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How A Republic Dies

“Ours, as you know, is a government of limited powers. The Constitution confers the authority for certain actions upon the President and the Congress, and explicitly prohibits them taking other actions. This is done to protect the rights and liberties of the people”.1

President Calvin Coolidge

“Of course one does meet brilliant men’, said Nikolay Nikolayevich, ‘but they are isolated. The fashion nowadays is all for groups and societies of every sort.—It is always a sign of mediocrity in people when they herd together…The truth is only sought by individuals, and they break with those who do not love it enough”.2

Dr. Zhivago

Long ago, in the year 1787, a tribe known as Gardenites dwelt in the lush valley Arboretum that provided all their needs. Growing in its midst was a tree named Liberty. Inscribed on its sacred bole was General Welfare, a list of powers delegated to Arboretum’s government they called Steward. Only one piece of fruit grew from this tree. Because it contained the seeds of Liberty’s renewal, Gardenites prohibited anyone to eat it. Even though they lived in paradise, some residents began imagining how they could make Arboretum better, if they were charge. Instead of limiting Steward to only protecting Liberty, the imaginers, called Consolidators, would grant him unlimited power to reorganize and reorder life in Arboretum according to their vision for how it should be run. When Consolidators made their proposal to the Gardenite Assembly, they in turn consulted Liberty. General Welfare forbade Steward from taking any action not on its list. Finding no authority for the proposal, Gardenites voted no. A silver-tongued man named Beguile led the Consolidators. His manners were serpent like; his clothes shimmered as if gold. Words flowed from his sibilant tongue like honey as he promised Gardenites a life freed from toil and a cornucopia of plenty for all if they but ate the fruit of Liberty. Seduced by Beguile, Gardenites took and ate the fruit. With the last seed consumed, the words inscribed on Liberty faded, dissolved, and blew away like dust. Consolidators, whose desire was to rule over all Gardenites, seized control and became Steward. Soon briars and thorns grew up among the crops making harvests meager. Rains ceased, the ground grew parched and cracked, and crops began to die. Steward beat the Gardenites to work harder, taking the first portion of each harvest to share with obedient followers. They raided Gardenite homes for items of value they dispensed among themselves. A great sound rent the air. Liberty cracked, split asunder, and crashed to the ground. Arboretum was no more.

At this writing, Democrats and Republicans debate the size and cost of Mr. Biden’s “infrastructure” bill. Missing from the debate is the question as to whether or not federal infrastructure bills are legal in the first place. If not, arguments over size and cost are moot.

Professor Brion McClanahan writes the “general welfare” is one of the most misunderstood phrases in the Constitution. Many, if not most Americans believe it means the federal government is to provide for their material well-being. This includes food and poverty assistance, medical care, paying for college, building roads and bridges, and so forth. This results from an “incorrect reading of the Constitution” leading to approximately “90 percent of what the federal government does being ‘unconstitutional’—and it’s all due to an expansion of government power under the guise of the ‘general welfare”.3

The most important part of the Constitution with respect to the exercise of federal power are Article 1, Sections 7, 8, and 9. They comprise “the power of the ‘sword and purse” consisting of restrictive clauses relative to Congress’s exercise of power. By ill-informed and dishonest reinterpretation of these clauses, they are the mechanisms by which those in power metamorphosed a federal into a national system of government. From day one, Founders who favored consolidating power in a strong central government [Consolidationists] worked to transform the restrictive design of the general welfare phrase into a positive authorization for what they wanted to do.4

Article 1, Section 8, the enumerated powers, comprise a closed loop. The states delegated to the federal government no powers outside it. Professor Forrest McDonald notes the taxation authority of the U.S. government is limited to the common defense and general welfare. Government may tax, borrow, and spend only for what is in the enumerated powers. No authority for infrastructure, roads, bridges, canals, transportation, and so forth is among that list. The Founders rejected federal funding for infrastructure projects because the states as a whole would pay for projects benefitting only one region or locale.5

States sent delegates to Philadelphia in May 1787, to revise the Articles of Confederation. Instead, during the next several months, they drafted a new Constitution. Among the factions attending were “nationalists” who wanted to create a strong central government of consolidated powers. Consolidated from the states, which then would become appendages of the central government with no autonomy or sovereign power of their own. If they succeeded, American government would become much like those in England and Europe wherein the powerful used it as a means to promote favored regional, commercial, nepotistic, and political special interests.

