“It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy,” he wrote in a famous passage. “It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.” – John Adams
The great shortcoming of democracy is and always has been the culture, the people themselves. The stupidity and hypocrisy displayed every day on social media is proof of that.
As was noted above, John Adams, and other Founding Fathers, were dubious about the idea of democracy, precisely because it provided the means to weaponize the general stupidity of people.
But isn’t America a democracy?
Well…despite what the anti-electoral college idiots tell you…the pledge of allegiance states, “and to the republic for which it stands.”
This photo prompted talk show personality Samantha Bee to call Ivanka Trump “a feckless cunt”, all to the cheers of Progressives.
The Framers of the Constitution were, again dubious of pure democracy, “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths”– (Federalist No. 10).
They instead opted for a republic. A democracy is a form of government in which the people decide policy matters directly–through town hall meetings or by voting on ballot initiatives and referendums. A republic, on the other hand, is a system in which the people choose representatives who, by proxy make decisions for them.
Over time, “democracy”, liberalism, has become a bit bastardized, adopted to mean a form of government in which the government derives its power from the people and is accountable to them for the use of that power. In this sense, the United States might accurately be called a democracy.
Writing of the merits of a republican or representative form of government, James Madison observed that one of the most important differences between a democracy and a republic is “the delegation of the government [in a republic] to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.”
The Constitution notes that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government” (Article IV, Section 4).
What this means is that the real value isn’t so much that we have universal or regular elections, but the tripartite government with a further subdivided legislative branch in which senators (at one time they were appointed, not elected) had the power to keep in check the more democratic House of Representatives. We also have a fundamental Bill of Rights—these right shall not be infringed upon, where the people are not allowed to vote on the determination of rights such as freedom of speech and of religion. The Supreme Court is empowered to use the law to restrain such “democratic assaults” on liberty and citizenship.
However, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. In 1937, Karl Loewenstein published “Militant Democracy and Fundamental Rights,” in the American Political Science Review in 1937. According to Loewenstein, fascists were able to abuse the fundamental rights granted to them by democratic constitutions – namely freedom of speech, press, and assembly, and equal participation in the electoral process – to destroy democracy from within. The key to defending democracy and defeating fascists was to deny them these fundamental rights through temporary restrictive legislation. Confronted with the success of Hitler and Germany throughout the 1930s. He understood fascism not as an ideology but as a method, one that exploited nationalism and newly available forms of media to achieve “a supersession of constitutional government by emotional government.”
He noted, “The technical devices for mobilizing emotionalism are ingenious and of amazing variety and efficacy, although recently become more and more standardized–among them, besides high-pitched nationalist enthusiasm, the most important expedient, perhaps, is permanent psychic coercion, at times amounting to intimidation and terrorization scientifically applied.”
Lowenstien’s is a lament on the inability of democracy to contain fascism. It refers to a form of constitutional democracy authorized to protect civil and political freedom by preemptively restricting the exercise of such freedoms. Today, we see it manifested in the raft of anti-terrorism legislative initiatives that many states introduced in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001. At the federal level, we see the Patriot Act and empowering of the NSA. More traditional manifestations of militant democracy include hate-speech legislation, the banning of political parties, restrictions on mass demonstrations, and the criminalization of certain political organizations.
While Lowenstein may have had his heart in the right place, he was just trying to ward off totalitarianism with more totalitarianism…most Americans have not had to go to the extremes he witnessed in Europe.
The framers, by limiting the powers of the federal government and the division of those powers limits autocratic ambitions.
Still, militant democratic tendencies seep in, such as Net Neutrality or “campaign finance reform,” a subtle way of suppressing and regulating political speech coming from unapproved parties at unapproved times or in unapproved contexts. Youtube removing PragerU videos, or Facebook labeling Diamond and Silk as “dangerous”.
The totalitarians’ rhetoric always returns to some form of militant democracy and the idea ultimately finds its way into legal action–those who would ban dissident sermons about gay marriage or the wanton use of unapproved pronouns as “hate speech,” those who advocate the arrest and suppression of activists and scholars with unpopular views about climate change, presidents who threaten to sic the federal regulators on media critics and left-leaning technology companies, mayors who would use the powers of government against nonconformist Chic-fil-A.
A Slight Regression to lament a Sad Chicken
Mayor Bill de Blasio and members of the New York City Council are calling for a city-wide boycott of Chick-fil-A – “I’m certainly not going to patronize them and I wouldn’t urge any other New Yorker to patronize them,” the mayor told DNAInfo.com.
Councilman Daniel Dromm was even more blunt – accusing the Southern restaurant chain of spreading a “message of hate.” Chick-fil-A opened its first New York City restaurant in 2015 – followed by a second location in April. The mayor’s remarks came after it was announced a third restaurant would be opening in Queens – which happens to be the district represented by Councilman Dromm. So why do the mayor and the city council have a problem with Chick-fil-A? Basically, Chick-fil-A is owned by a devoutly Christian family. Back in 2012 company president Dan Cathy ruffled feathers by telling a reporter that he believed marriage is between a man and a woman.
“What the ownership of Chick-fil-A has said is wrong,” said De Blasio. Reminder, this is the guy who eats his pizza with a fork.
Run to the Cry Closet!
Worse, if Ben Shapiro or Milo is permitted to speak on a college campus, the argument goes, then the gas chambers can only be a few days away. It appears now that the great threats to American democracy are a mild-mannered Orthodox Jew with a newspaper column or a provocative homosexual that likes to wear fur or one or two nice blonde ladies from Connecticut who spend Saturdays driving their kids to soccer matches. I doubt even Lowenstein would make any correlations to Weimar Germany. This is all just basic stupidity.
Can liberalism contain democracy—is mass democracy more dangerous threat to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, property rights, and other fundamentals of citizenship than Nazi storm troopers?
As Kanye West found out, it is the democratic mob, not an autocratic elite, that demands conformity in life and thought and speech, and brooks no dissent.
Just recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for prosecuting Charles and David Koch as traitors and war criminals. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, was subjected to subpoenas (including demands for information about its donors) because the nation’s Democratic Attorneys general don’t like what its former patron Exxon has had to say about global warming. ExxonMobil remains under investigation for its activism and advocacy on climate change. As attorney general of California, Kamala Harris illegally demanded donor lists from conservative nonprofits for the obvious purpose of subjecting them to political bullying. The IRS harassment of Tea Party groups and the National Organization for Marriage is part of our history. State University of New York at Oswego administrator has reprimanded a conservative student for delivering an “uncomfortable” speech during an “Open Mic” event last month.
The leftist culture that told itself it was radically open-minded really turned out to be one balkanized by fear, insularity, intellectual bigotry, and closed-mindedness.
That makes it valuable as an artifact of the mindset that has done so much to alienate conservatives from much of the media and that has contributed so much to the ghettoization of our political discourse. Not surprisingly, when you tell roughly half of the country that they are benighted bigots whose ideas are not even worth hearing, they go elsewhere.
For those of us raised by Roosevelt Democrats, the feeling we have now is disappointment, and of being woke.
Irving Kristol famously said, “a neoconservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality.”
So it goes.
Great article. Thank you.
I agree–great article, very much needed by a number of not-so-well-educated leftists in Northampton County who fail to understand the difference between a democracy and a federal republic and who are unable to see the dangers inherent in the entitlement state. I live in Accomack County, but then, we have to deal with Robert “Tyson Chicken” Crockett, Supervisor for Life. Again, thanks for such a well-written editorial.
What an interesting and thought-provoking article on many levels we don’t often see being discussed in this very confused place that bills itself as the “United States of America,” but really isn’t united, at all, as we can clearly see from the USA TODAY article “California bans travel to another state based on its ‘discriminatory’ LGBT adoption law” by Ryan W. Miller on 3 June 2018, as follows:
Add Oklahoma to the list of states to which California is banning state-funded and state-sponsored travel.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced Friday that as a result of “discriminatory legislation” that became Oklahoma law last month, the western state will prohibit travel to its midwestern counterpart.
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California sounds like it is becoming insular and isolated like North Korea.
