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Posts Tagged ‘Articles of Confederation’

Why the 1787 Constitution Did Not Bring Republican Government to America | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on February 20, 2023

They new thing that they were trying to do was carry out a counterrevolution and superimpose a large and expensive national state apparatus over the American republics that already existed. This new government would impose taxes at higher rates than the old monarchy ever had. Unfortunately, the counterrevolutionaries succeeded.

https://mises.org/wire/why-1787-constitution-did-not-bring-republican-government-america

Ryan McMaken

One of the many myths that schoolchildren are taught in the name of American exceptionalism is the idea that the Americans finally embraced a republican form of government at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. This, we are told, was revolutionary.

The usual narrative goes something like this: In ancient times, the world saw the rise of republics in Italy and Greece. The Roman Republic was notable for its virtue and its status as a government of the people. But the Roman Republic, like the small Greek republics, was but short lived and was destroyed by the temptations of empire and despotism.

But then came the so-called American experiment. This new, noble experiment sprang up when America’s great men met at Philadelphia in 1787 to hand down to Americans a new republic—something revolutionary and innovative in the face of a world ruled by crowned heads.

This story is often accompanied by a well-worn anecdote about Benjamin Franklin. It usually goes like this:

Philadelphia, 1787. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention are just leaving Independence Hall, having decided on the general structure for the new United States. A crowd had gathered on the steps of Independence Hall, eager to hear the news. A sturdy old woman (sometimes referred to as “an anxious lady”), wearing a shawl, approached Benjamin Franklin and asked him, “well, Doctor, what do we have, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied sagely, “a republic, if you can keep it.”

Most of my readers will surely have heard this little anecdote many times. The subtext here is that the United States had invented something altogether new with the constitution of 1787. The story suggests that in the late 1780s, Americans were not yet sure if they had the fortitude for a republic or if they would return to being a monarchy. Fortunately, the sagacious Founding Fathers decided “we” would be republicans after all.1

As propaganda, this story has been remarkably effective. For many Americans—at least for those who received some sort of education—the propaganda seems quite plausible. After all, weren’t the French and the English ruled by despotic kings in the late eighteenth century? Wasn’t George Washington offered a position as king of America? Apparently, whether or not the United States would be a republic remained an open question.

It’s a nice tale, but it is fundamentally wrong in light of the political realities of the 1780s. This is obvious when we consider two facts: the first is that by the time the 1787 convention took place, the lands of the former British colonies were already a thoroughly republican place. All of the US states, plus the neighboring Republic of Vermont, had already adopted republican constitutions. The Philadelphia convention had nothing to do with it.

The second problem for the myth is that in 1787 the United States overall already had a republican constitution. The so-called Articles of Confederation had been adopted in 1776, and thus there was nothing revolutionary or innovative about adopting a second republican constitution in 1787.

In other words, all Americans in 1787 already lived in a constitutional republic at both the state level and the federal level. So, no, the Founding Fathers most certainly did not invent or create a new “experiment” of republicanism in any way. They new thing that they were trying to do was carry out a counterrevolution and superimpose a large and expensive national state apparatus over the American republics that already existed. This new government would impose taxes at higher rates than the old monarchy ever had. Unfortunately, the counterrevolutionaries succeeded.

But why invent a myth in which the new constitution was somehow responsible for making the United States a republic? At least part of the motivation here surely stems from the fact that the myth minimizes the states’ role in creating the republic. By ignoring the fact that the states laid the groundwork for republican government, the myth can instead push the narrative that the Federalists and their strong new central government “gave” America a republican system of government. This top-down creation myth erases the bottom-up reality. Moreover, the myth helps to obscure the fact that the United States was originally intended to be a voluntary confederation of republics, and not simply “a republic.”

Yet the myth endures.

The States Were Already Republican before the New Constitution

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Freedom’s Only Chance Is to Eliminate Constitution Worship From the Minds of All Thinking Individuals

Posted by M. C. on June 29, 2022

By Gary D. Barnett

To put this in plain English, the masses are fully responsible for their own servitude because they voluntarily allow themselves to be lied to, cheated, taxed, manipulated, controlled, beaten, ruled, and murdered by the very people they purposely place in power over them.

Freedom’s Only Chance Is to Eliminate Constitution Worship From the Minds of All Thinking Individuals

“The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.: 1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth. 2. Dupes – a large class, no doubt – each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a “free man,” a “sovereign”; that this is “a free government”; “a government of equal rights,” “the best government on earth,” and such like absurdities. 3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change.”