Delegates may not have shared a common vision for what form the new government should take, but they did share a common understanding of the words general welfare. They “lifted” them and their meaning from the document they were sent to revise. In both documents, general welfare refers to government actions benefitting “the union as a whole such as military hardware for the common defense” but not tax expenditures or financing of projects benefitting only specific localities, regions, states, and so forth. This restriction excludes federal involvement with any form of infrastructure or its maintenance.6

In order to create a national as opposed to a federal system, Consolidationists knew they had to alter the meaning of general welfare. James McHenry, of Maryland, wrote in his journal on 4 September 1787 that under the proposed Constitution, the “national” (sic) legislature could not, but should have the power to appropriate money to “erect lighthouses or clean out or preserve the navigation of harbors”. He discussed this with Nathaniel Gorham, Massachusetts, and Gouverneur Morris and Thomas Fitzimmons, delegates from Pennsylvania. Morris said, “The Congress could do so under the ‘General Welfare Clause”. McHenry was aware such an interpretation would allow Congress to grant trade monopolies which, Southern states rejected. Benjamin Franklin also sought to circumvent the restrictive nature of the general welfare. He proposed the words “to provide for cutting canals where deemed necessary” be added after the words “post roads” in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7. James Wilson, and the rest of the Pennsylvania delegation, supported this motion. Considering Philadelphia was a major trading port, their self-interest was obvious. Roger Sherman, Connecticut, opposed this change noting, “The expense in such cases, will fall on the United States, and the benefit accrue to the places where the canals may be cut”. Wilson countered that Sherman was not only wrong but his restrictive construction of the term constituted an obstruction of the general welfare. Rufus King of Massachusetts, a state with the important port Boston, saw the larger picture and came to Sherman’s defense. He noted Wilson’s interpretation of general welfare meant government would have authority to establish banks, build roads, and erect commercial monopolies “that would sharply divide the states”.7 Delegates voted Franklin’s proposal down. King’s comment was a foreshadowing of backroom deal making. Politicians call it “log-rolling”. Coastal states obtain federal funding for projects appropriate to their geography by supporting funding for projects in land locked regions. The general welfare prevented such practices.8 Consolidators did not give up.

Gouverneur Morris continued to insist the general welfare should allow the general government to build docking piers (infrastructure) in port city harbors. He told McHenry and Gorham delegates should promote this interpretation. “McHenry was horrified by the implication of so broad an interpretation of the clause”. Morris attempted to alter the meaning of general welfare through subterfuge. As principle penman for the Committee of Style, he wrote the Constitution’s draft. When he penned Article 1, Section 8, he “itemized the powers of Congress in clauses, separating them by semicolons. He inserted one between “To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises’ and the qualifying ‘to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare”.9 A semicolon is a “punctuation mark; used chiefly in a coordinating function between major sentence elements (as independent clauses of a compound sentence)”.10 Morris’s alteration would have turned general welfare from a dependent phrase into a stand-alone clause transforming a restrictive into a “positive grant of power”. Congress could then do whatever it wanted. Roger Sherman caught Morris’s trick, brought it to the Convention’s attention, and they directed a comma replace the semicolon.11

Instead of a clause, the general welfare is a dependent or subordinate phrase, a distinction with a difference. Clauses are a “Collection of words that has a subject that includes an active verb”.12 An independent clause “can stand on its own” [contains both a subject and a verb] and “it does not need to be joined to any other clauses because it contains all the information necessary to be a complete sentence”. In addition they; 1) have a subject which tells the reader what the sentence is about, 2) have an action or predicate [verbs that explain or tell what the subject is doing], and 3) express a complete thought, something that happened or was said.13 A phrase is a “collection of words that may have nouns or verbals [nouns-words that name. Verbs/verbals-words that do or are].14 Dependent or subordinate phrases do not complete a thought and cannot stand-alone. For example, the words “general welfare” to a reader mean nothing. For a clause or sentence to stand-alone, it must contain a word or group of words acting as a noun and is the main-focus of the sentence.15 A phrase cannot stand-alone otherwise; it is a sentence fragment, “and is considered one of the worst writing errors one can make”.16 What does all this mean?

