The Constitution As Regime

[wkmac]

Ok, the title is actually from an article I found in the latest edition of The American Conservative under the title of "Our Machiavellian Constitution" but is an actual reprint and linked to the original source over at Front Porch Republic under the name, Constitution as Regime.

The reason I'm posting this is because in another thread, a poster quoted James Madison from a letter he wrote to one James Robertson on the issue of general welfare:

"With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."

I don't disagree with the point nor the point of the poster who quoted it in relation of what gov't should be and how far it's reach. I'm a localist kind of guy so a powerful central state in any area in not my cup of tea. But as you'll see if you read the above article linked, it's time to be willing to step back and look a lot closer at the events and the outcome of efforts of the late 1780's and then the following actions of gov't even in those early years. Many men who championed freedom, liberty and limited gov't sure didn't act that way entirely once they themselves sat at and around the head of the federal state so is it any wonder as that generation died off and later generations came into play that the distance between the freedom and liberty enjoyed after the last shot fired at Yorktown and what we call such today are vastly different?

If one wants to de-volve the central state, it's no secret that I do, then one has to do a good root cause analysis and get out of denial in just chasing symptoms in the present. You also can't defang a deadly snake by only removing one fang and one venom sack as the snake if still left able to inflict a lethal strike at the time of it's choosing. Also, history shows time and time again that the Snake of State is more than capable of regrowing that fang many times to the cheers and worship of the very people who thought they had pulled it.

Case in point would be all those who extolled Bush for war and voted for Obama as an act of pulling the fang only to now cheer Obama as he's making that fang even longer and more deadly! Oddly enough Bush himself ran on a policy of "no more nationbuilding" (a fang added to by Clinton) which excited a lot of red state voters yet once in office he grew the fang to never before seen levels. Not really if you understand Lincoln, Wilson and FDR but there's the denial again!

To quote another poster making a good point!

Just another politician telling people what they want to hear.

JMO.

 

[av8torntn]

Just to cheer you up.

 

[wkmac]

I actually thought this one was better. Then again, you could probably say the same thing about a bunch of republicans too so there you go!

RIP Sammy Davis Jr.

Fellas! Fellas! Wanna hear a good one? The rubes actually believe there's a real difference between all of us and they believe the Constitution was meant to "bind us down." Is that a scream or what!

 

[wkmac]

When Patrick Henry heard of the meeting in Philly to draft the Constitution, he correctly said, "I smell a rat!"

Benjamin Franklin, who attended the proceedings but took more of a backseat was observed to have remarked as follows when the deed was done.

Benjamin Franklin was the senior statesman at the Convention. He didn’t participate in the debates as much as you might expect, but when it was over, he is reputed to have made a very sober observation, with tears in his eyes he said "its complexion was doubtful, that it might last for ages, involve one quarter of the globe, and probably end in despotism."

As to the term "general welfare":

The Framers’ final control on taxation was to control all spending. In this, they showed their genius and realism. Taxes, said the Constitution could be used "to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." Debts, Defence, and Welfare all began with capital letters. Hamilton, undoubtedly the leading advocate for a strong national government, in The Federalist, 34, said, the Constitution tied up the hands of government and prevented using taxes for any, "offensive war founded on reasons of state." Tax moneys could only be used for Defence, at least that’s what the Framers put in the Constitution. General Welfare meant the opposite of special welfare – but that restriction, like the common Defence restriction has been tossed out the window by national government.

In relation to the term "common defense" consider this point:

Many of the Founders did not want any kind of a national government. What they envisioned was a common defence league, like in Switzerland among the Cantons. They greatly feared a central government, and the anemic Congress under the Confederation was just fine with them.

Let's see, the Swiss have a people's militia system, a policy of non-intervention and have completely avoided all the great wars. Imagine that! Wonder what their crime rate is with all those guns around? Maybe instead of looking at the gun itself, we should look at our glorification of war as a possible source of aggression and a root cause of criminal acts! The Swiss model demands a complete rethink IMO. Anybody hear of any acts of terrorism in Switzerland? Oh wait, there was this act of barbaric brutality so I guess even the Swiss aren't immune from global terorists organizations and their training camps!
That was fun wasn't it!

Source of above quotes and I would highly encourage a read of it too.

Common defense and general welfare IMO by many founders were not terms considered as big in scope but very small and limiting factors. Both were limting factors! To stretch one while limiting the other creates precedent for those adovcating expansion of the other issue in giving them just cause. Arguing the founders belief in limitation becomes meaningless when you ignored them elsewhere with gross expansion of war powers and surveil authority just as it would be to assert that they meant for gov't to provide for every risk and boo-boo one might experience in the course of life.

Truth is either side speaks directly to the very thing that Franklin so feared and what Patrick Henry smelled.

 

[av8torntn]

Common defense and general welfare IMO by many founders were not terms considered as big in scope but very small and limiting factors. Both were limting factors!

