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After spending a
lifetime in politics John C. Calhoun (U.S. Senator, Vice President of the
United States, Secretary of War) wrote his brilliant treatise, A Disquisition on Government,
which was published posthumously shortly after his death in 1850. In it
Calhoun warned that it is an error to believe that a written constitution
alone is “sufficient,
of itself, without the aid of any organism except such as is necessary to
separate its several departments, and render them independent of each other
to counteract the tendency of the numerical majority to oppression and abuse
of power” (p.
26). The separation of powers is fine as far as it goes, in other words, but
it would never be a sufficient defense against governmental tyranny, said
Calhoun.
Moreover, it is a
“great
mistake,”
Calhoun wrote, to suppose that “the mere
insertion of provisions to restrict and limit the powers of the government, without
investing those for whose protection they are inserted, with the means of
enforcing their observance, will be sufficient to prevent the major and
dominant party from abusing its powers”
(emphasis added). The party “in possession of
the government” will always be opposed to any and all
restrictions on its powers. They “will have no need
of these restrictions” and “would
come, in time, to regard these limitations as unnecessary and improper
restraints and endeavor to elude them . . .”
The “part
in favor of the restrictions” (i.e., strict
constructionists) would inevitably be overpowered. It is sheer folly, Calhoun
argued, to suppose that “the party in
possession of the ballot box and the physical force of the country,
could be successfully resisted by an appeal to reason, truth, justice, or the
obligations imposed by the constitution”
(emphasis added). He predicted that “the restrictions
[of government power in the Constitution] would ultimately be annulled, and
the government be converted into one of unlimited powers.” He
was right, of course.
This is a classic
statement of the Jeffersonian states’ rights position.
The people of the free, independent and sovereign states must be empowered
with the rights of nullification and secession, and a concurrent majority
with veto power over unconstitutional federal laws, if their constitutional
liberties are to have any chance of protection, Calhoun believed. The federal
government itself can never, ever be trusted to limit its own powers.
How did Calhoun
come to such conclusions? One answer to this question is that he was a
serious student of politics, history, and political philosophy for his entire
life, and understood the nature of government as much as anyone else alive
during his time. He also witnessed first hand or quickly learned about the
machinations of the sworn enemies of limited constitutional government in
America: men such as Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, John Marshall, Joseph
Story and Daniel Webster.
The Founding
Fathers of Constitutional Subversion
America’s
first constitution, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, did a
much better job of limiting the tyrannical proclivities of government than
the U.S. Constitution ever did, and it did so while permitting enough
governmental power to field an army that defeated the British Empire. The
limits on government that the Articles contained outraged the advocates of
unlimited governmental powers, such as Alexander Hamilton, which is why the “Perpetual
Union” that
was created by the Articles was abolished as all the states peacefully
seceded from that union
The
constitutional convention was Hamilton’s idea
as much as anyone’s. Upon arriving at the convention
Hamilton laid out the plan of his fellow nationalists: a permanent president
or king, who would appoint all governors, who would have veto power over all
state legislation. This monopoly government would then impose on the entire
nation a British-style mercantilist empire without Great Britain, complete
with massive corporate welfare subsidies, a large public debt, protectionist
tariffs, and a central bank modeled after the Bank of England that would
inflate the currency to finance the empire.
Hamilton did not
get his way, of course, thanks to the Jeffersonians. When the Constitution
was finally ratified, creating a federal instead of a national or
monopolistic, monarchical government, Hamilton denounced the document as “a
frail and worthless fabric.” He and his
Federalist/nationalist colleagues immediately went to work destroying the
limits on government contained in the Constitution. He invented the notion of
“implied
powers” of
the Constitution, which allowed him and his political heirs to argue that the
Constitution is not a set of limitations on governmental powers, as Jefferson
believed it was, but rather a potential stamp of approval on anything the
government ever wanted to do as long as it is “properly”
interpreted by clever, statist lawyers like Alexander Hamilton or John
Marshall. Hamilton “set out to remold
the Constitution into an instrument of national supremacy,” wrote
Clinton Rossiter in Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution.
