Geroge Mason, Patrick Henry, and Nationalism contra Federalism

Was Nationalism Sold To the Country As Federalism?by Al Benson Jr.

It seems that, under the Articles of Confederation, there were states rights, as each state was considered sovereign and independent. However, with the ratification of the new constitution, that seems to have disappeared. Historian Clarence Carson has noted that, regarding the Articles of Confederation: “This bent, or tradition can be traced to many sources. Americans were, above all, a people of the book–the written word–the Bible. There was the Puritan idea, too, of the Covenant, an agreement between man and man and between man and God…Colonists had drawn their own political agreements, such as the Mayflower Compact and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut…Once the colonies had broken away from England, the only historical allegiances that remained were to the states and localities…At any rate, there should be no doubt that the government of the United States under the Articles of Confederation was brought into being by the states.”
Some delegates saw the new Constitution as potentially tyrannical and refused to sign it. It seems that statesmen in those days had a far clearer view of things than do our present politicians, who I will not dignify by calling them statesmen.
George Mason of Virginia was unwilling to sign. The major objection was that the new document did not contain a bill of rights and there were objections in several state conventions to ratification being enacted too hastily without such being made part of the document. Patrick Henry argued, and rightfully so, in the light of history, that a specific bill of rights was essential. He observed that governments regularly and automatically assumed powers that were not prohibited to them. Can anyone in our day deny this truth? We have a Commander-in-Chief that regularly rules the country by executive fiat when he can’t get a usually-willing Congress to go along with something he has been instructed to ram through. And Congress never seems to complain. They sit back and let him do it. In our day the Executive Branch of government regularly usurps powers denied to it and the courts ignore the whole situation, giving the Executive and Legislative branches a wink and a nod as our rights are stolen. So much for checks and balances–another bill of goods we have been sold.
Added to all this was the continuing problem of differing views of the Constitution, which seems to have been a major problem back before the War of Northern Aggression.
In his book The Confederate Constitution of 1861 Marshall DeRosa noted that: “Within the context of American federalism does sovereignty reside in the people in their national or state capacities? To be more precise, does the U.S. Constitution establish an association of sovereign individuals within their respective states or a national community of sovereign individuals the states notwithstanding?” It seems that within the ‘more perfect Union” there has always been this tension. DeRosa noted that by 1861 this tension had become a major cleavage so that the Constitution “rather served as a vehicle for dissension and separation.”
DeRosa observed that: “This was most certainly the case by 1861, as Northerners insisted on a model of federalism consisting of a national community of individuals, with sovereignty being a national phenomenon–that is, nationalism–whereas Southerners adhered to a model consisting of a community of states.”
John C. Calhoun, while he was still alive, (he died in March, 1850) noticed that a transition was taking place wherein the old Federal Republic was being transformed into a consolidated democracy, which placed sovereign authority at the national level while taking power away from the states. That trend continued, with William Henry Seward claiming that the Constitution had established a national community of individuals and not a community of states. Seward was from New York.
And this thought has occurred to me–is it just possible that what Calhoun observed as a transformation was, in fact, actually there in seed form at the very beginning?
According to DeRosa, Seward claimed that: “the States are not parties to the Constitution as States; it is the Constitution of the people of the United States. But even if the States continue as States, they have surrendered their equality as States, and submitted themselves to the sway of the numerical majority…” There is no way I can agree with Seward’s blatant nationalism, but, what if that was really the intent from the beginning? What if nationalism was sold to the Southern states surreptitiously as federalism and, outside of a few men like Patrick Henry, hardly any grasped that? While that may sound far out to some, is it any further out than the idea of a group of men eagerly signing up for a “Union” they could not secede from only 13 years after they had experienced the same situation with Great Britain?
You have to wonder what would make men yoke themselves and their states again to a bondage they had only recently fought a war of independence to get away from. You have to wonder if some of these delegates had in mind something other than the freedom and liberty for both states and individuals that Patrick Henry envisioned.
An educated pastor once said to me “You have to wonder if there were some anti-Christs in that (constitutional) convention.” At the time, I did not grasp the enormity of his assertion. Now I have begun to.