The general welfare is a phrase dependent on and attached to the common defense and the enumeration of powers that follow. This enumeration defines the general welfare. Infrastructure is not among the powers listed. The taxation authority of the U.S. government is limited to the common defense and enumerated powers. The federal government has no authority to appropriate money to build roads, bridges, canals, and so forth. To do so would improve the welfare of a specific area, not the nation and thus delegates rejected delegating this power to the federal government.17

When the Convention first presented the proposed Constitution to delegates in Philadelphia, the words “common defense” and “general welfare” were absent. A motion to add them was defeated. Delegates grounded objections on the fact that since Article 1, Section 8, the enumerated powers, constituted the common defense and general welfare, these words were redundant. In addition, delegates who supported a federal as opposed to national system of government, contended consolidationists would twist the meaning of general welfare to expand federal power beyond its enumeration. Roger Sherman noted these words applied to very few “objects” limited to protecting the nation from foreign powers and insurrection.18 South Carolina delegate David Ramsey agreed the Constitution confined the powers of Congress to providing for the common defense and general welfare. To raise money for any other purpose, including internal improvements (infrastructure) was illegal as those were among the reserved powers belonging to the states. Upon this understanding, delegates added the words when the Convention closed in September 1787.19

Criticisms by opponents of the proposed Constitution compelled proponents to defend and explain its problematic parts. They did this through newspaper editorials, essays, and the Federalist Papers. Madison and Hamilton, to a greater degree, were nationalists. Both considered the Articles of Confederation an impediment to creating an American nation. Both supported a national as opposed to a federal system of government. However, they understood states would not support the former because it meant relinquishing state sovereignty. Hence, they supported the proposed Constitution as a first step toward a larger goal. They conceded the general welfare did not authorize Congress to fund infrastructure. Common sense dictated states fund their own projects.20

Anti-Federalists claimed the general welfare “clause” (sic) constituted an unlimited delegation of power to the general government. James Madison addressed this in Federalist 41. He noted Article 1, Section 8, and its 18 sub-clauses comprised the sole meaning of general welfare. The list was restrictive. Congress has power to tax, borrow, and spend only for what is on the list. Most of the list comprise actions relative to the military, foreign commerce, and war.21 In Federalist 45, Madison wrote; “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State”.22 Madison provides a concise explanation of America’s republican form of limited government and federalism. Hamilton could not help but show his true colors.

Writing in Federalist 30 and 34, Hamilton insisted the federal government’s ability to acquire revenue and spend had to be commiserate with challenges it faced especially with respect to the machinations of foreign powers. Because no one could predict the future, government’s power to tax and spend should be untethered from limits imposed by Article 1, Section 8. It was logical Congress have the power to tax and spend on any project it deemed for the general welfare.23 Jefferson and Madison corrected Hamilton noting the purpose of the enumeration was to limit Congress’s application of the meaning “general welfare”.24

Future Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, ardent nationalist, and enemy of state rights, nevertheless defended ratification at the Virginia Convention. He conceded an enumeration limited the powers of Congress. It had no authority to pass laws beyond that enumeration and, if it did, judges would strike them down as “void” and unconstitutional.25 Anti-Federalists were unconvinced. A critic writing as “Brutus” insisted Consolidationists would use the general welfare to transform the federal into a national form of government.26 The vote to ratify the proposed Constitution was unanimous in only three of thirteen states and was close in five others.27 Tenche Coxe, Pennsylvania delegate wrote the states had not delegated to the federal government power to involve itself in the construction and operation of buildings and canals in the States or to subsidize such ventures. Had this not been the case, the States would never have ratified the Constitution. Delegates later added the Tenth Amendment to make clear all powers the States had not delegated to the federal government, they reserved to themselves.28 This issue was bound to come up again.

In 1794, members of Congress proposed allocating federal funds to resettle French refugees from Haitian slave revolts in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Maryland Congressman Samuel Smith argued such an appropriation was constitutional. Virginia Congressman James Madison opposed the bill on constitutional grounds observing, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress for expending on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents”.29 Virginia Congressman John Nicholas agreed with Madison. He proposed, instead, colleagues raise funds through a “private subscription”. Attempting to shame him, Smith said if Nicholas beheld the misery and suffering of the French refugees, he would never have made such a proposal. Backers of the bill said no money would come from the public treasury. Instead, they would subtract the amount of the appropriation from the debt the U.S. owed France from the war.30 Like lawyers then and now, they do not have to be right only have the better sounding argument.

