Nick Dranias/Goldwater Institute
In honor of Constitution Week, the Goldwater Institute has released report that compares the 50 state constitutions to what we usually consider the gold standard. As Goldwater is a think tank devoted to the philosophy of limited government and economic freedom, report author Nick Dranias naturally reviews the state constitutions from that perspective.
In “50 Bright Stars,” Dranias concludes nearly every state has a fundamental document that offers more protections for civic rights and more restrictions on the scope and power of government than is described in the U.S. Constitution or as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. The state constitutions that shine the brightest for freedom are found in Arizona, Alabama, Tennessee and Idaho, Dranias concludes after combining his own analysis with the Mercatus Center’s economic freedom study.
In fact, Arizona ranks first in one of Dranias’ charts that factors in 10 different benchmarks for a classic constitutional republic. That result might be bit of home state bias, as Arizona’s actual score based on Dranias’ analysis was matched by Florida and Louisiana.
Before we puff up our chests too much, Dranias has one, giant caveat — neither state or federal governments really look anything like the limited structures that were envisioned by the framers of the U.S. Constitution in 1787:
“In a very real sense, Arizonans and the residents
of a handful of other states hold the flame
of liberty in their hands — a flame with the
illumination of a match-light, not a torch.
Whether or not we can keep that flame
alive, grow it, and spread its illumination
across the nation depends critically upon
focusing limited resources where they will
have the greatest impact.”
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Arizona ranking #1 in a Goldwater report tells me what everyone in the REAL world already knows; Arizona is at the bottom of the barrel and not in any way attempting to get out. The Arizona constitution is a laugh!