Where Mason Left Us by Vito Mussomeli

This essay is in honor of George Mason’s death, October 7, 1792.
He wrote the foundational words for America. If we listen, he taught us the dream that the import of America is greater, more important than any government of any United States.
He continues today as he was in his time, a pulsating presence of cogency, learning and disregard for political prominence. An unsplintered force, he is our unbreakable vision of limited government grounded in the local people. Like Taylor of Caroline and Macon of North Carolina, he was a true, tempered and tried ‘Roman’ Republican. He built for the ages. He loved for and lived between our eternities of Life and Liberty.
His “Virginia Declaration of Rights” is our touchstone expression of the essential American understanding of a people, any people and their government. He did not abbreviate our world into “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. He was far more clear: “… all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety”.
Again, “… all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them.”
And, again, “… when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to … (the security, protection and common benefit of the people) … a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.” (Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, from Sec. 1, 2 and 3)
In 1787 he led the fight to end the Slave Trade only to have that quintessential understanding of liberty set adrift in the slave-ship harbors of New England on the demand of South Carolina’s early gift to Nationalism, General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. In turn, Pinckney threw away the South’s defense against New England’s commercialism voting to allow a simple majority in the national legislature for commercial statutes. Infuriated, Mason claimed the South was there “delivered” into the hands of the Northern business interests. He recognized the igniting spark of future war.
Unlike Patrick Henry relying on the Amendment Clause to sign approval for the Constitution, or Edmund Randolph who did an about-face from Philadelphia so strange as to withhold a letter from New York during the Virginia ratification convention which, if known to the delegates, may have tipped Virginia to Mason’s side, Mason held firm and refused. In so doing he declined the shards of political compromise to retain political stature. It was then he rose to become an historical beacon of a person’s self-worth.
He understood that the threat to a person’s liberty is so great as the distance between your government and your person. Humanity’s personal liberty requires greater vigilance than its property. Principles of government that will be continuously construed to protect our liberty can only be retained when closely borne. While Wilson, Hamilton and Ellsworth plotted for a national judiciary which they knew would stitch together national power over the States, Mason agreed the courts would grow far afield from the States. He proposed that any national judiciary be limited to admiralty and maritime cases. Like Jefferson who called courts “sappers”, Mason knew no government function breathes air so distant from local people as a national-appointed judiciary.
When he passed from this world on October 7, 1792, he left a record of sterling brilliance and unparalleled character, of self-denial service to more than the people of Virginia. He is our Untarnished Founder, a man whose intellect, character and vision equaled or surpassed any in this world’s political history – for he served the world as well as his country, Virginia. He and Jefferson would say good-bye at Gunston Hall for the last time on September 30, 1792, and the Federalist Republican mantle drew closer and far heavier onto Jefferson’s shoulders.

Quote Of Clarity

"I am firmly convinced that Southern independence would have meant NO consolidated power capable of launching imperial wars against Spain and the Philippines; no intervention into the Great War in 1917, which directly led to the rise of Lenin and Hitler; no follow-up to the Great War that ignited in 1939; and no communist rule over eastern Europe until 1990."

- Old Rebel at Rebellion Blog


Post in total:

Peter Gemma reviews works of fiction and scholarship that explore the possibilities of a Southern victory in 1865. He finds most of them slavishly dedicated to propping up the standard interpretation that anything but a total Northern victory would have been a disaster:

In his book, “Defending Dixie” (Foundation for American Education, 2006), Professor Clyde N. Wilson observed that when writing about the South’s War for Independence most contemporary historians (and fiction writers in this case), “… insist [on] the interpretation we must accept … they wish to obliterate even the recognition of the possibility that there was any other legitimate interpretation.”

“What if” books about a CSA victory can lead to Southern daydreams. Perhaps if more novels and alternative history books penetrate the mass market, real—non-partisan—historical studies will be published. Those should generate serious reflections on why the triumph of the Confederate States of America would define political, philosophical, and cultural progress.

I am firmly convinced that Southern independence would have meant NO consolidated power capable of launching imperial wars against Spain and the Philippines; no intervention into the Great War in 1917, which directly led to the rise of Lenin and Hitler; no follow-up to the Great War that ignited in 1939; and no communist rule over eastern Europe until 1990.

