From the Archives: ‘Intellectual Activist’ Robert Tracinski traces origins of the Ninth Amendment

‘Intellectual Activist’ Robert Tracinski traces origins of the Ninth Amendment
January 2, 2011 12:58 AM MST

In an interview last month with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner coinciding with the Jefferson Area Libertarians’ celebration of Bill of Rights Day, Robert Tracinski expressed his view of the meaning and importance of the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Tracinski is editor and publisher of The Intellectual Activist (TIADaily.com), a position he has held since 1996 with the three-decade-old publication. He is also an active member of the Jefferson Area Tea Party.

Ratification debates
The origin of the Ninth Amendment can be found in the debate over ratification of the Constitution and whether it should include a bill of rights.

“The argument in favor of a bill of rights was very strong,” Tracinski said, because “we need to have these protections to keep government in check.”

Yet, he added, there was “one really good argument against a bill of rights” made by James Madison and others, which can be summed up as “the minute you put this down on paper and say, ‘these are your rights,’ it invites [the government] to say, ‘OK, those are your only rights, that’s all we have to limit ourselves to, and anything else we can do.’”

There was a desire among the Founders, Tracinski noted, to “not create this assumption that these are the only rights people have.”

Specifically to address this argument, in drafting the Bill of Rights, Madison included the language of the Ninth Amendment, which was based on a suggestion made by the Virginia ratifying convention.

Virginia’s “suggested wording was then fine-tuned and honed and brought down to this,” what we now call the Ninth Amendment, in order to “head off that idea that these are the only rights you have because they’re the only ones that are written down,” Tracinski explained.

Revival of constitutionalism

Reflecting on current affairs, Tracinski said that “what excites me about today is we are seeing a revival of constitutionalism.”

The American constitutional creed, he reiterated, “isn’t just a series of legal statements in a document [but] it’s a whole way of thinking about the role of government, a whole way of thinking about the limitations on government and the rights of the people.”

The concept of a constitutional creed, Tracinski concluded, “is something I see people taking more seriously, studying in more depth, and – hopefully -- reviving the constitution not just as a document but as a way of thinking, as a philosophy of government.”

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on January 2, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Robert Tracinski celebrates the meaning of the 9th Amendment

Robert Tracinski celebrates the meaning of the 9th Amendment
January 1, 2011 6:14 PM MST

The New Year’s Eve edition of the Daily Progress published a letter to the editor from Edward Strickler of Albemarle County, who praised the Jefferson Area Libertarians for sponsoring a reading of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution on Bill of Rights Day at the First Amendment Monument in downtown Charlottesville.

“It is great to have champions of liberty in our community,” wrote Strickler.

As it happens, the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner interviewed one of the featured speakers at that event, Robert Tracinski, a member of the Jefferson Area Tea Party and publisher of The Intellectual Activist. (The other featured speaker was WCHV radio host Joe Thomas.)

Importance of 9th Amendment
The topic of Tracinski’s remarks was the importance of the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution, which reads:

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

The Ninth Amendment, Tracinski explained, is not so much a legal statement as it is a “statement of political philosophy.”

The amendment, he said, states that “individual rights are the basis of this whole thing, that pre-existing individual rights retained by the people are the essence and everything the government does has to be limited by that.”

9th Amendment jurisprudence?
There is no “Ninth Amendment jurisprudence” among Supreme Court decisions, he noted, “because it’s so broad and abstract.”

Rather than being the basis of specific judicial decisions, Tracinski said, the importance of the Ninth Amendment lies “more [in] the idea that it’s a guide to constitutional interpretation, because it basically says, ‘when in doubt, err on the side of individual rights. Err on the side of individual freedom.’”

The Ninth Amendment, he continued, “invites the interpreter of the Constitution, including Supreme Court justices, to refer back to the Declaration of Independence and to the Lockean, pro-individual rights position in there, as the basis for and meaning of the Constitution and as the grounds for interpreting everything in the Constitution.”

Default position: individual liberty

In Tracinski’s view, the default position for the government is restriction, while the default position for individuals is freedom.

He cited a famous quotation from Thomas Jefferson “about how we should trust people to run their own lives.” When it comes to government, Jefferson said, “Let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

This idea, Tracinski said, is that “for the individual out there in the world, you should be able to view the world as a field of unobstructed action, with only a few areas marked off saying you can’t go there.”

The exceptions are such things as armed robbery or assault, he explained, and “there are a few very evil deeds that we’re not going to let you do and we’re going to punish you if you do them. Other than that, the field’s wide open. You can do what you want.”

On the other hand, he said, “for the government, it should be the exact opposite: there should be a few little islands where we say, ‘OK, here, national defense, law enforcement, the courts, these things you’re allowed to do and you can operate in this area’ but [the government is] hemmed in around all sides and the rest of the world is off limits to [it] and [it] can’t go there.”

That, Tracinski said, should be “how we look at things in terms of the relationship of the government to the people. That’s what the Ninth Amendment basically tells us.”

In part two of this interview, Tracinski traces the origins of the Ninth Amendment.


