I see where you are making an interesting mistake, Bob, and that should help us move further on this.
Yet let me thank you once more for being direct and providing me therefore a look into your thinking. What I also like is that we are almost saying the exact same things. Almost, because you are giving away some of your own US Constitutional powers and I would never do that.
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The first thing to get above water is that none of the three empowered entities are the absolute dictator in this case. Rather, the US Constitution itself is top dog.
That highest legal document in the nation is the blue print of our nation, the ultimate pathway how our nation is put together. Everything has to function via this document, cannot conflict with it, including acknowledging of course that not all is dictated all the way to picking up after one's dog. All entities are subjected to it, nevertheless: Federal government, State governments, and the People. The US Constitution rocks, because it is the rock.
This is a very important part for understanding the setup. We have to separate the struggles of the three powers from the actual document itself that describes these powers. The blueprint is legally found above the three entities.
The powers are described in the US Constitution, and as such it is the US Constitution that bestowed these powers on these three entities. So, if you say that the US Constitution does not bestow powers (as it clearly does in the Tenth Amendment), then we are not standing on the same foundation. You are then standing on your (or other people's) idea of what that document describes, and I am standing on the exact words themselves as found in that document and what all States ultimately signed. I am saying: Three realms of powers in total, and a fourth realm for local cities and counties is absolutely not one of them.
Allow me to make this tiny distinction ultra-important, Bob. It is not that I must win, or that you must agree to the position. We are ultimately not going to a judge for a final decision, and as such we are not involving a third party to have it go one way or another. What I am trying to do is make you see the position I stand in. I cannot force you to stand in the same spot, but I can tell you that you are letting things slip out of your hands by standing in your spot because you are not standing with the exact words of the US Constitution themselves but with an interpretation that made you make a step out of the way (and the powers that be profiting from your moving one step out of the way).
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As we learned in school, the Framers were disappointed that they had to agree to the US Constitution as first put in place. They tried to turn this into a better outcome, but they had to agree that the 13 colonies remained their own legal entities. A compromise got established. What they did have, however, was the signatures of the 13 States, making this the highest document of the nation for all and forever.
What got put in place at first is a separate-but-equal setup: 13 equal States, separated from one another in one Federation. It was that separate-but-equal that made the outcome a disappointment for the Framers (because separate-but-equal is never an enlightened setup, but rather an acknowledgment of what already was -- as such, it was not new, just an agreement to work together).
(Yes, we can agree that the Founding Fathers were not the cleanest in all respect themselves. It's very much Do as I say, not as I do, right?)
The reaction by the Framers to that disappointing limitation is what we call the Bill of Rights. It is their trying to overcome the medieval aspects of separate-but-equal by describing the enlightened ideals one by one. I have no qualms what you say about the first eight. I focus on the Ninth, the Tenth and the Fourteenth.
These amendments to the US Constitution are fully anchored in the US Constitution; they are part of it. The Amendments are bolted in cement. The Framers could not get their enlightened ideals in via the front door, and they got them in via the back door. But in the house we call the USA, they got them in with the foundation nevertheless.
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If you want to say I am mistaken, then I can only reply the same to you. I claim the actual words in the Ninth, Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments unmistakably show that this position I take in is correct. I care about the other Amendments particularly when you can use them to undermine the three I just mentioned. But otherwise there are no words to undermine these highest words.
Interpretations about the words are not the words themselves.
