WEBVTT NOTE Why the Constitution Had to Be Destroyed 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.600 The title I gave, the Mises Institute, was Why the Constitution Had to be Destroyed. 2 00:00:05.600 --> 00:00:10.900 That was many months ago, but I think I should have added a subtitle of, and how they did it. 3 00:00:10.900 --> 00:00:14.000 And that's going to be the bulk of my talk, and how they did it. 4 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:17.900 And, of course, the Constitution has been effectively destroyed. 5 00:00:17.900 --> 00:00:22.100 There really are no constitutional limits on the growth of government anymore. 6 00:00:22.100 --> 00:00:26.800 Judge Andrew Napolitano, in his book, The Constitution in Exile, 7 00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:35.440 noted that not a single federal law was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court from 1937 8 00:00:35.440 --> 00:00:43.920 to 1995. So every once in a blue moon you'll see the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the people 9 00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:49.200 and against the Washington establishment, but maybe not even a full moon. Every once a century 10 00:00:49.200 --> 00:00:55.200 now is the way it is. So essentially we live in a regime of unlimited government. The only time 11 00:00:55.200 --> 00:01:04.200 The only time Republicans ever really, apart from Ron Paul, ever talk about the Constitution is whenever they want to use it to block something the Democrats are trying to do. 12 00:01:04.200 --> 00:01:14.200 And the only time you ever hear a Democrat in Congress talking about the Constitution is when they want to try to use it to block something the Republicans are trying to do at the moment. 13 00:01:14.200 --> 00:01:21.200 But nobody believes in using it as a limit on governmental power, with the exception of Ron Paul and a few others. 14 00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:24.120 In fact, five or six years ago, 15 00:01:24.120 --> 00:01:26.200 Congressman Paul invited me to speak 16 00:01:26.200 --> 00:01:29.200 to his Liberty Caucus in Washington, in his office. 17 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:31.780 It was about 10 or 11 members of Congress 18 00:01:31.780 --> 00:01:33.160 who were like-minded. 19 00:01:33.160 --> 00:01:36.480 And in some of the names would be familiar 20 00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:38.120 to most of you, I suppose. 21 00:01:38.120 --> 00:01:40.520 And one of the things these members of Congress 22 00:01:40.520 --> 00:01:43.440 all nodded their heads to was when one of them said, 23 00:01:43.440 --> 00:01:47.560 you can no longer be taken seriously in Congress 24 00:01:47.560 --> 00:01:50.000 if you make constitutional arguments 25 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:52.120 against Any Governmental Program. 26 00:01:52.120 --> 00:01:54.880 And so our rulers understand this. 27 00:01:54.880 --> 00:01:56.880 They've won, they've succeeded. 28 00:01:56.880 --> 00:01:58.240 And so I thought it would be useful 29 00:01:58.240 --> 00:02:02.080 to try to tell the story of how this came about and why, 30 00:02:02.080 --> 00:02:04.980 why the Constitution had to be destroyed 31 00:02:04.980 --> 00:02:09.000 based on some of my research in economic history. 32 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:11.640 And I'm gonna just read you the answer. 33 00:02:11.640 --> 00:02:14.200 This is why the Constitution had to be destroyed, 34 00:02:14.200 --> 00:02:15.180 in my opinion. 35 00:02:15.180 --> 00:02:16.260 So I guess I can sit down 36 00:02:16.260 --> 00:02:18.700 after I read this paragraph here. 37 00:02:18.700 --> 00:02:23.140 This was a statement by the late Murray Rothbard 38 00:02:23.140 --> 00:02:26.940 in one of his books about the very beginning 39 00:02:26.940 --> 00:02:28.940 of the American Republic. 40 00:02:28.940 --> 00:02:30.900 The very beginning of the American Republic. 41 00:02:30.900 --> 00:02:33.900 There always were the two factions in American politics. 42 00:02:33.900 --> 00:02:36.740 You had the nationalists who wanted a powerful 43 00:02:36.740 --> 00:02:40.220 central government that would be very active 44 00:02:40.220 --> 00:02:42.780 and do all sorts of bad things. 