Congressman Madison was President Madison in 1817. Congress submitted to him a bill for “internal improvements”, an appropriation for roads and canals. He vetoed it because it was unconstitutional. Madison observed in his veto message that the States delegated no authority for internal improvements to the federal government in Article 1, Section 8. Any other interpretation would mean Congress had the power to do whatever it wanted.31

Thomas Jefferson explained in a letter to Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, (1822) that President James Monroe had “negatived” [vetoed] an “act for internal improvement” passed by Congress. The bill’s supporters claimed authority to tax and spend for any purpose they considered the general welfare. Jefferson countered that Congress did not have unlimited powers to “provide for the general welfare but were restrained to those specifically enumerated”. It was through the exercise of that finite list of powers Congress provided for the “general welfare” and the same applied to taxing, borrowing, and spending. Jefferson believed it was fortunate the bill was passed because Monroe’s veto would “settle forever the meaning of the phrase, which, by a mere grammatical quibble” [semicolon] at the end of each list or subsection, had been used by the so-called Federalists, to expand the powers of the federal government at the expense of the State’s reserved powers. “It is a mere question of syntax, whether the two last infinitives are governed by the first or are distinct, and co-ordinate powers; a question unequivocally decided by the exact definition of powers immediately following”. In his veto message of the appropriation for the Cumberland Road, Monroe asked, “Have Congress a right to raise and appropriate the money to any and every purpose according to their will and pleasure? They certainly have not. The government of the United States is a limited government, instituted for great national purposes and for those only”.32

Although dead some 24 years, Hamilton’s philosophical successors continued working to undermine the restrictive nature of the general welfare phrase by introducing bills for internal improvements. South Carolina Congressman William Drayton declared, “Hamilton’s view would make a mockery of the doctrine of enumerated powers, the centerpiece of the Constitution, rendering the enumeration of Congress’s powers superfluous. Whenever Congress wanted to do something it could simply declare the act to be serving the ‘general welfare’ and get out from under its limits imposed by enumeration”. What would be the sense of an enumeration if, by invoking the general welfare, Congress could violate any restrictions placed on its power by the Constitution?33

One hundred years after delegates in Philadelphia signed the Constitution, President Grover Cleveland vetoed the Texas Seed Bill a drought relief measure, because it was unconstitutional. He asked rhetorically, “If government supports the people, who will support the government”? It has no wealth and produces no goods. It can enlarge its role in the lives of people only by taking more of what they earn and produce reducing their freedom and prosperity in equal measure.34 He wrote in his veto message:

“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution,

and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government

ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is no

manner properly related to the public service or benefit.

A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and

duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson

should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the

Government, the Government should not support the people”.

Cleveland consulted the Constitution to determine if the proposed action was legal. It was not. Presidents like Cleveland, and later Calvin Coolidge, became the exception. Congressmen continued proposing bills violating the meaning of general welfare. Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Hoover participated in undermining federalism, the basis for a government of limited powers. Franklin Roosevelt turned a drip into a flood.

Although the Supreme Court in United States v. Butler (1936) struck down Franklin Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment Act, it nevertheless held that under Article 1 of the Constitution, Congress had broad powers to tax and spend for whatever it deemed the general welfare of the nation, what Hamilton always wanted. Looking back in 1945, Chief Justice Owen Roberts observed that this case decided the long-standing debate between Hamilton and Jefferson over a loose versus strict construction of the enumerated powers and general welfare in favor of Hamilton.35 Although many more decisions to come drove the final nails into its coffin, on that day the Constitution died overthrown by nine men.

The States created a federal system of government. To it, they delegated power over international affairs, treaties, war, peace, and trade. States reserved all other powers to themselves. They prohibited federal involvement in any form of internal improvement. This would include dredging Boston Harbor, building bridges in Minnesota, constructing flood levies in Missouri, subsidies for Amtrak in NYC, a dam in Arizona, windmill farms in California, aid to indigent in Oregon, and farmers in Iowa, all of which it does. “The central government does not exist to provide a paycheck, a job, a road, healthcare, charity for the indigent, or a minimum wage”. The Founder’s acceptance that these are the responsibilities of states and individuals was universal. They would “not have viewed the transfer of responsibility from individuals to the government as a sign of progress”.36

Republican Senators Roy Blunt and Marsha Blackburn, Missouri and Tennessee respectively, support infrastructure projects, roads, bridges, and internet access, but not the Democrat’s bill.37 Today neither Democrats nor Republicans debate the Constitutionality of their acts especially infrastructure bills. Instead, they quibble over cost. They have abandoned federalism, the principle of limited government, and the Constitution. The liberty, property, and even lives of Americans cannot be safe under such a tyrannical form of government. When people say, “Well, at least we live in a free country” and “Land of the free, home of the brave” I shake my head at such ignorance. Like an over the hill actor, they are living on a past reputation that died a long time ago.

11 Calvin Coolidge, Foundations of the Republic: Speeches and Addresses (Freeport, N.Y., Books For Libraries Press, 1926/1968), 122.

22 Boris Pasternak, translation by Manya Harai and Max Hayward, Doctor Zhivago (New York, N.Y., Everyman’s Library, Alfred A Knopf, 1958/1991), 15.

