Disunionism, people, where “disunionism” is defined as the political position that the Union (the federal government of the United States) should be dissolved.
Yes, I know, we have not heard those words in quite some time here in the “United” States of America, which are seemingly rapidly becoming disunited as I write these words for posterity, this as we read in the Associated Press article “Trump seeks pause in legal fight with revised travel ban” by Sudhin Thanawala on 16 February 2017 as follows:
The Trump administration said in court documents on Thursday it wants a pause in the legal fight over its ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations, so it can issue a replacement ban as it strives to protect the nation from terrorism.
“In so doing, the president will clear the way for immediately protecting the country rather than pursuing further, potentially time-consuming litigation,” the filing said.
Trump said at the news conference that a new order would come next week.
“I will not back down from defending our country.”
“I got elected on defense of our country,” he said.
Stephen Vladeck, who teaches at the University of Texas School of Law, said the states challenging the current ban — Washington and Minnesota — would likely change their lawsuit to focus on any revised order.
“It will surely be a mess — and perhaps a repeat of some of the chaos we saw the first weekend of the original order,” Vladeck wrote in an email.
Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said the federal government was “conceding defeat” by saying it does not want a larger appellate panel to review last week’s ruling.
The lawsuit says the ban unconstitutionally blocks entry to the U.S. on the basis of religion and harms residents, universities and sales tax revenue in the two states.
Eighteen other states, including California and New York, have supported the challenge.
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What incredible times we are living in, people, when a state, in this case, Washington on the west coast, can brag in the main-stream media about defeating the president of the United States, of which Washington is one, in federal court on matters of national security for all the citizens of the “United” States of America versus sales tax receipts for the state of Washington, all of which raises a very serious question of exactly what it is that is going on here.
Has the state of Washington, in defeating the Trump administration in the 9th Circuit Court of appeals, rendered the federal government a nullity in this country?
And if in fact, as it appears from the language above of Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson that the federal government was “conceding defeat” by saying it does not want a larger appellate panel to review last week’s ruling, what does this defeat of the president of the “United” States of America by the state of Washington portend for our federal system of government?
As we go further into the future here, it really seems as if we are receding back into a past in this nation where disunion and dismemberment of the so-called “united” states of America was a distinct possibility, both before 1787 and the eventual ratification of the United States Constitution, and after, when the debt assumption plan of Alexander Hamilton was being fiercely debated in the new United State Congress, a debate that served to alienate Alexander Hamilton of New York and James Madison of Virginia, and which served to cause the creation of the first two political parties in this nation, the Federalists of Hamilton versus the Republican party of Madison and Jefferson.
That split, which was between the American people of that time, not just Hamilton on the one hand and Madison and Jefferson on the other, was over the relationship of the federal government to the states, which is what we are once again confronted with in this contest between the states and Donald Trump as chief magistrate of the United States of America, just as Abe Lincoln was back in the times of the last disunion movement here in America.
Then, of course, it was Lincoln who emerged victorious over the states.
Today, it is the states which appear to be emerging victorious over a sitting American president, this notwithstanding the words of the political philosopher Oreste Brownson in his 1866 series of essays on the American Republic that:
I find, with Mr. Madison, our most philosophic statesman, the originality of the American system in the division of powers between a General government having sole charge of the foreign and general, and particular or State governments having, within their respective territories, sole charge of the particular relations and interests of the American people.
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It is exactly that “general government having sole charge of the foreign and general” that is under attack today in this contest which Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson tells us he has won.
Getting back to history, Madison and Jefferson were both against a strong federal government, while Hamilton saw a strong federal or central government as essential to the preservation of the new union under the Constitution, a preservation which was never guaranteed by the fact of the ratification by 13 states at that time of a piece of paper starting out with the words, “We the People of the United States, in Order 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, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
We forget, or perhaps never even knew, that before there was a United States Constitution, there still was a “united” states of America, that under the Articles of Confederation adopted by the Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, although ratification of the Articles of Confederation by all thirteen states did not occur until March 1, 1781.
Of relevance to this discussion, and the position of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson back then, and the state of Washington and its allies today, the Articles created a loose confederation of sovereign states and a weak central government, leaving most of the power with the state governments.
With the adoption of the United States Constitution, a power struggle began between the federal government and the states, and once again, that power struggle is rearing its ugly head, as it did back in the 1860s in the form of the American Civil War, or “War of Northern Aggression.”
With respect to that power struggle, of further relevance to this discussion is this following language from the Articles Of Confederation, to wit:
To all to whom these Presents shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States affixed to our Names send greeting.
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, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
I. The Stile of this Confederacy shall be “The United States of America”.
II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.
III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.
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As we consider the words of Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson in the Associated Press article “Trump seeks pause in legal fight with revised travel ban” by Sudhin Thanawala on 16 February 2017 that the federal government was “conceding defeat” by saying it does not want a larger appellate panel to review last week’s ruling, and the lawsuit says the ban unconstitutionally blocks entry to the U.S. on the basis of religion and harms residents, universities and sales tax revenue in the two states and that it was supported by eighteen other states, including California and New York, doesn’t it very much seem as if Article III of the old Articles of Confederation has come back to life here in our nation, where we are seeing at least nineteen (19) of the supposed “United” States of America entering once again into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, this time against the federal government of the United States, as well as the Trump administration, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever?
