By Douglas V. Gibbs
The roots of tyranny have always been present in the United States. Alexander Hamilton, during George Washington's Presidency, used an anti-Constitutional concept called "Implied Powers" to convince Washington, and the Congress, that a centralized national bank, not unlike what later became the Federal Reserve, was constitutional. In 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall in his written opinion of theMarbury v. Madison case, introduced the concept of judicial review, bypassing the Constitution, Congress, and the States by giving to the courts a new power to interpret the Constitution, and act legislatively from the bench when the courts strike down a law. Under the Presidency of John Adams the Congress approved the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. One of the four acts allowed the federal government to take action against anyone who dared to speak out against the administration. At one point, a member of the House of Representatives, Matthew Lyon, was jailed for saying of the administration in a written essay, "ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice"
Tyrannical behavior by the federal government was not something the founders never encountered, and in fact some of them participated in.
During the Constitutional Convention in 1787 the decision in regards to the new Constitution was to grant the government only certain powers, and allow the rest of the authorities to be reserved to the States. Despite all of the checks and balances, however, many of them doubted the nation would survive. The experiment of self-governance under a republican form of government was risky, but tyranny was always knocking on the door. In fact, Thomas Jefferson believed that a bloody revolution would need to be waged about every twenty years just to keep the government from stomping upon the liberty of the citizens. He said, "And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. . . The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure."
Which brings us to the first tool on our tool belt for taking back this country: A bloody revolution.
A bloody revolution is a last resort, but one that the founders knew may be necessary. It is this tool on our tool belt that is the reason for the Second Amendment. Our right to keep and bear arms is not as important for hunting, and protecting our private property, as it is for protecting the people from a tyrannical government. If the people are armed, tyranny normally remains at bay. Among the first actions by tyrants like Hitler was to disarm the people. If the people are not armed, they cannot fight against the tyranny.
The second tool for taking back this country is a peaceful revolution. The TEA Party is a part of that method, and has done well so far. However, the propaganda and devious tactics of the liberal left has outgunned the TEA Party and conservative movement. Either, the push back needs to be stronger, or more people need to be educated about the power we have as citizens to take back our country.
The third tool for taking back this country is nullification. The States, according to Jefferson, Madison, and a number of other founders, have the right to nullify unconstitutional laws. The second clause of Article VI., best known as the Supremacy Clause, states that "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land. That would mean that any laws not pursuant of the Constitution are not the supreme law of the land, and are null and void. Thomas Jefferson addressed this act of nullification available to the States in his draft of the Kentucky Resolution in 1798. In short, the States do not have to implement unconstitutional laws. They can "nullify" those laws, because they are null and void. Remember, the States gave some of their powers to the federal government to create the federal government, and it was their delegates at the convention writing the Constitution. That makes the States the "Contract Makers," and in turn, the final arbiters of the Constitution. It is their call, not the courts', on if a federal law is unconstitutional, and if the State legislature believes the law to be unconstitutional, the State can simply refuse to implement it through nullification. In history, often the State legislature will pass a piece of legislation indicating that the State is nullifying a particular law.
The fourth and final tool on the tool belt of Americans for taking back our country is the Article V. Convention. An "Article V. Convention," can completely shake the foundations of our governmental system, and steer the federal government back into the restraints of the U.S. Constitution.
Article V. is the section of the Constitution that explains the amendment process. The allowance for Congress to propose amendments was actually an after-thought, and only added during the final days of the Constitutional Convention. Originally, only the States were going to be allowed to propose amendments. The anti-federalists feared that by granting the authority to Congress to propose amendments, the federal government would work to completely re-write the Constitution. However, it was argued that the fail-safe to that was the fact that the States would still be needed to ratify the proposed amendment.
The call for an Article V. Convention is nothing new. 49 States have called for an Article V. Convention through the submission of over 750 applications. The convention, however, has never taken place because the Congress will not set a time and place (their only task regarding an Article V. Convention), for fear of the people proposing amendments, and the States ratifying them, which would ultimately cut the federal government out of the process. Centralized systems do not like it when individual states and people get involved in a process they think is only their domain.
Despite being a statist, Alexander Hamilton wrote Federalist 85 brilliantly, in defense of the Article V. Convention. He argued that if the federal government did become tyrannical, the Article V. Convention was the fail-safe device the States had to reign the out-of-control federal government back in.
Article V. Conventions were offered as a method for the people and the States to stop the rampage of a tyrannical government. An Article V. Convention gives the people and States a way to combat a federal system that ignores the Constitution, treats it as if it does not exist, or invalidates it through judicial means. An Article V. Convention is not only something we need not fear, but one of our primary tools to combat against a tyrannical federal system. An Article V. Convention is our means of changing the Constitution through amendments so that we may give power back to the States, and protect state sovereignty.
Changing the Constitution by amendment is not an easy process on purpose. Amendments must be ratified by 3/4 of the states. The federal government does not like that process because they think it limits their power (and they are correct). This is why the federal government is doing as it pleases regardless of the authorities granted by the Constitution. They wish to keep the States out of the picture. Taking power without the benefit of an amendment makes the State legislatures irrelevant. Those that support big government plan to do their worst as they are now, through ignoring the law, and invalidating the original intent of the U.S. Constitution through the judiciary whenever possible.
They fear the Article V. Convention because such a convention is the people's way of forcing the federal government to behave in accordance to the limiting principles of the Constitution. Despite some arguments that these conventions can be dangerous, be advised that an Article V. Convention is not a way for the corrupt politicians and judges to re-write the Constitution. Only amendments can be proposed in such a convention, and those proposed amendments are still required to be ratified by the States.
One of the amendments that could be a key in turning this nation around would be an amendment to repeal the 17th Amendment.
