‘A Fundamental Misunderstanding of the Federal Constitution’

 

Folks on the Right are irate over President Biden’s proposals to reshape the federal Supreme Court:

 

On Monday, July 29th, President Joe Biden proposed a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It would impose term limits on the justices and force them to abide by an “ethics code.” This sounds innocuous, doesn’t it? Well, it is anything but. It is the first salvo of an unabashed attempt by the Democratic Party to fundamentally alter the balance of power between the three branches of the United States government (The European Conservative).

 

Stepman noted that the court is one institution that Democrats and other leftists have yet to establish control over, and interestingly, it wasn't a problem until the court "shifted to the right." "It's a fairly ironclad rule in American politics that any institution the Left doesn't control it will ultimately seek to destroy. So it goes with the modern Supreme Court," he said. The court, in fact, now "represents a potential roadblock to their absolute power over American government." So they are demanding to remove justices with whom they disagree, and install some of their own ideological compatriots (WND).

Their analysis is correct as far as it goes, yet they are overlooking the key point about the federal constitution itself:  It was written precisely to concentrate as much power as possible in the federal government.  The separation of powers was simply a neat ploy to divert attention away from that goal of the nationalists/centralizers, to calm the fears of the localists who were fearful of throwing out the Articles of Confederation.  The historian Merrill Jensen offers some insights that are often ignored in political discussions today:

 

Politically the dominating fact of the Confederation Period was the struggle between two groups of leaders to shape the character of the state and central governments.  The revolutionary constitutions of the states placed final power in the legislatures and made the executive and judicial branches subservient to them.  The members of the colonial aristocracy who became Patriots, and new men who gained economic power during the Revolution deplored this fact, but they were unable to alter the state constitutions during the 1780’s.  Meanwhile they tried persistently to strengthen the central government.  These men were the nationalists of the 1780’s.

 

On the other hand the men who were the true federalists believed that the greatest gain of the Revolution was the independence of the several states and the creation of a central government subservient to them.  The leaders of this group . . . were Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George Clinton, . . . and a host of less well known but no less important men in each of the States.  Most of these men believed, as a result of their experience with Great Britain before 1776 and of their reading of history, that the states could be best governed without the intervention of a powerful central government.  . . . the best of them agreed that the central government needed more power, but they wanted that power given so as not to alter the basic character of the Articles of Confederation.  Here is where they were in fundamental disagreement with the nationalists who wanted to remove the central government from the control of the state legislatures.

 

The nationalist leaders . . . were men like Robert Morris, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, . . . George Washington, James Madison, and many lesser men.  Most of these men were by temperament or economic interest believers in executive and judicial rather than legislative control of state and central governments, in the rigorous collection of taxes, and, as creditors, in the strict payment of the public and private debts.  They declared that national honor and prestige could be maintained only by a powerful central government.  . . .  The nationalists frankly disliked the political heritage of the Revolution.  They deplored the fact there was no check upon the actions of majorities in state legislatures; that there was no central government to which minorities could appeal from the decisions of such majorities, as they had done before the Revolution.

 

 . . . Outside the Convention [of 1787 in Philadelphia that drafted the current federal constitution—W.G.] General Knox was saying that a “mad democracy sweeps away every moral trait from the human character” and that the Convention would “clip the wings of a mad democracy” (The New Nation: A History of the United States during the Confederation 1781-1789, Northeastern University Press, Boston, Mass., 1981, pgs. 424-5, 426).

We are living with the repercussions of this debate still today.  When the Red States of the South and beyond pass laws in their State legislatures to ban puberty blockers for kids, limit access for children to social media, define marriage as between one man and one woman, teach the Biblical account of creation in public schools, etc., the nationalists pronounce this an ‘excess of democracy’ whose wings must be clipped by the federal government, often by the same Supreme Court conservatives are attempting to defend at this present moment.

Conservatives/Revivalists are not wrong in wanting to maintain the integrity of the judiciary, but instead of intense and myopic focus on the federal courts, they need to broaden their view to include the State judiciaries as well.  There they will find some overlooked tools to keep big government centralizers, whether Republicans or Democrats, from dominating politically.  We will get to that momentarily.

First, however, it must be noted that arguing over separation of powers within the federal government at this point is simply arguing over who will be the main director of the despotism the States live under, the seeds of which, sown in the Philadelphia constitution, came to full fruition when Lincoln launched his war of conquest against the Southern States, which transformed a voluntary union into an involuntary empire.  The distinguished Southern historian Dr Clyde Wilson of South Carolina describes very well the conditions that folks have experienced under those opposite systems:

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The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/08/garlington-a-fundamental-misunderstanding-of-the-federal-constitution/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!