Think on it, people, and please, stay tuned, for as always, in these turbulent times we now find ourselves in, in this troubled nation, there is much more to come on this subject of disunionism here in our America.
Or is it ours, anymore?
Something to think about, anyway, people as we watch this on-going drama go by.
Paul Plante says
In the beginning, that being 1776, at the time of separation of England and its king, George III, there was no such thing as the “American people.”
America was the name of a place, not a nation, and the people of the 13 colonies that occupied what is now the eastern seaboard of that place identified not with the place, but their state, instead, which was, at that time, their nation.
Thus, there were Virginians, and New Yorkers and North Carolinians, but no American people.
In Philo-Publius I by William Duer, who had served in the Continental Congress and the convention that framed the New York Constitution, and who in 1778, signed the United States Articles of Confederation, in the Daily Advertiser, New York, October 30, 1787, we see a hope and desire that the people of the different states would begin to think of themselves as one people, one nation, as follows:
But, while these persons may have to repine at the loss of official importance or pecuniary emolument, the private citizen may feel himself exalted to a more elevated rank.
He may pride himself in the character of a citizen of America, as more dignified than that of a citizen of any single State.
He may greet himself with the appellation of an American as more honorable than that of a New Yorker, a Pennsylvanian, or a Virginian.
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Those words from this nation’s beginning in 1787 about “greeting oneself with the appellation of an American as being more honorable than that of a New Yorker, a Pennsylvanian, or a Virginian” actually formed a large part, I would say, of my citizenship training beginning in kindergarten, before a later period in America began, where people started identifying themselves not with this nation but instead with the country of the origin of some ancestor of theirs and adding that on as a prefix to the word “American,” so that we have the so-called hyphenated Americans of today in this highly divided land which is becoming a carcass for the people of the world to pick over at will, as opposed to being a nation with its own citizens, much as Rome was in and around 410 A.D. when Alaric and his Visigoths came to town for a visit.
In Duer’s Philo-Publius I, which was written at the same time as the early Federalist papers in an effort to convince the people of New York to ratify the new Constitution as opposed to “did-unioning” New York from the new nation, as many in New York at that time seriously wished to do, that being the faction of then-governor and populist George Clinton, a political foe of Alexander Hamilton, we have as follows with respect to the issue of what the relationship between the states and the proposed federal government was going to be at that time as follows:
In the first number of the Federalist, which appeared in the INDEPENDENT JOURNAL of Saturday, the interest of certain Officers, under the State establishments, to oppose an increase of Federal authority, is mentioned as a principal source of the opposition to be expected to the New Constitution.
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There he is talking about the Clinton faction in New York, specifically, although as we see from this excerpt from the teaching aid “Introduction to the New York Ratifying Convention,” New York was not alone in having a strong disunion factor at that time:
By the end of May 1788, proponents of the Constitution had secured the approval of eight state ratifying conventions.
But securing the ninth state was not going to be an easy task.
Everything rested on the three remaining states: New Hampshire, Virginia, and New York.
(North Carolina and Rhode Island did not ratify the Constitution until the First Congress sent twelve amendment proposals to the states for ratification.)
The best evidence suggests that going into these three ratifying conventions, the Federalist–Antifederalist delegate split was 52-52 in New Hampshire, 84-84 in Virginia and 19-46 in New York.
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As to actual disunion itself, all of those state ratifying conventions were scheduled to meet in June of 1788: Virginia on the 2nd, New York on the 17th, and New Hampshire on the 18th.
News that New Hampshire ratified came one week into the New York convention.
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That news provoked this following in the New York Ratifying Convention:
Chancellor Livingston captured the moment: “The Confederation, he said, was dissolved.”
“The question before the committee was now a question of policy and expediency.”
News that Virginia had ratified reinforced Livingston‘s observation.
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In the minutes for June 24-June 26, 1788 New York Ratifying Convention, we have these following words on that subject:
Word arrived on June 24 that New Hampshire had ratified.
Chancellor Livingston interrupts with news that New Hampshire has ratified the Constitution.
This created “an alteration in circumstances.”
Lansing disagrees, especially with Livingston‘s insinuation that there is a disunionist temperament in the air.
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For those unfamiliar with the names of the players back then, among those delegates who defended the Constitution at the New York Ratifying Convention were 1) Alexander Hamilton and 2) John Jay, joint authors of The Federalist Papers and 3) Chancellor Livingston who administered the oath of office to President George Washington at the First Inaugural, while opposing adoption of the Constitution were 1) Melancton Smith, 2) John Lansing, a New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia who left in protest after six weeks, 3) and Governor George Clinton, author of the Cato essays and President of the Convention.
So what exactly was going on there in the New York Ratifying Convention when news came in that New Hampshire had ratified the Constitution, which created “an alteration in circumstances” and caused Chancellor Livingston to say “The Confederation was dissolved,” so that “The question before the committee was now a question of policy and expediency?”
What did he mean by the words “the Confederation is dissolved?”
How could it possibly be dissolved?
Re-read the beginning of the Articles of Confederation above, ratified by all 13 states seven (7) years earlier on March 1, 1781, and take care to notice the words “Articles of Confederation and PERPETUAL Union.”
“Perpetual Union,” people, that is what all 13 states then existing as the “united” states of America agreed to in 1781, where the word “perpetual” is defined as “never ending or changing.”