That article continues as follows:
“California taxpayers are taking a stand against bigotry and in support of those who would be harmed by this prejudiced policy.” he said.
Oklahoma becomes the ninth state subject to the state-funded ban.
Travel to Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas had previously been prohibited due to the 2017 law.
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So, are we still the “United States of America?”
Or have we turned into a democracy, instead, where one never knows from day to day if there is any law, or what it might possibly be, since mutability is a hallmark of democracy, which brings me back in time to November 22, 1787, and “Cato’s” Letter V to the Citizens of the State of New York in the New-York Journal, November 22, 1787, where he stated as follows as to what he thought at that time our future in this country would be, in terms of government, to wit:
In my last number I endeavored to prove that the language of the article relative to the establishment of the executive of this new government was vague and inexplicit, that the great powers of the President, connected with his duration in office would lead to oppression and ruin.
That he would be governed by favorites and flatterers, or that a dangerous council would be collected from the great officers of state — that the ten miles square, if the remarks of one of the wisest men, drawn from the experience of mankind, may be credited, would be the asylum of the base, idle, avaricious and ambitious, and that the court would possess a language and manners different from yours; that a vice president is as unnecessary, as he is dangerous in his influence — that the president cannot represent you because he is not of your own immediate choice, that if you adopt this government, you will incline to an arbitrary and odious aristocracy or monarchy that the president possessed of the power, given him by this frame of government differs but very immaterially from the establishment of monarchy in Great Britain, and I warned you to beware of the fallacious resemblance that is held out to you by the advocates of this new system between it and your own state governments.
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From my perspective as a student of history and government in this country, there is much truth in what he says there about the “ten miles square” (Washington, District of Columbia) becoming the asylum of the base, idle, avaricious and ambitious, with the “court” down there possessing a language and manners different from ours, which takes us to this further language in Cato’s Letter V, to wit:
It is a duty you owe likewise to your own reputation, for you have a great name to lose; you are characterised as cautious, prudent and jealous in politics; whence is it therefore, that you are about to precipitate yourselves into a sea of uncertainty, and adopt a system so vague, and which has discarded so many of your valuable rights.
Is it because you do not believe that an American can be a tyrant?
If this be the case you rest on a weak basis; Americans are like other men in similar situations, when the manners and opinions of the community are changed by the causes I mentioned before, and your political compact inexplicit, your posterity will find that great power connected with ambition, luxury, and flattery, will as readily produce a Caesar, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian in America, as the same causes did in the Roman empire.
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As to representation, Cato stated thusly:
It is a very important objection to this government, that the representation consists of so few; too few to resist the influence of corruption, and the temptation to treachery, against which all governments ought to take precautions — how guarded you have been on this head, in your own state constitution, and yet the number of senators and representatives proposed for this vast continent, does not equal those of your own state; how great the disparity, if you compare them with the aggregate numbers in the United States.
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Again, who can argue against Cato’s proposition that our federal government is too weak to resist the influence of corruption, especially now that our federal government is really a possession of two corrupt political factions, both of which represent minorities of voters in this country?
As to the “republican frame” of our federal government, in Federalist No. 37 from the Daily Advertiser, titled “Concerning the Difficulties of the Convention in Devising a Proper Form of Government,” on Friday, January 11, 1788, Virginia’s Jemmy Madison informed us as follows:
IN REVIEWING the defects of the existing Confederation, and showing that they cannot be supplied by a government of less energy than that before the public, several of the most important principles of the latter fell of course under consideration.
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I think that is the important starting point here, that people, because they have no need to, are unaware of today, is that the form or frame of government we have today resulted from a rejection of something which clearly was not working, not could it work – that being the government under the Articles of Confederation.
In all of my reading of the words of those alive at that time, this present frame of government was never intended at the beginning as a cure-all, be-all for the rest of time, a point made throughout the writings of political writers of that time.
Getting back to Federalist No. 37, this is what Jemmy Madison had to say as to our nation’s political beginnings:
But as the ultimate object of these papers is to determine clearly and fully the merits of this Constitution, and the expediency of adopting it, our plan cannot be complete without taking a more critical and thorough survey of the work of the convention, without examining it on all its sides, comparing it in all its parts, and calculating its probable effects.
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Now, it must be kept in mind that when these Federalist Papers were written to the “People of the State of New York,” it is because New York under Governor George Clinton, believed to be “Cato,” was against ratification of the new Constitution, which led Jemmy Madison to state as follows in Federalist No. 37, to wit:
It is a misfortune, inseparable from human affairs, that public measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good; and that this spirit is more apt to be diminished than promoted, by those occasions which require an unusual exercise of it.
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It always amazes me how much more insight they had back then into human nature than seems to exist today, especially among the insipid and juvenile political commentators on main-stream television in America today, which has us divided into good Democrats and a “basket of deplorables.”
As to the purpose of the Federalist Papers, here is what James Madison, a principal author along with Alexander Hamilton, had to say on that subject:
They solicit the attention of those only, who add to a sincere zeal for the happiness of their country, a temper favorable to a just estimate of the means of promoting it.
Persons of this character will proceed to an examination of the plan submitted by the convention, not only without a disposition to find or to magnify faults; but will see the propriety of reflecting, that a faultless plan was not to be expected.
Nor will they barely make allowances for the errors which may be chargeable on the fallibility to which the convention, as a body of men, were liable; but will keep in mind, that they themselves also are but men, and ought not to assume an infallibility in rejudging the fallible opinions of others.
With equal readiness will it be perceived, that besides these inducements to candor, many allowances ought to be made for the difficulties inherent in the very nature of the undertaking referred to the convention.
The novelty of the undertaking immediately strikes us.
It has been shown in the course of these papers, that the existing Confederation is founded on principles which are fallacious; that we must consequently change this first foundation, and with it the superstructure resting upon it.
It has been shown, that the other confederacies which could be consulted as precedents have been vitiated by the same erroneous principles, and can therefore furnish no other light than that of beacons, which give warning of the course to be shunned, without pointing out that which ought to be pursued.
The most that the convention could do in such a situation, was to avoid the errors suggested by the past experience of other countries, as well as of our own; and to provide a convenient mode of rectifying their own errors, as future experiences may unfold them.
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And there I will rest to let the import of those words of Virginia’s James Madison “that a faultless plan was not to be expected,” and the “most that the convention could do in such a situation, was to avoid the errors suggested by the past experience of other countries, as well as of our own; and to provide a convenient mode of rectifying their own errors, as future experiences may unfold them,” be pondered and absorbed.
With respect to the statement “As was noted above, John Adams, and other Founding Fathers, were dubious about the idea of democracy, precisely because it provided the means to weaponize the general stupidity of people,” it must be noted that such statements about democracy were made only after an extensive review of governments around the world by John Adams back in 1786, when the philosophy of government was being hotly debated in this country as to what form of government we were to have in this country going forward.
How extensive that study was can be seen from a review of the chapter titles of “A DEFENCE OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. BY JOHN ADAMS, LL. D. AND A MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES AT BOSTON.” in 1786, as follows:
DEMOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.
III. St. Marino 8
IV. Biscay 16
The Grisons 21
The United Provinces of the Low Countries 22
V. Switzerland 22
Appenzel 23
VI. Underwald 26
VII. Glaris 28
VIII. Zug 31
IX. Uri 32
X. Switz 34
ARISTOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.
XI. Berne 35
XII. Fribourg 39
XIII. Soleure 42
XIV. Lucerne 45
XV. Zurich 47
XVI. Schaffhause 49
Mulhouse — Bienne 50
XVII. St. Gall 51
Geneva 52
XVIII. Lucca — Genoa 56
XIX. Venice 58
The United Provinces of the Low Countries 69
MONARCHICAL REPUBLICS.
XX. England 70
XXI. Poland 72
XXII. Poland 74
XXIII. Recapitulation 91
PHILOSOPHERS.
XXIV. Dr. Swift 97
XXV. Dr. Franklin 105
XXVI. Dr. Price 121
MIXED GOVERNMENTS.
XXVII. Machiavel 141
XXVIII. Sidney 148
Montesquieu 153
ANCIENT REPUBLICS, AND OPINIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS.
