Dear Friends:
The first place to go to understand the proper relationship between church and state is to study the nature of jurisdictions. Jurisdictional separation deals with the legitimate boundaries of authority. A person who owns a piece of property has jurisdiction over his own property, but he does not have jurisdiction over someone else’s property. A property owner can only “speak the law” (juris = law + diction = speak) within the confines of the boundaries of his own property. In this way, a property owner’s jurisdiction is limited. Property lines are legal entities that limit authority.
What’s true of property is also true of civil governments. State governments have limited jurisdictional authority. A state government and its courts can only “speak the law,” have jurisdiction over, those who reside within the boundaries of the state or those passing through. That’s why each state has its own constitution, courts, and elected officials. An elected official in one state has no jurisdictional authority in or over another state.
In the same way, the Federal government’s jurisdiction is designed to be limited by the Constitution, although such limitations are not often acknowledged by the courts, the President, or Congress. These delegated agencies are always attempting to test the limits of their specified boundary markers. Nevertheless, the Constitution is a jurisdictionally limited document in that its enumerated powers are the only ones it possesses. Powers not specified in the Constitution are retained by the individual states as set forth in their constitutions. These Federal jurisdictional limitations are set forth in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution:
Ninth: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Tenth: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Jurisdictional limitation at all levels of civil government is one of the governmental principles that makes America a stable and free nation.
When the Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787, it did not contain a bill of rights. The constitution as drafted was sent to the states for ratification. The Federalists supported it while the Anti-Federalists opposed it. The Anti-Federalists wanted a bill of rights. The Federalists argued that a bill of rights was unnecessary since the Constitution created a national government of enumerated powers. With this form of government, unless a power was actually spelled out in the document, it did not exist. Since the Constitution did not give the national government legislative power over religion, Federalists considered a bill of rights unnecessary and even dangerous. To mention a subject was thought to give the Federal government control over it. John Jay stated it this way:
Silence and blank paper neither grant nor take away anything. Complaints are also made that the proposed Constitution is not accompanied by a bill of rights; and yet they who make the complaints know, and are content, that no bill of rights accompanied the constitution of this State [New York].1
Jay failed to note George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), the English Bill of Rights (1689), and earlier English political documents such as Magna Charta (1215). The specification of rights was part of English history that served as an example to those who had a public mistrust of government.
The Anti-Federalists disagreed with the claim that silence made rights undeniable. They had an innate and historical suspicion of centralized civil government. Without further restraints on basic individual rights, they feared that the Federal government could exercise powers not granted to it because they were not prohibited by the Constitution. They argued that a formal declaration of rights was essential to secure certain liberties. Virginia, New York, Rhode Island, and North Carolina requested amendments concerning freedom of religion, press, assembly, and speech. The Virginia Convention stated the following regarding religion in Article 16 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights:
That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.2
Borrowing language from the Declaration of Independence, the Federalists made it clear that this and other rights are not granted by civil governments but are “natural and unalienable.”
The Anti-Federalists won the argument. Their mistrust of government was broad enough that the states insisted on adding amendments over the objections of the Federalists. Twelve amendments were put forth by James Madison, but only ten were adopted and voted on.
Fear of jurisdictional usurpation was as real 230 years ago as it is today. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough people who see it as a problem. If we are ever to win back our nation, understanding jurisdictional limitations is a necessary first step.
SOURCES:
1 Henry P. Johnston, ed., The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay: 1782–1793, 4 Vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1891), 3:305-306.
2 Adopted unanimously June 12, 1776, by the Virginia Convention of Delegates.
Respectfully,
Mark
Monday, October 18, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
The Self-Destructive Path of Growing Public Sector Employment
Dear Friends:
“Anyone who wants to work an interesting job, earn a generous salary, enjoy unbeatable, rock-solid job security and, most importantly, advance the public good in pivotal ways would probably favor the federal sector,” said Lily Whiteman, Federal Careers Expert. This quote represents a troubling new reality in today’s American society: The public sector has become more attractive than the private sector. Today, however, government favoritism toward public workers has skewed the sense of values that are the American capitalist hallmark. Ms. Whiteman continues, “… government employees seem to work shorter hours, have more vacation time, access unbelievable health care, never worry about job security and even make more money than people slugging it out in the private sector.” Sounds like a dream job, right? Work less, don’t worry about losing your job over poor performance, get better benefits, and get paid more for doing a job that contributes very little to the nation’s output. So what, now, are parents supposed to tell their kids, “Weasel your way into a government job and you’ll be set for life”? The reality of the situation is that the government always looks out for its own, even when the economy is spinning down the toilet.
