State Sovereignty Rally at Albany, New York Capitol Building August 7, 2010. Rick Montes (New York Tenth Amendment Center) speech on the Tenth Amendment

It’s nice to show up at rallies and wave our don’t tread on me flags, and support the tea parties, and scream that Obama is destroying our Constitution – but how many really understand what is being destroyed?

A Constitutionalist and Tenth Amendment supporter believe that the U.S. Constitution is arguably the greatest political document man could devise.

Long before this Constitution was devised, there were 13 sovereign states with their own Constitutions.

If we allow cowardly politicians to violate our rights – shame on us.

The Founding Fathers debated this issue quite thoroughly. There were many in attendance who wished to have us become a consolidated, national government. James Madison repeatedly tried to grant the federal government the power to negate all state laws. He was soundly defeated each time.

In the end we were given a Federal Republic that was made up of individual sovereign states. These states delegated limited and enumerated powers to the federal government. To be certain that there was no mistake, they had the Tenth Amendment added: “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.”

Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government “