"A Republic--If You Can Keep It"

This coming Wednesday, September 17, is Constitution Day, commemorating the day that document was signed in 1787. A major problem is that many, if not most, Americans have never read, let alone studied carefully, what that foundational document says. As a result, they don't know if what others are saying about it is true or false.

Page 1 of the U.S. Constitution

Thousands upon thousands of Americans have died defending the Constitution. Politicians are sworn to uphold it, and they often refer to it, whether in their election campaigns or in debating various issues that arise. But do even they really know what it says? Or what it means? Or what it protects or prohibits? Do they really believe what it says? Do they have any sense of responsibility to obey the things it sets forth?

When the various states' delegations met to revise the Articles of Confederation, their sole purpose was to improve weaknesses evident in that our original charter of governance. But some of those delegates came with an ulterior motive: to replace the Articles with an entirely new form of government that reduced the powers of the individual states and to create a strong central government. But those Federalists were opposed by delegates who were reluctant to cede the states' powers to a strong central government that would threaten their rights and individual freedoms.

George Washington and fellow delegates at the Constitutional Convention

The two factions offered both oral and written arguments for their respective views in efforts to influence the citizens and leaders in the individual states, especially when the substitution government came before the states for ratification. Those who supported a strong central government at the expense of the states published a series of essays that became known collectively as The Federalist Papers.

Alexander Hamilton

The idea for the collection was hatched by perhaps the most forceful proponent of big government and government debt among the delegates, Alexander Hamilton. He published his essays in New York's newspapers using the pseudonym Publius. Future president James Madison and John Jay, future first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, added essays to the collection. All of the essays proposed a central government supreme over the individual state governments

Arguing against the Federalists' views were men known as Anti-Federalists for an obvious reason. Their oral debates were published in response to those of the Federalists. They, too, used various pseudonyms, including Cincinnatus, Federal Farmer, A Plebian, Aristocrotis, Agrippa, Cato, A Countryman, and others. The real names of the contributors included such luminaries as Mercy Otis Warren (a female), James Winthrop, Richard Henry Lee, George Clinton, and DeWitt Clinton. Patrick Henry used his own name.

The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers

Their collection was called, appropriately, The Anti-Federalist Papers. Their arguments tended to favor strong state governments and a weaker central government, quite opposite the arguments of the Federalists.

Although both documents dealt with numerous and sundry aspects of governance, central to it all was the issue of the nature and role of the states in that governance. Anticipating Anti-Federalist objections that the proposed new government described in the Constitution would effectually neuter the states, reducing them to mere agents of the central government, Madison tried to assure them that it would not.

"Each state," he declared in essay No. 39, "in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act." He continued, "In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects."

Patrick Henry

Most of the Anti-Federalists' arguments dealt with the preservation of individual rights. "Liberty," Patrick Henry argued, "ought to be the direct end of your Government." He considered the Federalists' proposals to be a "revolution." "Consider what you are about to do before you part with this Government," he warned, referring to the Articles of Confederation.

The Federalists won out, but not before the Anti-Federalists wrestled from them a promise to insert a Bill of Rights that would be added after the Constitution was ratified.

The first real test came in the War Between the States, and it focused on the right of secession. That argument allegedly was resolved in the defeat of Southern armies on the battlefield. Or was it? Various discussions of secession still arise to this very day.

Lincoln repeatedly vio0lated provisions of the very Constitution he had sworn to uphold and he purported to be defending during the war. He shut down newspapers of editors who criticized his administration, imprisoned or exiled political opponents, and denied the "residuary and inviolable sovereignty" of the Southern states when they seceded from the Union. In effect, he was destroying the Constitution in order to preserve it.

DiLorenzo's book detailing the damage Hamilton's ideas have done to American government

Nonetheless, many of the Anti-Federalists' fears have come true. Since the end of that war, the central government has usurped state prerogatives. Strong-central-government voices are calling for repeal of certain sacred guarantees of the Bill of Rights. Government is trying to censor free speech, regulate religious expression, and deny the states' Tenth Amendment guarantee. And the nation is head over heels--possibly irreparably--in debt. (Thank you, Alexander Hamilton! For more on this issue and Hamilton's blame for it, see Hamilton's Curse by Thomas DiLorenzo.)

All of this began when delegates met, ostensibly to "form a more perfect Union," and trashed the old government entirely for a totally new one. Today, many people are calling for a new constitutional convention, supposedly to correct weaknesses in the Constitution. But what's to keep them from doing the same thing the Federalists did, changing government as we now it and substituting one that further erodes states' power and individual freedoms? I'm skeptical and suspicious.

Patrick Henry warned, "Sir, suspicion is a virtue, as long as its object is the preservation of the public good.... Let your suspicion look to both sides.... Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel."

That's not paranoia; it's wise citizenship.

Benjamin Franklin

In commemoration of Constitution Day, may we consider carefully what we have, regardless of its flaws, and guard fiercely every freedom it offers. Now we have, as Benjamin Franklin remarked to someone who asked what kind of government the Constitutional Convention had created, "A republic--if we can keep it."