One of the first
subversive things Hamilton did was to rewrite the history of the American
founding by saying in a public speech on June 29 1787, that the states were
merely “artificial
beings” and
were never sovereign. The “nation,” not
the states, was sovereign, he said. And he said this while the constitutional
convention was busy crafting Article 7 of the Constitution, which holds that
the Constitution would become the law of the land only when nine of the
thirteen free and independent states ratified it. The states were to ratify
the Constitution because, as everyone knew, they were sovereign and
were delegating a few express powers to the central government for their
mutual benefit.
It was Hamilton
who first invented the expansive interpretations of the General Welfare and
Commerce Clauses of the Constitution, which have been used for generations to
grant totalitarian powers to the central state. He literally set the template
for the destruction of constitutional liberty in America the moment it became
apparent at the constitutional convention that he and his fellow nationalists
would not get their way and create a “monarchy
bottomed on corruption,” as Thomas
Jefferson described the Hamiltonian system.
Hamilton’s
devoted disciple, John Marshall, was appointed chief justice of the United
States in 1801 and served in that post for more than three decades. His career
was a crusade to rewrite the Constitution so that it would become a
nationalist document that destroyed states’
rights and most other limitations on the powers of the centralized state. He
essentially declared in Marbury vs. Madison that he, John Marshall,
would be the arbiter of constitutionality via “judicial
review.” The
Jeffersonians, meanwhile, had always warned that if they day ever came when
the federal government became the sole arbiter of the limits of its own
powers, it would soon declare that there were, in fact, no limits on
its powers. This of course is what the anti-Jeffersonians wanted
– and
what has happened.
In the case of Martin
v. Hunter’s Lessee
Marshall invented out of thin air the notion that the federal government had
the “right” to
veto state court decisions. Marshall also made up the theory that the
so-called Supremacy Clause of the Constitution makes the federal government “supreme” in
all matters. This is false: The federal government is only “supreme” with
regard to those powers that were expressly delegated to it by the free and
independent states, in Article 1, Section 8.
Marshall also
repeated Hamilton’s bogus theory of the American founding,
claiming that the “nation”
somehow created the states. He amazingly argued that the federal government
was somehow created by “the whole people” and
not the citizens of the states through state political conventions, as was
actually the case. In the name of “the people,”
Marshall said, the federal government claimed the right to “legitimately
control all individuals or governments within the American territory”
(Edward S. Corwin, John Marshall and the Constitution, p. 131).
All of the
Hamilton/Marshall nonsense about the founders having created a monopolistic,
monarchical government and having abolished states rights or federalism was
repeated for decades by the likes of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story and
Daniel Webster. Story was “the most
Hamiltonian of judges,” wrote Clinton
Rossiter. His famous book, Commentaries on the Constitution, published
in 1833, could have been entitled “Commentaries on
Alexander Hamilton’s Commentaries on the Constitution,” says
Rossiter. He “construed the powers of Congress
liberally,” i.e.,
meaning there were virtually no limits to such powers; and “upheld
the supremacy of the nation,” i.e., of
monopolistic, monarchical, and unconstitutional government. Stories Commentaries
provided a political roadmap for “the
legal profession’s elite or at least among the part of it
educated in the North during the middle years of the nineteenth century,” wrote
Rossiter.
Story’s “famous” Commentaries
are filled with phony history and illogic. On the Articles of
Confederation, he wrote that “It is heresy to
maintain, that a party to a compact has a right to revoke that compact.” But
of course the Articles were revoked!
Secession of a
single state would mean “dissolution of
the government,” Story wrote. Nonsense. After eleven
Southern states seceded in 1860–61 the U.S. government proceeded to
field the largest and best-equipped army in the history of the world up to
that point. It was hardly “dissolved.”
