FReeper Book Club: The Debate over the Constitution, Centinel #1

A Publius/Billthedrill Essay | 1 February 2010 | Publius & Billthedrill

[Publius]

There had been much contention between the rural/frontier areas of Pennsylvania and the urban/Philadelphia powers. Unlike today, those in power had a real fear that an angry mounted mob would take time out of their pioneering endeavors to 'run the rascals out' and in fact it had happened previously.

And when it happened, they chased the Confederation Congress north to Princeton. Hamilton wrote an incendiary letter to Washington asking him to leave Mount Vernon, take control of the army and re-take Philadelphia. The crisis petered out before anyone could jump on his horse.

That information you dug up about Bryan's father and the Junto is important. I suspect Franklin founded the Junto because Philadelphia did not have a Masonic Lodge in 1727. Usually, the local lodge took on the functions of social interaction and network building.

Before his death in 1984, I had an uncle who was the past grand master of a Masonic lodge in Philadelphia, and I'm sure he could have given me a detailed history of Freemasonry in the city.

[Billthedrill]

A BTT for the evening crowd. As this proceeds we are going to try to trace some of the origins of the ideas that informed these debaters. It didn't happen in a vacuum - Bryan mentions, for example, Montesquieu, and we have to consider Locke as well as such contemporaries as Rousseau, Voltaire, Hume, and Burke. We will, as well, attempt to link events chronologically with those of the French Revolution and contrast the two histories. One of these conflicts ended up in an enduring Republic, the other in a new despotism under Napoleon. Many of the reasons for this reside in the debates we are about to examine.

Others reside in where the two upheavals started. We have already seen a hint of the class struggles that were about to send Paris into flames, whose seeds many of the Founders recognized in the New World. Did they avoid them, reconcile them, or merely delay a reckoning?

Well, all right then, the battle is joined.

[tstarr]

In Verse 47, Bryan says, “The Congress may construe every purpose for which the state legislatures now lay taxes to be for the general welfare and thereby seize upon every object of revenue.” This line has echoed through American history for two centuries. To what extent was he anticipating the direct taxation that even then was forbidden by the Constitution? Was he anticipating that power would accrete to the center over time, and why or why not?

This verse really resonated with me. I can't tell you how many people I have talked to who seize upon the "general welfare" phrase to open up the floodgates to federal power and taxation. I believe that he was fearful of a government of elites gradually taking over and using such loose phrases as this as the justification for doing so. And he appears to have been correct.

[Publius]

"But it's for a good cause."

I hear it all the time, and it really infuriates me. I would recommend Steven Maikoski's Initial Points in Politics for an excellent diagnosis of this problem.

[tstarr]

Ironically it is a side note – a rather amusing one – that Bryan does not think that one representative per 30,000 inhabitants is sufficient, but his reasons are sound, being based on the capacity of communications in those days. One would love to see the look on his face were he told that a similar policy in the current United States would imply a House of some 10,000 members.

I think the crux of the issue is less the total number of representatives, but what should be done at the federal level. If Congress was only concerned with "big picture" items like should we go to war, etc., 10,000 members could vote remotely now and it would be fine. But we have gradually allowed the federal to overtake the state (as warned of by Bryan), which would turn to complete anarchy with a large number of representatives. Of course, the answer to this is to reduce the size of the federal government to what was intended at the time.

[tstarr]

In Verses 57 and 58, Bryan argues that America may be too large for the kind of government envisioned in the Constitution. His answer is a group of small republics united in the sphere of foreign relations. To what extent was he right? Is he right today, with a much larger country? Is despotism inevitable, and why or why not?

I believe that America is NOT too large for the kind of government envisioned in the Constitution, but we don't really have that today, do we? I wonder if we wouldn't be better served today by a group of 5-6 individual republics united by a common currency and foreign relations, but charting their own way in other areas. My first choice would be a return to the original constitution and away from "case law" as the basis for our judicial decisions. However, there are some advantages to this idea, not least of which is greater local control of all issues. Do you think something better would have been done about illegal immigration if it was dealt with by a government closer to the people of the Southwest as a separate republic?

[Publius]

Do you think something better would have been done about illegal immigration if it was dealt with by a government closer to the people of the Southwest as a separate republic?

That depends on who was running that republic. First a little history for perspective.

To a very great degree organized labor was responsible in the Fifties for creating the American middle class as we know it, and it did so by insisting that unskilled labor be paid the same wages as skilled labor. Following the war, America had the only industrial framework in the world that hadn’t been destroyed by bombardment. American unions could demand higher wages, and the rest of the world had no choice but to pay whatever price was demanded for American goods while the devastated countries were rebuilt. That was balanced by the fact that much of the reconstruction was funded out of the pockets of those same American workers. But it was a good time to be one of the latter. An American male could drop out of school, get his union card, sign up at the local plant, marry, have 2.3 children, own a car, house and vacation home, and at age 65 retire with a full pension and go fishing. Good times while they lasted.

In the Sixties, the Third World came on line as a source of cheap labor; in the Seventies, high labor costs caused American goods to be priced out of world markets. The unions had at last lost their pricing power. The only way to compete, other than moving the company overseas, was to reduce American wages to Third World levels, and what better way to do that than to open up the floodgates of immigration, legal or otherwise? This is why the Wall Street Journal has long pushed for a constitutional amendment stating, "There shall be open borders."

