The Ninth and Tenth Amendments

There has been so much going on this past week and today that I am grateful these two are fairly straightforward.

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

X
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.

I feel like these last two amendments in the Bill of Rights are a closing out to it, in much the same way that the last two articles function for the regular body of the Constitution. We know what we have said, we thought hard about it, so don't go trying to say it means this or that. Having those bits of clarity doesn't mean that no one would ever try and shrink or stretch a definition, but it's at least an attempt at closing the process.

They say that everything we have just gone over is the province of the Federal government, but primarily for the purpose of delineating the rights of persons that the government will defend. If we didn't mention it, it can be left to the States, or to the conscience of individual citizens, but we know our government does not need to keep inserting itself into everything.

That could be dangerous ground, but I think it shows a confidence in what came before. We covered what we need to, and the important things are contained therein.

That is not to say there was no controversy in the ratification of these first ten amendments, but it must have nonetheless been possible to look at what had been accomplished and feel like it was good.