So how then could the Confederation be dissolved seven years later, in 1788, by only nine of the original 13 states who all agreed that the Confederation would be in perpetuity?
If something in perpetuity agreed to by a totality of the parties to the agreement to have the agreement be perpetual, which is to say “never ending or changing,” can then be abrogated by less than the totality at a subsequent date of only seven years later, then what meaning does the word “perpetual” really have when it comes to political agreements?
I am surprised that our American history teaching always seems to gloss over that point of how exactly an agreement in perpetuity among the states ended up not being perpetual at all, and in fact, ended up in the political toilet, which left New York State out in the cold in 1788 after New Hampshire ratified, a position which was made even more untenable, in the minds of those like Alexander Hamilton, who saw a strong central government as being essential to this nation’s very survival, when Virginia then ratified.
That dissolving of the confederacy in 1788, while we today give it no thought at all, was to have great ramifications concerning our nation’s subsequent history, and it is again having ramifications in this nation today.
With respect to those ramifications, consider these words of John Jay, a member of the New York State Convention, and future chief justice of the United States Supreme Court in “An Address to the People of the State of New-York On the Subject of the Constitution, Agreed upon at Philadelphia, The 17th of September, 1787. New-York: Printed by Samuel Loudon, Printer to the State. 1788,” to wit:
Few are ignorant that there has lately sprung up a sect of politicians who teach and profess to believe that the extent of our nation is too great for the superintendance of one national Government, and on that principle argue that it ought to be divided into two or three.
This doctrine, however mischievous in its tendency and consequences, has its advocates; and, should any of them be sent to the Convention, it will naturally be their policy rather to cherish than to prevent divisions; for well knowing that the institution of any national Government, would blast their favourite system, no measures that lead to it can meet with their aid or approbation.
Nor can we be certain whether or not any and what foreign influence would, on such an occasion, be indirectly exerted, nor for what purposes—delicacy forbids an ample discussion of this question.
Such other foreign nations, if any such their be, who, jealous of our growing importance, and fearful that our commerce and navigation should impair their own—who behold our rapid population with regret, and apprehend that the enterprising spirit of our people, when seconded by power and probability of success, may be directed to objects not consistent with their policy or interests, cannot fail to wish that we may continue a weak and a divided people.
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Note those words, “a weak and divided people,” which is precisely what we are becoming, or have actually succeeded in becoming today with the virulent factionalism extant in this nation today, and the words, “foreign influence.”
In that address, Jay then continued as follows:
Let those who are sanguine in their expectations of a better plan from a new Convention, also reflect on the delays and risque to which it would expose us.
Let them consider whether we ought to give further opportunities to discord to alienate the hearts of our citizens from one another, and thereby encourage new Cromwells to bold exploits.
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“Further opportunities to discord to alienate the hearts of our citizens from one another!”
How very today that sounds, doesn’t it, people?
Getting back to John Jay and the old Articles of Confederation, which despite being perpetual, were soon to be no more:
The old Confederation has done its best, and cannot help us; and is now so relaxed and feeble, that in all probability it would not survive so violent a shock.
Then “to your tents Oh Israel!” would be the word.
Then every band of union would be severed.
Then every State would be a little nation, jealous of its neighbors, and anxious to strengthen itself by foreign alliances, against its former friends.
Then farewell to fraternal affection, unsuspecting intercourse; and mutual participation in commerce, navigation and citizenship.
Then would arise mutual restrictions and fears, mutual garrisons,—and standing armies, and all those dreadful evils which for so many ages plagued England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, while they continued disunited, and were played off against each other.
You cannot be certain, that by rejecting the proposed plan you would not place yourself in a very awkward situation.
Suppose nine States should nevertheless adopt it, would you not in that case be obliged either to separate from the Union or rescind your dissent?
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Ah, yes, people, American history and questions for our times!
And please, stay tuned, for there is more to come, and thank your for your attention, your citizenship is appreciated.
Paul Plante says
In the beginning, people, as I said above, with respect to the political history of this nation, depending, of course, on whose version of the multitude of “American histories” now extant you are going by at the moment, at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, there were no “American people.”
Notwithstanding that there were other nationalities in this land at that time, those people who rebelled against the English king, George III, were Englishmen, not Americans, and the “rights” they felt they had were rights granted to Englishmen in England, as there were no rights pursuant to the U.S. Constitution at that time, for the simple reason that there was no United States Constitution, and would not be for another twelve (12) years, until 1788, and even then, the U.S. Constitution had no Bill of Rights, nor was that thought at all necessary by those called the “founding fathers.”
The 10 amendments that are now known as the Bill of Rights were not ratified until December 15, 1791, fifteen (15) years after the Declaration of Independence, and three (3) years after the Constitution itself was ratified.
As to the Declaration of Independence, that document makes it incandescently clear that it was Englishmen, and not the “American people,” contrary to many extant theories of “American history, who were rebelling against what was held to be their lawful monarch, to wit:
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren.
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“British brethren,” people.
Getting back to the Declaration of Independence, it continued as follows:
We have warned them (their British brethren in England) from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here.
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Note that word “emigration.”
It has a much different meaning than does the word “immigrant,” and we should not lose sight of that, as we are in reality as much or more a nation of emigrants, i.e., “a person who leaves their own country in order to settle permanently in another,” than we are a nation of immigrants, i.e., “a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.”