The growth of public-sector compensation and benefits in the context of a global recession is not only a travesty, it’s a serious impediment to the future growth of our country. Why would a graduate from a top university pursue a job in the private sector (in which jobs are now even more scarce) when, after nine years of pay hikes and benefits in the context of a struggling economy, the compensation of federal civil servants is now, on average, twice that of private-sector workers?
Recently, another $26 billion has been appropriated to the States, which, President Obama claims is about “saving the jobs of teachers and other essential professionals.” It wasn’t about saving jobs, it was about using taxpayer money to pay off teacher union bosses, reward them for past political favors, and get the votes for the Democrats for the all-important November election. The additional funding is also to help bail out the bloated pension plans that guarantee a healthy yearly gain when the S&P is down over 10%-12% for the decade! Washington doesn’t seem to care about the busted 401(k) system of the private-sector worker, they just want to shove their free-spending agenda down our throats while they raise taxes.
The United States right now needs to be moving in the opposite direction of the one we’re currently heading in. We need the brightest college graduates innovating in the private sector, not working as overcompensated, underperforming federal employees. We need lower tax rates to stimulate private industry. We need to reorganize the flawed and broken pension system. We need to stop bailing out the unions in return for votes.
Until we restore the core values that have driven this nation since its founding, our country will keep heading down this dangerous and self-destructive path.
Respectfully,
Mark
“Anyone who wants to work an interesting job, earn a generous salary, enjoy unbeatable, rock-solid job security and, most importantly, advance the public good in pivotal ways would probably favor the federal sector,” said Lily Whiteman, Federal Careers Expert. This quote represents a troubling new reality in today’s American society: The public sector has become more attractive than the private sector. Today, however, government favoritism toward public workers has skewed the sense of values that are the American capitalist hallmark. Ms. Whiteman continues, “… government employees seem to work shorter hours, have more vacation time, access unbelievable health care, never worry about job security and even make more money than people slugging it out in the private sector.” Sounds like a dream job, right? Work less, don’t worry about losing your job over poor performance, get better benefits, and get paid more for doing a job that contributes very little to the nation’s output. So what, now, are parents supposed to tell their kids, “Weasel your way into a government job and you’ll be set for life”? The reality of the situation is that the government always looks out for its own, even when the economy is spinning down the toilet.
The growth of public-sector compensation and benefits in the context of a global recession is not only a travesty, it’s a serious impediment to the future growth of our country. Why would a graduate from a top university pursue a job in the private sector (in which jobs are now even more scarce) when, after nine years of pay hikes and benefits in the context of a struggling economy, the compensation of federal civil servants is now, on average, twice that of private-sector workers?
Recently, another $26 billion has been appropriated to the States, which, President Obama claims is about “saving the jobs of teachers and other essential professionals.” It wasn’t about saving jobs, it was about using taxpayer money to pay off teacher union bosses, reward them for past political favors, and get the votes for the Democrats for the all-important November election. The additional funding is also to help bail out the bloated pension plans that guarantee a healthy yearly gain when the S&P is down over 10%-12% for the decade! Washington doesn’t seem to care about the busted 401(k) system of the private-sector worker, they just want to shove their free-spending agenda down our throats while they raise taxes.
The United States right now needs to be moving in the opposite direction of the one we’re currently heading in. We need the brightest college graduates innovating in the private sector, not working as overcompensated, underperforming federal employees. We need lower tax rates to stimulate private industry. We need to reorganize the flawed and broken pension system. We need to stop bailing out the unions in return for votes.
Until we restore the core values that have driven this nation since its founding, our country will keep heading down this dangerous and self-destructive path.
Respectfully,
Mark
Monday, October 4, 2010
Sam Adams to America: “I told you so.”
Dear Friends:
Upon the whole, we are too apt to charge those misfortunes to the want of energy in our government, which we have brought upon ourselves by dissipation and extravagance. – “Candidus”
It has become clear that since the time of our beloved founders, we Americans have experienced a slide into tyranny. At what point did things go wrong?
Many advocates of States’ rights would probably respond with answers such as “The Civil War” or Lincoln’s presidency. However, the problem goes back even further in time to the first great advance of tyranny in America: “The Constitutional Convention.”
