almost innate sense of propriety in demanding they be treated fairly and equitably.
This tendency to rigor is perhaps even more evident when parents must mete out punishments and rewards. To be falsely penalized for something they did not do will stir up the loudest and shrillest of complaints among the innocent offspring.
Too many adults, unfortunately, mildly, meekly, and silently accept such collectivist justice when dealing with social and political issues.
The essence of a moral view of justice entails a recognition that only individuals can be held accountable for the right and wrong they do. Because each of us possesses free will and, thus, the capacity to make choices among alternatives, when we act upon our best (or sometimes worst) judgment, we and we alone are who should reap the benefits of selecting wisely and appropriately...and we and we alone should be the ones to suffer the negative consequences of picking hastily, foolishly, or ignorantly.
If good and evil are to mean anything, our moral autonomy as beings with the capacity for rational behavior must be acknowledged and accepted. Any other basis for determining who is responsible for destructive or constructive outcomes leads to the kind of schizophrenic legal and political realm nipping at our heels today.
This individualistic conception of justice did not always hold sway. Indeed, collectivistic guilt has a long history. In Christian theology, we are all guilty of sin because of the behavior of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Throughout the past, whole families -- sometimes entire cities -- were held responsible for what fathers or kings might have done. The average citizen of ancient Carthage would have had little influence on the policies of his leaders. Nevertheless, he paid the price of Rome's disfavor when his home was razed and the ground salted.
Our Founding Fathers recognized the inherent injustice in accepting the doctrine of collective guilt, i.e., visiting unto the sons the sins of the father. Article III of the Constitution says that "no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood." In other words, the family of a traitor cannot be punished simply because the members are related to the perpetrator.
The bulk of the legal code under which we labor today, however, is rife with violations of this principle. The general collectivization of our culture in the Twentieth Century permeates every crack and crevice of our relationship with the law. Incoherently, our politicians hold individual citizens blameless for many of the negative conditions in their lives (e.g., being poor, homeless, addicted to drugs, sexual promiscuous, or abysmally ignorant) while pointing a narrow finger at us all. "Society" does not provide enough resources (i.e., money) or understanding or opportunities.
But "society" is only an abstraction, a way of describing the relationships, the actions, the beliefs of individuals. Despite what every dictator or tyrant or statist has proclaimed, society as a separate entity does not literally exist apart from and above the separate and distinct individuals who comprise it. Just as the ideas of "right" and "left" have no meaning when divorced from the people involved, so too, "society" loses its coherence when reified (and too often, deified).
In addition to supplying a (poor) rationale for the plethora of social programs dragging us down -- from Social Security and Medicare to business subsidies and disaster relief -- the notion of collective responsibility, obligation, or guilt obliterates proper understanding and application of justice and equity by punishing the innocent majority for the transgressions of the criminal few.
Most regulations, laws, and prohibitions are propounded by pointing out that certain abuses have occurred in the past. Thus, because certain people have engaged in improper behavior, everyone must be presumed to be a potential criminal and have his choices and actions inspected, constrained, or curtailed. Such legal machinations act as a kind of prior restraint. They sanction the notion that the agents of the government must, in essence, punish citizens -- for potential improprieties -- beforehand by means of dictates, fees, or restrictions on what they do and/or how they do it.
But an implicit assumption of guilt -- before you have even acted -- violates the constitutionally recognized principle that you can only be punished after you have actually done something wrong. Even then, the legal system must assume the innocence of the accused. The courts must prove you are guilty. To make you prove you are innocent -- as most regulations on business and individuals do -- is rank injustice. To add insult to the injury, many of the laws strangling us today are based on some group's notion of morality regardless of whether or not you have actually violated anyone's rights (for example, with consensual "crimes" such as prostitution, drug use, and gambling).
Affirmative action policies punish those who were never racist for the sins of those long dead, an indirect "corruption of blood." Business regulations assume that only state scrutiny prevents all entrepreneurs from being polluters, swindlers, and cheaters. Sexual harassment and anti-discrimination laws (whether for sex, race, ethnic background, age, or disability) squeeze us all into narrow-minded compartments of barely suppressed bigotry held in check only by the good graces of the bureaucrats.
Tens of thousands of gun (i.e., people) control laws treat peaceful, rights-respecting individuals as criminals held at bay only because they must jump through arbitrary, unconstitutional hoops that disarm and endanger millions while leaving the field unchallenged to the rapists, robbers, and burglars.
The "rule of law" has morphed into the "rule of men." Politicians, regulators, and law enforcement agents see us today as blank, faceless, and interchangeable segments of whatever particular group they have focused upon. No longer are we treated as distinct individuals. Instead we are lumped together, punished for no sin of our own, treated not as innocent individuals, but as untrustworthy villains-by-proxy.
The Constitution has been turned on its head. Instead of the individual at the pinnacle of the pyramid, today he is crushed by the weight of the masses who take precedence in their anonymity over his unique and individual life and personality. Instead of the individual being able to do anything not prohibited and the state only that which is permitted, in modern society, the abstract (and literally nonexistent) state has virtually carte blanche to chase after every whim. The true, fundamental component of our culture -- a single, real, breathing person -- is bound and chained, able to choose only from a narrower and narrower range of what is allowed him as a privilege, not a right.
As mentioned, the very notion of "rights" has itself been both bloated and choked. On the one hand, "rights" to health care, housing, food, education and on and on are manufactured out of thin air. On the other hand, property rights -- the foundation for implementing the right to your own existence -- is suppressed by the rampant moral inflation of bogus rights. Coupled with both malign neglect and direct attacks upon property, we drift without legal anchor or direction.
To restore freedom, we must reclaim the moral initiative. We must re-consecrate respect for justice as a trait of the individual, not the collective. We must hold as sacrosanct our right to earn and hold property, to direct its use, and to wield it as a shield against malefactors. We must proclaim our right as free, autonomous, and sovereign individuals to do what we want, say what we will, and build our lives without the permission, sanction, or approval of any group. As long as we respect the same rights of all others, we should and must never be punished for the transgressions of the few.
