Denmark is basically an island with thin gruel for soil and a blink-of-the-eye growing season. No surprise then that the old Danes built ships and sailed all over the known world looking for a better place to live. On the way, if they happened to need some some biscuits or diversion, they would pull into a port, take what they needed and burn the place down so word would go out that resistance was futile. When did that, they were called Vikings. When they finally found a place they liked and stayed there, they were called Danes.
The Danes liked an area of Northern France a lot so they stayed there. The people they kicked out called them the North-men, because Denmark was in the north, and the place came to be called Normandy. After a while the Danes of Normandy decided to give England a try. That was in 1066, and it was called the Norman Conquest. It was led by a guy named William. He liked England so much, he decided to be a Dane rather than a Viking and stick around. Since he was there for the long haul, William tore up the old property books and deeded in all the land to himself, and then deeded out parcels to his loyal nobles. Thus was born the English Crown. If you happened not to be a noble, you were a peasant, and tough nuts to you because you had no rights whatsoever. Oh yeah, I forgot, the Danes were a bunch of pagans.
But some of those peasants were pretty smart, and patient. They slowly began pulling back rights from the Crown based on what they called Natural Law, things that seemed self-evident, until (finally) England was a constitutional monarchy with a bill of rights that looks just like ours (it is just like ours actually, because we copied it a hundred years later). This process took about 800 years and required a couple of revolutions along the way. Towards the end of the process, the English started colonizing America, kind of like a politer version of the Danes. Their motives for doing so were a mixture of profit, religious freedom and the need for a place to park the undesirables that they usually kept locked up in debtors' prison (Hellllo Georgia!).
The people who went (or got sent) to the Colonies ruled themselves. Having nothing else to go by, they went ahead and did it like Englishmen, right down to the Natural Law and the Bill of Rights stuff. And that was a pretty good way to do it apparently, because the Colonies prospered enough to tempt the French to try to steal them in the 1750s. It took nine years for the King to slap the French down. Then he tried to recoup the blood and treasure England had spilled keeping the French out of the Colonists' chili by jacking up some new taxes. The King had a pretty good substantive argument for the taxes, but he stubbed his toe procedurally by not giving the Colonists a hearing on it. Remember, they thought they were Englishmen, subjects of a constitutionally restrained monarch. The King thought . . . well, who knows what, but he wasn't going to let a Colonial rabble tell him what to do. The King and the Colonists, well they couldn't really work that one out.
So, the Colonies went ahead and punched the King dead in the mouth and started their own country. At first, they wanted their own king too. That might seem stupid in retrospect, but at the time, a constitutional monarchy was the best you got. After George Washington nixed the King Idea, they drafted some sketchy Articles of Confederacy which established a toothless federal government that was powerless to stop the individual states from taxing each other and raising their own armies. Seeing that something in between a King and a Confederacy was called for, they finally got working on a Constitution that would create a stronger Federal Government, but limit its power so it didn't end up turning the new Americans into a bunch of peasants.
Justly suspicious of the hazard of creating a new governmental entity (cue giant sucking sound), the Framers imbued the new Federal Government only with those powers specifically delegated by the States. Then, not even trusting themselves that far, they tacked on a Bill of Rights just like the one that kept the King in check. Kind of a belts plus suspenders approach, but they were pretty sharp guys those Framers. Pretty sharp. Because, despite their efforts to keep the new Federal Government in its box, the darn thing started creeping out past its limited delegated powers right from the start. Not so much in a "no-raping-the-women-til-the-gold-is-aboard", William the Conqueror kind of way, but in a Empathetic kind of way, like "hey Sad Clown, we're here to help you, but this pesky Constitution keeps getting in our way, so why don't you just give us a little more power so we can help you through this (war, depression, national emergency-you fill in the blank) and then we'll give that power right on back."
Sounds good on paper, but works bad in practice, because once Uncle Sam has more power (even a little), he's not giving it back. Nope. Not ever. He's like a really patient Viking AND a Dane rolled into one--slowly taking what he wants, burning down the rest as a warning to the others and settling down to live in your town . . . forever. Uncle Shug, with his greasy smile and his good intentions, may not look like William the Conqueror, but the effect is the same. Little by little, he is transforming us Sad Clowns into powerless peasants of the Viking of Empathy.
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