XXIX. Harrington 158
XXX. Polybius 169
XXXI. Polybius 177
XXXII. Dionysius Halicarnassensis — Valerius 184
XXXIII. Plato 188
XXXIV. Sir Thomas Smith 207
ANCIENT DEMOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.
XXXV. Carthage 210
ANCIENT ARISTOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.
XXXVI. Rome 215
ANCIENT MONARCHICAL REPUBLICS.
XXXVII. Tacitus 225
XXXVIII. Homer — Phæacia 232
XXXIX. Homer — Ithaca 237
Homer 242
ANCIENT ARISTOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.
XL. Lacedæmon 249
ANCIENT DEMOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.
XLI. Athens 260
XLII. Antalcidas 286
XLIII. Achaia 295
XLIV. Crete 305
XLV. Corinth 308
XLVI. Argos 311
XLVII. Iphitus 315
XLVIII. Thebes 318
ANCIENT ARISTOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.
XLIX. Crotona — Pythagoras 322
ANCIENT DEMOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.
L. Sybaris — Charondas 327
LI. Locris — Zaleucus 331
LII. Rome 334
CONCLUSION.
LIII. Congress 362
LIV. Locke, Milton, and Hume 365
LV. Conclusion 372
Postscript 383
I don’t think people today have an understanding or appreciation of the fact that those who are called today “the founding fathers” were in fact real people whose political thoughts literally changed the history of the world, overnight.
Unless you are interested in what is considered ancient history, there is no need to know that any of that happened.
Whatever those people might have been thinking in 1776 is totally irrelevant in the lives of most people in America today.
And thus, the Republic itself has become irrelevant – “is it doing something for me, is it putting something in my pocket, if not, then I don’t want to hear about it because my life is already complicated enough!”
And people instead talk about “our Democracy,” as if it were something tangible and sacred, when in fact it is a chimera, a will-o-the-wisp, because nobody can ever really say what it is and how it is supposed to work, which is why we are supposed to have a Republican Frame of government.
And there is where it all breaks down, because there is no agreement, especially when discussing the matter with those who self-identify as liberals and Progressive Democrats.
For the record, my definition, which is rejected by self-professed liberals, comes from Black’s Law Dictionary, which is why it is rejected by liberals and is as follows:
COMMONWEALTH: It generally designates a republican frame of government – one in which the welfare and rights of the entire mass of people are the main consideration, rather than the privileges of a class or the will of a monarch.
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The self-professed liberals do not like that part in there about the welfare and rights of the entire mass of people being the main consideration, rather than the privileges of a class, which would include them, but exclude people like myself, which is what democracy allows them to do.
Hence, they like democracy better.
As to the “Republic” the so-called “founding fathers” intended us to have, it is necessary to read their own writings, such as the Speeches in the Connecticut Ratifying Convention of James Wadsworth and Oliver Ellsworth on January 07, 1788, where this was stated about what our Republic was intended to be, out of all the various possibilities, to wit:
In republics, it is a fundamental principle, that the majority govern, and that the minority comply with the general voice.
How contrary then to republican principles, how humiliating is our present situation (under the Articles of Confederation).
A single state can rise up, and put a veto upon the most important public measures.
We have seen this actually take place, a single state has controuled the general voice of the union, a minority, a very small minority has governed us.
So far is this from being consistent with republican principles, that it is in effect the worst species of monarchy.
Hence we see, how necessary for the union is a coercive principle.
No man pretends the contrary.
We all see and feel this necessity.
The only question is, shall it be a coercion of Law, or a coercion of arms: There is no other possible alternative.
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The Republic was needed to save the Union, but back then, the “Union” under the Articles of Confederation was only thirteen states along the eastern seaboard, not the fifty states of today, that are hardly united today, and becoming less so as the days go by, as can be seen from the Albany, New York Times Union article “Cuomo touts progressive values as Democratic convention wraps up – Former Vice President Joe Biden endorsed Cuomo for third term” by David Lombardo on Thursday, May 24, 2018, as follows:
HEMPSTEAD – Democrats had President Donald J. Trump in their sights as their annual state convention wrapped up Thursday on Long Island.
“New York is the alternative state to Trump’s America,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo proclaimed in his concluding remarks, when he formally accepted the party’s endorsement to seek a third term.
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While in the CITY AND STATE NY article “What to watch for at the state Democratic Convention – You can expect some drama around this year’s contested primaries.” by Grace Segers on May 22, 2018, we are told, “Cuomo has, in part, staked his governorship on being a vocal leader of the resistance to President Donald Trump on the national level.”
Which in some kind of perverse way takes us back to the time of the Articles of Confederation, when New York state was again going its own way, to the great concern of its neighbors at that time in America’s history.
As to the Articles of Confederation, they were approved by the Continental Congress in 1777, and a copy was sent to each of the thirteen states for ratification.
The first signing began on July 9, 1778, two (2) years after the Declaration of Independence, with delegates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina involved in the process.
It wasn’t until Maryland signed that the Articles of Confederation (our first constitution) became the law of the land.
Due to a conflict over the control of western lands, Maryland was the last state to ratify on March 1, 1781.
Which then leads us to “The State Soldier Essay I” in the Virginia Independent Chronicle on January 16, 1788, as follows:
An ADDRESS to the GOOD PEOPLE of Virginia, on the new FEDERAL CONSTITUTION, by an old STATE SOLDIER, in an answer to an Officer in the late American Army.
A fellow-citizen whose life has once been devoted to your service, and knows no other interest now than what is common to you all, solicits your attention for a new few moments on the new plan of government submitted to you consideration.
Well aware of the feebleness of a Soldier’s voice after his service shall be no longer requisite, and sensible of the superiority of those who have already appeared on this subject, he does not flatter himself that what he has now to say will have much weight.
Yet it may serve to contradict some general opinions which may have grown out of circumstances too dangerous to our reputations, to remain unanswered.
FREEDOM has its charms, and authority its use— but there are certain points beyond which neither can be stretched without falling into licentiousness, or sinking under oppression.
Here then let us pause!
And before we approach these dreadful extremes, view well the ground on which we now stand, as well as that to which we are about to step.
Let it be remembered that after a long and bloody conflict, we have been left in possession of that great blessing for which we so long contended— and which was only obtained, and could not be perfectly founded at a time when there was only a chance for succeeding in the claim.
The one being separate and distinct from the other at all times, a happy REVOLUTION therefore, has necessarily left incomplete the labors of the war for the more judicious and permanent establishment of the calms of peace.
It was not expected, or even wished, that a SYSTEM, which was the mere OFFSPRING of NECESSITY, should govern and controul us when our object was chanted, and another time than confusion should offer itself to our service for making choice of a better.
But on the contrary the same mutual agreement which promised us success in our undertaking during the war, led us to hope for a happy settlement of those right at the approach of peace— which alone can be done now by that policy which holds out at equal balance, strength and energy in the one hand, and justice, peace, and lenity in the other.
Too much ’til tru may be surrendered up— but ’tis as certain too much may be retained, since there is no way more likely to lose one’s liberty in the end than being to niggardly of it in the beginning.
For he who grasps at more than he can possibly hold, will retain less than he could have handled with ease had he been moderate at first.
But how much is necessary to be given up is the difficulty to be ascertained.
WE all know however the more desperate any disease has become, so much more violent must be the remedy — that if there be now a danger in making the attempt, it is owing more to the putting off to this late period that which at some time or another is unavoidable, than to any thing in the design itself.
Having neglected this business until necessity pressed us forward to it, we see an anxiety and hurry now in some which is extremely alarming to others — when in fact had it been attempted at the close of the war, it might have seemed nothing more perhaps than a necessary guard to that tender infant, INDEPENDENCE, to whom we had just given birth.
Long had the friends to the late REVOLUTION observed how incomplete the business was when we contented ourselves under that form of government, after the return of peace, which was only designed to bind us together the more effectually to carry on the war — and which could not be expected to operate effectually in many cases, the exspence of which no one at that time could foresee.
At this late period then an attempt has been made to complete the designs of a war that ended many years before.
