Did James Madison Get It Wrong? (Vanity)

Many years ago, Dr. Walter E. Williams was subbing for Rush and closed out a segment by saying something along the lines of, “Some have said that people desire freedom and will do whatever it takes to throw off the chains of tyranny. America is the result of these desires. I now wonder if America isn’t the aberration and tyranny is the natural state.”

I remember disagreeing violently to that statement. I believed that it was natural for a person to desire to be free.

Now, years later, I’ve observed a number of rational people who are more than willing to give away their personal freedom in order to get services and/or security. Entire nations have followed sweet-talking leaders into tyranny during my lifetime. A significant portion of the world’s population is now in the process of trading peaceful coexistence with the other nations for a promise of an earthly kingdom now and a paradise yet to come.

All of these people are willing to give away their freedom to be enslaved by one form of tyranny or another. I look back in history, and I see the same thing. IF people have any freedom, it is soon taken away either by a strong man who perceives their freedom as weakness or by the people themselves exchanging it for some worldly good, some level of security, or some desire.

It’s just possible that those of us who desire to be left alone and allowed to live our lives as we choose are the weird ones. Those others who want the government to do everything for them might be the normal ones.

Madison and Jefferson both thought that elections and separation of power would not be enough if the government could judge its own case regarding constitutionality. Jefferson wrote, “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” Look into the Principles of ’98. Hamilton and others argued for the federal courts as the judge of constitutionality and, of course, that came to be in Marbury v. Madison. Madison and Jefferson were right.

There are a list of points in our Republic's history where there were a comedy of errors that gradually moved our country away from what our founding fathers intended.

Someone mentioned in a previous post that they thought the amendment process was to difficult and that was a possible problem. I feel quite the contrary. Honestly, how many Freepers agree with all the amendments. Some amendments were passed because of fear and the power of the press (e.g. Prohibition which needed its own amendment to repeal it.) I think a part of the problem is that the amendment process was too easy.

Ending slavery and sufferage were probably the only amendments that made our Constitution better. I think that was because Madison and Jefferson were very in tuned to what would keep our Republic together the longest and those two amendments were in line with their beliefs and morals. What they ended up with was a quick fix so the 13 original colonies/states would stay together for the duration of the Revolutionary War. I think that the founding fathers thought that others with their moral character would fix the rest later. Unfortunately there are few, if any, after them who had the moral fiber to make decisions in favor of the People.

The snow-ball that began rolling downhill and got out of control, in my opinion was the Civil War. After the civil war, Federalism won and so did those who evolved from the Hamiltonians and now called Progressives. States effectively lost their sovereignty then and at that time we, in effect, broke with the constitution. I implore you to look up the complete context of Jeffersons quote - The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Tyrants and Patriots. It is manure. end quote.

Jefferson was refering to Shays Rebellion which was eventually quashed. Jefferson continued to agree with their right of rebellion but hastened to add that the rebels should be pardoned and even though he didnt agree with the reason of the rebellion, he believed that our country needed a rebellion from time to time so the Government didnt forget who ruled this country - The People. He is often misquoted because people do not know the context of what he said.

I could drone on, but I will end with a quote from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison dated January 5, 1799 (Ford VII). 344 regarding the Alien and Sedition Acts Quote condensed for purposes of saving space - The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principles of unlimited submission to their General Government...By compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States...they constituted a General Government for special purposes, reserving, each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self government...Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unaauthoritave, void, and of no force - end quote.

In a word, war. The Progressives would have had their grandiose plans thwarted had it not been for World War 1. That's why their rise was greeted with equanimity and derision before WW1. Had it not been for war powers, their designs would have come to naught.

To be honest, what American history shows is a tragedy wrought by an insoluble dilemma. When war comes, most of the chains of the Constitution are cut off, for obvious reasons: who wants their government to fight a foreign foe with one hand tied between its back? Unfortunately, the lack of Constituional restraint in war leads many Americans to associate semi-tyranny with victory. Thus, semi-tyranny becomes prestigious and less easy to fend off.

As I said, there's no way out of this dilemma (that isn't absurd or impracticable.)

Of course, I could take the easy out and say...Madison's Fault! :)

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