Not many Christians know that the Constitution was written during a period of unprecedented freedom among any people in history (between 1776 and 1787). Promising originally only to revise the Articles of Confederation, the framers emerged from Philadelphia with a completely different document that greatly centralized powers at the Federal level relative to what had been. It was a conscious coup on the part of those in favor of strong centralized power.
Most people don’t realize, then, that the Constitution was the first great government expansion in this country – an expansion that set the precedent for much of the tyranny we experience today, believe it or not.
It was also vigorously opposed by some of the greatest advocates of liberty in our history, even though they lost out to the conspiracy in Philadelphia. It is time we reaffirmed the ideals of freedom for which they once fought, and which for the space of a few years made this country free.
The Real Sons of Liberty
Many of the principal fathers of the American Revolution saw today’s problems coming in their own time. Despite common sentiment and the textbook version of American history, these most prescient men are the least known, least read, and often completely forgotten figures of that time. They are not Washington, Madison, and Hamilton. They are not the authors of the Federalist Papers. These latter were the tyrants in the eyes of those whom I mention.
These men were the authors of the Anti-Federalist Papers. Few people today even read the much more publicized Federalist Papers. They’re not taught about them in school. The Papers’ language and concepts are often found too lofty and difficult, despite the fact that these Papers were mere newspaper editorials of their time. Few people know of them. Fewer read them.
Even fewer read the opposition of the day – the tea party types of the day – the Anti-Federalist Papers.
Yet these liberty-minded leaders saw the centralizing forces at work during their day as the sinews of tyranny. They knew absolutely where centralized government power would lead. On this principle they opposed the Constitution itself, for it ceded too much power to the central government.
One of them, writing under the pseudonym “The Federal Farmer” (possibly Richard Henry Lee), foresaw the direction of centralizing power as a departure from a free society, but also as the long-term agenda of a few ambitious leaders:
The plan of government now proposed [the Constitution] is evidently calculated totally to change, in time, our condition as a people. Instead of being thirteen republics, under a federal head, it is clearly designed to make us one consolidated government.… This consolidation of the states has been the object of several men in this country for sometime past. Whether such a change… can be effected without convulsions and civil wars; whether such a change will not totally destroy the liberties of this country – time only can determine.1
The Judicial Back Door
Prominent among their concerns was fear that a Supreme Court would create a path to tyranny (especially of the wealthy over the common man). “Candidus,” attributed to Samuel Adams, warned that it would “occasion innumerable controversies; as almost every cause (even those originally between citizens of the same State) may be so contrived as to be carried to this federal court.”2 This means, effectively, the end of State sovereignty, for a partisan Court could construe any decision, and that decision would stand for every State.
This fear materialized quickly after the Federalist proponents pressured the States to adopt the Constitution. Within a mere fifteen years the nationalist John Marshall framed the system and then decided the very case he framed – Marbury v. Madison (1803) – in favor of the nationalists against the Jeffersonians. The decision established the doctrine euphemized as “judicial review” where the Supreme Court can essentially legislate through their decisions.
Marshall struck again at States’ rights in McCulloch v. Maryland (1824), determining that unelected directors acting in their own self-interest could establish national banks with the States and yet remain exempt from State regulation. The whole decision was a national scam that profited big banks and expansion of government by unelected leaders.
Having the Supreme Court in these cases all but ensured that the people would be tyrannized, just as Candidus said. When the “right of election itself” is “transferred from the people to their rulers” the people have been subjected to the most fundamental tyranny. So writes the Anti-Federalist “Brutus” on the even lesser issue of Congress’ rights to manipulate election parameters: “If the people of America will submit to a constitution that will vest in the hands of any body of men a right to deprive them by law of the privilege of a fair election, they will submit to almost anything.”3 When a yawning and complacent populace agrees to such advances of tyranny, it will take more than education to restore freedom – it will take pain:
Reasoning with them will be in vain, they must be left until they are brought to reflection by feeling oppression – they will have to wrest from their oppressors, by a strong hand, that which they now [before the Constitution was ratified!] possess, and which they may retain if they will exercise but a moderate share of prudence and firmness.4
States rights were furthered destroyed and judicial review more firmly entrenched after the Civil War, during reconstruction, particularly by the Fourteenth Amendment. Things have only gotten worse over time. So The Federal Farmer’s warning came true, indeed, time has told: States rights were hijacked by the nationalists, and it took a civil war eventually to enforce their tyranny.
