If the original Constitution formed a system of law with a limited central government, then how did the United States get so offtrack?

That's the argument presented by David Loy Mauch, who claims that the government originally established by the United States' founding fathers isn't what we have now. And in his book "This Constitution...shall be the supreme Law of the Land," Mauch contends that events during and after the Civil War led to the false interpretation of US law still at work today-that the federal government trumps state rights.

This provocative educational guide looks...