Constitution Day Fireworks!
There were fireworks on September 17th over the City of Williams in Arizona. In July, the fireworks are usually cancelled on Independence Day because of the dryness of the season and illegal dictates of the unconstitutional “National Forest Service.” It was good to see a thirty-minute display on the day that we celebrate the ratification of the “Law of the Land.”
On this occasion, we note that it is the law of the land and any laws that conflict with it are called “Unconstitutional” and do not have to be obeyed. After all, in Massachusetts, Federalist letters signed by Cassius (attributed to James Sullivan) expressed the opinion that:
You certainly cannot harbour an idea so derogatory to reason and the nature of things, as that men, who, for eight years, have fought and struggled, to obtain and secure to you freedom and independence, should now be engaged in a design to subvert your liberties and reduce you to a state of servitude. Reason revolts at the thought, … and none but the infamous incendiary, or the unprincipled monster, would insinuate a thing so vile.
For those of you out-of-the-loop, the Federalist where the guys encouraging ratification of the Constitution of the United States. There were those who encouraged keeping the Articles of Confederation called–oddly enough–Anti-Federalist.
The Anti-Federalist most important contribution to the cause was the addition of a Bill of Rights which the Federalists opposed. After all, everyone knew what their rights were and they would be taught in schools. They were until the unconstitutional addition of the Department of Education.
Since the Articles of Confederation established a Republican form of government, it was felt that it was best to continue with that form. Thomas Jefferson thought it the best form to secure the rights and liberties of the individual. For you kids in school, that’s the guy that they teach you separated Church and State. They won’t teach you, however, that he was a strong supporter of a Republican form of government.
It is also important to stress that a Republican form of government is not what the “Republican Party” espouses. They are no more “republican” than your average Democrat.
Of course, Cassius answered the charge that the Constitution would destroy our Republican tradition and culture (Yes, Virginia. Americans do have a culture) with:
Section 4, of article IV. says, The United States shall guarantee to every state in the Union a Republican Form of Government; and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.—At the perusal of this clause, anti-federalism must blush, and opposition hide its head. Could anything have more openly, or more plainly evinced to the world, the noble motives which influenced the conduct of the delegates of America, than the clause aforementioned? it provides, that a republican form of government shall be guaranteed to each state in the Union. The inhabitants of America are surely acquainted with the principles of republicanism, and will certainly demand the establishment of them, in their fullest extent.
The section just mentioned, secures to us the full enjoyment of every thing which freemen hold dear, and provides for protecting us against every thing which they can dread.
This article, my countrymen, is sufficient to convince you of the excellency of that constitution which the federal convention have formed; a constitution founded on the broad basis of liberty, and, should the citizens of America happily concur in adopting it, its pillars may be as fixed as the foundations of created nature.
And as far as a Bill of Rights is concerned?
The weakness the anti-federalists discover in insinuating that the federal government will have it in their power to establish a despotick government, must be obvious to every one; for the time for which they are elected is so short, as almost to preclude the possibility of their effecting plans for enslaving so vast an empire as the United States of America, even if they were so base as to hope for anything of the kind. The representatives of the people would also be conscious, that their good conduct alone, would be the only thing which could influence a free people to continue to bestow on them their suffrages: the representatives of the people would not, moreover, dare to act contrary to the instructions of their constituents; and if any one can suppose that they would, I would ask them, why such clamour is made about a bill of rights, for securing the liberties of the subject? for if the delegates dared to act contrary to their instructions, would they be afraid to encroach upon a bill of rights?
The Federalist “clamoured” that the rights of the States are more than secured under the Constitution. Cassius claimed that the Constitution even give more power to future State legislatures. In the more famous “Federalist Papers”–The only Federalist papers that the government wants you to believe exist–Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper #17:
It will always be far more easy for the State governments to encroach upon the national authorities than for the national government to encroach upon the State authorities. The proof of this proposition turns upon the greater degree of influence which the State governments if they administer their affairs with uprightness and prudence, will generally possess over the people; a circumstance which at the same time teaches us that there is an inherent and intrinsic weakness in all federal constitutions; and that too much pains cannot be taken in their organization, to give them all the force which is compatible with the principles of liberty.
So what happened to this force of the States? How did we come up with a “National Parks Service,” Obama-doesn’t-care, federal firearms restrictions, the end of incandescent light bulbs and any number of other illegal and unconstitutional federal intrusions on the States?
Those intrusions came from Roosevelt in the thirties who stacked the Supreme Court with only those who accepted his Communist Manifesto driven ideology. They came up with the idea that the federal government could control States and destroy individual rights through the, so-called, Interstate Commerce Clause. The Congress had already relinquished their Constitutional duty to “coin money and regulate the value thereof” to a private cabal of bankers called the Federal Reserve. That left them with the time to figure out how to attack the rights of the States and the individual citizens.
As one Anti-Federalist writing under the pseudonym of Aggripa (Still unidentified positively to this day) put it:
The unlimited power over trade, domestick as well as foreign, is another power that will more probably be applied to a bad than to a good purpose.
Chief Justice John Marshall in Gibbons v. Ogden (written long before Roosevelt) pointed out that the clause was to prevent interference of commerce between the States; not to cause it.
One would think that the day of the ratification of the Constitution would be marked with fireworks and parades as seriously as Independence day. Maybe if you had a day off on September 17th, you might take oyur responsibilities for your rights seriously. Speaking of the importance of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Elihu Root wrote in The Essentials of the Constitution:
“Every one of these provisions has a history. Every one stops a way through which the overwhelming power of government has oppressed the weak individual citizen, and may do so again if the way be opened. Such provisions as these are not mere commands. They withhold power. The instant any officer, of whatever kind or grade, transgresses them he ceases to act as an officer. The power of sovereignty no longer supports him. The majesty of the law no longer gives him authority. The shield of the law no longer protects him. He becomes a trespasser, a despoiler, a law breaker, and all the machinery of the law may be set in motion for his restraint or punishment. It is true that the people who have made these rules may repeal them. As restraints upon the people themselves they are but self-denying ordinances which the people may revoke, but the supreme test of capacity for popular self-government is the possession of that power of self-restraint through which a people can subject its own conduct to the control of declared principles of action.”
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Tags: Arizona, Constitution, Media, News Item
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