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Out of those words comes the description of what our Republic was intended to be which will flow forth from the pen of Virginia’s James Madison circa January 1788 in FEDERALIST No. 39, “The Conformity of the Plan to Republican Principles” for the Independent Journal To the People of the State of New York.
Or at least that is the way I understand our history.
With respect to our “federal republic,” if in fact we still have one in this country, other than as a memory, regardless of what the founding fathers like Virginia’s Jemmy Madison and John Adams of Massachusetts might have thought it was going to be, the most up-to-date version I am aware of is found in the decision of the United States Supreme Court in NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS ET AL. v. SEBELIUS, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, ET AL., CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT, No. 11–393. Argued March 26, 27, 28, 2012 — Decided June 28, 2012, to wit:
In our federal system, the National Government possesses only limited powers; the States and the people retain the remainder.
end quotes
Now, that is consistent with my knowledge set concerning our form of government in this country, but when I have presented that political philosophical thought to self-identified “liberals” and Democrats on the internet, what I get back is a bunch of screeching and hissing noises saying that that is what the Republicans think, but it is not really that way, and if I think it is that way, that means I have to be a brain-washed Republican, which is bull**** on many different levels, starting with the fact that I am not a Republican, nor has my brain been washed by anyone.
And here, to understand their position, one has to understand that those who self-profess as liberals are often, in my experience of them in debate, versed in political science, which has them as proponents of the federalism of William Harrison Riker, an American political scientist who applied game theory and mathematics to political science.
As Wikipedia tells us, other contributions, Riker is known for work on the theory and history of federalism and on what he called “heresthetics”—the art of changing political outcomes without changing peoples’ underlying preferences by manipulating the decision-making process, for example by changing the order in which decisions are made.
In his book “Liberalism Against Populism,” he argued that the instability of majority rule, demonstrated in Arrow’s impossibility theorem and the McKelvey–Schofield chaos theorem, meant that “populist” interpretations of democracy as implementing a collective will of the people were untenable.
Instead, democratic leaders aimed to build disparate coalitions; a piece of successful coalition-building could cause realigning elections, in which blocs of voters swiftly changed their allegiance.
Concerning political coalition for the benefit of minorities, Riker argued that the larger the coalition, the shorter-lived it is.
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Now, it may seem subtle, but those are important points to understand with respect to predicting the direction our so-called “federal republic” is headed in.
In the article “Riker: Federalism, in Handbook of Political Science,” Riker defines federalism as follows:
Federalism is a political organization in which the activities of government are divided between regional governments and a central government in such a way that each kind of government has some activities on which it makes final decisions.”
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Self-professed liberals and Democrats do not deny that; to the contrary they give the regional governments a small role to play, and the main role to the central government, which they would control in their system.
In such a way, complete uniformity of thought would be imposed on the entire nation by Washington, which would render everyone equal.
Now, with respect to federalism, it must be noted that it is not a fixed quantity at all, as we see from the following:
Federalism comes in many flavors, which can be thought of along a continuum from minimal (loosely allied) to maximal (highly centralized) federalism.
• In minimal federalism, the central rulers have at least one (perhaps narrowly restricted) area in which it can act without approval of the federal units. (Otherwise, it’s an alliance like the UN, not a federal union.)
• In maximal federalism, the central rulers can make decisions in all but on (perhaps narrowly restricted) area without approval of the federal units. (Otherwise, it’s a fully centralized government, not a federal union.)
end quotes
Self-professed liberals and Democrats are for at least maximal federalism, if not fully centralized government with them in charge.
And then Riker tells us this, which is quite true, to wit:
A strongly centralized party system can undermine federal divisions of authority.
Thus, fully centralized (“maximal,”) federalism is often accompanied by a strong governing party, rendering federal divisions “quite meaningless,” with examples being the USSR, Yugoslavia, and Mexico (under PRI).
Thus, measuring the degree of federalism requires measuring the degree of party centralization.
And Riker measures party centralization according to (1) whether the party that controls the central government also controls the regional governments and (2) the strength of party discipline.
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There is where the vision of the founding fathers, especially Jemmy Madison, failed them.
They did not foresee the rise of the modern political parties which rise of based on communications technology, beginning with FDR’s use of the radio, to JFK’s mastery of television to today, where if you want to hear what the United States president is saying, you have to travel by internet to the TWITTERSPHERE, where people spew bursts of gibberish that are thankfully limited to only 180-characters, and how that would serve to greatly change political thought in this country by reducing it to gibberish..
Getting back to the Supreme Court decision decided June 28, 2012, this is what the Court had to say on the subject of the relationship between the central government and the states, to wit:
The States thus can and do perform many of the vital functions of modern government — punishing street crime, running public schools, and zoning property for development, to name but a few — even though the Constitution’s text does not authorize any government to do so.
Our cases refer to this general power of governing, possessed by the States but not by the Federal Government, as the “police power.”
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There, in my experience, is where the self-professed liberals and Democrats start freaking out and screeching to high heaven, because they want all police power concentrated in the federal government, so uniformity of thought can be enforced all over America, with deviation.
But that clashes with the version of reality put forth by the Supreme Court, to wit:
“State sovereignty is not just an end in itself: Rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.”
Because the police power is controlled by 50 different States instead of one national sovereign, the facets of governing that touch on citizens’ daily lives are normally administered by smaller governments closer to the governed.
The Framers thus ensured that powers which “in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people” were held by governments more local and more accountable than a distant federal bureaucracy.
The Federalist No. 45, at 293 (J. Madison).
The independent power of the States also serves as a check on the power of the Federal Government:
“By denying any one government complete jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life, federalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power.”
end quotes
For the vision of the self-professed liberals and Democrats and Democratic Socialists and Progressive Democrats like New York State’s Young Andy Cuomo to come true, however, the central government has to have complete jurisdiction over all concerns of public life, and regardless of what Jemmy Madison might think of it, that is what we are witnessing today – that process of the central government taking that jurisdiction from out of thin air, and then exercising it.
So much for the federal republic.
This truly is a fascinating subject that has been raised in here, which I am finding requires a lot of thought and consideration.
You would have thought a rich subject like this would have drawn in a veritable plethora and college history professors and poly sci experts all with their own pet versions of political history in this country we call our home.
Going back to the beginning of political philosophy in what was to become the United States of America back in and around 1776, in LETTER XLI, ANCIENT DEMOCRATICAL REPUBLICS. ATHENS, of “A DEFENCE OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. BY JOHN ADAMS, LL. D. AND A MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES AT BOSTON.” John Adams in 1786 stated as follows concerning democracy in ancient Athens:
Democracy signified a government by all the freemen of the state, or the peop!e at large, forming in assembly the legal, absolute sovereign: but as this, above all others, was subject to irregularity, confusion, and absurdity, when unchecked by some balancing power lodged in fewer hands, it was called ochlocracy, or mob rule.
end quotes
So when the article state “As was noted above, John Adams, and other Founding Fathers, were dubious about the idea of democracy, precisely because it provided the means to weaponize the general stupidity of people,” it was based on an extensive review of history, which is the story of people and what they do, and fail to do, as well.
That study of actual history led Jemmy Madison in Federalist No. 10, The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York, Friday, November 23, 1787, to state as follows concerning what our government in this nation should be, in light of that history of other peoples and other nations:.
AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.
The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice.
He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it.
The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations.
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“Popular governments” is another term for “democracy,” which itself is an empty term with pretty much any meaning one wants to give to it, which takes us back to Jemmy Madison in Federalist No. 19, to wit:
From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.
A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.
Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
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If one listens carefully to the Progressives in this country today, and we all should be listening to them, not ignoring them, they are trying to repeat that process all over again, in this country we call our home.
Interestingly, in 1838, in “The American Democrat,” author Jam,es Fenimore Cooper wrote as follows concerning the Republic we once had, but have no more, to wit:
The term republick, means the public things, or the common weal.
Hence the term commonwealth, the word wealth, in its political sense, meaning prosperity in general, and not riches in particular.
end quotes
With respect to democracy, which we now have, Cooper in the same work said this:
Men properly derive their designation from their acts, and not from their professions.
