A Constitutional Government? What a Concept!

Let’s play a game! I’d like to pretend for a moment that the Progressive movement doesn’t exist; that the subsequent Liberals never discovered Karl Marx or Friedrich Nietzsche. Let’s imagine an America where we had the foresight and courage to block Soviet Russia’s attempts to demoralize America by infiltrating the American press, film industries and educational systems. Let’s ponder the future as if our past had followed a course that more closely resembled the government our founding fathers had meant for us to have. Before we can actually play that game, we must start at the beginning with a review of what that government was supposed to look like. Only then can we remap the last two hundred years and perhaps, speculate on the next two hundred.

The people that founded the American colonies were for the most part, British émigrés, people that sought to escape religious persecution or leave the crowded streets of England’s urban centers and seek new fortunes by settling a vast, new and relatively uninhabited land. There were spacious tracts of land and seemingly limitless resources to be exploited by adventurous men that were fit and industrious. Living in a pre-industrial, agrarian world, uses for many of the “new world’s” resources were still largely unknown but they would certainly come into play later. By the time the British colonies were firmly established in America, the Spanish myths about cities of gold had been disproven and fur trade, fertile lands and natural ports were considered to be America’s greatest assets.

While many still traveled back and forth to England, the American born descendants of the original settlers had mostly taken their father’s places by the turn of the 18th Century. They were beginning to create an identity separate from their British heritage mainly because the British Crown treated them as second class citizens. England had fought several skirmishes with Spain since the inception of the colonies and was actively sparring with France on the borders of the American colonies by the time the mid 1700’s had arrived. England had stationed a number of troops to guard the colonies against French incursion but the British Treasury was under pressure and the cost to maintain a protective force in numbers was becoming prohibitive. The English population was already overtaxed and on the verge of revolt so England turned to her second class citizens in America to carry the financial burden of her own protection.

For many, it may seem proper that the beneficiaries of that protection should pay for it but this story could not be written if Britain had not taken that principal too far. Strict limits were placed on the manufacture of American goods so that British made goods would still be in demand. While one new tax after another was levied on colonial trade, the colonies were continually denied the representation in Parliament that British citizens had enjoyed for centuries. The troops sent by England to guard the colonies were slowly assuming the duties of suppressing the anger that was slowly brewing against the unfair restrictions and tariffs. The troops themselves became the center of the controversy as colonists were forced to house and feed the soldiers at their own expense.

All of this would boil over into open insurrection and finally result in a bloody revolt against British rule. The Declaration of Independence would have had no more historical significance than an advertising poster for fertilizing manure had the colonies not defied all odds and emerged victorious. With their independence from England, the colonies would use their proclamation of natural rights and the list of grievances in that declaration to create an entirely new form of government.

The new government would be founded on the principal that man’s fundamental rights descended directly from God and were irrevocable; that these rights had always existed and were not an act of kindness granted by a beneficent government. The basic structure of the government they created borrowed the most historically successful parts from a variety of cultures. It would contain a body of civilian representatives as found in the British Parliament; a Senate as found in the Roman Empire and a democratically elected leader as part of the experiment. All of these would be restrained by law and for the first time in the history of the planet, the word of law shackled the reach government and the citizens retained supreme rule over all of it.

Central to the formation of the new government was the principal that the States remained sovereign and self governing. The Constitution created a governing body that would unify the States while each retained autonomy and that would not be an easy trick. They achieved this through a “bottom up” strategy. The people retained direct control over State government through the electoral process and the State would govern its citizens by laws enacted with the consent of the governed. The individual States would freely enter into a Union of States whose governing body would be comprised of elected representatives from each State and a President elected by the citizens of all of the States in the Union. It would be a Republic, with the electorate selecting representatives based on their principals and those representatives would vote for or against legislation on their behalf.

Each State would have to agree to abide by the United States Constitution in order to enter the Union. The Constitution is a document that not only reaffirms the State’s sovereign rule but clearly defines the powers that the States would delegate to the Federal government; strictly limiting the Federal government to those powers alone. As part of the Union, the States would agree to obey the laws passed by the Federal government so long as those laws pertained to the responsibilities delegated to the Federal government by the Constitution. A Supreme Court was established that would rule on any Federal law that was challenged by a State or citizen that could prove harm.

Curiously, the Bill of Rights were added as the first ten amendments to the Constitution and not written into the original document. It is not that the Founding Fathers considered those rights as an afterthought; indeed they considered those rights supreme. They did not add them because they did not feel they embodied the Federal government with any power sufficient to threaten those rights. We now know the confidence they had in the Constitutional limits placed on the Federal government was overstated and the Supreme Court spends much of its time hearing cases surrounding those sacred rights. While visionaries, the Founding Fathers saw that power is corruptible and did the best they could to see that the Federal government was correctly restrained. What they did not envision were the future generation of Constitutional scholars dedicated to finding pathways around those restraints and that would inevitably bring us to a point where the Federal government it threatening to become the master and not the servant of the people.

The Founding Fathers were geniuses but alas, they were still mere mortals. If they possessed the powers of clairvoyance perhaps they could have avoided the mess we are in today with a simple table of definitions added as an appendix to the Constitution. That would certainly have taken the wind out of the sails of those prominent Constitutional lawyers and closed the loopholes that they are now driving trucks through. Those definitions already exist in the Federalist Papers, a series of letters and correspondence penned by the founders that clearly detail their intent and place the language contained in the Constitution in context. Unfortunately, since those letters are not part of the actual Constitution they bear no weight in the actual review of the law as it is written. Armies of legalist attorneys now argue each and every word written in the Constitution and assign modern interpretations that shatter what were once considered iron chains on the power of the Federal government.

