What I find most galling are not Republican allegations former Democrat Vice President Joe “Boss Tweed” Biden leveraged his position to benefit his son Hunter in Ukraine.1 Nor do I find Democrat accusations President Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine pressuring President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate potential Biden influence peddling most galling. Democrats want Americans to believe Trump withheld aid while Ukraine was at war with Russia. However, Putin invaded Ukrainian Crimea on 20 February 2014 and later sent military units across Russia’s western border into Ukraine to assist “separatists” in May of the same year. Trump did not place his party line call to Zelensky until July of 2019, five years later.2 Can we be frank? Notions Ukraine would survive let alone prevail in a war with Russia are preposterous. Therefore, American military and economic aid would be pointless. Why then do Democrat and Republican administrations send it? Are Americans willing to offer their sons to die for Ukrainians fighting Russia? Is the U.S. willing to risk nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine? We must address yet another reality.
Since Tsar Nicholas I, Russia has pursued a policy of “Russification” in conquered nations and territories. Imperial Russia took control of the education system, mass media, and popular culture in subjugated countries. They replaced native tongues, customs, history, literature, art, music, and holidays with those of Mother Russia. Whether the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania for those who attended public schools) the Caucasus, Poland, or Ukraine, conquered people were forced to grow up as Russians.3
Soviets added a new dynamic to Russification by transplanting hundreds of thousands of Russians to the Baltics and especially Ukraine. The Communist’s goal was to displace natives and breed them into a minority population or, at least have a forward base of Russian immigrants embedded in targeted nations. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviets uprooted entire Russian villages and moved them to Ukraine. In 1926, only 8.2% of Ukrainians were ethnic Russian. That figure rose to 16.9% in 1959 and 22.1% in 1989. In addition, by 1985, the Soviets had relocated by force, over 185,000 Ukrainians to faraway places in Russia and to the Baltics. So successful was Russification (America’s open-borders crowd pay attention), that native Ukrainians living along their eastern border with Russia dropped from 33.4% in 1926 to 2.3% by 1970. In a conflict with Russia, where will their loyalties lie? With whom will ethnic-Russian “Ukrainians” side?4 The idea that America can simply show up with her military and straighten this all out is ludicrous but still, this is not what is most galling. Instead, it is the profound degree of self-inflicted constitutional ignorance afflicting so many Americans. Who asks; what part of the Constitution authorizes Congress to seize the wages and property of American citizens and hand it over to foreigners in other countries? Go ahead and look. I’ll wait. You will be the subject of an archeological dig before you find it because no such authority exists. What the Constitution does not authorize it forbids.
The Constitution’s Framers and State Ratifying Conventions were clear in 1787-1788; powers they delegated to the new federal government were finite and few. The Framers enumerated (listed) them in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. These powers are explicit. They rejected notions that, through novel interpretations later on, anyone could create implied from explicit powers. Scottish immigrant James Wilson became a prominent Philadelphia attorney and patriot. He signed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and was a “Federalist” delegate to the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention. Wilson described the new form of government that would replace the Articles of Confederation as a “confederate republic”. It was not a “single centralized state” because that would lead to “despotism” and tyranny. The federal government had only those powers delegated to it by the States. It could not exercise powers it did not have nor could the government imply powers into existence.5 No one is asking why the U.S. government, under Democrats and Republicans, is stealing the money and property of its citizens in order to buy and reward “friends” around the world.
I suspect to some degree America’s ruling class elite have always hamstrung the cause of liberty. They do not quite trust Americans, even their political followers, with liberty. A condemnation of liberals and Democrats? On the contrary. Republican Presidents, including Richard Nixon, George H W and George W Bush, and candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney ran as conservatives who would defend the Constitution. Once in office, as Presidents, Governors, or Senators, they shed conservative principles like snakes squirming from old skin. It is as if they believe the job of supporters is to get them elected and then shut up and go away until the next election. They talk a good game and then make one compromise after another always moving in the direction of opponents. One can find unease and mistrust of social “inferiors” even in the writing of some conservatives.