The people who were here at the time of the Declaration of Independence came here to get away from somewhere else, because other than wilderness, there really was not all that much to draw people here at that time.
Getting back to the Declaration of Independence, those on this side who were separating informed those back in the British Homeland who were being separated from, as follows:
We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.
They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.
We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
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“We hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends!”
And that is who we are, people.
There is where it all began, with that declaration right above here – we, the American people, hold the Brits, along with the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends!
And those words in turn lead us to this “Address to the People of the United States” in January 1787 by Benjamin Rush, a Founding Father of the United States and civic leader in Philadelphia, where he was a physician, politician, social reformer, educator and humanitarian, as well as the founder of Dickinson College, who attended the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence and was a leader of the American Enlightenment, and an enthusiastic supporter of the American Revolution, as well as a leader in Pennsylvania’s ratification of the Constitution in 1788, to wit:
There is nothing more common than to confound the terms of the American revolution with those of the late American war.
The American war is over: but this is far from being the case with the American revolution.
On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed.
It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government; and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens, for these forms of government, after they are established and brought to perfection.
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Nothing but the first act of the great drama was closed, people, and that great drama continues to this day, and every day, we are living it still, although in truth, it seems more a combination of a clown show and soap opera than it does a great drama.
And focus on that last sentence, people, because it brings us to right where we are now in this country, with federal judges and members of what is supposed to be our federal government telling us that we live in a “Constitutional Democracy,” when the Constitution itself guarantees us a “Republican frame of government,” instead.
“It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government.”
Those words by Benjamin Rush in January 1787 would in a handful of years lead to a political rupture between Alexander Hamilton and those known as “federalists,” or as Tommy Jefferson would have it, closet Monarchists, on the one hand, and James Madison and Tommy Jefferson, who became the Republicans, on the other, because of two entirely different and competing visions of exactly what kind of federal government we actually were going to have in this country, i.e., legislative tyranny on the one side in the view of Alexander Hamilton, who was for a strong executive, and executive tyranny on the other, in the view of Jemmy Madison and Tommy Jefferson, both of whom were very much for state’s rights and a weak executive.
The basis of that position taken by Madison and Jefferson can be seen in this following from that 1787 address to the people of the United States of Benjamin Rush as follows:
The confederation, together with most of our state constitutions, were formed under very unfavourable circumstances.
We had just emerged from a corrupted monarchy.
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A corrupted monarchy, people – that is what Tommy Jefferson and Jemmy Madison thought was going to be installed in this country by Alexander Hamilton and his faction of supporters in the north.
And this excerpt from the 1787 address of Benjamin Rush seems to apply to the people of America today, to wit:
Although we understood perfectly the principles of liberty, yet most of us were ignorant of the forms and combinations of power in republics.
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Yes, people, that is so us today, isn’t it – after all these years, we still don’t understand perfectly the principles of liberty, and yes, most of us are woefully ignorant of the forms and combinations of power in republics.
Getting back to history, in a short while after the U.S. Constitution was ratified, this nation became very much split and divided over the question of who we were going to side with in Europe, when Marat and Robespierre in France had Louis XVI decapitated, and France then declared war on Spain and England, with Tommy Jefferson and Jemmy Madison being very much on the side of the French revolutionaries, along with a sizable portion of the population of this country who wanted George Washington to come down on the side of France, as opposed to being neutral, and Alexander Hamilton and his supporters being on the side of good relations with the English, for economic reasons.
There began a split that remains with us today, although the reasons over time have changed.
And that brings us back to these words from the 1787 address of Benjamin Rush, to wit:
Add to this, the British army was in the heart of our country, spreading desolation wherever it went: our resentments, of course, were awakened.
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By the heart of our country, of course, in the latter stages of the war, he is talking about the south, where the British spread far more desolation than they did in the north, and thus, earned far more enmity from the people of the southern states than they did in the north, a circumstance that was to further divide this nation at its beginning, which in turn led to the birth of the political factions in this country today who plague us with the dysfunction in our federal government so prevalent today due to partisan gridlock, which takes us back to Benjamin Rush:
We detested the British name; and unfortunately refused to copy some things in the administration of justice and power, in the British government, which have made it the admiration and envy of the world.
In our opposition to monarchy, we forgot that the temple of tyranny has two doors.
We bolted one of them by proper restraints; but we left the other open, by neglecting to guard against the effects of our own ignorance and licentiousness.
Most of the present difficulties of this country arise from the weakness and other defects of our governments.
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That last sentence, people, although originally voiced by Benjamin Rush in January of 1787, applies to this nation again, right now, today, which brings us back to this statement of his in that same address:
It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government; and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens, for these forms of government, after they are established and brought to perfection.
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As we view our highly divided nation today, it brings this question to mind: Whatever did happen with respect to preparing the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens for these forms of government after they were established and brought to perfection?
Or were they never really established or brought to perfection?
Questions for our times, people, questions for our times, indeed.
Paul Plante says
“KNOW-NOTHINGS,” people.
As we speak of dis-unionism in here, and the immigration issue that is driving the movement in places like Cincinnati, Ohio, New York City, and San Francisco, which have declared themselves to be “sanctuary cities” where federal laws no longer apply, does anyone remember the “KNOW-NOTHINGS?”
For those unfamiliar with the Know-Nothing Party, according to Ohio History Connection website, the Know-Nothing Party, also known as the American Party, was a prominent United States political party during the late 1840s and the early 1850s.