Freedom and Self-Government
While problems can arise also under a decentralized system of freedom, these will not compare to the tyrannies that grow from the opposite. Candidus warns that we must “distinguish between the evils that arise from extraneous causes and our private imprudencies, and those that arise from our government.”5
Power over vital areas of human action such as commerce, legislation, defense, etc., Candidus realized as too precious and precarious to leave to the decisions of a few men to enact by governmental force; it should rather be left as decentralized as possible. Paying lip-service to the beloved leaders of the day, he foresees that “though this country is now blessed with a Washington, Frnaklin [sic], Hancock and Adams,” elected leaders shall not always possess such integrity, and “posterity may have reason to rue the day when their political welfare depends on the decision of men who may fill the places of these worthies.”6
In such times as he foresaw, when we lament the decisions of those elected leaders, we ought also to lament the centralizing nature of the Federal government, and educate ourselves in the type of freedom spoken of by here by Candidus. This type of freedom comes from the people, not from the government. But this presupposes a people who can govern themselves, and possess themselves in responsibility and integrity. Freedom begins with the will of a people to live free, not with a people looking to power to secure themselves benefits at the expense of others. Indeed, Candidus warned that “coertion with some persons seems the principal object, but I believe we have more to expect from the affections of the people, than from an armed body of men.”7
Freedom, again, begins in the affections of the people. But like now, Candidus saw corrupt government as enabled by a pacified, fearful, and gluttonous people. He wrote this astoundingly prophetic passage:
Upon the whole, we are too apt to charge those misfortunes to the want of energy in our government, which we have brought upon ourselves by dissipation and extravagance; and we are led to flatter ourselves, that the proposed Constitution will restore us to peace and happiness, notwithstanding we should neglect to acquire these blessings by industry and frugality. – I will venture to affirm, that the extravagance of our British importations, – the discouragement of our own manufactures, and the luxurious living of all ranks and degrees, have been the principle cause of all the evils we now experience; and a general reform in these particulars, would have a greater tendency to promote the welfare of these States, than any measures that could be adopted. – No government under heaven could have preserved a people from ruin, or kept their commerce from declining, when they were exhausting their valuable resources in paying for superfluities, and running themselves in debt to foreigners, and to each other for articles of folly and dissipation: – While this is the case, we may contend about forms of government, but no establishment will enrich a people, who wantonly spend beyond their income.8
I wish I had time further to unpack this prophecy with parallels to current events, but I think you can well enough detect the highlights. I cannot think of a more relevant prophetic warning to America – a warning which went unheeded and which now we bear the consequences. Debt to both foreign nations and consumer corporations, largely due to extravagances in individual living, coupled with aversion to work and save. This is true at the level of individuals as well as at every level of government, punctuated by the bailouts of Marshall’s beneficiaries, the over-leveraged big banks, and continual pork projects for favored big-businesses. And sure enough, the government – despite its endless promises to the contrary – has not saved us from decline and moral decay, nor can it.
Assuming the ascription of “Candidus” to Samuel Adams is correct, we should expect a keen scolding were he here today. We should expect another Boston Tea Party over the coercive encroachments of government. And with this we should expect a severe inventory of our private lives, our manner of work ethic, our manner of thrift, and our moral integrity to sacrifice for the cause of freedom.
We have failed in all of these areas, and we have received the government we deserve. Sam could well say, “I told you so.”
But for some reason I doubt he would. I suspect he would rather get to work on the proper remedy – beginning with personal repentance over our moral failures, continuing with an establishment of a lifestyle of work and frugality, and leading into a program of rolling back the size and scope of government until the only government officials that individuals have contact with come from the local county.
SOURCES:
1 In The Complete Anti-Federalist, 7 vol., ed. by Herbert J. Storing (University of Chicago Press, 1981), 2.8.4.
2 “Essays by Candidus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 4.9.13.
3 “Essays of Brutus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 2.9.53.
4 “Essays of Brutus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 2.9.53.
5 “Essays by Candidus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 7 vol., ed. by Herbert J. Storing (University of Chicago Press, 1981), 4.9.13.
6 “Essays by Candidus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 4.9.15.
7 “Essays by Candidus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 4.9.15.
8 “Essays by Candidus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 7 vol., ed. by Herbert J. Storing (University of Chicago Press, 1981), 4.9.18.
Respectfully,
Mark
Upon the whole, we are too apt to charge those misfortunes to the want of energy in our government, which we have brought upon ourselves by dissipation and extravagance. – “Candidus”
It has become clear that since the time of our beloved founders, we Americans have experienced a slide into tyranny. At what point did things go wrong?
