Guest Blogger: Rahul Mukherjee

After discussing the possibilities for a 28th amendment, I looked at a few on the internet and found a very interesting proposed amendment called the "Liberty Amendment" which ties really well with what we have been discussing in class as the main purpose of the constitution and as an aside on the economy. The liberty amendment describes that the individual liberty, freedom and sovereignty of the people will be restored in a representative republican form of government by clarifying the original spirit and intent of the Constitution. The Liberty Amendment will give back to the Constitution its full force and effect in limiting the powers and activities of the Federal Government and restoring those powers reserved to the States and to the people. When I read this, I saw the connections between the republican form of government and the effect of a limited government but what really surprised me was that the main part of this amendment is towards future economic policies towards eliminating the national debt. In brief, its sections describe..

Section 1. The Government of the United States shall not engage in any business, professional, commercial, financial or industrial enterprise except as specified in the Constitution.
Section 2. The constitution or laws of any State, or the laws of the United States shall not be subject to the terms of any foreign or domestic agreement which would abrogate this amendment.
Section 3. The activities of the United States Government which violate the intent and purpose of this amendment shall, within a period of three years from the date of the ratification of this amendment, be liquidated and the properties and facilities affected shall be sold.
Section 4. Three years after the ratification of this amendment the sixteenth article of amendments to the Constitution of the United States shall stand repealed and thereafter Congress shall not levy taxes on personal incomes, estates, and/or gifts. The Liberty Amendment will renew personal freedom – the ability of individuals to exercise their God-given rights with a minimum of dependence on, and interference from, the Federal Government. It will restore to ourselves and to future generations the advantages which we inherited from our forefathers – advantages which made us the most fortunate people on earth.


After reading the sections, I had a disagreeable notion to what it is proposing as I cannot clearly remember any business, professional, commercial, or financial that is specifically stated in the constitution. What really got me was section 2 as it describes the terms of the foreign or domestic agreement because before the framers wrote the constitution, the main problem they wanted to amend in the Articles of Confederation was the weak national government and its lack of ability to raise enough money to support itself and according to this amendment, it's infringing the businesses and foreign trade which, in my opinion, is contradictory to what the founders had in mind. While reading Section 4, I was reminded of the only amendment that was ever repealed (18th) in order to introduce the 26th to get rid of Prohibition and I found that this Liberty amendment, if ratified, would repeal the 16th amendment on Congress not levying personal income tax, property tax...Another interesting proposition made by this amendment is its ability to liquidate all businesses to substantially reduce the national debt and it states that the annual budget spending by the government could be reduced by more than fifty percent by terminating federal competition with free enterprise and interference in the economy. Apparently, this would help the economy start again but would give our natural rights (Locke) back to use, but what I really thought was, did we not help create the government for our protections of our life, liberty, and the pursuit of happyness? And after reading the proposed economic policy, I thought about what would happen after the economy was stable, how would it expand? What would the economic plan look like to raise revenue? Comments are welcome.