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on January 1, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Charlottesville-area Libertarians use 2011 Tax Day to argue against taxes

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 15, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Charlottesville-area Libertarians use 2011 Tax Day to argue against taxes
April 15, 2011 12:14 AM MST

Each month members of the Jefferson Area Libertarians, a local division of the Libertarian Party of Virginia, meet for a social hour at West Main Restaurant in Charlottesville.

This month the meeting took place on the eve of the traditional date for Americans to complete their federal tax returns. (The Internal Revenue Service has extended this year's deadline from Friday, April 15, to Monday, April 18.)

James Curtis, treasurer of the Libertarian Party of Virginia (LPVA), and Jim Lark, secretary of the Jefferson Area Libertarians (JAL), will be guests on April 15 on The Schilling Show on WINA (1070 AM) to talk about tax policy. The two activists gave the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner an exclusive preview of the topics they will address on the radio Friday afternoon.

‘Grossly overtaxed’
Lark said he plans to talk about “the nature of what taxes are and the extent to which most libertarians feel that we are grossly overtaxed.”

The government, Lark explained, does many things it “should not be doing and we’re paying for those. There are many things that, even if government should be doing them – and that’s debatable – we’re still paying too much.”

Lark said he and Curtis will try to convey to Rob Schilling's listeners “the idea that perhaps we can cut the cost of government substantially. We can cut taxes; we can cut spending substantially.”

For his part, Curtis said that one point he wants to make is that there has been “a lot of discussion lately that the federal government’s not experiencing an income issue, it’s more of a spending matter. I politely disagree with that. I think it is a revenue issue also.”

Curtis explained that he thinks “the federal government actually takes in too much revenue” and it is “taxing us too aggressively, putting too much strain on the economy.”

How to transform the tax system
Offered a “magic wand” that could transform the country’s tax system, Lark and Curtis gave similar but not identical wish lists.

“If they give the magic wand to me,” Lark said he would get rid of the tax system “entirely” and instead would like to see “a society where taxes look more like user fees or something like that, where people actually pay for goods and services” that they use.

Given “a less powerful magic wand,” however, Lark said he would “probably go to some sort of flat-tax scheme at a very low rate.”

Curtis said that he would “repeal the individual and corporate income taxes and payroll taxes. Individual taxes are theft.”

Under those circumstances, he explained, “government would have to do without most of its unconstitutional programs,” while remaining programs “would have to be put into its reduced budget.”

He noted that much of the federal government’s revenue comes from “excise taxes, tariffs, and such” and that many people have a misconception that “if we got rid of the income tax, the federal government would go out of business.”

Curtis pointed out, however, that individual income taxes only constitute about 32 percent of federal revenues, “so we’re potentially talking about cutting the budget by a third if we repeal the income tax.”

What about the Fair Tax?
Both Curtis and Lark are reluctant to endorse the Fair Tax, a consumption tax popularized by nationally syndicated radio host Neal Boortz and former Georgia Congressman John Linder, designed to replace the income tax.

“I’ve always been a friendly skeptic about the Fair Tax,” said Lark. “I certainly understand what they’re trying to do and I’m very sympathetic to a lot of the ideas that motivate it, but I’m not sure that it would be a step in the right direction.”

Noting that he has “a lot of friends who are major Fair Tax enthusiasts,” Lark conceded that “if it were passed, it very well may be an improvement over what we now have,” but his own preference is to “move in a different direction.”

To Curtis, the Fair Tax is “better than what we have now but the polite way to put it is I’m not a fan.”

Tax Day Rallies
The Jefferson Area Libertarians will be participating in two events marking Tax Day 2011.

On Friday at 5:00 p.m., the group’s chairman, John Munchmeyer, will speak at a rally at the Free Speech Monument on Charlottesville’s downtown mall, sponsored by the Jefferson Area Tea Party.

On Monday, from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m., JAL will have its own educational demonstration outside the main Charlottesville Post Office on Route 29 North, hoping to reach local taxpayers as they drop their income tax returns into the mail box.

From the Archives: Five reasons to be a libertarian

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 8, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

This was my fourth article published on Examiner.com. Eventually I wrote about 500 articles that appeared on the now defunct news site over the six years between April 2010 and June 2016.

Five reasons to be a libertarian
April 8, 2010 9:15 PM MST

What does it mean to be a libertarian?

Members of the Jefferson Area Libertarians, who are active in and around Charlottesville, Virginia, meet monthly for a happy hour at West Main restaurant, to discuss current affairs and other topics.

At their meeting on April 8, several JAL members answered the questions: What does it mean to be a libertarian? What is the essence of libertarianism?

Here are five of their responses.

Personal and Economic Freedom

John Munchmeyer, chairman of the Jefferson Area Libertarians, explained how he discovered libertarian thought.

“I was reading a book by Harry Browne, Why Government Doesn’t Work, sitting at Dulles Airport, waiting for a flight, when I got to the part about health care and it was like a light bulb went on in my head. It was like, “oh my gosh, government can never solve the problems in health care because it caused them in the first place.”

The essence of libertarianism to Munchmeyer? “Libertarianism is when you believe in personal freedom and economic freedom.”