But the interests of Big Business are not necessarily in the best interests of all Americans. A Southwest republic might guard the border and shoot all invaders, but if business interests held the reins of power, I wouldn't bet on that.

[Loud Mime]

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

James Madison Federalist 47

This is a GREAT thread!!

[Jacquerie]

Thanks. That filled a gap in my knowledge. What is the name of the book?

[EBH]

In Verses 16 and 17, Bryan doesn’t believe that a man’s opinion should be trusted just because of his abilities. One would imagine his horror at the opinions of actors being taken seriously! His stance is reminiscent of William Buckley’s famous statement that he would rather be governed by the first one hundred people in the New York telephone directory than by the entire faculty of Harvard. Hamilton was no doubt horrified by Bryan’s statement, but even Jefferson would have had his doubts. Is there room for elites in American governance, and why or why not? Is there truly a certain native wisdom resident in the People, and why or why not?

Is there room for elites in American governance, and why or why not? I suspect that the elites of their time were well educated in history and well tempered by their own religion. These men holding this debate were of all walks of life, some even were "elites" at their time. I think the difference between then and now is a matter of what set their understanding of the Natural Law and the principals that guided them.

The elites of today are schooled, coached in perverted histories and discouraged from embracing any form of religious upbringing or beliefs. They are taught, learn well how to circumvent the law, misinterpret the Constitution with the magic of empty rhetoric. They do this without the least glimmer of a conscience.

It is this observation, of the elite ruling culture of modern times, that causes me to often doubt our current endeavors to restore our Constitution.

[sig226]

This is a critical point. Were we to adhere to the rule of 30,000, then we would have 10,000 congressmen in the House today. This is why I've begun to think that we should maintain the House of Repesentatives on the Internet and actually have those 10,000 congresscrittters. They would never leave home, would be available to their constituents 24/7, and would work via secure server. Bribing that many congressmen would be much more difficult than bribing 435.

I've worked through this argument several times and abandoned this premise. It would take more effort to bribe so many officials, but the bribes would be much smaller and therefore more difficult to discover. For one thing, there would be 10,000 possible sources of corruption to investigate. I return to the belief that the Congress should have more members not because of the economy of bribery. The economy of scale in the current system makes it unworkable. How can one person represent half a million people living in up to twenty different towns?

The suggestion is ridiculous. It also costs a fortune to run a legitimate campaign against the incumbent. Politicians quickly learn the value of photo ops and speechifying. It gets their names out, and people rarely question the validity of the news story. The challenger has to create these media exposures for himself. This takes time and money, which eliminates many potentially good candidates. He has to convince more than 250,000 people that he is the right person for the job.

If the district contains less people, it is easier to do this. The district is not one of the gerrymandered abortions we currently use, so the people actually have things in common. If the district only has 30,000 people, or 50,000 (my preferred number) then it's much easier to reach them. You'd be surprised how many hands you can shake standing outside Wal-Mart on a Saturday morning. I can do that, even driving my little Chevy and working full time. You can do it, too. Even if our campaigns rely on BS, we have to stand in front of a group of people and smile while we deliver that BS. If we deliver enough BS, our neighbor BilltheDrill might also decide that he can run for the office against both of us.

[Bigun]

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Is that not the situation we currently find ourselves in?

Do we not have currently a single "same hands" group very much in control of all three branches of our government?

I believe we do and the "same hands" group I speak of is lawyers.

[Loud Mime]

The Republicans should be using that quote from Madison at every opportunity!

[Loud Mime]

You cannot properly represent the people when they do not understand the proper processes of government.

As has been known for thousands of years, once the people recognize they have power, they will do all they can to gain riches from the treasury.

[LucyJo]

Early draft of the Constitution found in Phila.

[LucyJo]

Re: post #55, the James Wilson info is an interesting addition to your topic for Thursday.

[whodathunkit]

>But Bryan grates on the modern ear with his statement that a successful republic would also require that property be fairly equally distributed. How would Bryan see today’s America with its disparities of wealth, some created by merit and others by government?

I read Bryan as saying, not that property ought to be RE-distributed, but merely that a fairly equal distribution of property is a necessary precondition for free government to flourish. In other words, upon seeing vast disparities of property in a nation, he would not be optimistic that a republic could thrive there.

I agree that was the intention of Bryans statement about wealth in relation to a new form of government. I'm assuming that real property (land) was what he was considering.

One way to become wealthy at that time was to acquire land at low cost and immediately cut the timber off to be burnt on site. The ashes from the burnt hardwoods (potash) could be sold at a price that would cover the cost of the land and also the labor involved. The land could then be used for farming or pasture. Even the most destitute man, if he was industrious enough and physically able, could become a landowner in a fairly short period of time.

[stylin_geek]

Verse 16 and 17..native wisdom or “common sense” does tend to reside with the people.

See Daniel Boone and how he was taken to task by a constituent regarding the government getting involved in settling money upon a man who had died in service of his country.

According to Boone, while it was a worthy and noble cause, it was not the proper place of government to do such.

How many times have so called “experts” said one thing, then, 10 years later, after further study, reversed themselves?

It looks to me like Bryan has no problem with elites being in government, but, he understood having a government of just elites would tend to distance government from the people.

When one class of people runs government, government is going to reflect the biases of that class.

[Publius]

I read a review of the book in The New Republic back in '95, but I don't remember the name of it. The reviewer rehashed the entire story with -- surprisingly -- a tone of regret that it had happened.

[TASMANIANRED]

Fine Job.