While attending the Lansing Tea party, and while listening to reports of other tea parties it became apparent that Americans are hopelessly in love with saying the pledge of allegiance. The irony of hundreds of thousands of Americans gathering to protest government oppression all the while reciting a pledge that was created and legislatively exalted with the express purpose of uniting people to the unitary state was overwhelming. It was like viewing people who gathered to protest their enslavement opening their ceremony with a ritual that sang the praise of chains.
I hate the pledge of allegiance for the following reason,
1.) It was written by a Baptist minister (Francis Bellamy) who identified himself as a Socialist and was even defrocked for preaching that “Jesus was a socialist.”
2.) Francis Bellamy once admitted that one purpose of the pledge was to help achieve the totalitarian (socialist) fantasy that his cousin (Edward Bellamy) once wrote about in one of his novels.
3.) By forcing generations to plight their trough to the Nation State more important bonds of loyalty to family and church were implicitly superseded. As such a civil religion and nation state family were created.
4.) The Constitution does not, and never has taught, that the nation is indivisible.
5.) Between 1892 when the pledge was written until 1942 the pledge was said with the right arm stiffly held out with the right hand palm up. Can you say Hail Caesar? Heil Hitler?
6.) The pledge of allegiance is a paean of praise to the borg Nation State.
Since Americans are apparently hopelessly stuck on sentimental pledges, allow me to suggest a pledge for the next batch of tea parties.
I pledge allegiance to the U.S. Constitution
And to the Constitutional Republic it created
Sovereign states
bound, by a dissoluble compact
committed to limiting the actions of tyrannical government
against all
I like it!!!
My children don’t know the words to the empire-worshiping version…maybe I’ll teach them yours.
Jay
My demur on your constitutional interpretation. The union is Constitutionally indissoluble, except by the Constitutional method of the whole permitting the cutting of a member of the body republic.
Other than that, you know you’re loved.
Well said but it is my understanding that an ammendment to the US constitution can be made with a 2/3rds majority of states in favour. Ergo a dissenting state achieving a successful pettition of 33 states could claim legal independance.
I believe maverick politicians in California and New York at various times have given consideration and created debate on such lines.
In a true democracy all options should be on the table. You might find the current and legally approved pettition in Scotland to breakaway from the United Kingdom worth following. The outcome is of little consequence because Scotland is unlikely to be self -funding or self sufficient.
The key issue is Spain and the provence of Catalain: Belgium and the Flemish question along with a dozen or more insecure states/provinces/territories around the world possibly giving impetus and succour if independance was achieved by democratic means.
Thanks Michael. However, in these parts “true Democracy” is avoided like the plague.
Oh, and Madison agrees with me.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch3s14.html
I love you also, but you can’t find your interpretation in the Constitution.
The first union of the original 13 colonies was effected by the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781. The articles established a confederation of sovereign states in a permanent union. The “permanence” lasted only until 1788, when 11 states withdrew from the confederation and ratified the new Constitution, which became effective on March 4, 1789. The founding fathers recognized the defects in the Articles of Confederation, learned from these defects, and scrapped the articles in favor of the “more perfect union” found in the Constitution. The “more perfect” aspect of the union was not found in the fact that the new Union was insoluble but rather that the new union was organized to function more effectively.
Nowhere in the Constitution is there any mention of the union of the states being permanent. This was not an oversight by any means. Indeed, when New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia ratified the Constitution, they specifically stated that they reserved the right to resume the governmental powers granted to the United States. A right existing for one of the states is a right that legitimately belongs to the other states. Their claim to the right of secession was understood and agreed to by the other ratifiers, including George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention and was also a delegate from Virginia. In his book Life of Webster Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge writes, “It is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton to Clinton and Mason, who did not regard the new system as an experiment from which each and every State had a right to peaceably withdraw.” A textbook used at West Point before the Civil War, A View of the Constitution, written by Judge William Rawle, states, “The secession of a State depends on the will of the people of such a State.”
Well into the 19th century, the United States was still viewed by many as an experimental confederation from which states could secede just as they had earlier acceded to it. It took a bloody war to crush the previous Constitutional republic and remake it into a National republic. However, as you know, the ability to burn, rape, murder and ravage a people does not constitute proof for a position.
It is significant that no Confederate leader was ever brought to trial for treason. A trial would have brought a verdict on the constitutional legality of secession. Federal prosecutors were satisfied with the verdict that had been decided in battle, and they were fearful that a court would decide for the legality of secession thus implicitly suggesting that the war was unconstitutional. This is why Jefferson Davis was never brought to trial.