Many advocates of States’ rights would probably respond with answers such as “The Civil War” or Lincoln’s presidency. However, the problem goes back even further in time to the first great advance of tyranny in America: “The Constitutional Convention.”
Not many Christians know that the Constitution was written during a period of unprecedented freedom among any people in history (between 1776 and 1787). Promising originally only to revise the Articles of Confederation, the framers emerged from Philadelphia with a completely different document that greatly centralized powers at the Federal level relative to what had been. It was a conscious coup on the part of those in favor of strong centralized power.
Most people don’t realize, then, that the Constitution was the first great government expansion in this country – an expansion that set the precedent for much of the tyranny we experience today, believe it or not.
It was also vigorously opposed by some of the greatest advocates of liberty in our history, even though they lost out to the conspiracy in Philadelphia. It is time we reaffirmed the ideals of freedom for which they once fought, and which for the space of a few years made this country free.
The Real Sons of Liberty
Many of the principal fathers of the American Revolution saw today’s problems coming in their own time. Despite common sentiment and the textbook version of American history, these most prescient men are the least known, least read, and often completely forgotten figures of that time. They are not Washington, Madison, and Hamilton. They are not the authors of the Federalist Papers. These latter were the tyrants in the eyes of those whom I mention.
These men were the authors of the Anti-Federalist Papers. Few people today even read the much more publicized Federalist Papers. They’re not taught about them in school. The Papers’ language and concepts are often found too lofty and difficult, despite the fact that these Papers were mere newspaper editorials of their time. Few people know of them. Fewer read them.
Even fewer read the opposition of the day – the tea party types of the day – the Anti-Federalist Papers.
Yet these liberty-minded leaders saw the centralizing forces at work during their day as the sinews of tyranny. They knew absolutely where centralized government power would lead. On this principle they opposed the Constitution itself, for it ceded too much power to the central government.
One of them, writing under the pseudonym “The Federal Farmer” (possibly Richard Henry Lee), foresaw the direction of centralizing power as a departure from a free society, but also as the long-term agenda of a few ambitious leaders:
The plan of government now proposed [the Constitution] is evidently calculated totally to change, in time, our condition as a people. Instead of being thirteen republics, under a federal head, it is clearly designed to make us one consolidated government.… This consolidation of the states has been the object of several men in this country for sometime past. Whether such a change… can be effected without convulsions and civil wars; whether such a change will not totally destroy the liberties of this country – time only can determine.1
The Judicial Back Door
Prominent among their concerns was fear that a Supreme Court would create a path to tyranny (especially of the wealthy over the common man). “Candidus,” attributed to Samuel Adams, warned that it would “occasion innumerable controversies; as almost every cause (even those originally between citizens of the same State) may be so contrived as to be carried to this federal court.”2 This means, effectively, the end of State sovereignty, for a partisan Court could construe any decision, and that decision would stand for every State.
This fear materialized quickly after the Federalist proponents pressured the States to adopt the Constitution. Within a mere fifteen years the nationalist John Marshall framed the system and then decided the very case he framed – Marbury v. Madison (1803) – in favor of the nationalists against the Jeffersonians. The decision established the doctrine euphemized as “judicial review” where the Supreme Court can essentially legislate through their decisions.
Marshall struck again at States’ rights in McCulloch v. Maryland (1824), determining that unelected directors acting in their own self-interest could establish national banks with the States and yet remain exempt from State regulation. The whole decision was a national scam that profited big banks and expansion of government by unelected leaders.
Having the Supreme Court in these cases all but ensured that the people would be tyrannized, just as Candidus said. When the “right of election itself” is “transferred from the people to their rulers” the people have been subjected to the most fundamental tyranny. So writes the Anti-Federalist “Brutus” on the even lesser issue of Congress’ rights to manipulate election parameters: “If the people of America will submit to a constitution that will vest in the hands of any body of men a right to deprive them by law of the privilege of a fair election, they will submit to almost anything.”3 When a yawning and complacent populace agrees to such advances of tyranny, it will take more than education to restore freedom – it will take pain:
Reasoning with them will be in vain, they must be left until they are brought to reflection by feeling oppression – they will have to wrest from their oppressors, by a strong hand, that which they now [before the Constitution was ratified!] possess, and which they may retain if they will exercise but a moderate share of prudence and firmness.4
States rights were furthered destroyed and judicial review more firmly entrenched after the Civil War, during reconstruction, particularly by the Fourteenth Amendment. Things have only gotten worse over time. So The Federal Farmer’s warning came true, indeed, time has told: States rights were hijacked by the nationalists, and it took a civil war eventually to enforce their tyranny.