In a classic of
doubletalk, Story admitted that “The original
compact of society . . . in no instance . . . has ever been formally
expressed at the first institution of a state.” That
is, there was never any agreement by the citizens of any state to always and
forever be obedient to those who would enforce what they proclaim to be “the
general will.” Nevertheless, said Story, “every
part should pay obedience to the will of the whole.” And who
is to define “the will of the
whole”? Why,
nationalist Supreme Court justices like Joseph Story and John Marshall, of
course.
Story admitted
that social contract theories of “voluntary” state
formation were mere theoretical fantasies. He also held the rather creepy and
totalitarian, if not barbarian view that “The
majority must have a right to accomplish that object by the means, which they
deem adequate for the end . . . . The will of the majority of the people is
absolute and sovereign, limited only by its means and power to make its
will effectual.”
What Story is
saying here is not that there should be a national plebescite on all policy
issues that can express the “will of the
majority.” No,
as with Hamilton he adopted the French Jacobin philosophy that such a “will” was
possessed in the minds of the ruling class, and that that class (the Storys,
Hamiltons, Marshalls, etc.) somehow possessed “absolute” power
as long as it has the military means to “make
its will effectual.” Here we have the
theoretical basis for Abe Lincoln’s waging of total
war on his own citizens.
Contrary to the
political truths expressed by Calhoun which have all proven to be true, by
the way Story expressed the elementary-schoolish view that the appropriate
response to governmental oppression should be only via “the
proper tribunals constituted by the government” which
would supposedly “appeal to the good sense, and integrity,
and justice of the majority of the people.” Trust
the politicians and lifetime-appointed federal judges to enforce their view
of “justice,” in
other words. That hasn’t really worked
out during the succeeding 170 years.
Story also
repeated John Marshall’s fable that the
Supremacy Clause created a monopolistic government in Washington, D.C. and
effectively abolished states’ rights, along
with the equally ridiculous myth that the Constitution was magically ratified
by “the
whole people”
(presumably not counting women, who could not vote, or slaves and free
blacks).
Another famous
and influential subverter of the Constitution was Daniel Webster, who
repeated many of these same nationalist fables during his famous U.S. Senate
debate with South Carolina's Robert Hayne in January of 1830. This is a
debate that Hayne clearly won according to their congressional colleagues,
and the media of the day, although nationalist historians (a.k.a.,
distorians) have claimed otherwise.
The first Big Lie
that Webster told was that “the Constitution
of the United States confers on the government itself . . . the power of
deciding ultimately and conclusively upon the extent of its own authority.” No,
it does not. John Marshall may have wished that it did when he
invented judicial review, but the document itself says no such thing. As
Senator John Taylor once said, “The Constitution
never could have designed to destroy [liberty], by investing five or six men,
installed for life, with a power of regulating the constitutional rights of
all political departments.”
Webster then
presented a totally false scenario: “One of two things
is true: either the laws of the Union are beyond the discretion and beyond
the control of the States; or else we have no constitution of general
government . . .” Huh? All the laws? Are the people
to have no say whatsoever about laws they believe are clearly constitutional?
Apparently so, said Daniel Webster.
The a-historical
fairy tale about the Constitution being somehow ratified by “the
whole people” was
repeated over and over by Webster. His strategy was apparently to convince
his audience not by historical facts but by repetition and bluster. “The
Constitution creates a popular government, erected by the people . . . it is
not a creature of the state governments,” he
bellowed. Anyone who has ever read Article 7 of the U.S. Constitution knows
that this is utterly false.
In fine French
Jacobin fashion, Webster asked, “Who shall
interpret their [the peoples’] will? Why “the
government itself,” he said. Not through popular votes, mind
you, but through the orders, mandates, and dictates of “the
government itself.” The people themselves were to have
nothing to do with “interpreting” their
own “will.”
