Make Mine the Ninth, Thankyouverymuch.

 I prefer the Ninth Amendment to the Tenth, generally, the latter containing an element that leaves doors open for mischief.

The 9A states:

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

 

The Amendment states in clear language that the rights of free men exist well beyond the metes and specifications of the Constitution and that those rights may not be in any way validly disparaged.  The Framers should have stopped there, but sadly failed to.  Perhaps they wanted a nice round number and could think of nothing better than the following:

"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."

 

The bolded text is the problem. For one thing, it logically separates "states" from "people. Here's a newsflash: the people ARE the "states". Were you and I to climb to yon dizzying height upon the mountaintop and wave the magic wand to cause every human being on the planet to disappear, save you and myself, I would then ask "where is the 'state'? Show it to me!" You would be hard pressed to demonstrate its existence. Without people - ALL the people - there is no "state", and even then reference to the "state" is naught other than a linguistic convention of practical convenience. It never refers to anything real, except perhaps the set of a given human population, such as those of Texas, for example.

In addition, the use of "or" leaves a logically valid pretext for excluding "the people" from the powers in question. From the standpoint of propositional logic (zeroth-order logic), there is an OR-relationship between the "state" and people. This relationship is used daily to deny the rights of free Americans. The National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA34) is a prime example. NFA34 formally and systematically denies or infringes upon the right of most people to keep and bear certain types of arms, which are reserved only for the "state", which of course is just another set of people, fundamentally no different from the rest, save by the false claims made by themselves against all the others. Nuclear materials are similarly restricted in equal violation. The list of such violations is drearily long. From the standpoint of logic, the semantics of the Tenth tell us that so long as at least one of the two entities ("state" or people) reserve a particular power, all is well with the world. This, of course, is nonsense, and yet here we are. The Framers, knowingly or not, foisted a tiny but vicious disaster upon the people they claimed to have been best guaranteeing freedom.

The semantic bottom-line of "the states, or the people" reduces to "the people, or the people". From the standpoint of set logic, we can say that the expression would be "one set of people" or "the other set of people". The only way to render this valid in terms of its truth value would be to demonstrate a fundamental (radical) difference between the members of the two sets. This cannot be done, and so there is no valid basis in logic or in truth for setting one set above the other in terms of its authority to reserve for itself and wield the powers in question. It is redundant and in that redundancy resides no practically valid meaning. In other words, that particular portion of the Amendment is pure nonsensical gibberish, devoid of meaning the moment you reject the notion of "state" as an extant, objectively real entity separate and distinct from "the people". "The people" are the only reality that "state" can ever claim as its own. As you can see, we are awash in bullshit; very dangerous bullshit, I may add, for it has been the root of endless evils.

HOWEVER, there is a tiny jewel in the 10A: "nor prohibited by [the Constitution] to the states". It is the clear and explicit indicator that the states MUST abide by the restrictions placed upon them by the Constitution just as must the fedgov comply. These tight limitations upon "state" governing powers and actions are the conditions a territory's people must accept as a requirement for being accepted as a member of the American union. It by all means sets to rest some of the foolish debate as to whether the states are so bound by the so-called "equal protection" clause of the 14A. They are indeed so bound insofar as the Constitution limits the reach of "government" power.

The Constitution is the contract by which signatories thereto are to be held in compliance. This does not lend any super power of the fedgov to enforce upon states their usually idiotic and felonious requirements they have so often foisted upon the people of the so-called "states". It only means that those operating as agents of "state governments" are hamstrung in the same ways are is the fedgov with respect to the rights of the people whom they are sworn to serve in good faith and competence. If the 14A applied only to the fedgov as some have posited, then the circumscriptions of the Constitution upon that body would have little to no practical meaning because the member states would remain free to disparage and deny rights as they saw fit. This is idiocy of the first order.
A proper, if nonetheless still redundant wording of the 10A would go something like this:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it, are reserved to the People."

 

There are no "states".  "State", as commonly used today, is perhaps the grandest of all lies.  It is a gigantic nothing to which all manner of false properties, powers, rights, and interests have been attributed by those who are either unforgivably ignorant of the relevancies, or who are peddling things that no sane, intelligent,  and decent man would ever buy from another human being, yet who will obediently open his wallet upon command of the almighty "state".  This is a cancer of mind and morals.  Obedience to the "state" represents the renunciation of all individual responsibility for one's own life, choices, and actions.  It is the Freeman become the Weakman by will for the sake of mere convenience; of accepting lies that absolve one of the responsibility to act in countervail of evil.  It is the reduction of the free human being to a sniveling coward, at best, and to an avaricious beast in the worse case, content to see men with guns do his bidding, no matter who gets hurt.

We are currently lost as a people. Freemen must perforce be moral men, for the one cannot exist without the other. The good news, however, is we are not yet so far gone that we cannot recover ourselves from the clutches of the devils who now so blatantly, casually, and with such sardonic contempt and dismissal run roughshod ever more deeply upon the territory of our sovereign rights as free human beings. But time is not on our side, it would seem to me. With each passing day the tyrant worms his way ever more deeply into his quest to cultivate his power to the point that dislodging him becomes ever more unlikely. We should have been hanging the scoundrels from lamp posts and tree branches since at least 200 years ago, but we failed. It is not too late, though, but we cannot prevail if we do not act, and we cannot act if we do not get our heads straight on the matters that count. Defy Themme at every turn. Refuse to comply. Exercise your rights, even if seemingly gratuitously, for failure to do so gives Themme every phony baloney pretext for eventual denial. Be courageous and make Themme sweat and toil and curse and spit for every crumb they take from you. Give up nothing without a fight and leave Themme doubting themselves, yet doubting not your resolve as a Freeman. Be well, God bless you all, and until next time, please accept my best wishes.