33 Brion McClanahan, The Politically Incorrect Guide To the Founding Fathers (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2009), 77.

44 Brion McClanahan, The Founding Father’s Guide to the Constitution (Washington, D.C. Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2012), 38.

55 Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence, Kansas, University Press of Kansas, 1985), 264-265. The Latin phrase means “New Order of the Ages” and appears on the reverse of the Great Seal.

66 McClanahan, Politically Incorrect Guide, 78.

77 McClanahan, Founding Fathers Guide, 55-58.

88 Richard J. Hardy, Government In America (Boston, Massachusetts, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992), 355.

99 McDonald, 265.

1010 Frederick C. Mish, Editor-in-Chief, Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Addition (Springfield, Massachusetts, Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2001), 1060.

1111 McDonald, 265.

1313 Your Dictionary, “Independent And Dependent Clauses”, at http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/grammar-rules-and-tips/independent-and-dependent-cl.

1414 C. Edward Good, A Grammar Book For You And Me (Sterling, Virginia, Capital Books, Inc., 2002), 8-9, 30-33.

1515 IBID. 3-4, 14-15.

1717 McDonald, 264-265.

1818 McClanahan, The Founder’s Guide, 43.

1919 IBID. 43.

2020 McClanahan, The Politically Incorrect Guide, 78-79.

2121 Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist Papers, Clinton Rossiter, editor (New York, N.Y., A Mentor Book for the New American Library, 1961), 262-263.

2222 IBID. 292-293.

2323 IBID. 189-193, 205-211.

2424 Legal Information Institute, “Spending for the General Welfare”, at http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html.

2525 John Marshall, Article 3, Section 2, Clause 1, Virginia Ratifying Convention, 20 June 1788, Papers 1: 275-85, Volume 4, page 247 at http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/as21s26.html.

2626 Herbert J. Strong, Editor, selected by Murray Dry from The Complete Anti-Federalist, The Anti-Federalist: Writings by the Opponents of the Constitution (Chicago, Illinois, The University of Chicago Press, 1981/1985), 166-174.

2727 Ashbrook Center, “Teaching American History” at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/ratification/overview/ashbrookcenter/Ashbrook University, Ashland, Ohio, 401 College Avenue, Ohio, 44805.

2828 McClanahan, Founding Father’s Guide, 59, 171, 179.

2929 National Archives, “Santo Domingan Refugees, 10 January 1794” Founders Online, National Archives at https://founders.archives.gov/documents/madison/01-15-02-0017. Original source is Thomas A. Mason, Robert A. Rutland, and Jeanne K. Sisson, editors, The Papers of James Madison, Vol. 15, 24 March 1793-20 April 1795, (Charlottesville, Virginia, University Press of Virginia, 1985), 177-179.

3030 IBID. 179.

3131 Clarence B. Carson, Basic American Government (Wadley, Alabama, American Textbook Committee, 1996), 48.

3232 Martin A. Larson, The Essence of Thomas Jefferson (New York, N.Y. Joseph J. Binns, Publisher, 1977), 145-146. From Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, D.C., Taylor & Murray, 1854), Volume VII, 17-86 to Albert Gallatin, 16 July 1817, 78-79.

3333 Roger Pilon, CATO Handbook for Congress (Washington, D.C. CATO Institute, 1999), 28-29.

3434 Clarence B Carson, A Basic History of the United States, Volume 5: The Welfare State 1929-1985 (Wadley, Alabama, American Textbook Committee, 1987), 1.

3535 Legal Information Institute. The Court held, in a 6-3 vote, federal funding for agriculture in states was legal but federal management was not.

3636 McClanahan, The Politically Incorrect Guide, 79.

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"News Media", Academics, Courts, gun control, Law, Media, Politics, Rights, Schools and campuses, Sellouts and traitors

Freedom and the Role of the Militia Part II

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.

22 Natalyia Vasilyeva, The Associated Press, “Russia’s Conflict With Ukraine: An Explainer,” 26 November 2018, The Military Times at https://www.military-times.com/news/yar-military/2018/11/26/russias-conflict-with-ukraine-an-explainer/

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.

66 Daniel McCarthy, “Liberalism Cannot Stop The Shootings”, American Spectator at https://spectatorus/liberalism-cannot-stop-shootings/

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.

1414 IBID. 3-4.

1515 Goldwin Smith, A History of England (New York, N.Y., Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), 305-334.

1616 IBID. 334.

1717 Richards, 1-10, 15-16.

1818 IBID. 23-61.

1919 IBID. 64-74, 61-63.

2020 IBID. 89-116, 129-138.

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