The American Party, or “KNOW-NOTHINGS,” originated in 1849 when Zachary Taylor, nicknamed “Old Rough and Ready,” was the 12th President of the United States, serving from March 1849 until his death in July 1850.
Unlike either Barack Hussein Obama or the present incumbent, before his presidency, Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of major general, and like Eisenhower after him, it was Taylor’s status as a national hero as a result of his victories in the Mexican-American War that won him election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs.
Of interest to this discussion of dis-unionism, Taylor’s top priority as president was preserving the Union, but he died 16 months into his term, before making any progress on the status of slavery, which had been inflaming tensions in Congress.
Preserving the union, people, that being in 1850, sixty-nine (69) years after the union was first formed by the ratification of the Articles of Confederation by all 13 states on March 1, 1781, entitled “Articles of Confederation and PERPETUAL Union.”
“Perpetual” was still having a hard time getting off the ground, and as history shows, “perpetual” was actually then on a trajectory to crash-land!
Getting back to that history, after “Old Rough and Ready” breathed his last, Millard Fillmore became the 13th President of the United States (1850–53), and he was the last to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House.
Fillmore, an obscure name today in American politics, was instrumental in getting the Compromise of 1850 passed, a bargain that led to a brief truce in the battle over slavery.
When he failed to win the Whig nomination for president in 1852, he instead gained the endorsement of the nativist Know-Nothing Party four years later, and finished third in that election, which brings the “KNOW-NOTHINGS” into the political picture here.
Born into poverty in the Finger Lakes area of New York state where his parents were tenant farmers during his formative years, Fillmore rose from poverty through study, and became a lawyer though he had little formal schooling.
Getting back to the “KNOW-NOTHINGS” and this immigration issue which president Trump has kicked up with his executive order on immigration, the Ohio History website tells us as follows:
Its members strongly opposed immigrants and followers of the Catholic Church.
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The more things seem to change, they don’t change at all, people!
The “American” people opposed immigrants in 1850, and all these years later, they still oppose them.
Getting back to the “KNOW-NOTHINGS:
The majority of white Americans followed Protestant faiths.
Many of these people feared Catholics because members of this faith followed the teachings of the Pope.
The Know-Nothings feared that the Catholics were more loyal to the Pope than to the United States.
More radical members of the Know-Nothing Party believed that the Catholics intended to take over the United States of America.
The Catholics would then place the nation under the Pope’s rule.
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That, people, is a later version of the earlier claims of Tommy Jefferson and Jemmy Madison made through their cats-paw Philip Freneau and his National Gazette about George Washington’s administration’s supposed “monarchial” style, including its formal European-style levees and other “aristocratic” behavior, as well as Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s economic program, and wild claims that Hamilton intended to “sell” America back to the British, as if they would want it back after just losing it in a war they couldn’t win.
Getting back to the “KNOW-NOTHINGS”:
The Know-Nothing Party intended to prevent Catholics and immigrants from being elected to political offices.
Its members also hoped to deny these people jobs in the private sector, arguing that the nation’s business owners needed to employ true Americans.
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WOW, ZOUNDS, and HOLY COW, people, what is up with that?
These “KNOW-NOTHING” in the 1850s, some one hundred sixty-six (166) years ago now, wanted to prevent Catholics and immigrants from being elected to political offices and they also hoped to deny these people jobs in the private sector, arguing that the nation’s business owners needed to employ true Americans.
“TRUE AMERICANS,” people, think about that for a moment.
And then ask yourself, as I have done many times since returning to wherever “here” actually is from VEET NAM and Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Crusade to eradicate GLOBAL COMMIE-NISM and the “RED MENACE” by stomping the **** out of it over in VEET NAM, before the Vietnamese COMMIES could get here, and like old Panama Red, take over your house and everything in it, ask yourself, who are these “TRUE AMERICANS?”
To answer that question, let us take a look at who the “KNOW-NOTHINGS” themselves were:
The majority of Know-Nothings came from middle and working-class backgrounds.
These people feared competition for jobs from immigrants coming to the United States.
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WOW, again, people, are we talking about today?
Or yesterday?
Getting back to the “KNOW-NOTHINGS”:
Critics of this party named it the Know-Nothing Party because it was a secret organization.
Its members would not reveal the party’s doctrines to non-members.
Know-Nothings were to respond to questions about their beliefs with, “I know nothing.”
end quotes
As has been said elsewhere, you can’t write this stuff, people, because nobody would believe it could be true.
Can you imagine a “KNOW-NOTHING” candidate for president today at a presidential debate, responding to every question with “I know nothing?”
What are the odds in today’s warped and twisted political climate in this country of that person not only getting nominated, but elected by a landslide?
And again getting back to the “KNOW-NOTHINGS”:
The Know-Nothing Party adopted the American Party as its official name in 1854 when Franklin Pierce was the 14th President of the United States (1853–57).
As WIKIPEDIA informs us, Pierce was a northern Democrat who saw the abolitionist movement as a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation.
end quote
There we are back at that same recurring theme – the unity of the nation – that is once again an issue in our lives in this country today.
Getting back to WIKIPEDIA, Pierce’s polarizing actions in championing and signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act alienated anti-slavery groups while failing to stem intersectional conflict, setting the stage for Southern secession and the US Civil War.