Exactly. Everything in the Constitution was a limiting factor for the federal government.

 

[wkmac]

Exactly. Everything in the Constitution was a limiting factor for the federal government.

"OUR" problem AV is that "many founders" felt that way not that all founders did so and thus the very document with words we say limited it's scope has in turn been used in the very opposite manner. Even many of those founders including Jefferson once in power moved beyond it's limitations for their own ends. Many historians suggest Jefferson's shame at this is one reason on his tombstone there is no mention of him having been President. Even Jefferson proved Lord Acton correct in the corrupting influence of power.

Patrick Henry was dead on right when he said, "I smell a rat!" When you consider Jefferson's archenemy in Hamilton and his treachery to the heritage of the revolution by his advocacy of a new gov't beyond the Articles and then follow the belief through gov't and the Lion of gov't (Ted Kennedy wasn't the first) that Hamilton became among celebrated statists of both parties, the document to come after that grand convention just has a tainted stain on it from that point forward. But even Jefferson wasn't opposed to general welfare, his only stance was that this general welfare must be in line with the enumeriated powers given to Congress in Art. 1 Sec. 8. Interesting how he saw the Congress as the seat of power and not the Presidency.

George Smith in a Mises piece on Hamilton stated the following:

Thomas Jefferson said no; Congress did not have unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, "but were restrained to those specifically enumerated." His political rival Alexander Hamilton, on the other hand, had two answers. As the author of Federalist #84, in which he referred to constitutions "as limitations of the power of government itself," he might agree with Jefferson, at least publicly. But later, as Treasury secretary under Washington, he dropped the façade of government restraint. As long as any proposed legislation was "in the public good," he considered it lawful under the Constitution.

Hamilton held a very different view of gov't and from Smith quoting Thomas Dilorenzo in Hamilton's Curse:

Hamilton dismissed Jefferson's strict constructionism and viewed the Constitution as a grant of powers rather than as a set of limitations. With clever manipulation of words, he believed, the Constitution could be used to approve virtually all government actions without involving the citizens at all.

Even Dilorenzo himself acknowledge's the influence and control of Hamilton today over the long forgotten Lockean ideals and those of the classical liberal/physiocrats in the radical ideals of Thomas Paine. In regards to Paine, he was probably America's first true anarchist, God Bless him!

The current economic crisis is the inevitable consequence of what I call Hamilton’s Curse in my new book of that name. It is the legacy of Alexander Hamilton and his political, economic, and constitutional philosophy. As George Will once wrote, Americans are fond of quoting Jefferson, but we live in Hamilton’s country.
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]The great debate between Hamilton and Jefferson over the purpose of government, which animates American politics to this day, was very much about economic policy. Hamilton was a compulsive statist who wanted to bring the corrupt British mercantilist system – the very system the American Revolution was fought to escape from – to America. He fought fiercely for his program of corporate welfare, protectionist tariffs, public debt, pervasive taxation, and a central bank run by politicians and their appointees out of the nation’s capital. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Jefferson and his followers opposed him every step of the way because they understood that Hamilton’s agenda was totally destructive of liberty. And unlike Hamilton, they took Adam Smith’s warnings against economic interventionism seriously. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Hamilton complained to George Washington that "we need a government of more energy" and expressed disgust over "an excessive concern for liberty in public men" like Jefferson. Hamilton "had perhaps the highest respect for government of any important American political thinker who ever lived," wrote Hamilton biographer Clinton Rossiter.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Hamilton and his political compatriots, the Federalists, understood that a mercantilist empire is a very bad thing if you are on the paying end, as the colonists were. But if you are on the receiving end, that’s altogether different. It’s good to be the king, as Mel Brooks would say.[/FONT]

 

[wkmac]

You also get a hint that some of our founders involvement in rebellion to the crown was not for the most alltruistic and noble of terms! Even the great and grand Boston Tea Party memorialized in American myth was more about global trade, monopoly and protection of mercantile turf than it was some grand act in the name of liberty and freedom. The historical grand families of Northeastern business elite must ROTFLtheirAO everytime a news cast of the "Tea Parties" is shown on the nightly news as at least they understand what the act itself was all about. Gives them something to laugh at when they meet in the "Grove" to discuss the many ways to cook hamburger. Pardon me as it's my way of having fun with the advocates of conspiracy to the grand schemes of the Burgerbuilders!


As Dilorenzo pointed out, at least George Will had the honesty of admitting the truth but then again how hard is it to admit the truth when you wholeheartedly agree with it. What can't be easily defended by enumierated powers in the Constitution can be easily do so via international treaty and yet again, the Constitution has failed to maintain it's ability to limit. Minarchist or at best wanna-be's like Will (not really but for the sake of discussion) would berate liberals for gov't and market interventions and yet then turn around themselves and propose gov't interventionsunder the illusion that these are less intrusive and satisfy themselves on the premise of being a better managerial state. Even in 2008' when the Paulson plan of intervention was being discussed, that bulwark of free market and economic liberty in Forbes magazine condemned such idealism of gov't limitation and defended the very first efforts which happened to be at the hands of Hamilton. Never met a capitalist yet unwilling to take a gov't freebie!
Well they paid for it in taxes you say! Wait a minute, when other means of taxation are discussed you defend the poor by saying such taxes would be passed on to the consumer and that corporations pay no taxes. Hmmm cake and eating it too!