Respect for True Human Rights
James Curtis is treasurer of the Libertarian Party of Virginia. He said he thinks the essence of libertarianism is “respect for true human rights, recognition that each of us owns our self, that we have the right to do as we choose, that government exists (when we choose to form governments) to protect those rights.”

Liberty and responsibility
Jim Lark, secretary of the Jefferson Area Libertarians and former national chairman of the Libertarian Party, said that libertarianism “means that you believe in individual liberty, that individuals have rights, that they have the right to acquire property, that they have the right to the fruits of their labors. They cannot, however, violate the like rights of others and they must be held responsible for their actions.”

Non-Initiation of Force
Steve LaBianca, an alternate member of the Libertarian National Committee, said that libertarianism “is a political philosophy characterized by the absence of the initiation of physical violence, physical coercion, [or] physical force.” What that means personally, he said, is “to practice not coercing anybody for any reason whatsoever. Obviously, that means I can exert force in defense of myself, if I choose to (not necessarily required).”

He added: “In a political sense, it means institutions which also do not do that, which means governments specifically should not engage in the initiation of force, as well.

‘Leave Me Alone’
Albemarle County resident Tim Hulsey, who is not affiliated with any political party but who attends JAL happy hours for the intelligent conversation, summed things up in few words:

“I hate politics. I hate the way politics always comes around to bite me in the ass, and I want politics to be less important in my life.”

The Jefferson Area Libertarians meet on the second Tuesday of each month from 4:30 p.m to 6:30 p.m. at West Main Restaurant, 333 W. Main Street, in Charlottesville. For more information, visit www.4JAL.org.

From the Archives: Charlottesville Libertarians celebrate Bill of Rights Day at Free Speech Wall

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on December 15, 2013. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Charlottesville Libertarians celebrate Bill of Rights Day at Free Speech Wall

On the 222nd anniversary of the ratification of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, members of the Jefferson Area Libertarians gathered at the Free Speech Monument near Charlottesville's City Hall to celebrate the Bill of Rights and how it “safeguards life, liberty, and property.”

An annual event since 1998, the December 15 gathering took place under sunny skies and was sometimes punctuated by a gust of wind that toppled posters and blew scripts out of speakers' hands. Featuring an “acclamation” of the Bill of Rights, in which the whole group of participants recited the ten amendments and their more obscure preamble, the celebration also included remarks by two local Libertarian Party activists.

'Restrictions on government'

In introducing the acclamation, Jefferson Area Libertarians (JAL) chairman John Munchmeyer pointed out that the first ten amendments to the Constitution “are restrictions on government not a list of the rights of the people. Rights” he said, “do not come from a government, a king, a constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or any piece of paper.”

The meaning of declarations of rights like this, he continued, is that “as long as you do not violate others' rights, you may live your life as you see fit without interference from government. The power of the state is subservient to the rights of the individual. This is the key that made this country different; it's what makes these United States of America special.”

Dr. Hallee Morgan, treasurer of the JAL, expressed surprise that the Founders even had do debate whether to add the Bill of Rights to the Constitution.

Today, she said, the Bill of Rights “seems like something that's just so important and so basic that one would think they wouldn't be able to debate about it” but rather that they would simply adopt it as something unquestionably proper.

Morgan noted that what the Founders “were most afraid of then was the power of the federal government,” which is also “one of the biggest problems that we have right at the moment.” The federal government, she added, “”take more than the Bill of Rights allows, consistently.”

Today's lawmakers “have too much power. They have a great deal more, certainly, than was intended by our forefathers.”

'Right to be left alone'

Morgan reflected on the definition of rights by noting that “existentialists would say that the natural law is the right to exist. Then of course there was Emerson, who said it was just the right to be left alone, which I can certainly sympathize with.”

Under natural law, she said, “we have the right to be free, the right to be free from coercion, to be free from servitude; the right to think, the right to create, the right to love; the right to defend yourself and defend others – any of your loved ones.”

Concluding her remarks, Morgan said that she is “really frightened by the future of the United States, mainly because we're getting so far away from the Constitution. The president, lawmakers, and judges are just roundly ignoring it.”

Munchmeyer followed up by showing how the original concept of the U.S. government has been “turned upside down.”

The Founders, he said, “formed the federal government to take care of specific enumerated functions like national defense, but the purpose of the government was still exclusively to safeguard life, liberty, and property and stay out of everything else.”

'Tentacles of bureaucracy'

Over the past 150 years, he lamented, “the whole thing has been turned on its head and now the servant has become the master. We have a national government that lords over the states and also lords directly over the individual, forcing us to do its bidding.”

Pointing out the expansiveness of the federal government today, Munchmeyer added that “it is difficult to name one aspect of our lives the tentacles of the national bureaucracy do not reach. Most of that intervention has resulted in making things worse [while] creating new, unforeseen side effects.”

Trying to end on an upbeat note, the JAL chairman said that gatherings like this one on Charlottesville's downtown mall demonstrate that people still have concern for their government and are willing to protest overreach on matters like NSA spying, Obamacare, and unbridled regulations. He optimistically closed his remarks by wishing the crowd a merry Christmas.