George St. Tucker agrees with me. Judge William Rawle agrees with me. The Kentucky Virginia resolutions agrees with me. John Taylor of Caroline agrees with me.
The 10th amendment reads,
The Constitution gave no authority to the united States to use force to keep a sovereign state within the union, therefore the constitution allows secession by virtue that it does not delegate or enumerate power to the federal government to stop such a legal action.
So, the listing of “authorities” is determinative of the rightness of your argument? I’m sure that I can list as many “authorities” as you, but the number doesn’t address the quality of the authorities. What did the founders understand. Patrick Henry opposed the Constitution and one of his points of opposition was because the Constitution was a government of an organic union. The people, ultimately, were the source of power, not the states.
You can argue that the anti-federalist were right in their criticisms. But you appeal to secondary authorities will not overcome the understanding of Publius and the other founders.
Your argument from silence falls on its own and needs no rebuttal from me.
So when a government becomes tyrannical and fails to obey its own laws, the people have a right to separate and form a new government (phrased in different ways by “authorities,” from Jefferson to Lincoln)…unless the tyrannical government says, “No?”
Got it.
Jay
BTW – Paul started the authority game with his, “Madison agrees with me,” comment. So far it’s Paul’s authorities = 1; Bret’s = 5 (one of which is, in fact, the Constitution, itself)
FAIL
Paul,
You listed some authorities and I listed some authorities. My point was actually quite similar to yours and that point was that listing a few authorities (even, such as Madison who wrote the Virginia Resolves) does not make your position correct since the affirming of the Constitution was a joint project. In terms of the quality of the authorities … well, I should think George St. Tucker’s work is a pretty high quality since Tucker’s work represented Jefferson’s views — as did John Taylor of Caroline.
Second, you seemed to skim right over the part where I said,
Also, it is inconceivable to me that anyone who understands that this nation was formed by secession (from England) would argue that secession was not allowed by the Constitution.
The states and not the people were the source of power. You are mistaken when in your post you make the contrary assertion. James K. Kilpatrick, in his book “The Sovereign States,” writes, “The delusion that sovereignty is vested in the whole people of the united States is one of the strangest misconceptions of our public life.”
Those who make the argument that “The people, ultimately, were the source of power, not the states,” have not considered the fuller story of the Constitution on this score.
This argument is pursued based on the preamble to the Constitution where “We the people of the united States … do ordain and establish this Constitution” is invoked as the authority. However, Madison’s Notes of the Debates in the Federal convention,” the only written record of the constitutional convention’s proceedings tells a fuller story. Here we learn that, The preamble of the first draft of the US Constitution read,
Once the founders realized that all the states might not ratify the document — at least not until a considerable time had passed — the preamble was changed so that the individual states were not named. The final change also aided the document stylistically making it much less cumbersome to read.
The idea that the ratification was one big national act “by the whole” people was a concept that Daniel Webster came up with and which Abraham Lincoln enshrined. It was not the view of the founders as can be seen by Madison’s notes. In Madison’s Notes he clearly wrote that the Constitution would be ratified by “the people comprising those political societies in their highest sovereign capacity.” As the Constitution was ratified by state conventions it is obvious that “those political societies in their highest sovereign capacity,” were the individual states sovereignly considered. Interestingly enough, it was not even state governments that possessed that power but citizens of the states, who, though delegating their authority to representatives sent to conventions, did retain ultimate sovereignty for themselves, as members of separate political communities called states.
In the end the National government was created not by the people as a whole (a quite non Constitutional Republic mindset that would have been alien to the Colonials) but rather was created by the process whereby state ratifying conventions, acting w/ the authority of the people of their respective states, chose to delegate certain powers previously held by themselves in their political societies, to the central government.
So, you can see your statement that “the people, ultimately, were the source of power, not the states,” is not accurate. True, the people, ultimately were the source of power, but it was the people as organized in their particular political societies (states). The people were sovereign and that sovereignty was exercised through the states. That is why secession is legitimate when it is pursued through the context of state conventions.
Well, I’ve given you far more than silence here as argumentation. I will leave it to you to decide if it needs rebuttal.
Blessings,
More to follow, but there is no argument about the right to revolt. Madison understood that. The argument is about secession. There’s a difference. You have the right, according to the founders, to revolt, but, and I will try to develop the argument latter, not secede from the union. You can divorce from the union, but you can’t annul the union which came into being.
Paul,
Secession is not nullification.
You supposedly couldn’t annul the union stemming from the articles of confederation either but they did.