Tomorrow we begin our experiment in earnest. We will imagine that the Founders did include that table of definitions in the actual Constitution and that there is no longer any question as to the role of the Federal government. Make sure you wear a helmet and elbow pads because it’s going to be one hell of a ride!

Paul

The Declaration of Independence

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security….


By the time these extraordinary words were drafted, the colonies of the American States had effectively been at war with Great Britain for over a year. The “Seven Years War” (1754–1763), which some considered to be the real “first world war” because of the multitude of European nations that were involved, had strained England’s finances and placed the British government deeply in debt. Previous attempts to raise additional taxes in England had resulted in violent protests and were therefore, out of the question. In an attempt to restore solvency to the treasury and to cover the costs of keeping military forces in the American colonies, Britain imposed a number of taxes on the colonies rather than risk further dissent in England.

The first tax enacted after the Seven Years War was the Sugar Act of 1764 (a modification of the Molasses Act of 1733). The Molasses Act places a 6 pence tax per gallon on molasses imported into Great Britain. The Sugar Act taxed Molasses imported to the Americas from the British West Indies at the rate of 3 pence per gallon.

Stamp Act of 1765 required that a tax stamp be purchased and affixed to most printed materials. The act was met with resistance and violent protests in the colonies. Many of the agents responsible for selling the required stamps were intimidated into resigning their commission as the local population began to join in protests instigated by the Son’s of Liberty. The Stamp Act was also met with resistance from British merchants and manufacturers that exported to the colonies. There trade was being threatened by the economic problems in the colonies that the tax had only worsened; as a result, the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766.

In 1765, Parliament also enacted the Quartering Act. This Act stated that British troops stationed in the colonies would be housed in barracks and public houses. If the number of troops stationed in a particular area outnumbered the available military accommodation, the act permitted that the troops would be housed in a variety of structures including inns, stables, outbuildings, taverns, etc. and that the owners of those establishments would be required to provide food, bedding and other necessities without compensation. New York refused to cooperate with this act and the troops that arrived there remained quartered on board their ships. For their insolence, Parliament suspended the Province of New York's Governor and legislature in 1767 and 1769. In 1771, the New York Assembly acquiesced and allocated funds for the quartering of the British troops.

Since the colonies had reacted so violently to the imposed taxes and other acts, the British Parliament enacted the Declaratory Act in 1766 in an attempt to restrain the behavior of the colonies. The act declared that Parliament had the right to make laws for the colonies in all matters. Unlike the British colonies in other parts of the world, the American colonists, for the most part, had either emigrated from England or at the very least, were direct descendents of Englishmen. The notion that they could be taxed without having representation in Parliament did not sit well in the America’s since the British Constitution prevented Parliament from exacting taxes without the consent of the governed in England proper. Clearly, England did not recognize that this provision of law applied to English subjects living in the colonial states.

Even after the disaster of the Stamp Act, Parliament enacted the Townshend Acts in 1767. The Townsend Acts were as series of five different laws whose intent was to raise revenue in the colonies to pay for governors and judges independent of colonial control, to create a more effective means of enforcing compliance with trade regulations, to punish the province of New York for failing to comply with the 1765 Quartering Act, and to establish the precedent that the British Parliament had the right to tax the colonies regardless of Parliamentary representation. By 1768 matters had deteriorated so badly that the British Military had occupied Boston and by 1770, The Boston Massacre had forever dimmed the hopes that reconciliation with England was possible.

Although reconciliation was unlikely, the loyalists living in the colonies had sent several letters pleading for Parliament to intercede and asking that the American colonies be granted the same rights and privileges afforded to all Englishmen residing within Great Britain. All attempts to illicit assistance from Parliament were rebuffed and the colonies were declared to be in revolution with the members of the Continental Congress branded as traitors to the Crown. In April of 1775, the battles of Lexington and Concord signaled the earnest beginning of the war of revolution and by June of that year, Congress had passed a resolution formally creating the Continental Army.

Of course you know that on July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence. Had the colonies not won the war with England, the Declaration would have no more importance that any other piece of paper but with the eventual assistance of France, Spain and the Dutch Republic, the Continental Army prevailed and accepted the surrender of the British military forces in 1783 and secured the future of this fledgling nation.

These were not the wanton acts of lawless barbarians. These were decent and good men that were denied the right to live as subjects of the British Crown with the same privileges enjoyed by all other Britons. The acts of oppression employed by the Army of Great Britain and the British Parliament that were meant to strangle the colonies into submission served only to fuel the fires if dissent. The Declaration of Independence was drafted to serve as an honorable statement of their intentions. It was to be a legal notice that the colonies were in fact, separate and apart from Great Britain and would continue the armed conflict to enforce that separation. The Declaration listed the offenses and atrocities committed against the people of the colonies and served as their lawful justification for the revolution that was already under way.

These were people that were not fighting to be free; they were fighting because they were already free. Freedom was a right that they strongly believed was granted to them by a mighty and just God. Their freedoms were not a proclamation of Congress or the whim of a benevolent King, but a divine right that had always existed. These beliefs would guide them in the work that lay ahead in drafting the most profound document human hands had ever created; The Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution would embody the essence of every struggle mankind had faced to live freely and without fear. The first ten amendments to the Constitution could easily be seen as a brief list of those struggles and the righteous solutions to them.

Please join me tomorrow as we begin to explore the Constitution of The United States of America.

Paul