Your child belongs to us already…

Battlefield USA posts this often:  

When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to us already…. What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.

 – Adolf Hitler

Nullification - Battlefield USA Compliation

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Battlefield USA

What Is Wrong With Conservatism

Original article:
New York to Iowa: Why I Traveled to Help Michele Bachmann by Irv Pollack

Key Excerpt:

Let’s look this election in another way.

Conservatives need to ask, “What are the liberals’ principles? What are the ends that liberals seek? What is the point at which they will no longer have grievances against America? If conservatives ask those questions, the answer will be something like this: Liberals will only be satisfied when historic America is eliminated! How are they eliminating historic America? Think about the changes that have and are taking place. Many states now sanction homosexual marriage. The military is now actively recruiting open homosexuals. We have opened our borders so that our very sovereignty is in question. We are told the lie that Americans don’t want to do the jobs that illegals are taking from them. Abortion continues at staggering numbers as if it were “peachy keen.” We have double standards everywhere to try to ensure equality of outcome. Merit is no longer the primary factor in advancing one’s education or career. We do not acknowledge the absolute incompatibility of Islamic law (Sharia) with our way of life. We are destroying the American family by rewarding illegitimacy. Spending is obscene and has to end somewhere in a train wreck for our children and grandchildren. Our major institutions (academia, the media giants, education, advertising, Hollywood, etc.) bombard us with relentless propaganda, casting an almost impenetrable veil over our eyes and minds. These people are “one worlders” who think that man is perfectible if we only would let them run things.

If conservatives would identify the true liberal agenda in this way, and oppose it, then conservatism would mean something. Mainstream conservatives never make this point because it would show that liberals and conservatives have no common ground, which would further mean that the American system, based on the assumption that we all share the same basic loyalties and principles, is gone. Conservatives’ main function is to uphold and preserve the American system. Therefore, conservatives cannot afford to identify what it really is that liberals really believe. TO PROTECT THE AMERICAN SYSTEM, THEY MUST HELP THE LIBERALS CONCEAL WHAT LIBERALISM IS REALLY ABOUT! In short, conservatives, in order to carry out their mission of preserving and defending the American system, must conceal the fact that the liberals’ mission is to destroy the American system. Crazy isn’t it?

The Myth of American Freedom

A great summary of here we are/how did we get here.

The Myth of American Freedom
by Andrew P. Napolitano

Here is Judge Napolitano's closing argument yesterday on his FreedomWatch.

Does the government work for us or do we work for the government? Is freedom in America a myth or a reality? Tonight, what if we didn't live in a free country?

What if the Constitution were written not to limit government, but to expand it? What if the Constitution didn't fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence, but betrayed it? What if the Constitution actually permitted the government to limit and constrict freedom? What if the Bill of Rights was just a paper promise, that the government could avoid whenever it claimed the need to do so? What if the same generation – in some cases the same people – that drafted the U.S. Constitution enacted laws that violated it? What if the merchants and bankers who financed the American Revolution bought their way into the new government and got it to enact laws that stifled their competition? What if the civil war that was fought in the name of freedom actually advanced the cause of tyranny?

What if the federal government were the product of 150 years of stealing power and liberty and property from the people and the states? What if our political elites spent the 20th century importing the socialist ideas of big government Statism from Europe? What if our political class was adopting the European political culture from which our founding fathers fought so hard to break free?

What if our political leaders no longer acknowledged that our rights come from our humanity, but insisted instead that they come from the government? What if you had to produce your papers to get out of or into our once-free country? What if you couldn't board a plane, a train, or a long-distance bus without providing documentation telling the government who you are and where you're going, without paying the government, and without risking sexual assault? What if your local police department could shoot down a plane? What if government agents could write their own search warrants, declare their own enemies, and seize whatever property they want? What if the feds could detain you indefinitely, with no visitors, no lawyer, no judge, and no jury? What if they could make you just disappear? What if the government broke its own laws in order to enforce them? What if the government broke down your front door in the middle of the night and shot your dog, and claimed it was a mistake?