The sad part is these same people would call what they do an operation of Free Market capitalism. I have no problem with the capitialism part but the Free Market part is an absolute lie and fraud. BTW, the easiest way to determine if an act is free market or capitalist is very simple. In the true free market, it's an even exchange, a win-win if you will whereas in capitalism the driving force is competition with winners and losers. Now this in itself is not bad if the market remains free, open and honest and consumers of goods or services are free to choose which allows the best allocation of resources to be distributed. Even the medium of exchange itself is determined by the 2 parties and now dictated too by legal tender laws.

I wonder how subserviant the African American community would have been to white America had there been no legal tender laws and within their own community that could have converted their labor into their own medium of exchange thus building their own wealth and "competing" head to head with the white controlled economy? Now that's a question you have to enter some really radical circles to discuss! African Americans were victims as much from lack of true free market as from anything else and this in itself empowered racist political policies because it empowered white society with control by which goods and services are exchanged. Gov't therefore enforced this system of control as it benefitted from the tax mechanism attached to it. Self interests of gov't over the interests of the individual while protecting market monopoly of the private oligarchy?

Capitalism however tends to be tied to the fact that the winners in order to maintain a winning record encourage gov't through it's powers of force to then grant them market priviledge such as the positive right of incorporation which again through use of the commerce clause (enumeriated powers of Congress) is defended by the Constitution. Going further to erode the free market, capitalism can quietly and often secretly demand that gov't regulate the market place with costly rules that are easily absorbed by the larger established corporations whose lawyers and think tanks wrote the rules to begin with but make it nearly impossible for smaller upstart firms with small market reach to even go into business much less rise to compete with the larger monsters. Social Healthcare anyone? Big business loves and benefits from Big Government and always has!

The minarchist finds this OK as gov't should support and fund businesses that create jobs and expand the tax base (gov't self interest again and protecting the winners) which in turn fosters more gov't. Since the inception of Reaganomics and the myth of trickle down, it is true that gov't tax revenues have exploded in this nearly 30 year dreamstate truly proving beyond doubt that this method does work on the revenue side. However, during this same period gov't itself has grown and even more amazing is the fact that prior to President Obama being sworn in, 20 of the 28 years of the last 30 and since 1950' the "limited gov't" party has controlled the Federal Presidency and had more influence in Congress than has been led to believe in 36 of those 58 years. But in that timeframe of originalist/constitutionalists government, it's power has grown to such levels to even make Marx and Lenin or II Duce proud. Even Clinton never really monkeyed with the core of trickle down as much as the Donkey crowd would love to believe but then gov't (demorat or republicon) is nothing more than Criss Angel writ large.

I understand and appreciate where you come from as I too was a minarchist (very popular belief and very comfortable too) from the mid 70's till the late 90's although it was George Bush/Dick Cheney et al who pushed me over the edge to make me realize it and face it to go the next logical step. The other side of this coin is that I don't care how you live or for that matter how anyone else here wants to live, if they want to be communist, fascists, neo-cons, neo-lib, neo-drunks, I don't care. Have at it. Chose to live the life you want too and if you can find others who want to join your group freely and without force or fraud I'm all for it. But we don't live in a country where people are free to choose and make those kinds of choices do we? We are forced, compelled and even frauded into living a very specific form of life according to public policy decided on another fraud called mobocracy or what the greeks called Ochlocracy. But the mob is always controlled and driven by an oligarchy whose hand we sense and know it's there but are never really allowed to fully see. So much for President Transparency right? Even the so-called left has concerns over oligarchy. In 2009' we have those concerned over a liberal oligarchy but when one takes off the glasses of party politics, it's about impossible to distingish between the 2 oligarchy players. If one didn't know better, one would think the same entity controls bothsides. Begs the question do we in fact know better?

Limited Gov't IMO is an Impossible Dream in that the nature of gov't is force and complusion and when it's interests override the interest of the individual, it's limitations will be set aside in the name of it's own self interests or rather the persons who've managed to obtain control of it. The Lord Acton axiom again.

Kevin Carson at the Center for a Stateless Society got it right in many respects when he asked, "Mother, Should I Trust the Government?"

 

[av8torntn]

By any standard is all this spending really for general welfare?

 

[av8torntn]

"The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823

 

[moreluck]

 

[moreluck]

Re: The Constitution

CURL: Obama: A domestic enemy of the U.S. Constitution - Washington Times