Keep in mind that Buchanan refused to move against the seceded states because he believed he didn’t have the constitutional authority to do so. This goes back to the argument I made earlier regarding the 10th amendment.
The union is not some inviolable mystical bond. It is a voluntary compact (confederation) and its members may legitimately withdraw their membership for a variety of reasons.
As originally conceived and founded, a federal, not national government was established. The states (independent and free nations, as the declaration recognizes) created the federal government, and not the other way around, which means that the union may be dissolved by them.
That the states were independent and free nations can also be seen in the peace treaty King George III made with those independent and free nations.
Bret, regarding your original post, isn’t it also true that the words “under God” weren’t even part of the original pledge? (not that the addition of those words somehow magically legitimizes or sanctifies the statist content and nature of the pledge).
Yes, “under God” were added years later, to the displeasure of Bellamy.
What’s more … the pledge doesn’t say which god we are under.
“Under God,” was added to the pledge during the Eisenhower administration to more sharply contrast us with the “God-less Communists.”
J
Bret – you’re assuming what you mean to prove that the quality of the sovereignty of the states did not change upon ratifying the Constitution.
Joshua – you say “the union is not some inviolable mystical bond.” Your assertion is not uncontroverted. Federalism doesn’t mean that the states had (have) the power to dissolve the union anymore than they have the right to ignore Constitutional acts of Congress.
Both you and Bret confuse the natural right of revolution with some mythical Constitutional right of secession.
What follows is an extended quote from Harry Jaffa (not as a cite to authority, just proper attribution.
The heart of the defense of the Confederate South lies in the claim that secession was a lawful act under the Constitution itself. This question — of the lawfulness of secession — embodies in itself the entire crisis of the Union. I believe that I have, in A New Birth, given it the most thorough analysis ever attempted. I cannot reproduce that analysis here in all its complexity. Simply stated however, the idea of secession means that those who have lost an election can break up the government rather than abide by its results. If minorities can set aside the result of an election, then there is no point in having elections at all. Lincoln’s defense of the Union was therefore a defense of the principle of constitutional majority rule, a principle not recognized anywhere else in the world of that time. Unless the defense of that principle succeeded here, it is not likely that it would ever have succeeded elsewhere. That is what Lincoln meant at Gettysburg when he said that the Civil War was a test whether popular government would perish from the earth.
The Southerners attempted to defend secession by claiming that they had the same lawful right to de-ratify the Constitution as they had to ratify it. Secession, they said, was neither more nor less than de-ratification. The Union under the Constitution was a voluntary contractual agreement among the states. They had the same contractual right, they said, to leave the Union as to join it. This however is to misconstrue the nature of contracts. Consider: marriage is a voluntary agreement, or contract, between a man and a woman. Prior to the marriage, each is free to contract alliances with other parties. After marriage, they are entitled to no such freedom. To say that a partner in marriage can end the union, and co-habit with another partner, is in effect to deny that there ever was a marriage at all. Bear in mind that a seceded state claimed the right to enter into alliances with foreign powers. Under the law of contracts, obligations freely undertaken can never be disavowed unilaterally. That the Constitution would by granting a right of secession provide for its own demise — assisted suicide so to speak — is absurd.
http://www.claremont.org/publications/pubid.198/pub_detail.asp
Paul,
I would think that burden of proof would be upon the one suggesting that the character of the sovereignty of the state changed with the signing the constitution and not with the one suggesting that state sovereignty was consistent from before the signing of the Constitution to after the signing of the Constitution.
Of course, Harry Jaffa, nor the claremont institute are high on my fan list.
Well, Thomas Jefferson did not think the way that Harry Jaffa thought. Jefferson wrote concerning potential future secession,
Jefferson even defended the right of secession in his first inaugural address by declaring,
This is what we would expect from states that had seceded from England due to not being able to abide the results of English policy.
Second, this country had 15 Presidential elections without the minority going their own way. That is suggestive that having a union that included the right of secession didn’t automatically make void the idea of elections. Secession was always understood as the court of last resort and so elections could be had with the legal right of secession without the worry of minority veto by secession.
US History suggests that all regions of the country understood that secession was within their province. In 1813 the N.E. states considered secession in the Hartford convention. Even Abraham Lincoln when he was a US Congressman believed that secession was a viable option,
Jaffa, at least in this quote, completely fails to take account of Virginia’s, New York’s, and Rhode Island’s stipulations before joining the Union. Virginia put it this way,
Virginia along w/ the other colonies joined the Union with the notion that it was not giving up its notion of sovereignty.