Article 3,
Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution clearly defines treason under the
constitution: “Treason against the United States shall
consist in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving
them Aid and Comfort.” Thus, treason
means levying war against “them,” the
sovereign states. This is why Lincoln’s
invasion of the Southern states was the very definition of treasonous
behavior under the Constitution. Had the North lost the war, he could have
been justifiably hanged.
Webster attempted
to re-define treason under the Constitution by claiming that “To
resist by force the execution of a [federal] law, generally, is treason.” Thus,
if the federal government were to invade a sovereign state to enforce one of
its laws, a clearly treasonous act under the plain language of the
Constitution, resistance to the invasion is what constitutes treason
according to Webster. He defined treason, in other words, to mean exactly the
opposite of what it actually means in the Constitution.
Then there is the
elementary-schoolish faith in democracy as the only necessary defense against
governmental tyranny: “Trust in the
efficacy of frequent elections,” “trust
in the judicial power.” Well, we tried
that for decades and decades, Daniel, and it didn’t
work.
All of these
false histories and logical fallacies were repeated by other nationalist
politicians for decades. This includes Abraham Lincoln, who probably lifted
his famous line in The Gettysburg Address from this statement by Webster
during his debate with Hayne: “It is, Sir, the
people’s
Constitution, the people’s government,
made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. The
people of the United States have declared that this Constitution shall be the
supreme law.” Of
course, they did not.
As Lord Pete
Bauer once said in commenting on the rhetoric of communism, whenever one
hears of “the
people’s
republic” the “peoples’
government,” etc.,
it is a sure bet that the people have nothing whatsoever to do with, or
control over that government.
Hamilton,
Marshall, Webster, Story, and other nationalists kept up their rhetorical
fog-horning for decades, trying to convince Americans that the founding
fathers did, after all, adopt Hamilton’s plan
of a dictatorial executive that abolished states rights and was devoted to
building a mercantilist empire in America that would rival the British
empire. But their rhetoric had little or no success during their lifetimes.
New Englanders
plotted to secede for a decade after Thomas Jefferson was elected president
in 1800; all states, North and South, made use of the Jeffersonian, states’
rights doctrine of nullification to oppose the Fugitive Slave Act,
protectionist tariffs, the antics of the Bank of the United States, and other
issues up until the 1860s. There was a secession movement in the Mid-Atlantic
states in the 1850s, and in 1861 the majority of Northern
newspaper editorialists were in support of peaceful secession (see Northern Editorials on Secession by
Howard Perkins).
The false,
nationalist theory of the American founding was repeated by Abraham Lincoln
in his first inaugural address (and praised decades later by Adolf Hitler in Mein
Kampf, wherein Hitler mad his case for abolishing states’
rights and centralizing all political power in Germany). In the same speech
Lincoln threatened “invasion” and “bloodshed” (his
words) in any state that failed to collect the newly-doubled federal tariff
tax. He then followed through with his threat.
The only group of
Americans to ever seriously challenge this false nationalist theory, Southern
secessionists, were mass murdered by the hundreds of thousands, including
some 50,000 civilians according to James McPherson; their cities and towns
were bombed and burned to the ground, tens of millions of dollars of private
property was plundered by the U.S. Army; Southern women, white and black,
were raped; and total war was waged on the civilian population. This is what
finally cemented into place the false, Hamiltonian/nationalist theory of the
American founding, for the victors always get to write the history in war.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, is “limited
only” by
the state’s “power
to make its will effectual,” as Joseph Story
proclaimed. The technology of mass murder in the hands of the state finally
made this will “effectual” in
the first half of the 1860s. Americans have been mis-educated and misinformed
about their own political history ever since. It is this mis-education, this
false theory of history, that serves to prop up the Hamiltonian empire that
Americans now slave under.
Thomas DiLorenzo
Thomas
J. DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the
author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about
Dishonest Abe and How Capitalism Saved America. His
latest book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed
the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today.
Article
originally published on www.Mises.org. By
authorization of the author
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