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.