And that, of course, was dis-unionism on steroids, and it was that dis-unionism that led the American political philosopher Oreste Brownson to write as follows in 1866 in his series of political essays, “THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC: ITS CONSTITUTION, TENDENCIES, AND DESTINY,” as follows:
The defection of the slaveholding States, and the fearful struggle that has followed for national unity and integrity, have brought it at once to a distinct recognition of itself, and forced it to pass from thoughtless, careless, heedless, reckless adolescence to grave and reflecting manhood.
The nation has been suddenly compelled to study itself, and henceforth must act from reflection, understanding, science, statesmanship, not from instinct, impulse, passion, or caprice, knowing well what it does, and wherefore it does it.
The change which four years of civil war have wrought in the nation is great, and is sure to give it the seriousness, the gravity, the dignity, the manliness it has heretofore lacked.
Though the nation has been brought to a consciousness of its own existence, it has not, even yet, attained to a full and clear understanding of its own national constitution.
Its vision is still obscured by the floating mists of its earlier morning, and its judgment rendered indistinct and indecisive by the wild theories and fancies of its childhood.
end quotes
Think on those words as they apply to our times today, people: “the nation has been suddenly compelled to study itself, and henceforth must act from reflection, understanding, science, statesmanship, not from instinct, impulse, passion, or caprice, knowing well what it does, and wherefore it does it”; and “though the nation has been brought to a consciousness of its own existence, it has not, even yet, attained to a full and clear understanding of its own national constitution.”
That is 1866, people, one hundred and fifty-one (151) years ago now.
If those words had any truth to them back then, why is it today that we are not acting from reflection, understanding, science, statesmanship, but instead,from instinct, impulse, passion, or caprice?
Is it because we are still a nation of “KNOW-NOTHINGS?”
Something to think about, anyway.
Paul Plante says
So, what happened to the “KNOW-NOTHINGS?”
Did they just disappear from the American political scene like the Whigs and Federalists before them?
Or are they still with us today, albeit it in a different guise with a different label?
To answer that, let us go back to the Ohio History website for a moment where we have as follows concerning the “KNOW-NOTHINGS”:
The Know-Nothing Party quickly grew in popularity in the North, where most recent immigrants to the United States resided.
In 1854, Know-Nothing candidates even won control of the Massachusetts legislature.
Know-Nothings also wielded some power in Ohio.
Several cities, including Youngstown and Cleveland, had newspapers that touted Know-Nothing beliefs.
Ohio’s Know-Nothings formed an alliance in the early 1850s with the Fusionist Party, a precursor of the Republican Party.
The Know-Nothings campaigned for Fusionist Salmon Chase in the gubernatorial election of 1855.
Their support helped Chase win the election.
Nationally, in 1856, the American Party ran Millard Fillmore as its candidate for President of the United States.
While Fillmore finished last, he still received almost 900,000 votes out of the approximately four million votes cast in the election.
Although many Americans, including some Ohioans, opposed the Catholic faith and lived in fear of immigrants, slavery and its expansion was a more important issue to them.
The Know-Nothing Party refused to take a stand on slavery.
As a result of the party’s refusal to take a position on slavery, the Know-Nothing Party was declined by the presidential election of 1860.
The party did not run a candidate for president in this election, as many of its followers had joined the Republican Party.
end quotes
Political realignments, people.
The “KNOW-NOTHINGS” became Republicans, and their fear of immigrants remains with us to this day.
And that was not the only political realignment to take place back then which continues forward to our times and the political factionalism which has our national government paralyzed by gridlock and political in-fighting between the warring factions in Washington, D.C., the dysfunctional capital of the United States of America, which really are not all that united anymore.
Here to the north of you, the “Barnburners” and “Hunkers” were the names of two opposing factions of the New York state Democratic Party in the mid-19th century, right around the same time as the “KNOW-NOTHINGS” were in the ascendant in American politics.
As one of the main issues dividing the two warring political factions in America today is immigration, back then, the main issue dividing the two factions of the Democrat party, the Barnburners and Hunkers, was that of slavery, with the Barnburners being the anti-slavery faction.
As WIKIPEDIA informs us, while this division occurred within the context of New York politics, it reflected the national divisions in the United States in the years preceding the American Civil War, which was dis-unionism on steroids as stated above..
Tracing the political connections between then and now, the Barnburners were considered the radical faction of the Democrat party, and they opposed expanding the public debt, and the power of the large, state established, corporations, and they also generally came to oppose the extension of slavery.
As to feeding off the taxpayers and public corruption and political patronage, the Barnburners stood for local control by the Albany Regency, as against the Polk political machine which the new administration was trying to build up in New York.
Among the prominent Barnburners were Martin Van Buren, Silas Wright and John A. Dix.
At the 1848 presidential election, the Barnburners left the Democratic Party, refusing to support presidential nominee Lewis Cass, and instead joining with other anti-slavery groups, predominantly the abolitionist Liberty Party and some anti-slavery Conscience Whigs from New England and the Midwest, to form the Free Soil Party, which nominated former President Van Buren to run again for the presidency.
Their vote divided the Democratic strength and secured the election of Zachary Taylor, the Whig nominee.
After the Compromise of 1850 temporarily neutralized the issue of slavery and undercut the party’s no-compromise position, most Barnburners who joined the Free Soil Party returned to the Democrats.