Writing for conservative The American Spectator, Daniel McCarthy notes liberals believe the mere existence of firearms, in conjunction with the election of Donald Trump, whose words have radicalized the young, is the cause of public mass shootings (PMS). For liberals the only remedy is to remove Trump from office, ban and seize all firearms in private hands, and double down on suppression of “hate speech”. This in spite of the fact police investigations reveal those guilty of PMS are typically creatures of the Left, not Trump supporters. McCarthy notes the Second Amendment’s intent was to protect the firearms liberals want to seize. He adds that a “well-regulated militia” means a citizenry well practiced with arms as opposed to a standing army. To be effective, the militia must have the same firearms as a federal standing army. So far so good. Then McCarthy runs off the rails. He asserts notions the Second Amendment supports citizen rebellion, like Shays’ Rebellion, is “right-wing folklore”. McCarthy offers as proof the Virginia Declaration of Rights, authored by George Mason that “inspired” the Second Amendment. Its stated reason for arms is to maintain a well-regulated militia “under strict subordination to, and governed by the civil power”.6 Where to start? Part one covered the meaning of “militia”. Here we turn to a story of mistrust by the people’s “betters”.
Typical high school government textbooks allege the Articles of Confederation had failed. This led to unpaid State and private debt, violence, and economic chaos verging on tearing the union apart. “Shays’ Rebellion in Western Massachusetts (31 August 1786-June 1787) was only the most spectacular of several incidents”.7 They assert “By 1786, people in many states were on the verge of rebellion…Led by Daniel Shays, a veteran of the Revolution, hundreds of angry farmers and laborers banded together, marched on court houses, and freed imprisoned debtors from jail”. Richard Hardy, like other government textbook authors, uses Shays’ Rebellion (a name invented by enemies of the farmer’s protest) as an argument for abolishing the Articles and replacing it with a strong national government of centralized powers.8 This interpretation was strongly echoed by liberal teachers (is there a distinction?) with whom I taught and the jock-coaches principals assign to teach government. Ill-versed in the subject, the latter deviated not from the script. Little, if any, of what they teach, including the book’s representation, of Shays’ Rebellion is accurate. The same holds true at the University. For example, a typical college text explains “hard times, tight money, and heavy taxes” sent Massachusetts farmers to debtors’ prison while others “lost their land”. The farmers’ rebellion was “put down” by “state troops”.9 Liberal John Garraty’s text asserts Shays’ Rebellion was the result of Massachusetts attempting to pay off its war debt with the tax bite “falling most heavily on those of moderate income”. He describes mobs shutting down courts to prevent foreclosures and Daniel Shays leading an army to seize the federal arsenal in Springfield, a battle they lost.10 Liberal historian Samuel Eliot Morison, despised by Communist Howard Zinn, author of the most popular fictionalized history passing as truth in public schools and universities,11 writes that Shay’s Rebellion consisted of poor farmers facing harsh economic conditions who demanded relief from their State government. They seized control of courts in Western Massachusetts preventing them from opening until the legislature amended the Constitution. Their demands included ending requirements debts be paid in specie and ending legal favoritism of coastal commercial interests at the expense of farmers. Morison labels Massachusetts’ Governor James Bowdoin a “staunch conservative” who called out the militia to put down these illegal protests.12 Postwar economic conditions were indeed harsh in several colonies but were not the cause of the so-called Shays’ Rebellion. Liberal teachers wield the story in classrooms as a “cautionary tale” to convince students the United States must have a strong national government of consolidated powers. Moreover, at the expense of State and individual rights.
Scare stories are part and parcel of the weapons used by those pushing an agenda to effect a desired outcome. Their creators spin and spoon-feed them to gullible Americans all too willing to embrace lies over truth. It works because Americans are too intellectually lazy to think beyond the accepted wisdom of the herd. Manipulators fuel preexistent worry and fear already planted by mass media and government schools (global warming, Putin under every bed) to create panic and alarm. Their goal is to cause rash imprudent reaction. The nation’s “Father” was the target of such an effort.