Lysander Spooner, No Treason No. 6: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)

Given all that has happened over the past 233 years, and especially the past three years, one might wonder why it is so vital to scrap the U.S. Constitution, (and eliminate government rule) and to cease immediately what in many cases could be considered Constitution worship. In fact, most will take considerable offense at the suggestion that the Constitution is a heinous document and a fraud, and in great part, has been the foundation of our liberty destruction. After all, many actually believe that this politician’s dream came directly from God. This could not be so if the American masses had not been duped into believing that a piece of parchment created and drafted in secret, in the dark of night, behind closed and locked doors; and by the very worst and most depraved element of society, politicians, was meant only to expand the powers of a centralized federal (national) government to levels so extreme as to defy sanity.

What level of nonsense is evident when the majority of the supposed most intelligent beings on earth believe that a political document can save them, give and protect their ‘rights’; all based on the absurd notion that all that is necessary for individual sovereignty is that an all-powerful government follow to the letter the same ‘rules’ it created for itself out of whole cloth?  Maybe this can be explained better by the master of propaganda, Edward Bernays, when he said:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

To put this in plain English, the masses are fully responsible for their own servitude because they voluntarily allow themselves to be lied to, cheated, taxed, manipulated, controlled, beaten, ruled, and murdered by the very people they purposely place in power over them.

It seems that I get correspondence daily to the effect that if only ‘our’ constitution were respected and followed, we all would be saved, lights would shine in the heavens, happiness would flourish, bells would ring, prosperity and equality would reign, and government would restrict itself and become a paternal and loving master.

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A More or Less Perfect Union – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on February 12, 2020

There’s a discussion about how some of our Bill of Rights guarantees mean absolutely nothing today, namely the 9th and 10th Amendments, which reaffirm personal liberty by specifically limiting the federal government to its “enumerated powers.”

The most important audience for “A More or Less Perfect Union” is high school and college students. For it is they who stand a good chance of losing the liberties that made our nation the greatest and freest on earth.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/02/walter-e-williams/a-more-or-less-perfect-union/

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“A More or Less Perfect Union” is a three-part series, produced by Free to Choose Network, that will air on various PBS stations across the nation starting in February. The documentary is a personal exploration of the U.S. Constitution by Justice Douglas Ginsburg, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit and is now a senior justice on the court. Ginsburg explores the U.S. Constitution and features interviews with and gains the perspectives from constitutional experts of all political views — liberal, conservative and libertarian. He examines the key issues of liberty in the U.S. both from a historical and contemporary perspective. Among those issues are freedom of the press and religion, slavery and civil rights, the Second Amendment, separation of powers and the number of ways that the Constitution’s framers sought to limit the power of the federal government.

The first episode is titled “A Constitution in Writing.” It examines the contentious atmosphere that arose among the delegates in that hot, humid Philadelphia summer of 1787. State delegates were sent to Philadelphia to work out the problems of the Articles of Confederation, which served as the first Constitution of the 13 original states. This part of the documentary examines some of the efforts to deal with the problems of the Articles of Confederation while maintaining its guiding principle to preserve the independence and sovereignty of the states. It also examines the compromises and struggles that led to the document we know as the U.S. Constitution. Some of the framers, particularly the Anti-Federalists, led by Patrick Henry, saw the Constitution as defective and demanded amendments be added that contained specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights and clear limitations on the federal government’s power. They swore that they would never ratify the Constitution unless it contained a Bill of Rights.

The second episode is titled “A Constitution for All.” One major emphasis of this episode is the examination of the Supreme Court decisions that undermined racial justice both for slaves and later ex-slaves for a century after the Civil War. Several constitutional scholars discuss how the courts and states ignored and weakened the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, known collectively as the Civil War Amendments, which were designed to ensure equality for recently emancipated slaves. There is also discussion of Bill of Rights guarantees to people accused of a crime. There is more exploration into the Bill of Rights guarantees of free speech, religious freedom and the notion that “due process of law” be part of any proceeding that denies a citizen “life, liberty or property.” This forced the government to compensate citizens when it takes private property for public use.

Episode three, “Our Constitution at Risk,” examines the many ways that our Constitution is under assault today. It points out that the framers would be shocked by how all three branches of government have grown as a result of what we the people demand from our elected representatives. There’s a discussion about how some of our Bill of Rights guarantees mean absolutely nothing today, namely the 9th and 10th Amendments, which reaffirm personal liberty by specifically limiting the federal government to its “enumerated powers.”

“A More or Less Perfect Union” is not just a bunch of academics and constitutional experts preaching. It features interviews with everyday Americans weighing in with their visions on the rule of law, the branches of government and the debate over originalism. There’s a companion book titled “Voices of Our Republic,” edited by Ginsburg. It is a collection of thoughts about the Constitution from judges, journalists, and academics. It includes the thoughts of Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Neil Gorsuch and Sandra Day O’Connor, publisher Arthur Sulzberger, professor Alan Dershowitz, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and historians Joseph Ellis and Ron Chernow, along with Jack Nicklaus, Gene Simmons and many others.

The most important audience for “A More or Less Perfect Union” is high school and college students. For it is they who stand a good chance of losing the liberties that made our nation the greatest and freest on earth.

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