Since when is talk of secession not considered treason?With the talk of secession ramping oddly up, the source of this dismay at the federal government must be put into the proper context.Governors Rick Perry of Texas and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota have tried to exert their state sovereignty by positing the unconstitutionality of health care reform.Their argument centers around the 10th Amendment, which gives the states power to exert their sovereignty, essentially declaring everything unconstitutional unless it’s specifically in the Constitution —  like our highways, our police and firefighters and even our Pell Grants.This ridiculous argument is one in a long line of challenges to the authority of the federal government, even going as far as convincing people the Founding Fathers would have hated all our amendments to their perfect Constitution, while still imploring people to do what they think our Founding Fathers would have done.The founders realized the document was to change along with the country, with the standards of colonial America differing vastly from contemporary society.Let’s hop into the way-back machine and look at life 200 years ago to fully realize how far we’ve come.The year is 1809. America is a petty 30-something who, like all others, thinks she knows everything. Life was good, people were merry and, like the Founders of our great land would have it, some people were considered “commodities.”I can hear the corner vendors in my head:”SLAVES! GET YOUR SLAVES HERE! WE GOT BIG ONES! SMALL ONES! TOUGH ONES! EVEN ONES WHO THINK THEY’RE HUMAN! GET YOUR SLAVES HERE!”Fast-forward to today, when elected leaders yearn for simpler times, when the true greatness and vision of our Founding Fathers is called for, even clamored for, when 200 years of subjugation and oppression have led to an unsatisfactory world where people assume they know what the Founders meant.The Founders wanted to give the people the freedoms of speech, religion, petition, the press, guns and some others having to do with courts, juries and quartering soldiers.But slavery? Get a life. We need cotton.Women’s suffrage? Please, when did they learn to leave the kitchen?Voting at 18? You’re allowed to die for democracy, not participate in it.The nerve of some people.Don’t you know the states hold the ultimate power? Don’t you know the states hold all the authority of this land?Don’t you know the states should secede?I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s take this slowly.When the Declaration of Independence was written, the colonies revolted from the oppressive King George III, who, along with the British Parliament, was responsible for nonsense taxes from which the colonies received no benefit.The Constitution — ordained, established and ratified after years of bloody fighting — codified the basic principles of a brand new experiment called “democracy.”But as we well know, this wasn’t good enough by itself. Speaking of “by itself,” many today are longing for a simpler time, back when amendments to the Constitution were considered inferior to the sacred document establishing our experiment.There was no need for a 14th Amendment, which guaranteed simple rights to anyone regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”This was mandated because the original wording of the Constitution designated black people as three-fifths of a person — which, by the way, was a compromise.Taking this into account, both President Obama and myself had black fathers and white mothers. Doing the math, half of us is one whole person, plus the three-fifths making up the other half.Basic arithmetic proves myself and the Commander-in-Chief are both four-fifths of a person.Just as the Founders intended.Eric Freeman Jr. is a 22-year-old political science senior from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_efreeman.—-Contact Eric Freeman Jr. at [email protected]