By Douglas V. Gibbs
America has been drifting away from its founding constitutional principles, a decay made possible by the patient, incremental strategy of “shifting baselines.” The enemies of limited government understand that the gradual erosion of liberty is far more effective than a sudden assault. What the Founding Fathers designed as a government of limited, enumerated powers has morphed into a sprawling administrative state with virtually unlimited authority, precisely because each generation accepts the overreach of the previous one as the new normal.
This concept of gradualism is a well-understood tool of those who seek to expand state power. As A. Ralph Epperson noted in The Unseen Hand, the strategy is to “promise one thing and deliver another… socialism must be brought about step by step [in gradual doses] in a way which will not disrupt the fabric of custom, law and mutual confidence.” It’s the classic scenario of the frog in a pot of water, slowly brought to a boil. The initial warmth is comforting, the heat increases so gradually it’s hardly noticed, and by the time the frog realizes the danger, it’s too late.
The founding baseline was crystal clear: the federal government’s authority was strictly limited to powers explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment was the ultimate safeguard, reserving all other powers to the states and the people. The Necessary and Proper Clause was a narrow tool to execute those enumerated powers, not a blank check. The Commerce Clause was designed to limit federal control while also preventing states from imposing tariffs on one another, not to regulate every human activity that might indirectly affect commerce. The General Welfare Clause was a condition to be met (as both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison later noted) and a limitation on Congress’s spending power, not an independent and unlimited source of legislative authority somehow tied to the “common good.”
The first major baseline shift came from Alexander Hamilton’s push for a national bank and his doctrine of “implied powers” which opened the door for the federal government to claim authority beyond what was expressly written. By broadly interpreting the Necessary and Proper Clause, Hamilton injected mercantilist ideas into what was meant to be a free-market system, setting a precedent for constitutional circumvention.
The next shift came from the judiciary. In Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall established the principle of judicial review, granting the federal courts a power that had been rejected during the Constitutional Convention. This judicial tyranny was applied in small doses, taking two centuries to reach the astronomical level of power we see today. We accept it only because it was built gradually, with each generation acclimating to the court’s expanding role.
After the War Between the States, a catastrophic shift occurred. The federal government, having (allegedly) preserved the Union, began asserting itself with new force. The Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th), while intended to protect individual rights, established a precedent for federal intervention in areas traditionally reserved to the states. The baseline shifted from “federal action is unconstitutional unless explicitly authorized” to “federal action is permissible if it can be tied to a broadly interpreted constitutional purpose,” however loosely defined.
The most dramatic collapse, however, came during the New Deal. Faced with the Great Depression, FDR’s administration enacted sweeping economic regulations unthinkable to the Founders. The Supreme Court initially resisted, striking down programs for exceeding the Commerce Clause and violating the non-delegation doctrine. But under immense political pressure, including FDR’s court-packing threat, the Court capitulated in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937). This “switch in time that saved nine” marked the death of strict constitutional limits.
The new baseline was devastating. The Commerce Clause was twisted to allow Congress to regulate virtually any activity crossing state lines, or with a “substantial economic effect” on interstate commerce. The non-delegation doctrine was neutered, permitting Congress to create vast administrative agencies like the EPA, OSHA, and the SEC, endowed with the power to make, enforce, and adjudicate their own rules. The Administrative State was born.
With this New Deal baseline cemented, federal expansion accelerated. The Great Society’s “War on Poverty” entrenched federal control over education and healthcare. The “War on Drugs” federalized state-level criminal matters. The post-9/11 Patriot Act justified warrantless surveillance in the name of national security. The COVID-19 response saw federal agencies issue sweeping mandates with minimal congressional oversight.
Why was this obvious overreach so easily accepted? Because of shifting baselines. Each generation grows up with the previous generation’s overreach as its starting point. Someone born in 1990 doesn’t remember a time before the Department of Education or the EPA; to them, these agencies are normal. The baseline has shifted so dramatically that what the Founders would have considered tyrannical is now seen as “responsible governance.”
This creates a vicious cycle: government expands its power, citizens resist but the expansion persists, the next generation grows up with it as normal, and the cycle repeats. The result is a federal government operating in ways that are fundamentally unconstitutional according to the document’s original meaning, yet accepted because we have collectively forgotten what true constitutional government looks like. The baseline has shifted so far that restoring the original is now seen as radical, not restorative.
The great tragedy is not that the government has seized power, but that we have willingly handed it over, one generation at a time. The Constitution is not a “living document” that evolves with the times; it is a cage, designed to contain the beast of government power. We have not only unlocked the door; we have forgotten the cage ever existed. The question is no longer whether we can restore the original baseline, but whether anyone even remembers what it looked like.
In our relentless pursuit of progress, we have regressed to the very state of centralized authority the Founders risked everything to escape. We have traded the chains of a distant king for the shackles of a sprawling bureaucracy, celebrating our freedom while ignoring the tightening grip. The baselines have shifted so dramatically that the radicalism of 1776 is now considered extremism, and the quiet tyranny of the administrative state is hailed as responsible governance. The experiment in self-government, it seems, has succeeded in convincing the subjects they are still in charge.
If we are to take it back, it begins with education. We must rediscover what the Constitution truly says and what the founding generation meant by its words. Only when we can answer those questions can we begin to slow-step the system back in the right direction. But be aware: just as it was a long game of shifting baselines that brought us here, it will take a similar generational game, bit by bit, to restore what was lost.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