The peculiar office of a demogogue is to advance his own interests, by affecting a deep devotion to the interests of the people.
The true theater of a demogogue is a democracy, for the body of the community possessing the power, the master he pretends to serve is best able to reward his efforts.
The demogogue always puts the people before the constitution and the laws, in face of the obvious truth that the people have placed the constitution and the laws before themselves.
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How true I have found that to be in my own studies of what purports to be “government” in this country, at all levels.
And there for the moment I will rest.
As I say, there is a lot of real solid food for thought in here, and each time I try to read through the article, even more springs out for consideration.
Getting back to A DEFENCE OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, by John Adams in 1786, he provides us with this baseline about people that persists down through history, including the Nazis, right on up to our present times in America today, because while fashions and hair styles may change through the years, people don’t, to wit:
LETTER XLI. ANCIENT DEMOCRATICAL REPUBLICS.
ATHENS.
Unless three powers have an absolute veto, or negative, to every law, the constitution can never be long preserved; and this principle we find verified in the subsequent history of Athens, notwithstanding the oath he (Solon) had the address and influence to persuade all the people to take, that they would change none of his (Solon’s) institutions for ten years.
Soon after his (Solon) departure, the three parties of the highlands, lowlands, and coasts, began to shew themselves afresh.
These were, in fact, the party of the rich, who wanted all power in their own hands, and to keep the people in absolute subjection, like the nobles in Poland, Venice, Genoa, Berne, Soleure, &c.; the democratical party, who wanted to abolish the council of five hundred, the Areopagus, the ten courts of Judicature, and every other check, and who, with furious zeal for equality, were the readiest instruments of despotism; and the party of judicious and moderate men, who, though weaker than either of the Others, were the only balance between them.
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Now, first consider that Solon is said to have lived between c. 638 – c. 558 BC, which is roughly 2500 years ago, and then pause to consider the fact that down through history, at least in the s0-called “Western” world, those same three classes of people can always be found, especially in the United States of America today, with the third party, the party of judicious and moderate men who were to be the balance between the other two, being very few in number, whose voices are usually never heard.
We very much have a party of the rich in this country today, who want all power in their own hands, and pretty much have it.
And we very much have the democratical party, who with furious zeal for equality, are the readiest instruments of despotism in this country today, and for the foreseeable future.
And that takes us, for the moment to this statement from the article above:
Over time, “democracy”, liberalism, has become a bit bastardized, adopted to mean a form of government in which the government derives its power from the people and is accountable to them for the use of that power.
end quotes
Which in turn takes us to p. 654 of “A Short History Of Western Civilization” by Charles Edward Smith, Louisiana State University, and Lynn M. Case, University of Pennyslvania, copyright 1948, as follows:
THE QUEST FOR ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY
The rise of political democracy was seen finally to foster some forms of economic democracy.
At first the Industrial Revolution, which dominated economic life in the nineteenth century, had the tendency, when left alone, to concentrate more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
A larger number of the working class became unemployed or reduced to poverty.
The prevailing acceptance of Adam Smith’s tenets in opposition to governmental regulation intensified this trend toward an unequal distribution of wealth.
end quotes
The industrial revolution in England was considered to be from 1760 to 1840, while Adam Smith, the Scottish political economist and philosopher made famous by his influential book The Wealth of Nations, written in 1776, the same year as our Declaration of Independence, was alive between 1723-1790, so that process has been going on for some long time now, the trend toward an unequal distribution of wealth, which is considered very un-democratic by the democratical faction, and if one comes forward in time in this country and reads “Wealth and Democracy” by Kevin Phillips, copyright 2002, one sees the exact same cycle playing itself out, all over again, as it has done several times in our own past.
Which takes us to p. 651 of “A Short History Of Western Civilization, as follows:
The Age of Enlightenment brilliantly culminated in the culture of the nineteenth century.
The rapid strides made by the forces of liberalism and nationalism were matched by the progress of thought, literature, and artistic efforts between 1815 and 1914.
Political thoughts and attitudes paralleled the liberal and national moods of the century.
In the restoration period the trend had seemed to favor absolute monarchy.
Chateaubriand in France and Hegel in Prussia exalted monarchy and the absolute authority of the state.
The revolutionary and reform movements after 1820, however, inclined thought in the direction of democracy.
Indeed, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer preferred very little governmental restriction of the individual beyond the limits required in preserving law and order.
end quotes
And democracy always brings us back to tyranny, as John Adams and James Madison tried to tell us in their writings on the subject, which are largely unknown today, if not totally forgotten.
Hey, it happened before today, so what possible relevance could it have today?
And that in its turn brings us to the Nazis, or fascists of Germany, and a funny thing happening on the way to the forum with Karl Loewenstein, a German philosopher and political scientist, regarded as one of the prominent figures of Constitutional law in the twentieth century, whose research and investigations into the deep typology of the different constitutions have had some impact on the Western constitutional thought who was exiled and came to the United States when Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party took power in 1933, in 1937 publishing “Militant Democracy and Fundamental Rights,” in the American Political Science Review in 1937.
As the article states, according to Loewenstein, fascists were able to abuse the fundamental rights granted to them by democratic constitutions – namely freedom of speech, press, and assembly, and equal participation in the electoral process – to destroy democracy from within.
end quotes
But is that anywhere near the truth, given that democracies historically have always been destroyed from within, starting with Athens 2500 years ago?
And what possible relevance does what happened in Germany with Hitler have to do with the United States back in 1937, or today, for that matter?
In 1933, Germany was a defeated country.
In a MARKETWATCH article by Joseph E. Stiglitz on February 3, 2015, it was stated as follows with respect to Germany pre-WWI:
Seventy years ago, at the end of World II, the Allies recognized that Germany must be given a fresh start.
They understood that Hitler’s rise had much to do with the unemployment (not the inflation) that resulted from imposing more debt on Germany at the end of World War I.
end quotes
And that takes us to p.170 of “World Wars And Revolutions” by Walter Phelps Hall, PhD, of Princeton, copyrighted 1943, as follows:
THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THE NAZIS
The chancellor was Bruning, a Centrist.
For support at home he had to depend on a slight majority made up of many different party groups and on the backing of the President of the Republic, the octogenarian Hindenburg.
Support outside his country he had none.
A customs union with Austria which might have helped save the day had been vetoed by the French, a veto upheld on technical grounds by the World Court at the Hague.
Neither politically nor financially was the republic to be aided in her death struggle.
Meanwhile, unemployment rose by leaps and bounds, and starvation threatened.
The very liberalism of the Weimar Republic was telling now against it.
For years the Nationalists and the Nazis had been organizing and drilling informal private armies of their own, the former the Steel Helmets, the latter the Sturmabteilung (Brown Shirts).
Even the peaceful Social Democrats had done likewise with the Reichsbanner corps.
Germany was seething with violent disorder.
Armed bands were attacking Jews and Communists, the former not retaliating, the latter fighting back.
Between the accession of Bruning in March, 1930, and the burning of the Reichstag building in February, 1933, which threw Germany into Hitler’s power, the utmost confusion reigned.
Plot and counterplot followed.
There were two presidential and two Reichstag elections; there were innumerable street riots and many murders; and the political balance swayed backward and forward between the defenders of Weimar and the Nationalists, the Nazis, and the Communists who hated the republic.
Much is still obscure concerning these three hectic years during which the Nazis and the Nationalists, wearing their private uniforms, marched out of the Reichstag and into it again, during which Bruning, a confirmed moderate and well-wisher of the republic, was compelled to rule largely by decree until he lost the support of the President, during which also the Junker aristocracy played constantly with fire (Adolph Hitler), only in the end to be badly scorched.
end quotes
How that in any way translates to this country today eludes me.
Unique circumstances produced Hitler and the Nazis, not democracy per se, and being aware of that history of the rise of the Nazis, I fail to see how democracy could have prevented them.
But that, of course, is just me.
Getting to some of the meat in here, we come to this statement from the above article: They instead opted for a republic.