In 1854, some Barnburners helped to form the Republican Party.
So, we have Barnburner Democrats joining “KNOW-NOTHINGS” to form the Republican party of today.
As to the Hunkers, they were the conservative faction of the Democrat party and they opposed the Barnburners, favoring state banks, internal improvements, and minimizing the slavery issue.
The term hunker was basically a synonym for “stick in the mud,” and became a contemptuous nickname, like “mossback,” for the unprogressive members of a party, which detested change.
Among the leaders of the Hunkers were Horatio Seymour, William L. Marcy, Samuel Beardsley, Edwin Croswell, and Daniel S. Dickinson.
Following the 1848 election, the Hunkers themselves split over the question of reconciliation with the Barnburners, with the Softs, led by Marcy, favoring reconciliation, and the Hards, led by Dickinson, opposing it.
This split would be exacerbated following the 1852 presidential election, when disputes over patronage led to an even broader split between Hards and Softs, and helped lead to the defeat of the Soft governor, Horatio Seymour, for re-election in 1854.
And there we have it, people.
We were divided at the beginning, we were divided in the middle, and to our discredit, we are still divided today.
So what will tomorrow bring?
Stay tuned is all I can say!
Paul Plante says
So who is this Oreste Brownson dude, then, and why should we bother with what he thinks, since he is long since dead?
Good questions!
As to the latter, we are all adults, and as such, we get to choose who and what we will listen to or disregard, and so it is with Oreste Brownson.
If his words mean nothing to you, then, by all means, simply disregard them!
As to who Oreste Brownson is, or more properly, as to how it is he comes into here out of all the historical figures I could be quoting from, for that answer, we have to go back to a quote attributed to Laurence Henry “Larry” Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University who also works with the firm Massey & Gail LLP on a variety of matters, a liberal scholar of constitutional law and cofounder of American Constitution Society, who is the author of American Constitutional Law (1978), a major treatise in that field, and who has argued before the United States Supreme Court 36 times, in the Guardian newspaper where he is telling MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show:
“It is as if history is being collapsed into a black hole and everything is happening faster than the speed of light.”
end quotes
That is so today, isn’t it, people?
Things are happening so fast it literally makes one’s head spin!
Anyway, back to Oreste Brownson, and how it is that he comes to be in here as opposed to someone else!
For that connection, we have to go to the American Constitution Society, which Laurence Henry “Larry” Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, is said to be a cofounder of.
According to Wikipedia, the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) is a progressive legal organization with a stated mission is to “promote the vitality of the U.S. Constitution and the fundamental values it expresses: individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, access to justice, democracy and the rule of law.”
The American Constitution Society was founded in 2001 by Peter Rubin, a Georgetown Law School professor who served as counsel to Al Gore in the legal battle over the 2000 election.
Before that, the group was originally known as the Madison Society for Law and Policy, with that Madison being Virginia’s own Jemmy Madison, called the “Father of the United States Constitution.”
The organization was founded in order to build a network of progressive lawyers and foster new avenues of progressive legal thought.
Think about that the implications and ramifications of that phrase for a moment if you will, people, “foster new avenues of progressive legal thought,” as we read in the article “Hillary Clinton rallies DNC members in video message” by Max Greenwood in THE HILL on 25 FEBRUARY 2017 as follows:
Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Friday showered praise on the wave of protests sweeping the country and urged party faithful to set their sights on elections to come.
“After the primaries we came together as a party to write the most progressive platform in history,” she said in a video message posted on the Democratic Party’s Twitter account.
“Ideas we championed are now inspiring leaders and activists across our country.”
“And everywhere people are marching, protesting, tweeting, speaking out and working for an America that’s hopeful, inclusive and big-hearted,” she added.
end quotes
The most “progressive platform” in history, says Hillary, as she urges on those intent on shutting down our federal government in the name of her “progressivism!
But that is a story for a different day.
Getting back to Oreste Brownson here, in 2009, ACS published “Keeping Faith with the Constitution” by Pamela S. Karlan, Goodwin Liu, and Christopher H. Schroeder which was re-issued by Oxford University Press in 2010, which book serves as a primer for progressives interested in promoting liberal constitutionalism.
Sooooo.
What the heck is LIBERAL CONSTITUTIONALISM, then, people?
It certainly is not something associated with Jemmy Madison, that is for sure, since during the debates on Alexander Hamilton’s Bank Bill in the House of Representatives on February 2, 1791, then-Virginia Representative James Madison obtained the floor and based his attack on the premise of strict Constitutional construction, the belief that a “…broad construction of federal powers…[would deliver] a powerful blow at the barriers against an indefinite expansion of federal authority.”
According to Jemmy, the Constitution was not written, nor was it to be interpreted, as a general grant of power without specified limitations.
In fact, claimed Madison, it was the reverse, which makes Jemmy Madison the original “strict constructionist,” long before Nino Scalia came along, so “LIBERAL CONSTITUTIONALISM” is not his doctrine, which is perhaps why the group originally known as the Madison Society for Law and Policy changed its name to the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.
