The Ninth Amendment

The Ninth Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

We never hear much talk about the ninth amendment to the Constitution. Granted it does seem somewhat vague at first. However it is an important part of the Bill of Rights and was intended to limit government to the powers laid out in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution.

To set the stage for why the Ninth Amendment was necessary. First we must understand what went into crafting our Constitution. Almost everyone at the time believed our federal government was too weak and something had to be done to strengthen it. The problem was preventing it from growing out of hand, remember we had just broken away from the English Monarch.

There were two factions.  The Federalist, who opposed the Bill of Rights, believed that the Constitution was enough.  They understood that singling out a certain few rights might lead to a government take over of all things not specified in the Bill of Rights.  However, they had to swallow the Bill of Rights in order to gain the support of the Anti-Federalist.  But first the Federalist crafted the Ninth Amendment to prohibit the federal government from all powers not laid out in the Constitution.

What is so amazing about this whole debate between the Federalist and Anti-Federalists is that they both agreed that the power of the federal government had to be limited. Eventually they compromised on how to limit that power.  I would love to have heard those debates. Today both parties debate on how to grow the government.

The Ninth Amendment has been trampled by today's big government officials who believe they have the power to do anything they want. They believe that America needs them to take care of us. That's simply not true.