I have been studying this issue of our “republic” for some long time now, trying to understand exactly what it is that we were supposed to have, as opposed to what we actually do have, depending on what day of the week it is, and whether the Democrats or Republicans hold power in that moment, which takes us to FEDERALIST No. 9, The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton, which essay starts out as follows:
A FIRM Union will be of the utmost moment to the peace and liberty of the States, as a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection.
end quote
Their first concern at that time was not so much the form or frame of government, but instead, how to preserve the union, to keep it from fracturing apart into a bunch of smaller confederacies, as was a distinct possibility at that time, which point is made in “The State Soldier Essay I” for the Virginia Independent Chronicle on January 16, 1788, as follows:
Having neglected this business until necessity pressed us forward to it, we see an anxiety and hurry now in some which is extremely alarming to others — when in fact had it been attempted at the close of the war, it might have seemed nothing more perhaps than a necessary guard to that tender infant, INDEPENDENCE, to whom we had just given birth.
Long had the friends to the late REVOLUTION observed how incomplete the business was when we contented ourselves under that form of government, after the return of peace, which was only designed to bind us together the more effectually to carry on the war — and which could not be expected to operate effectually in many cases, the exspence of which no one at that time could foresee.
end quotes
By “that form of government,” he was referring to the Articles of Confederation, which did not work that well during the Revolution, and were pretty much useless once independence and peace were gained.
That essay continued as follows:
At this late period then an attempt has been made to complete the designs of a war that ended many years before.
And the first object which presented itself to our view in the business was the necessity of strengthening the UNION— the only probable way to do which, was the creating an authority whereby our credit could be supported— and in doing this (although it seems a single alteration in our old plan) the introduction of several other things was unavoidable.
end quotes
Without an understanding of the fact that there almost was not a “United States of America” after the Revolution was over, it is difficult or impossible to understand what Hamilton and Jemmy Madison were talking about in Federalists 9 and 10.
As to the difference between the old form (the Articles of Confederation) and the new form (the Constitution), the State Soldier essay continues as follows:
The credit of the UNION, like that of an individual, was only to be kept up by a prospect of being at some time or another able to pay the debts it had necessarily contracted— and that prospect could no way begin but by the establishment of some fund whereon the CONTINENT could draw with certainty.
But the right of taxation (the only certain way of creating that fund) was too great a surrender to be made without [being] accompanied with some other alterations in the old plan.
Among these the Senate, and the mode of proportioning the taxes with the representatives, seem to be the most material— the one acting as a curb, the other as a guide in the business.
Though in fact the credit of the depts.— Its internal defence, its compliance with its treaties, and the litigation of its own disputes, must be considered as inseparable from its national dignity.
Therefore the additional authorities of the President, and the institution of the supreme court, were nothing more than necessary appendages to that AUTHORITY which every one seems to grant was necessary to be given up to strengthen our UNION and support our credit and dignity as a people— and when rightly considered can amount to nothing more than one alteration, so generally wished for, divided into several parts.
end quotes
As to the “Republican” form or frame of government, the State Soldier essay gives us this:
And of what is the republican form of government which Congress is now to guarantee to each state to consist?
Certainly of any thing each state shall think proper that does not take from Congress what this constitution absolutely claims.
end quotes
And from that statement, much confusion was to come, with scarcely any clarity added down through the years until now.
The only reference I have been able to find concerning the “Republican” frame of government subsequent to the Federalist papers is in the United States Supreme Court case of Luther v. Borden, 48 U.S. 1 (1849), where Mr. Chief Justice Taney of Dred Scott fame delivered the opinion of the court.
According to the Court:
This case has arisen out of the unfortunate political differences which agitated the people of Rhode Island in 1841 and 1842.
It is an action of trespass brought by Martin Luther, the plaintiff in error, against Luther M. Borden and others, the defendants, in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Rhode Island, for breaking and entering the plaintiff’s house.
The defendants justify upon the ground that large numbers of men were assembled in different parts of the State for the purpose of overthrowing the government by military force, and were actually levying war upon the State; that, in order to defend itself from this insurrection, the State was declared by competent authority to be under martial law; that the plaintiff was engaged in the insurrection; and that the defendants, being in the military service of the State, by command of their superior officer, broke and entered the house and searched the rooms for the plaintiff, who was supposed to be there concealed, in order to arrest him, doing as little damage as possible.
end quotes
That case arose out of what is known to history as the Dorr Rebellion (1841–1842), which was an attempt by middle-class residents to force broader democracy in the U.S. state of Rhode Island, where a small rural elite was in control of government.
It was led by Thomas Wilson Dorr, who mobilized the disenfranchised to demand changes to the state’s electoral rules.
In the Court’s decision, we are given this historical background:
At the period of the American Revolution, Rhode Island did not, like the other States, adopt a new constitution, but continued the form of government established by the Charter of Charles the Second, making only such alterations, by acts of the Legislature, as were necessary to adapt it to their condition and rights as an independent State.
In 1841, a portion of the people held meetings and formed associations which resulted in the election of a convention to form a new constitution to be submitted to the people for their adoption or rejection.
This convention framed a constitution, directed a vote to be taken upon it, declared afterwards that it had been adopted and ratified by a majority of the people of the State, and was the paramount law and constitution of Rhode Island.
Under it, elections were held for Governor, members of the Legislature, and other officers, who assembled together in May, 1842, and proceeded to organize the new government.
But the charter government did not acquiesce in these proceedings.
On the contrary, it passed stringent laws, and finally passed an act declaring the State under martial law.
end quotes
Getting to the issue of democracy versus Republican government, the Court continued as follows:
The question whether or not a majority of those persons entitled to suffrage voted to adopt a constitution cannot be settled in a judicial proceeding.
end quote
That is an interesting statement from the Supreme Court back then as to who could or could not vote in America.
Getting back to the fact of that matter:
“That the General Assembly of said Colony (Rhode Island), from time to time, elected and appointed delegates to the General Congress of the delegates of the several Colonies of North America, held in the years 1774, 1775, and 1776, and to the Congress of the United States of America, in the years 1776 and 1778.”
“And that said delegates of said Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations were received by, and acted with, the delegates from the other Colonies and States of America, in Congress assembled, as the delegates representing the said Colony and State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations; and that on the 4th day of July, A.D. 1776, said delegates of the said Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations united with the delegates of the other Colonies as representatives of the United States of America, and as such assented to and signed in behalf of said Colony the Declaration of the Independence of the United States of America. ”
“That afterward, to-wit, at the July session of the General Assembly of said State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, said General Assembly, by resolution thereof, did approve the said Declaration of Independence made by the Congress aforesaid, and did most solemnly engage that they would support the said General Congress in the said Declaration with their lives and fortunes.”
“That afterwards, to-wit, on the 9th day of July, 1778, the said State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, by her delegates duly authorized thereunto, became a party to the articles of confederation and perpetual union between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and ratified and confirmed the same, and, as one of the United States of America under said articles of confederation and perpetual union, was received, recognized, and acted with and by the other States of the said confederation, and by the United States of America in Congress assembled, during the continuation of said confederacy.”
“That after the dissolution of said confederacy, to wit, on the 29th day of May, A.D. 1790, said State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in convention duly called, elected, and assembled under an act of the General Assembly of said State, ratified the Constitution of the United States, and under the same became, and ever since has been, one of the said United States, and as such, under the Constitution and laws of the United States, and of the said State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, hath ever elected and sent, and doth now send, Senators and Representatives to the Congress of the United States, who have been since, and now are, received and recognized as such by the said United States, and in all respects have ever been received and recognized by the several States, and by the United States, as one of the said United States, under the said Constitution thereof.”