45 00:02:42.780 --> 00:02:45.500 And then you had the Jeffersonian wing, 46 00:02:45.500 --> 00:02:47.500 the decentralists who wanted limited 47 00:02:47.500 --> 00:03:17.500 Decentralized government, limited taxation, and so forth, and throughout the whole history of the country we've had a back and forth battle between the nationalists and the centralizers on the one hand, and the decentralizers and the more libertarian wing of American politics on the other, and here is how Rothbard described the nationalists, and of course Alexander Hamilton has always been looked at as the intellectual leader of the so-called nationalists of that time. 48 00:03:17.500 --> 00:03:23.500 What were they about? What did they want at the beginning of the Republic when the American Revolution ended? 49 00:03:23.500 --> 00:03:28.500 Here's what they wanted according to Rothbard. They wanted, quote, I'm quoting, 50 00:03:28.500 --> 00:03:36.500 to reimpose in the new United States a system of mercantilism and big government similar to that in Great Britain, 51 00:03:36.500 --> 00:03:41.500 against which the colonists had rebelled. The object was to have a strong central government, 52 00:03:41.500 --> 00:04:11.500 particularly a strong president or king as chief executive built up by high taxes and heavy public debt the strong government was to impose high tariffs to subsidize domestic manufacturers develop a big Navy to open up and subsidize foreign markets for American exports and launch a massive system of internal public works in short the United States was to have a British system without Great Britain that's Murray Rothbard 53 00:04:11.500 --> 00:04:15.340 and Alexander Hamilton actually labeled this system, 54 00:04:15.340 --> 00:04:17.140 the American system. 55 00:04:17.140 --> 00:04:19.860 How's that for Orwellian double talk? 56 00:04:19.860 --> 00:04:22.980 He wanted a clone of the British mercantilist system 57 00:04:22.980 --> 00:04:25.820 that the revolution had just been fought against 58 00:04:25.820 --> 00:04:28.460 and he wanted to call it the American system. 59 00:04:28.460 --> 00:04:31.500 And so if you break this down, what did they want? 60 00:04:31.500 --> 00:04:34.660 A centralized state where political power 61 00:04:34.660 --> 00:04:39.060 was totally centered in the federal government, 62 00:04:39.060 --> 00:04:43.500 heavy federal taxes and debts, discriminatory taxes, 63 00:04:43.500 --> 00:04:45.740 high tariffs would be a discriminatory tax, 64 00:04:45.740 --> 00:04:47.780 and the original constitution prohibited 65 00:04:47.780 --> 00:04:50.500 discriminatory taxation altogether. 66 00:04:50.500 --> 00:04:54.120 They wanted corporate welfare, run amok, essentially, 67 00:04:54.120 --> 00:04:56.760 and aggressive militarism. 68 00:04:56.760 --> 00:04:58.980 Does any of that sound familiar to anybody? 69 00:05:00.980 --> 00:05:02.740 What country might you describe 70 00:05:02.740 --> 00:05:05.540 that is characterized today by these things 71 00:05:05.540 --> 00:05:07.660 that you might be familiar with? 72 00:05:07.660 --> 00:05:09.740 Of course, that's our system today. 73 00:05:09.740 --> 00:05:13.420 And so I would argue that that was why the Constitution 74 00:05:13.420 --> 00:05:16.640 had to be destroyed because the Constitution did not, 75 00:05:16.640 --> 00:05:18.540 neither did the Articles of Confederation, 76 00:05:18.540 --> 00:05:21.540 certainly create a highly centralized state 77 00:05:21.540 --> 00:05:24.780 with heavy federal taxes and debt, discriminatory taxes, 78 00:05:24.780 --> 00:05:28.240 corporate welfare run amok, and aggressive militarism. 79 00:05:28.240 --> 00:05:30.240 That was not the system. 80 00:05:30.240 --> 00:05:34.740 So a very long, decades-long campaign or crusade 81 00:05:34.740 --> 00:05:37.160 had to be waged in a lot of different areas, 82 00:05:37.160 --> 00:05:40.120 in the courts and politics and elsewhere 83 00:05:40.120 --> 00:05:43.520 to destroy the Constitution so that this would be allowed, 84 00:05:43.520 --> 00:05:46.560 so this would come into being. 