With no desire to leave Mount Vernon again, George Washington was enjoying retirement from public life. In 1786, he received visitors and letters from friends and veterans reporting on a “rebellion” in Massachusetts. Their shared goal was abolition of the Articles of Confederation and replacing it with a strong national government of consolidated powers. They wanted to reduce or eliminate State sovereignty. They weaved scare stories ranging from exaggeration to outright lies. Washington was already discomfited by hysterical scare stories he read in newspapers written by editors who also shared a strong desire to scrap the Articles. Political leaders, former army officers, bankers, merchants, and large landowners added their voices to claims the nation was falling apart and about to disintegrate into revolution or civil war.13
General Henry Knox, Washington’s former artillery commander, along with others, knew Washington was a large landowner constantly dealing with squatters. Therefore, they painted Massachusetts’ rebels in the most lurid and false terms. They told him rebels wanted to close courts to stop foreclosure on land for unpaid debt, seize land belonging to the rich, and that Massachusetts’ militias were too weak to oppose them. Knox claimed a “licentious spirit” was widespread among the rebels and they were “malcontents” and “levellers” who, through violence, would abolish all social, economic, and class distinctions. In addition, they would erase all private debt and redistribute amongst themselves the land they seized.14 Knox used the term “levellers” to spark alarm in Washington and others. It sprang from the English Civil War of 1642 between Charles I and Parliament. Near the end of that war, common soldiers discussed what improvements they desired for postwar England. Levellers wanted to abolish the tax-supported state church, establish basic natural rights belonging to all men, declared sovereignty was in the people not kings, and that government was a social-compact with the people.15
Through malice or ignorance, Knox was conflating Levellers with English “Diggers”. The latter were essentially proto-communists. Basing their doctrine on the New Testament, Diggers wanted all unenclosed land seized and made communal, farmed, and its produce distributed by the commune to the poor. England would abolish private property along with “unequal wealth”.16 Knox’s misrepresentation of Shay’s Rebellion, and use of the term “Levellers”, had the desired effect. He conjured images of rogue uneducated, poor, and debt- ridden rabble rising up to burn the homes and farms of the rich, looting businesses and banks, and overthrowing the government in Boston. None of this was true.
The men in Western Massachusetts who marched on and closed courts in several towns were comprised of farmers, large landowners, merchants, Revolutionary War heroes and veterans, and political leaders. They were typically middle class, from leading long established families, and were neither poor nor debtors. They rebelled because land and note speculators, led by Governor James Bowdoin, had taken over the government in Boston. Like other states during the war, Massachusetts issued paper notes to pay its soldiers, farmers, and merchants from whom it requisitioned supplies. Not backed by specie, inflation ensued and soon, like the famous Continentals, they were worthless. People had to eat and pay bills so, when speculators offered to buy these notes for a fraction of their face value, their holders sold them. After the war, Bowdoin and his cronies bought up as many notes as they could. Once in power, they passed a law requiring the State redeem them at full face value, with interest, and much of it paid in specie. To finance redemption, Bowdoin’s government passed a head tax on families for every male 16 and older and farm families tended to be large. In addition, the state would tax their land. Those unable to pay faced losing family farms and going to prison. The State had forced soldiers, farmers, and small merchants to accept worthless notes during the war. From them speculators bought these notes for next to nothing. Now the state was taxing those who lost an enormous sum selling the notes to speculators to pay an even greater amount to redeem them on their behalf.17 Public school texts seem to leave out this part of the story.
Is it any wonder farmers in Western Massachusetts reacted in anger and protest? They demanded a change in the law. Specie was scarce and farmers knew the government in Boston was robbing them to benefit Bowdoin and his wealthy cronies. Boston was deaf to farmers’ complaints. Their protests became larger and eventually they closed local courts to force change. They were not attempting to overthrow the government. Bowdoin reacted with force. The State Legislature granted him authority to arrest, torture, and even hang rebels. He could also seize their land and sell it. To his benefactors, naturally. He suspended habeas corpus meaning he could arrest and keep rebels, even political enemies, in jail until they rotted. This he did. Massachusetts’ militia was more than large enough to suppress the rebellion but, when Bowdoin called it out, they refused. They would not march against men they knew to be honorable, patriots, and war veterans. Bowdoin and his rich speculator friends passed the hat amongst themselves and raised enough money to hire a mercenary army of 4,400 led by war veteran General Benjamin Lincoln to suppress the “rebellion”. Following several skirmishes, the rebellion ended when Lincoln’s State army seized the federal arsenal at Springfield before the farmers did.18 Proponents of a new “national” government did not tell George Washington this side of the story.