“That from the said 4th of July, A.D. 1776, to the present time, the said charter and the said government of the said State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, organized under the same, hath ever been acted under and recognized by the people of said State, and hath been recognized by each of the said United States, and hath been recognized and guaranteed by the said United States as the true, lawful, and republican constitution and form of government of said State; and that the said charter continued to regulate the exercise and distribution of the powers of said government of said State, and except so far as it hath been modified by the Revolution and the new order of things consequence thereon, continued to be the fundamental law of said State, until the adoption of the present constitution of said State, and the organization of the government under the same.”
end quotes
There we find reference to “the true, lawful, and republican constitution and form of government of said State,”
The facts then continue as follows:
“That a majority of the free white male citizens of Rhode Island, of twenty-one years and upwards, in the exercise of the sovereignty of the people, through the forms and in the manner set forth in said evidence, offered to be proved by the plaintiff, and in the absence, under the then existing frame of government of the said State of Rhode Island, of any provision therein for amending, altering, reforming, changing, or abolishing the said frame of government, had the right to reassume the powers of government, and establish a written constitution and frame of a republican form of government; and that having so exercised such right as aforesaid, the preexisting charter government, and the authority and the assumed laws under which the defendants in their plea claim to have acted, became null and void and of no effect, so far as they were repugnant to and conflicted with said constitution, and are no justification of the acts of the defendants in the premises.”
end quotes
Now, that was a true act of democracy there, which resulted in the Dorr Rebellion and the institution of martial law in Rhode Island.
end quotes
And here we come to some more interesting language, to wit:
Undoubtedly the courts of the United States have certain powers under the Constitution and laws of the United States which do not belong to the State courts.
But the power of determining that a State government has been lawfully established, which the courts of the State disown and repudiate, is not one of them.
It is the province of a court to expound the law, not to make it.
And certainly it is no part of the judicial functions of any court of the United States to prescribe the qualification of voters in a State, giving the right to those to whom it is denied by the written and established constitution and laws of the State, or taking it away from those to whom it is given; nor has it the right to determine what political privileges the citizens of a State are entitled to, unless there is an established constitution or law to govern its decision.
end quotes
That last sentence has been completely swept away by democracy in our times, to the point where even felons have the same right to vote as everyone else.
And here we come to Article IV of our Constitution:
The fourth section of the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States provides that the United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and on the application of the legislature or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.
Under this article of the Constitution, it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State.
For as the United States guarantee to each State a republican government, Congress must necessarily decide what government is established in the State before it can determine whether it is republican or not.
And when the senators and representatives of a State are admitted into the councils of the Union, the authority of the government under which they are appointed, as well as its republican character, is recognized by the proper constitutional authority.
end quotes
Believe it or not, that is it – those few words are all I have been able to find in our history concerning our “Republican” form of government.
All we know from that decision is what a Republican form of government is not, to wit:
Unquestionably a military government, established as the permanent government of the State, would not be a republican government, and it would be the duty of Congress to overthrow it.
end quote
So no wonder we are such a confused people today.
And again, there I will rest.
In the article above, these following statements are made, to wit:
The leftist culture that told itself it was radically open-minded really turned out to be one balkanized by fear, insularity, intellectual bigotry, and closed-mindedness.
That makes it valuable as an artifact of the mindset that has done so much to alienate conservatives from much of the media and that has contributed so much to the ghettoization of our political discourse.
end quotes
With respect to political mindsets, and political discourse in this country, which I don’t find all that much changed in the 231 years since the Federalist papers were written, I go right back to
FEDERALIST. No. 1, General Introduction for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton where he states the following about political discourse in those times, to wit:
AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America.
The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world.
It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.
If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.
This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to those of patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all considerate and good men must feel for the event.
Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good.
But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected.
The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth.
Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.
end quotes
Are we today again confronted with the perverted ambition of a class of men/women in this country who hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of our country?
Or do those people no longer exist in our American society of today?
Hamilton then continued as follows with respect to the traits of political classes present in the America of that time:
Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question.
Were there not even these inducements to moderation, nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties.
end quotes
In all truth, has anything changed since then with regard to the “intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties?”
Isn’t that in fact what we are witnessing again in this country with this militant democracy?
Hamilton then tells us this about ourselves as a political people back then:
And yet, however just these sentiments will be allowed to be, we have already sufficient indications that it will happen in this as in all former cases of great national discussion.
A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose.
To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.
end quotes
Doesn’t that statement about increasing the number of their converts by “the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives” bring to mind the recent declamations of Hillary Clinton where she loudly denounced more than half the American people as a “basket of deplorables?”
To bring that essay to a close, Hamilton then stated as follows:
I propose, in a series of papers, to discuss the following interesting particulars:
THE UTILITY OF THE UNION TO YOUR POLITICAL PROSPERITY
THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE PRESENT CONFEDERATION TO PRESERVE THAT UNION
THE NECESSITY OF A GOVERNMENT AT LEAST EQUALLY
ENERGETIC WITH THE ONE PROPOSED, TO THE ATTAINMENT OF THIS OBJECT
THE CONFORMITY OF THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTION TO THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT
ITS ANALOGY TO YOUR OWN STATE CONSTITUTION and lastly, THE ADDITIONAL SECURITY WHICH ITS ADOPTION WILL AFFORD TO THE PRESERVATION OF THAT SPECIES OF GOVERNMENT, TO LIBERTY, AND TO PROPERTY.
end quotes
The conformity of the proposed constitution to the true principles of Republican government!
To understand where it was that we started, to understand where we might be today, there is the place to me!
The above article, which I am still making my way through, as there is so much interesting content concerning democracy, which really ends up being group-think-or-else-get-ostracized, versus republicanism, which stems from a form a government where the people are sovereign and where virtuous and autonomous citizens must exercise self-control for the common good, concludes with this thought, or perhaps lament, to wit:
For those of us raised by Roosevelt Democrats, the feeling we have now is disappointment, and of being woke.
end quotes
I guess as an older person I have to wonder why that would be – especially the part about being woke, whatever on earth that term might mean in a political context today.
What happened to the New Deal?
Where did it go?
And why?
And how long ago was that now?
Let’s take a look and see.
First off, the architect of the New Deal, FDR, was dead on April 12, 1945.
Secondly, the Republicans, and perhaps the nation, after 20 years of the Democrats and the New Deal, were sick of both.
So, in November 1946, the Democrats suffered a severe defeat in the congressional elections.
The result was the 80th Congress, the first Republican-controlled Congress in 16 years.
Bent on dismantling the New Deal, the 80th Congress moved to limit the power of labor, lower taxes, and ride their successes on to victory in the 1948 presidential election.
end quotes
Talk about factionalism, there it is, staring us right in the face.
And people were hardly best buddies back then, giving each other hugs and all that stuff.
To the contrary, there was considerable political rancor extant back then, just as there was again in the latter 60s and early 70s, and again, today.
Truman, a committed “New Dealer,” clashed with the 80th Congress over a number of issues, but the most important was Congress’s attempt to regulate and restrict organized labor.
Truman vetoed the controversial 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which banned the closed shop and restricted the power of organized labor in a number of other ways, although the bill was passed over Truman’s veto.
And twice in 1947, the 80th Congress passed tax cuts, only to watch Truman veto them with the claim that they favored the wealthy.
The wealthy of that period were the aristocracy of earlier periods.
As to factionalism in our politics contributing to the death of the New Deal.
In September 1946, Truman fired Henry Wallace, his secretary of commerce and darling of the Democratic left, alienating that wing of the party.
Wallace then ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948; however, support for his candidacy from the Communist Party worked against Wallace in the campaign and destroyed any possibility of a victory.
Domestically, America’s second “Red Scare” began during Truman’s administration, and may in fact have been precipitated by the president to forestall attacks from the increasingly volatile right wing of both political parties.
There we are back to factionalism, because in truth, despite what Jemmy Madison and Alexander Hamilton told us in the Federalist Papers about the Union being a cure for factionalism, that was really a case of looking at political life in America through rose-colored glasses.
In March of 1947, Truman had inaugurated a loyalty program that subjected all federal workers to investigation as to their beliefs.
The program was designed to enhance Truman’s respectability among the growing number of American anti-Communists, but it set off an anti-Communist hysteria that led to a number of notorious espionage trials and accelerated the rise to national prominence of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Have we forgotten all of this history – how ugly those times were compared to today, and how many lives were destroyed by “Tailgunner Joe” McCarthy?
In 1950, Congress also passed the McCarran Act over the president’s veto, which bill required Communist and Communist-front organizations to register with the federal government, and it also empowered the federal government to arrest persons suspected of subversive activities.
Without excessive hyperbole, Truman in his veto message denounced the act as “the greatest danger to freedom of the press, speech, and assembly since the Sedition Acts of 1798.”