What if you were required to purchase a product that you didn't need, didn't want, and couldn't afford, from a company you never heard of, just as a condition of living in the United States? What if the government told you what not to put in your body as well as what to put into it; and how much? What if the government claimed that since it will be paying your medical bills, it can tell you what to eat, when to sleep, and how to live? What if the government tried to cajole and coax and compel you into behaviors and attitudes it considered socially acceptable? What if the government spent your tax money to advertise to you how great the services are that it provides? What if the government kept promising to make you safe while it kept stripping you of your liberties and committing crimes in your name that made you a target of more violence?

What if you didn't have a right to every dollar you earned? What if the government decided how much of your earnings it will keep and how much it will permit you to have? What if the government took money from you and gave it away to its rich banking and corporate friends whose businesses were failing? What if the government thought it knew better than you did how to lead your life and had no problem telling you so? What if the government took the credit for every success your own human actions helped you achieve? What if the government told you that only it could build roads, run schools, keep you safe, and collect trash even though it's never been able to do so efficiently before? What if the government spent nearly twice as much as it took in? What if it couldn't pass a budget on a timely basis and funded itself just weeks at a time? And what if the government kept borrowing money against the wealth of future generations to pay for wasteful programs today?

What if you worked for the government and the government didn't work for you? What if freedom were a myth? What if we don't live in a free country? What do we do about it?

From New York, defending freedom; so-long America.

September 30, 2011

Yuri Bezmenov

A classic breakdown of the problem today.

Yuri Bezmenov (Ex-KGB, USSR Defector) explains how it works(from Youtube) :



AND

Dr.T's Response

I liked this response at There Are No Socialists - June 25, 2011 - 6:56 pm - by Victor Davis Hanson

Found through The socialisthistorical end game - Vox Popoli(VoxDay)

Here is Dr. T's fairly decent summary of how the US condition got to where it is today:

Dr. T's response(click for link to original):

“This country has been through some pretty tough times…. In all instances we’ve come through pretty well.”

Not in my opinion. We fight the British in a revolution about taxation without representation and form a new nation. Less than 15 years later the federal government imposes a tax solely on whiskey (and not on any other beverages, alcoholic or not, in violation of the equal taxation clause in our Constitution). Those who opposed the tax were met with federal force.

Our nation supposedly was formed as a federation of sovreign states. Sovreignty includes the right to make or break alliances. However, Lincoln and others decided that not only was secession bad, but that it called for war to force those states back into the USA. During that war, we violated the Constitution some more by suspending habeas corpus and initiating a federal military draft, which is not one of the federal government’s enumerated powers.

We had no business getting involved in the Great War, but we hadn’t had any action since the Spanish-American War (that we caused), and so we drafted some more men to get killed in trenches in Europe.

We experienced the Great Depression that Hoover and Roosevelt made worse with their multiple rounds of stimulus spending. Roosevelt repeatedly violated the Constitution, tried to pack the Supreme Court, and began the welfare state that plagues us today and that may sink us soon.

Roosevelt desperately wished to help the British in WWII, but he couldn’t get Congress or the people behind that idea. Instead, he provoked Japan at every opportunity, knowing that if Japan and the US went to war, Japan’s treaty with Germany would result in Germany declaring war on the US. Once that happened, the vast majority of our war effort went towards Europe despite the fact that the Japanese were the ones who had attacked us and who were capturing American territories, protectorates, and allies in the Pacific. We violated the Constitution again and took the homes of Japanese-American citizens and forced them to live in camps. We did not do the same to German-Americans or Italian-Americans.

The Vietnam conflict showed that we don’t have to declare war to draft men and send them halfway around the world to fight and die. More than fifty thousand died to delay the fall of South Vietnam to the communist North. The only good to come from this war was the realization that a smaller volunteer military works better than a military comprised mostly of conscripts. (Note that we still haven’t given up on the draft. It is only suspended.)

Johnson decided to distract us from racial conflict and anti-war sentiment by creating Great Society Ponzi schemes. The full effects of that will be felt within the next twenty years as we follow the course taken by Greece.

