Tenth Amendment

I saw Robert Bork on some talk show over a decade ago. He was asked about the tenth amendment to the constitution. Here is the text of that amendment: 

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.

What Bork said shocked me. Let me paraphrase what he said. Bork basically said that judges ignored the tenth amendment because most governmental functions violated that amendment. This was before Justice Clarence Thomas' attempt to bring such matters to the front of the discussion again. 

Bork was right of course. No one has paid any attention to the constitution, as limited by the tenth amendment, since 1800, just a few years after its ratification.  

This issue goes back to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson wanted to buy Louisiana from the French. Yet this was forbidden by the tenth amendment. He was troubled by this. Jefferson's solution—ignore the issue and hope it goes away.  It has. 

So today we have evolved a government that bases most of its actions and functions on illegality. No one cares.  

So our modern candidates for office are pledging themselves to take an oath to uphold the constitution, and then immediately break that oath. While the constitutional oath that the congress critters take is not explicitly stated in the constitution, an oath is constitutionally required. Here is the oath they currently take:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God. 

Originally, and more in line with the constitutional requirement to take an oath, they said this: 

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States."

Click here for an official discussion of the oath.  

The irony for me is that any time I vote for a candidate in a national election, I will be voting for a person, who on their first vote, will be breaking their solemn oath they just made—even Ron Paul. The more I think about our system, our modern Babylon, the less is my desire to participate.