Anyway, in looking for more information on exactly what “LIBERAL CONSTITUTIONALISM” might in fact be, I went to the Online Library of Law & Liberty, a Project of Liberty Fund, to an article dated January 7, 2013 and entitled “Liberal Constitutionalism and Us” by Richard Reinsch, where we were informed as follows:
A liberal constitution is a contract among individuals, who consent to limits on their autonomy insofar, and only insofar, as they are consistent with individualist principles.
end quotes
However, as the author notes, liberal constitutionalism per the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s argument in “Philosophy of Right” has a big problem:
“Political liberalism (Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and, with some qualifications, Rousseau) confuses civil society with the State.”
The principle of liberal constitutionalism, Hegel says, is “endless subjectivity,” or what we call “individualism.”
To state Hegel’s central objection at phenomenological level: you can’t run a free country on that basis.
So we need more than individuals.
We need a society of persons constituted by familial, local, religious, and political attachments, recognizing that personhood contains aspirations and purposes that place it beyond the scope of state power.
end quotes
Think of those words in connection with what Hillary Clinton is saying in the article “Hillary Clinton rallies DNC members in video message” by Max Greenwood in THE HILL on 25 FEBRUARY 2017 as follows:
“After the primaries we came together as a party to write the most progressive platform in history!”
“Ideas we championed are now inspiring leaders and activists across our country.”
“And everywhere people are marching, protesting, tweeting, speaking out and working for an America that’s hopeful, inclusive and big-hearted,” she added.
end quotes
And think of those words in connection with these words from the Preamble to the 2016 Democratic Party Platform – July 21, 2016 As Approved by the Democratic Platform Committee July 8-9, 2016 – Orlando, FL, 2016 DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLATFORM, to wit:
In 2016, Democrats meet in Philadelphia with the same basic belief that animated the Continental Congress when they gathered here 240 years ago: Out of many, we are one.
Republicans in Congress have chosen gridlock and dysfunction over trying to find solutions to the real challenges we face.
It’s no wonder that so many feel like the system is rigged against them.
Democrats believe that cooperation is better than conflict, unity is better than division, empowerment is better than resentment, and bridges are better than walls.
It’s a simple but powerful idea: we are stronger together.
Democrats believe we are stronger and safer when America brings the world together and leads with principle and purpose.
Above all, Democrats are the party of inclusion.
We know that diversity is not our problem—it is our promise.
As Democrats, we respect differences of perspective and belief, and pledge to work together to move this country forward, even when we disagree.
With this platform, we do not merely seek common ground—we strive to reach higher ground.
We believe America is still, as Robert Kennedy said, “a great country, an unselfish country, and a compassionate country.”
These principles stand in sharp contrast to the Republicans, who have nominated as the standard-bearer for their party and their candidate for President a man who seeks to appeal to Americans’ basest differences, rather than our better natures.
This election is about more than Democrats and Republicans.
It is about who we are as a nation, and who we will be in the future.
Two hundred and forty years ago, in Philadelphia, we started a revolution of ideas and of action that continues to this day.
Since then, our union has been tested many times, through bondage and civil war, segregation and depression, two world wars and the threat of nuclear annihilation.
Despite what some say, America is and has always been great—but not because it has been perfect.
What makes America great is our unerring belief that we can make it better.
We can and we will build a more just economy, a more equal society, and a more perfect union—because we are stronger together.
end quotes
Getting back to Oreste Brownson, the author of that article then goes on to muse as follows with respect to our times in America today:
Our responsibilities as contemporary citizens of the American constitutional order are both more challenging, but paradoxically clearer given that modern political promises, or modern ideological commitments, are increasingly implausible.
In basic terms, the American postwar order has been constructed on the pillars of a metastasizing welfare state and an increasingly lawless administrative state, a secular and highly individualistic order (imposed largely by federal courts), strangely combined with a rather relentless egalitarian and redistributive quest, among other unpleasant realities.
These attempts to define our happiness, our equality, our safety, and our mystical, evolving liberties have led, if not to incipient failure, then to confusion and impotence.
end quotes
Those words from January 7, 2013 about modern political promises, or modern ideological commitments, being increasingly implausible, and attempts to define our happiness, our equality, our safety, and our mystical, evolving liberties leading, if not to incipient failure, then to confusion and impotence, are in direct reference to the modern political promises, or modern ideological commitments from the Preamble of the 2016 “progressive” Democrat Party Platform above, but that too is a subject for future discussion, which finally brings us to Oreste Brownson, as follows, from that same Online Library of Law & Liberty article by Richard Reinsch on January 7, 2013:
Orestes Brownson, one of America’s most astute constitutional critics and friends, came to the problem of personhood to political liberty from his great concern about the rise of abstract, universal theorizing that appropriates the Christian dogma of human equality, but wrenches it from its theological context.
Modern dogmatists turned equality into an ideology, making it into an immanentizing quest of political unity at the expense of the concrete person and the political order that provides for human flourishing.
end quotes
Hillary Clinton is just such a modern dogmatist who is turning equality into an ideology.
Getting back to Brownson:
In his fullest statement on American constitutionalism, The American Republic, Brownson urges that the resources within the American constitutional system that restrict the modern political temptation of either hyper-centralization or anarchy are most evident in the institutions and practices of American federalism.
But such federalism needed better thinking, Brownson believed.
end quotes
Keeping in mind that Brownson wrote “The American Republic” in 1866, at the close of our civil war, which he was a witness to, his observations about federalism in this country are worthy of consideration by us in our times, was my thought, anyway.
So that is why I have quoted from Brownson in here.
Do his words have relevance or meaning to us in our times?
Only you can decide!