The 1960s featured free love and mind-altering drugs. We decided to address the latter by starting a War on Drugs in the 1970s that has not ended. It has given us the largest prison population (in both raw numbers and percentage of adults imprisoned) of any nation. The War on Drugs also featured further degradation of the Bill of Rights, with the 4th Amendment now almost worthless as your property can be seized without a warrant or without you being charged with a crime.

We follow all that with the massive overresponse to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001, the loss of more liberties, the further trashing of the Bill of Rights, the massive expansion of government, and the deliberate infliction of public indignities and sexual molestations that provide no security benefits but show the public that our massive federal government can do almost it wants.

Yep, we’ve weathered our troubles so well that I’m emigrating as soon as possible.

Principles of Tyranny

HT and Link: Straight Talk

Principles of Tyranny…or we are so screwed

1. Control of public information and opinion:
It begins with withholding information, and leads to putting out false or misleading information. A government can develop ministries of propaganda under many guises. They typically call it “public information” or “marketing”.

2. Vote fraud used to prevent the election of reformers:
It doesn’t matter which of the two major party candidates are elected if no real reformer can get nominated, and when news services start knowing the outcomes of elections before it is possible for them to know, then the votes are not being honestly counted.

3. Undue official influence on trials and juries:
Nonrandom selection of jury panels, exclusion of those opposed to the law, exclusion of the jury from hearing argument on the law, exclusion of private prosecutors from access to the grand jury, and prevention of parties and their counsels from making effective arguments or challenging the government.

4. Usurpation of undelegated powers:
This is usually done with popular support for solving some problem, or to redistribute wealth to the advantage of the supporters of the dominant faction, but it soon leads to the deprivation of rights of minorities and individuals.

5. Seeking a government monopoly on the capability and use of armed force:
The first signs are efforts to register or restrict the possession and use of firearms, initially under the guise of “protecting” the public, which, when it actually results in increased crime, provides a basis for further disarmament efforts affecting more people and more weapons.

6. Militarization of law enforcement:
Declaring a “war on crime” that becomes a war on civil liberties. Preparation of military forces for internal policing duties.

7. Infiltration and subversion of citizen groups that could be forces for reform:
Internal spying and surveillance is the beginning. A sign is false prosecutions of their leaders.

8. Suppression of investigators and whistleblowers:
When people who try to uncover high level wrongdoing are threatened, that is a sign the system is not only riddled with corruption, but that the corruption has passed the threshold into active tyranny.

9. Use of the law for competition suppression:
It begins with the dominant faction winning support by paying off their supporters and suppressing their supporters’ competitors, but leads to public officials themselves engaging in illegal activities and using the law to suppress independent competitors. A good example of this is narcotics trafficking.

10. Subversion of internal checks and balances:
This involves the appointment to key positions of persons who can be controlled by their sponsors, and who are then induced to do illegal things. The worst way in which this occurs is in the appointment of judges that will go along with unconstitutional acts by the other branches.

11. Creation of a class of officials who are above the law:
This is indicated by dismissal of charges for wrongdoing against persons who are “following orders”.

12. Increasing dependency of the people on government:
The classic approach to domination of the people is to first take everything they have away from them, then make them compliant with the demands of the rulers to get anything back again.

13. Increasing public ignorance of their civic duties and reluctance to perform them:
When the people avoid doing things like voting and serving in militias and juries, tyranny is not far behind.

14. Use of staged events to produce popular support:
Acts of terrorism, blamed on political opponents, followed immediately with well-prepared proposals for increased powers and budgets for suppressive agencies. Sometimes called a Reichstag plot.

15. Conversion of rights into privileges:
Requiring licenses and permits for doing things that the government does not have the delegated power to restrict, except by due process in which the burden of proof is on the petitioner.

16. Political correctness:
Many if not most people are susceptible to being recruited to engage in repressive actions against disfavored views or behaviors, and led to pave the way for the dominance of tyrannical government.

Karl Marx's 10 Point Program of Communism

Liberalism = Communism = Statism

Below are the 10 points laid out by Marx.

Consider them and consider where the nation is today in reference to each. Then, consider for each of the points which of our political parties advocate for policies and programs to achieve the stated goals.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools.

How far along now is the U.S.A.?