ill of Rights which do
not contain one statement or inference that the federal government has
any responsibility, or power, to grant the people rights, privileges, or
benefits of any kind. The total emphasis in these American documents is
on telling the federal government _what it cannot do_ to and for the
people--on ordering the federal government to stay out of the private
affairs of citizens and to leave their God-given rights alone.

* * * * *

This negative, restricted role of the federal government, and this
assumption that God and not government is the source of man's rights
and privileges, are clearly stated in the Preamble to our Constitution.
The Preamble says that this Constitution is being _ordained_ and
established, not to _grant_ liberties to the people, but to _secure_ the
liberties which the people already had (before the government was ever
formed) as _blessings_.

The essence of the American constitutional system, which made freedom in
a federal union possible, is clearly stated in the first sentence of the
first Article of our Constitution and in the last Article (the Tenth
Amendment) of our Bill of Rights.

The first Article of our Constitution begins with the phrase, "All
legislative Powers _herein_ granted...." That obviously meant the
federal government had no powers which were not granted to it by the
Constitution. The Tenth Amendment restates the same thing with emphasis:

"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."

Clearly and emphatically, our Constitution says that the federal
government cannot legally do anything which is not authorized by a
specific grant of power in the Constitution.

This is the one constitutional concept that made the American
governmental system different from all others; it is the one which left
our people so free and unmolested by their own government that they
converted the backward, American continent into the land of freedom, the
most fruitful and powerful nation in history.

And this was the constitutional proviso which created the American
principle of federalism. The Constitution made no grant, or even
inferred a grant, of power to the federal government for meddling, to
any extent, or for any purpose whatever, in the private cultural,
economic, social, educational, religious, or political