Freedom and Self-Government
While problems can arise also under a decentralized system of freedom, these will not compare to the tyrannies that grow from the opposite. Candidus warns that we must “distinguish between the evils that arise from extraneous causes and our private imprudencies, and those that arise from our government.”5
Power over vital areas of human action such as commerce, legislation, defense, etc., Candidus realized as too precious and precarious to leave to the decisions of a few men to enact by governmental force; it should rather be left as decentralized as possible. Paying lip-service to the beloved leaders of the day, he foresees that “though this country is now blessed with a Washington, Frnaklin [sic], Hancock and Adams,” elected leaders shall not always possess such integrity, and “posterity may have reason to rue the day when their political welfare depends on the decision of men who may fill the places of these worthies.”6
In such times as he foresaw, when we lament the decisions of those elected leaders, we ought also to lament the centralizing nature of the Federal government, and educate ourselves in the type of freedom spoken of by here by Candidus. This type of freedom comes from the people, not from the government. But this presupposes a people who can govern themselves, and possess themselves in responsibility and integrity. Freedom begins with the will of a people to live free, not with a people looking to power to secure themselves benefits at the expense of others. Indeed, Candidus warned that “coertion with some persons seems the principal object, but I believe we have more to expect from the affections of the people, than from an armed body of men.”7
Freedom, again, begins in the affections of the people. But like now, Candidus saw corrupt government as enabled by a pacified, fearful, and gluttonous people. He wrote this astoundingly prophetic passage:
Upon the whole, we are too apt to charge those misfortunes to the want of energy in our government, which we have brought upon ourselves by dissipation and extravagance; and we are led to flatter ourselves, that the proposed Constitution will restore us to peace and happiness, notwithstanding we should neglect to acquire these blessings by industry and frugality. – I will venture to affirm, that the extravagance of our British importations, – the discouragement of our own manufactures, and the luxurious living of all ranks and degrees, have been the principle cause of all the evils we now experience; and a general reform in these particulars, would have a greater tendency to promote the welfare of these States, than any measures that could be adopted. – No government under heaven could have preserved a people from ruin, or kept their commerce from declining, when they were exhausting their valuable resources in paying for superfluities, and running themselves in debt to foreigners, and to each other for articles of folly and dissipation: – While this is the case, we may contend about forms of government, but no establishment will enrich a people, who wantonly spend beyond their income.8
I wish I had time further to unpack this prophecy with parallels to current events, but I think you can well enough detect the highlights. I cannot think of a more relevant prophetic warning to America – a warning which went unheeded and which now we bear the consequences. Debt to both foreign nations and consumer corporations, largely due to extravagances in individual living, coupled with aversion to work and save. This is true at the level of individuals as well as at every level of government, punctuated by the bailouts of Marshall’s beneficiaries, the over-leveraged big banks, and continual pork projects for favored big-businesses. And sure enough, the government – despite its endless promises to the contrary – has not saved us from decline and moral decay, nor can it.
Assuming the ascription of “Candidus” to Samuel Adams is correct, we should expect a keen scolding were he here today. We should expect another Boston Tea Party over the coercive encroachments of government. And with this we should expect a severe inventory of our private lives, our manner of work ethic, our manner of thrift, and our moral integrity to sacrifice for the cause of freedom.
We have failed in all of these areas, and we have received the government we deserve. Sam could well say, “I told you so.”
But for some reason I doubt he would. I suspect he would rather get to work on the proper remedy – beginning with personal repentance over our moral failures, continuing with an establishment of a lifestyle of work and frugality, and leading into a program of rolling back the size and scope of government until the only government officials that individuals have contact with come from the local county.
SOURCES:
1 In The Complete Anti-Federalist, 7 vol., ed. by Herbert J. Storing (University of Chicago Press, 1981), 2.8.4.
2 “Essays by Candidus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 4.9.13.
3 “Essays of Brutus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 2.9.53.
4 “Essays of Brutus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 2.9.53.
5 “Essays by Candidus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 7 vol., ed. by Herbert J. Storing (University of Chicago Press, 1981), 4.9.13.
6 “Essays by Candidus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 4.9.15.
7 “Essays by Candidus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 4.9.15.
8 “Essays by Candidus,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, 7 vol., ed. by Herbert J. Storing (University of Chicago Press, 1981), 4.9.18.
Respectfully,
Mark
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