A little wheel keeps turning, round and round and round – except now it is the militant democrats who are “the greatest danger to freedom of the press, speech, and assembly since the Sedition Acts of 1798.”
Truman’s veto of that popular bill was little short of heroic, but his stance caused his popularity to slump between 1950 and 1952, and enabled the Republicans to affix the unfair label of “soft on communism” on Truman’s Democrats to the end of his administration.
Although there were indeed Communists unearthed during the period, Alger Hiss being the main one, but not the only one, the damage done to the nation through the abrogations of personal liberty, false accusations, and the exercise of power by untrammeled regional fanatics undoubtedly outweighed any damage to national security inflicted by a few genuine Communists.
Are these times any different from those times?
Not that I can see, anyway, but, hey, I’m old and my eyes are failing, so maybe there is something here I simply am not seeing.
As I was reading the above article, I came across this provocative statement, to wit:
We also have a fundamental Bill of Rights—these right shall not be infringed upon, where the people are not allowed to vote on the determination of rights such as freedom of speech and of religion.
end quotes
I call that provocative for many reasons, not the least of which is that for the common man or woman, that so-called “Bill of Rights” is really a Bill of Goods, precisely because if you don’t have the money to buy the clout you need to have those rights, then you don’t have them in reality, plain and simple.
And let me make clear that I make that statement after personal experience trying to vindicate those so-called “rights” in federal district court for the northern district of New York, and the federal 2d circuit court of appeals in New York City.
And that talk of the Bill of Rights takes me back in time to January 18, 1788, to the “Alfredus” essay of Samuel Tenny, a delegate to the New Hampshire State constitutional convention in 1788, which essay was printed in Freeman’s Oracle, as follows:
Messeurs PRINTERS, In your Oracle of the 11th current I observed an address to the Farmers of the State, by one who pretends to belong to that respectable class of citizens.
Whether he does or not is of no consequence.
In this address he labors hard to tincture the public mind with jealouses and prejudicies against the new Constitution.
end quotes
Let me say that when it comes to American history of that period of time, I have been reading it in the letters and diaries of people alive back then, since I was young, and I reference this essay because it talks of the Bill of Rights, which was not a part of the original ratified Constitution, as follows:
Having possessed himself of that wretched hobby-horse, a Bill of Rights, which has been best ridden by every antifederal scribbler thro’ the United States, till he is jaded into a perfect hack equally unfit for service and shew, he has mounted him, armed cap-a-pre with Federal courts, trial by Jury, liberty of the Press.
Standing armies, etc. and etc.
Thus accoutred and mounted and perfectly resembling Don Quixote and the Renaissance in their memorable attack as the Wind-Mill, he Sallies out against the new Constitution, calling on his brethren to witness his amazing prowess and address in the dangerous conflict.
But the patrons of this admirable system, of federal government, need be under no apprehensions for its fate in this expedition.
Whatever may be the valor of the Rider, the steed has no mettle and will certainly fail him in the terrible onset.
For a proof of this I shall insert in this address the Speech of Mr. [James] Wilson in the Pennsylvania Convention on the subject of a Bill of Rights, by which it will appear that it is not only unnecessary in the new Constitution, but would be impractical and dangerous.
end quotes
Clearly, in 1788, there was great concern about the lack of a Bill of Rights.
But was that concern justified?
Or would we have been better without it?
To answer, or at least consider that question, “Alfredus” provided the readers of Freeman’s Oracle, with the following logic, which should be studied carefully by every American today, to wit:
The substance of this speech is as follows.
“Mr. President, We are repeatedly called upon to give some reason why a bill of rights has not been annexed to the proposed plan.”
“I not only think that enquiry is at this time unnecessary and out of order, but I expect, at least, that those who desire us to shew why it was omitted will furnish some arguments to shew that it ought to have been inserted; for the proof of the affirmative naturally falls upon them.”
“But the truth is, Sir, that this circumstance, which has since occasioned so much clamour and debate, never struck the mind of any member in the late convention until, I believe, within three days of the dissolution of that body, and even then, of so little account was the idea, that it passed off in a short conversation, without introducing a formal debate, or assuming the shape of a motion.”
“For, Sir, the attempt to have thrown into the national scale an instrument in order to evince that any power not mentioned in the constitution was reserved, would have been formed as an insult to the common understanding of mankind.”
“In civil governments it is certain, that bills of rights are unnecessary and useless, nor can I conceive whence the contrary notion has arisen.”
“Virginia has no bill of rights, and will it be said that her constitution was the less free?”
“Has South Carolina no security for her liberties?”
“That state has no bill of rights.”
“Are the citizens of Delaware more secured in their freedom, or more enlightened in the subjects of government than the citizens of Maryland?”
“New-Jersey has no bill of rights; New-York has none; and Rhode Island has none.”
“Thus, Sir, it appears from the sample of other states, as well as from principle that a bill of rights is neither essential nor a necessary instrument in forming a system of government, since liberty may exist and be as well secured without it.”
“But it was not only unnecessary, but on this occasion, it was found impracticable; for who will be bold enough to undertake to enumerate all the rights of the people?”
“And when the attempt to enumerate them is made, it will be remembered that if the enumeration is not complete, every thing not expressly mentioned will be presumed to be purposely omitted.”
“So it must be with a bill of rights, and an omission in stating the powers granted to the government, is not so dangerous as an omission in recapitulating the rights reserved by the people.”
“We have already seen the reign of magna charta, and tracing the subject still further we find the petition of rights claiming the liberties of the people, according to the laws and statutes of the realm, of which the great charter was, the most material; so that here again recourse is had to the old source from which their liberties are derived, the grant of the king.”
“It was not until the revolution that the subject was placed upon a different footing, and even then the people did not claim their liberties as an inherent right, but as the result of an original contract between them and the sovereign.”
“Thus, Mr. President, an attention to the situation of England will shew that the conduct of that country in respect to bills of rights, cannot furnish an example to the inhabitants of the United States, who by the revolution have regained all their natural rights, and possess their liberty neither by grant nor contract.”
“In short, Sir, I have said that a bill of rights would have been improperly annexed to the federal plan, and for this plain reason, that it would imply that whatever is not expressed was given, which is not the principle of the proposed constitution.”
end quotes
At this time in this nation’s history, is it possible for the most eloquent among us to make an argument based on logic that can rebut or refute or controvert any of that?
“Alfredus” then went further with his logic, arguing against the inclusion of a Bill of Rights into the federal constitution, as follows:
To these reasonings of Mr. Wilson it may be added that the Constitution for the United States and a constitution for an individual State are essentially different.
When we framed our State Constitution we were in a state of Nature, possessing individually all the rights, privileges and immunities that belong to men before they enter into political society.
The question was which of those we should retain.
The Bill of Rights prefixed to our constitution innumerated and defined them.
The rest were given up.
But to whom were they resigned?
Not to a sovereign power independent of our control, but to each other.
It was a social compact between individuals possessed of equal power and authority in which every thing that was not expressly reserved and guaranteed to individuals was resigned to the direction of the majority.
The Constitution now before the public is not a compact between individuals, but between several sovereign and independent political societies already formed and organized.
These societies have general and particular interests and concerns.
Those which respect the whole are submitted to the direction of the federal government; while those which respect individual states only are left, as they ought to be, in the hands of the state assemblies.
To prevent any interference between the federal and state governments, the objects of the former are pointed out in the preamble to the Constitution, viz. “To form a more perfect union—establish justice—insure domestic tranquility—provide for the common defence—promote the general welfare—and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
These objects are all national and important.
The powers vested in the supreme authority for the accomplishment of these purposes are accurately defined in the 8th section of the first article, and limited in the section following.
It must therefore be taken for granted that every thing not expressly given up is retained by the states.
If this is not enough to secure the liberties of the subject, The United States guarantee to each separate state a republican form of government.
Of these, the Bill of Rights, where they have any prefixed, is an essential part; of consequence the Bill of Rights is as effectually secured by the Constitution proposed as if it had been expressly mentioned.
What can the most suspicious patriot want further?
end quote
Indeed!