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How Ignorance Of American History Feeds Demagogues Who Hate The Constitution
The Federalist ^ | June 13, 2019 | Robert Curry

Posted on 06/13/2019 9:34:31 AM PDT by Perseverando

Americans in 1913 showed by their votes they had forgotten the purpose of the Framers’ design for the Senate. We today, by and large, have even forgotten that generation’s forgetting.

We have forgotten so much of what Americans once knew about America. To choose just one example—a simple but telling one—there is the name of the city of Cincinnati.

For decades, I have been conducting a kind of unscientific poll. Whenever I meet someone from Cincinnati, I always say, “Cincinnati. What an interesting name that is. Do you know where it came from?” The question generally elicits a blank look. So far, no one I have asked has been able to provide the answer. (I am certain many people from Cincinnati do know the answer, but evidently many don’t.)

Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to pick on the fine citizens of this great city; many of us who are not from Cincinnati can’t answer the question either.

This would have astonished Americans of the Founders’ generation and many later generations of Americans. Once upon a time, every American knew quite a bit about the men known as the Cincinnati—and about the man they were named for. That man was George Washington.

Washington was celebrated as “Cincinnatus.” He earned that name by being an astonishing example of republican virtue.

Meet the Original Cincinnatus Washington led America to victory in the American Revolution, but he did not then seize political power, as many in Europe assumed he would and as his contemporary Napoleon did after the French Revolution. In London, George III asked the American-born painter Benjamin West what Washington, having won the war, would do. West replied that it was said he would return to his farm. “If he does that,” said the king, “he will be the

(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: america; belongsinbloggers; clickbait; constitution; declassification; electionfraud; electoralcollege; fbi; fisa; freedom; impeachment; jamescomey; lisapage; peterstrzok; popularvote; robertmueller; truethevote
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To: Dilbert San Diego

Some candidates ...

Bug Tussle, Texas
Intercourse, PA
Embarrass, MINN
Imalone, WI
Nothing, AZ
Office Hall, VA
Pee Pee, OH
Tightwad, MO


21 posted on 06/13/2019 10:07:47 AM PDT by sparklite2 (Don't mind me. I'm just a contrarian.)
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To: Rurudyne

The first real anti-Constitution strides occurred with the Civil War and its immediate aftermath. Then the income tax and direct election senators came out of the late 19th and early 20th Century progressive reform movement that was largely a Republican movement headed by Teddy Roosevelt. Woodrow Wilson sealed the country’s fate with his Federal Reserve, lies about involving us in Europe’s great war, and starting the international governance movement with the League of Nations. That half century between 1860 and the Wilson presidency change the course of this nation forever, and not for the good in many ways.


22 posted on 06/13/2019 10:11:34 AM PDT by Avalon Memories (This Deplorable is not fooled by the Marxist-Stalinist totalitarians infesting the Dem Party.)
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To: Perseverando

bump


23 posted on 06/13/2019 10:13:39 AM PDT by Albion Wilde (It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it. --Douglas MacArthur)
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To: Olog-hai

But he didn’t make his lawlessness stick the way FDR did. His Amendments, however vile, still managed to have the bandaid of amendments attached to them.

The rest of Wilson’s lawlessness was a bad cold compared to FDR. We were fortunate that he had that stroke in that respect.

FDR’s was the start of cancer that has since metastasized, for it needs no stinkin’ amendments. It is true Arbitrary government and absolute rule.


24 posted on 06/13/2019 10:20:42 AM PDT by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: Perseverando

Ignorance of all* history. Our founders studied the ancients.


25 posted on 06/13/2019 10:24:22 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: Dilbert San Diego
Washington was referred to as the Cinncinnatus of America.

Abroad, Washington was very highly respected and as most people then knew their history, they were aware of the Cinncinnatus character.

He was the man who was so honorable that when given absolute power held it only as long as it was necessary. He then voluntarily relinquished power and returned to his farm and his family.

Washington after his service in the army and as President, left office and returned to civilian life. Among the power mad and warring European heads of state, THIS was nearly incredible! Many had predicted that the United States would not survive once political authority was placed in the hands on one man. They felt Washington would certainly fight to keep the Presidency.

26 posted on 06/13/2019 10:28:42 AM PDT by SMARTY ("Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us - by obligations, not by rights".)
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To: USS Alaska

In the past I’ve pointed out to Democrats who like to fancy that they’d have been among the Patriots that those who could tolerate Arbitrary government went with the Crown.

They didn’t like that.

Even less did they like my suggestion that had they actually been back then, a progressive as they are, the King George might well have taken acception to their lust for government power and lewdness.


27 posted on 06/13/2019 10:29:27 AM PDT by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: Rurudyne; All
Kicking the Constitution to the curb has been a progressive pastime since FDR managed the first real strides that stuck in that direction.

ROO-sevelt (as my Georgian grandparents called him) was terrible, and prolonged the Great Depression for years with his domestic policies, so my only disagreement is that he wasn't the first.

Wilson was even worse. Permanent income tax, Federal Reserve, harassment of business, the FTC, farm subsidies, etc. etc; in addition he lied us into WWI, created the Versailles debacle, and like most all Democrats didn't know when to let go of power.

By the way my grandparents idolized FDR, good southern Democrats that they were. "He was the only one that gave us hope."

It's all emotion over substance, that's the left's game, and there are enough ignorant people to make it work. Goodbye America; I think we can look forward to one of two possible futures: death on a civil war battlefield or life under totalitarianism, worse than it ever has been yet. Rant off, sorry for the pessimism.