Although a war hero, Daniel Shays was a newcomer to Western Massachusetts. He was leader of one of many groups who protested what Boston was doing. Those comprising “rebel” groups never called themselves “rebels, insurgents”, or “Shayites”. The press and allies of Bowdoin invented these labels. The same way the left uses “right-wing” for conservatives implying the latter are Nazis. Shame on you Daniel McCarthy. Instead, they referred to themselves as “Regulators” a term originating in England during the 1680s. Britons who took this name opposed corruption, cronyism, and tyranny in government. Americans knew this history. The term Regulator gained usage In Britain’s North American colonies in the 1760s, first in North and then in South Carolina. Lawyers and land speculators gained control of Carolina County Courts and used their position to levy heavy taxes, fees, and fines on farmers. They jailed delinquent taxpayers, seized, and sold their land. When the governments in each colony refused to reply to the farmer’s pleas for relief, they took matters into their own hands forming organizations of Regulators who drove corrupt lawyers, judges, and officials from office. Like Massachusetts, the aristocracy consolidated political power into its hands rewarding themselves and cronies at the expense of farmers, exactly what Britain’s appointed Royal Governors had done in the colonies. Each state in turn suppressed rebellion. Following in the footsteps of those who came before, Massachusetts’ Regulators vowed to end tyrannical government in Boston based on cronyism and corruption. Their goal was to rewrite the hated State Constitution of 1780.19
Men who favored creating a European style strong national government with centralized powers used Shay’s Rebellion to argue the government under the Articles was too weak to survive. They stoked fear and panic. “Nationalizers” created and disseminated false narratives through the media they controlled. They pressured Madison and Washington to support abandoning the Articles in favor of a yet, unwritten new form of government.20 It is remarkable that American patriots did not realize that, in beholding the rebels of 1786, they were seeing themselves in the mirror of 1776. There can be but one explanation. These men evinced a trait shared from time immemorial among those who would rule. They do not trust “lesser” citizens to rule themselves sharing the same amount of freedom as their “betters”. It is why they target the Second Amendment, freedom of speech, and challenge the outcomes of elections. Even some Republicans, conservative pundits, opinion makers, and movers and shakers believe in government for, not of the people. They want their base to vote and then shut up. Do not accommodate them. Read and learn the truth.
11 Peter Schweizer, Secret Empires (New York, N.Y., HarperCollins Publishers, 2018), 55-73. Spoiler alert, Republicans have their hands in the till as well.
33 Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, Sixth Edition (Oxford, England, Oxford University Press, 2000), 332, 333, 380, 394, 397, 575-576.
55 Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 (New York, N.Y. Simon & Schuster, 2010), 104, 108.
77 William A. McClenaghan, Magruders’ American Government, 2000 Edition (Needham, Massachusetts, Prentice Hall, 2000), 37.
88 Richard J. Hardy, Government In America (Boston, Massachusetts, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992), 45.
99 Rebecca Brooks Gruever, An American History, Second Edition, Volume 1 to 1877 (Reading, Massachusetts, Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1976), 175.
1010 John A. Garraty and Robert A. McCaughey, The American Nation: A History Of The United States, Sixth Edition (New York, N.Y., Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987), 151.
1111 Mary Grabar, Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, 2019), 6, 12, 14, 23-28, 251, 257.
1212 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History Of The American People, Prehistory to 1789 (New York, N.Y., A Mentor Book from New American Library, 1972), 390-394, 395.
1313 Leonard L. Richards, Shays’s Rebellion: The American Revolution’s Final Battle (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 1-3.
1515 Goldwin Smith, A History of England (New York, N.Y., Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), 305-334.
1717 Richards, 1-10, 15-16.
2020 IBID. 89-116, 129-138.