The Constitution never gave Lincoln the right to invade the states. The 10th amendment clearly says that
The Constitution did not delegate to the united States the power to invade the states. Not giving it that power, is suggestive that secession was a right retained by the states.
Lincoln’s destruction of the South insured that popular government perished in this country.
Lincoln did not defend the union but destroyed it. That which came through the war was as different a union as was the union that came into existence after the articles of confederation was a different union from the union that existed under the organization of the articles of confederation.
Jaffa assumes his position and then argues from it. Jaffa must prove his position before he can legitimately argue from it. This can be seen by his appeal to contracts. If the states joined the union with the understanding that it was a dissoluble contract then there is nothing in any of this that violates a contractual agreement.
As mentioned earlier, the states did understand that secession was a option.
The union was not a marriage. The union explicitly allowed for secession as seen in the quote from the Virginia ratifying convention. The union explicitly allowed for secession as was accepted by Jefferson.
I’m afraid it is Jaffa’s reasoning that is absurd.
You rock, Bret.
Boy, Bret, Jaffa sure is a mystic. He appeals to the mysterious “law of contracts,” which must be a part of the even more mysterious natural law that I keep hearing about.
Everything Jaffa says about marriage is wrong. He says it’s a “contractual agreement,” but then implies that both parties can’t agree to sever the contract, even if they want to. I guess a contract is unbreakable even if no one wants to be a part of it!
Then, somehow, the states have taken wedding vows and are married to each other. Is the Christ-like head Washington DC, while we all are the dutiful wife (wives)? I’m confused.
Jaffa: “Prior to the marriage, each is free to contract alliances with other parties.”
That must be the shack-up stage. Sort of like the Amish Rumspringa, in which the states can sleep around until they find the right alliance.
So what were the American revolutionaries doing? Seceding? Jaffa must say that they were in violation of contract (or colonial charter), no?
Jaffa is an airhead. Orestes Brownson makes a much better case for the anti-secession position in The American Republic.
Yes, Jaffa is an airhead! He has been exposed over and over again.
I’ve not read Brownson on the subject. Maybe I shall look it up.
If we were to abolish the electoral college, there are several different things that could happen. First, I’ll explain how this college works. To do this, I’ll use an explaination from http://www.learnnc.org:
The people of the United States elect a president every four years, but not directly. Here’s how it works.
In November of a presidential election year, each state holds an election for president in which all eligible citizens may vote. Citizens vote for a “ticket” of candidates that includes a candidate for president and a candidate for vice president.
The outcome of the vote in each state determines a slate of electors who then, in turn, make the actual choice of president and vice president. Each state has as many electors as it has senators and members of the House of Representatives, for a total of 538. (The District of Columbia gets three electors even though it has no representation in Congress.)
In December, the electors meet in their respective state capitols to cast their ballots for president and vice president. States may or may not require their electors to vote with the popular majority, and they may or may not give all of their electors to the winner of the statewide popular vote. (See “A Work in Progress,” below.)
These ballots are opened, counted, and certified by a joint session of Congress in January.
If no candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes or if the top two candidates are tied, the House of Representatives selects a president from among the five candidates with the most votes. Each state’s delegation has a single vote. The Senate selects a vice president by the same process. (This hasn’t happened since 1876, but it almost happened in 2000.)
What does this mean in practice? It means, as everyone learned or was reminded in 2000, that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide does not necessarily become president. There is no national election for president, only separate state elections. For a candidate to become president, he or she must win enough state elections to garner a majority of electoral votes. presidential campaigns, therefore, focus on winning states, not on winning a national majority.
It also means that — at least in theory — electors can thwart the popular will and vote for a candidate not supported by the voters of their state. In practice, however, electors are pledged to cast their votes in accordance with the popular vote, and “faithless electors” who go against the popular vote are extremely rare. Had there been a faithless elector in 2000, however, Al Gore might have become president! (See the historical perspective below for more about this.)
Ok, now I’ll explain what would happen if it were removed:
If this were to happen, the choices of just a few people could rule the nation. If the people of California wished to have one particulary “evil” person (say a person who is for abortion, even higher taxes (I know, how could they get higher), homosexual “marriges,” and other wrong things, then that person could easily be put up to the title of president. Because the State of California is so large…but also because it is only one state, that “evil” person could simply campain there and save lots of money! This is beside the point. The point is…because CA is so large, it takes up the vote of many (if we get ride of the electoral college). This could mean that the littler states have no voices at all! Even the larger states could remain silent. This could result in catastrophe!
This is why I firmly believe that we should not get rid of the electoral college.