28 posted on 06/13/2019 10:34:11 AM PDT by notdownwidems (Washington D.C. has become the enemy of free people everywhere!)
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To: notdownwidems

Archie Bunker:
[Maude refuses to get out of Archie’s chair] Well, I got the secret weapon that can lay this little lady right away. Here we go....

This country was ruined by Franklin Delano Roosevelt!

Cousin Maude:
You’re fat.

Archie Bunker:
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt...

Edith Bunker:
Archie, you promised never to say that name again in front of Maude.

Archie Bunker:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt!

Edith Bunker:
[to Maude] He don’t mean nothing. His whole family was for Roosevelt.

Archie Bunker:
That was for two terms. But that was it. We didn’t know the guy was going to hold on to the job like a pope!


29 posted on 06/13/2019 10:35:58 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Rurudyne

Wilson planted the seeds, and FDR watered and fertilized them. At least that’s how I see it.


30 posted on 06/13/2019 10:48:13 AM PDT by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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To: Perseverando; All
"The demoKKKrats are determined to destroy the Constitution, eradicate the Electoral College and ensure that their urban vote fraud machines keep their far left radicals in power in perpetuity."

Probably most Democratic voters who weren’t murdered in the womb were at least born with good heads on their shoulders and would support a constitutionally limited power federal government if they were brought up to speed on those limited powers.

Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if most citizens receiving compensation from a federal social spending program probably wouldn’t care if their government income was coming from their state, not the feds. The Founding States had intended for the states, not the feds, to establishing social spending programs, depending on what the legal majority citizen voters of a given state want.

In fact, note that a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting Supreme Court justices had clarified Congress’s constitutionally limited power to appropriate taxes.

"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States."—Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.


Also, the congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmaker, had clarified that the Founding States had trusted the states, not the feds, with the care of the people.

”... the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Federal Constitution, is in the States, and not in the Federal Government [emphases added].” —Rep. John Bingham, Congressional Globe, 1866. (See about middle of 3rd column.)


Justice Brandeis had put it this way.

"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose [emphasis added], serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” — Justice Brandeis, Laboratories of democracy.

Note that constitutional limits on states as laboratories of democracy is that states cannot establish privileged / protected classes or abridge constitutionally enumerated rights, and must maintain a constitutionally guaranteed republican form of government.

The problem with nearly all federal domestic spending is this. As a consequence of the ill-conceived 17th Amendment, citizen voters elect federal senators who probably don’t know the fed’s constitutionally limited powers any better than the voters do.

Career senators then get themselves reelected by working in cahoots with the likewise corrupt House to buy votes with social spending programs, such senators oblivious (ignoring?) that the federal government has no express constitutional authority to establish or fund such programs with taxpayer dollars imo.

In fact, you can bet that if a given federal domestic spending program is not reasonably related to the US Mail Service (1.8.7), or militia training (1.8.15), that it is unconstitutional and probably be right most of the time.

And the states cannot establish the social spending programs that their respective citizens want because the feds keep stealing state revenues by means of unconstitutional federal taxes evidenced by the Gibbons v. Ogden excerpt above shown here.

"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States."—Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.


The remedy for corrupt, unconstitutionally big federal government on our backs…

Patriots need to elect a new patriot Congress in the 2020 elections that will not only promise to support PDJT's vision for MAGA, but will also promise to surrender state powers that feds have been stealing from the states for decades back to the states.

And to make such changes permanent, patriots also need to support PDJT in leading the states to repeal the 16th and ill-conceived 17th Amendments.

Remember in November 2020!

MAGA! Not Democratic MADA (Make America Dead Again).

Corrections, insights welcome.

31 posted on 06/13/2019 11:19:40 AM PDT by Amendment10
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To: Perseverando
There was a time when the NEA (yes, the National Education Association), before its union conversion, actually published a book which might help us today, to be read or purchased: here.

Progressive activism and takeover of all the major bureaucracies for educating youth in the United States now dominates and indoctrinates those youth who are committed to its care and teaching.

Freeing American youth from its influence is the best way to begin a reorientation of those youth to the ideas of freedom.

32 posted on 06/13/2019 11:28:36 AM PDT by loveliberty2 (`)
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To: Perseverando

Uh ... the ORIGINAL Cincinnatus was a Roman general about 500 years BC.


33 posted on 06/13/2019 11:55:27 AM PDT by IronJack
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To: SMARTY
I thought everyone knew THAT
During the 2009 gathering in DC, wife and I met a couple from Cincinnati, and I remarked on the fact that Cincinnati was named for George Washington. All three of my companions were surprised and edified . . .

34 posted on 06/13/2019 12:39:12 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (Socialism is cynicism directed towards society and - correspondingly - naivete towards government.)
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To: Perseverando
Do not blame the citizens, blame the teachers. The reason I know nothing of the Cincinnatus, is that I was never taught of it. A Minnesotan, I learned much about, and even the spelling of, the Mississippi river in early grade school. It's not that I yearned to learn of it, it was because I was taught it. I was taught it, because the great river, with headwaters in our state was of importance to the schools there.

By the time we exit high school the vast majority of our knowledge comes from the things the schools elected to teach us. We know that, today especially, this election is greatly misdirected.

35 posted on 06/13/2019 3:23:04 PM PDT by norwaypinesavage (Calm down and enjoy the ride, great things are happening for our country)
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