To understand the 17th Amendment, we need to go back in history to understand how our political system was originally set up. The Founding Fathers included a number of checks and balances during the creation of the federal government in the hopes of creating enough safeguards to protect the people from an ever expansive, tyrannical central government. The separation of powers between the branches of government was an integral part of these checks and balances. However, not all of the checks and balances put in place were obvious.
The dynamics of the federal government were set up to prevent any part of government from having access to too much power.
The people, just like the government, were not fully trusted. To prevent the danger of too much power residing in any part of government, power needed to be divided as much as possible so as to keep it under control. Too much power in the hands of anybody has the potential of being a dangerous proposition - and that includes in the hands of the people.
This nation is not a democracy. All of the voting power was not given to the people. Even the voting power was divided so as to ensure the republic was protected from the mob-rule mentality of democracy.
The vote of the people, or the people’s full and unquestioned voice in government, was, and still is, manifested in the U.S. House of Representatives. Then, and now, the representatives were voted into office directly by the people. Each representative represents a district. The members of the United States Senate were not voted in directly by the people. The U.S. Senators were voted in by an indirect vote of the people.
The Senators were appointed by the State legislatures. The State legislators are voted into office by the people of the State. Therefore, during the early years of this nation, the Senators attained office by an indirect vote of the people through their State legislatures.
The State’s interests needed to be represented in the U.S. Congress. The States had that representation through the Senate by being able to appoint their Senators.
Since the Senators were appointed by the State legislatures, the Senators looked at the political atmosphere in a different manner than the members of the House of Representatives. Since the members of the House of Representatives are directly voted into office by the people, their concerns are more in line with the immediate concerns of the people, no matter how whimsical those concerns may be.
The Senate functioned in a very different manner because when the Senators were appointed they were expected to abide by the wishes of the State legislatures: State’s Rights, State Sovereignty, protecting the States not only from a foreign enemy, but from a domestic enemy, should the federal government become the potential tyranny that the Founding Fathers, and especially the Anti-federalists, feared a central government could become.
Remember, the federal government exists because the States let it. The powers derived by the federal government were granted to it by the States. The federal government is not supposed to be able to do much of anything without the permission of the several States. The Senate was the representation of the States so that the States could ensure the federal government remained within its authorities.
The States having representation in the federal government through the U.S. Senate is also another way that checks and balances were applied to the system. The House of Representatives represented The People, and the Senate represented The States. Through this arrangement, it gave The People the ability to check The States, and The States the ability to check The People, and together they checked The Executive. The dynamics of our government through this arrangement was a built in check and balance.
The States could not get too far without The People approving of it. The People could not get much done without The States agreeing with what they were trying to do. The Executive Branch could get little done without both The People and The States approving of it. However, if the President did not like what The People and The States were trying to accomplish, he could veto the bill. However, if The People and The States felt the legislation was important enough, they could override that veto with 2/3 of a vote in both Houses. That is how the government is supposed to work.
Looking at it in another way, a bill would be approved by both the People and the States before it went to the President to become law. This gave the executive and both parts of the legislative branch the opportunity to approve or disapprove potential laws. The 17th Amendment eliminated the States from that process.
In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment changed the appointment of the Senators from that of the State legislatures to that of the vote of the people.
The damage caused by the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment was that it makes the United States more like a democracy and less like the Republic the founders originally intended.
The people wanted the government to be more like a democracy, and they got it with the Seventeenth Amendment.
Karl Marx once stated that “Democracy is the road to socialism.”
Progressivism was on the rise in the United States during those early years of the 20th Century, and the statists knew that one of their main obstacles was the voice of the States. The Seventeenth Amendment was one of the vehicles the statists used to begin the process of silencing the States, with the ultimate goal of making them irrelevant in regards to the running of the federal government.
The statists did not reveal their true intentions. If they had proclaimed that they desired the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment so that they could proceed in their quest to change the United States into a socialist system, the people would have rejected it. Instead, they used a populist argument. “It is for the will of the people. You deserve a Senate voted into office by the democratic will of the people. If you directly vote for the Senators, they will be more apt to act in line with the will of the people. After all, the States are corrupt, and they can’t be trusted. You people, in the interest of democracy, deserve to be able to vote for the Senators yourselves.”
That was essentially the argument.
Sound familiar?
As a result, the whole system was turned on its head. The entire dynamic of our government system changed.
This division of voting power was put into place because the Founding Fathers knew that should the people be fooled while they completely controlled the vote, a tyranny could ensure that it was voted into the three primary parts of government: the executive, the House of Representatives, and the U.S. Senate. Once that tyranny had control of those three parts of government, the judicial branch would be sure to follow.
The founders knew that should the uninformed electorate vote in a tyranny, while caught up in some kind of cult of personality, it would spell the beginning of the end of the United States as we know it.
The Founding Fathers knew that democracy of that kind would destroy the system, so they divided the power of the vote. The voting power was divided, partly through the creation of the Electoral College, so as to protect us from the excesses of democracy.
Watching what is going on now, the goals of the people behind the Seventeenth Amendment have been reached. The Seventeenth Amendment, combined with the creation of the Federal Reserve, and the implementation of an income tax, was all a part of a scheme to change the American System into a model of socialism through the guise of democracy.
Thomas Jefferson said, “Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those that are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
John Adams said, “While it lasts, Democracy becomes more bloody than either an aristocracy or a monarchy. Democracy never lasts long; it soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
Thomas Jefferson said, “A democracy is nothing more than mob-rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%.”
James Bovard said, “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
A friend of mine adds that a republic is “two wolves and a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.”
Benjamin Franklin, after asked what the founders created in the Constitutional Convention, replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
With freedom comes responsibility.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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