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Whatever happened centuries before in Greece or Judaea, in our country universal White male adult suffrage came in the Jacksonian era and with it came the idea that one man was as good as another (within the given racial or ethnic constraints of the day).

It's not wrong to say that egalitarianism came in with Jackson, and that kind of egalitarian or democratic or populist attitude as been as common in the South (within the given racial or ethnic constraints of the day).

So Calhoun's belief that people aren't born free, and aren't endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and don't have equal rights to liberty provides the "the fundamental concept of liberty and its total underpinning of government"? Strange. Bizarre.

I recognize that there are complexities here (technically free men aren't born, dependent children are; freedom has to be fought for and won, and can be lost if one is unworthy of it; etc), but in no way is Calhoun a friend of human rights or liberty as most of us understand it today.

You can qualify and insert (red herring) language regarding “white male sufferage(sic)” and the “Jacksonian erea (sic)”, but that in no way negates the facts that all of that existed centuries before, and if you want to limit the concept, in the colonies and states scores of years earlier than the ratification of the Constitution.

But why the effort since the relevancy is questionable?

Then you insert your paragraph on what you think Calhoun's beliefs were (you channeling him here?) and try to make your definition the foundation of his 1848 speech, is of course “strange, bizarre” because your interpretations have nothing to do with what he was saying.

I can only suggest that you read it again, because it is the most cogent description of the pending failure of the Constitutional foundations in 1848.

You say: “...in no way is Calhoun a friend of human rights or liberty as most of us understand it today.”

Do you really have any idea how wrong you are?

Of course you don't.

Here again for you to try to understand:

“...government has no right to control individual liberty beyond what is necessary to the safety and well-being of society. Such is the boundary which separates the power of government and the liberty of the citizen or subject in the political state, which, as I have shown, is that natural state of man — the only one in which his race can exist, and the one in which he is born, lives, and dies.”

I think the statement that “few people today understand the relationship of the government to the people as proposed and codified by our forefathers” is quite clear here for all to see.