85 00:05:46.560 --> 00:05:48.680 And at the beginning of the American Republic, 86 00:05:48.680 --> 00:05:52.600 the proponents of this, of course, were the Hamiltonians, 87 00:05:52.600 --> 00:05:57.080 Hamilton himself, people such as Chief Justice John Marshall, 88 00:05:57.080 --> 00:06:02.080 Justice Joseph Story, a Supreme Court Justice, 89 00:06:02.440 --> 00:06:05.560 Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln. 90 00:06:05.560 --> 00:06:08.800 and those were the nationalists up until the Civil War era. 91 00:06:08.800 --> 00:06:11.040 The opponents of all this were the Jeffersonians, 92 00:06:11.040 --> 00:06:15.840 Jefferson himself, Madison, Monroe, Andrew Jackson, 93 00:06:15.840 --> 00:06:19.480 President John Tyler and people of that sort. 94 00:06:19.480 --> 00:06:24.480 And there was a very large battle that went on, okay? 95 00:06:25.400 --> 00:06:26.880 And so you have to understand a little bit 96 00:06:26.880 --> 00:06:30.320 of the history of this in that Hamilton himself, 97 00:06:30.320 --> 00:06:32.600 when he attended the Constitutional Convention, 98 00:06:32.600 --> 00:06:35.240 he did propose a permanent president 99 00:06:35.240 --> 00:06:36.680 who would appoint all the governors. 100 00:06:36.680 --> 00:06:43.840 So this was the first salvo in this decade long political battle to essentially achieve 101 00:06:43.840 --> 00:06:46.560 a centralized monopolistic state. 102 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:50.040 And the centralized monopolistic state was always tied to an economic agenda. 103 00:06:50.040 --> 00:06:55.960 It was tied to that economic agenda that I just mentioned, the so-called American system. 104 00:06:55.960 --> 00:06:57.200 And so that's what Hamilton did. 105 00:06:57.200 --> 00:07:01.480 He laid out his plan of a permanent president who would appoint all the governors who would 106 00:07:01.480 --> 00:07:04.480 have veto power over all state legislation. 107 00:07:04.480 --> 00:07:06.760 and that would have been identical to England. 108 00:07:06.760 --> 00:07:08.240 They just fought a revolution against that. 109 00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:10.720 Of course they didn't win, they didn't win that. 110 00:07:10.720 --> 00:07:13.360 There was a Senator from Virginia at the time 111 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:18.120 named John Taylor who smoked these people out. 112 00:07:18.120 --> 00:07:19.320 He wrote a great little book 113 00:07:19.320 --> 00:07:21.800 that has recently been republished 114 00:07:21.800 --> 00:07:24.680 and is based on the notes taken 115 00:07:24.680 --> 00:07:27.720 at the Constitutional Convention by Robert Yates 116 00:07:27.720 --> 00:07:29.800 who was the Chief Justice of New York at the time 117 00:07:29.800 --> 00:07:32.560 who attended the Constitutional Convention. 118 00:07:32.560 --> 00:07:37.400 These men swore to secrecy at the Constitutional Convention, and that should have been a big 119 00:07:37.400 --> 00:07:38.400 giant rat. 120 00:07:38.400 --> 00:07:43.140 For those of you familiar with the labor union antics, you might know that whenever there's 121 00:07:43.140 --> 00:07:48.260 a company that is bidding for contracts and is using non-union labor, labor unions often 122 00:07:48.260 --> 00:07:52.720 show up with a pickup truck with a gigantic inflated rat in the back of the pickup truck 123 00:07:52.720 --> 00:07:54.200 that's about 30 feet high. 124 00:07:54.200 --> 00:07:58.800 I don't know if you've ever seen this, because they call the non-union workers rats. 125 00:07:58.800 --> 00:08:28.800 The cats should have been sitting outside of the convention hall in Philadelphia when they worked up the constitution because they swore themselves to secrecy and you know, whenever you get a bunch of politicians in a room swearing themselves to secrecy, you know you should smell a big fat rat and so, but the rat was exposed maybe 20 or 30 years after the actual event in the form of James Madison's notes which were eventually published and also the notes by Robert Yates who his wife published after his death. 126 00:08:28.800 --> 00:08:35.300 in the 1820s, but here's what John Taylor, Senator John Taylor of Virginia said about 127 00:08:35.300 --> 00:08:37.160 what was going on at the time. 128 00:08:37.160 --> 00:08:42.160 He said, what was being proposed was a national government nearly conforming to that of England. 129 00:08:42.160 --> 00:08:46.980 By Colonel Hamilton's project, the states were fairly and openly to be restored to the 130 00:08:46.980 --> 00:08:53.240 rank of provinces and to be made as dependent upon a supreme national government as they 131 00:08:53.240 --> 00:08:55.900 had been upon a supreme British government. 132 00:08:55.900 --> 00:08:59.220 And so the Jeffersonians were saying, wait a minute, we just fought a revolution against 133 00:08:59.220 --> 00:09:00.220 this system. 134 00:09:00.220 --> 00:09:01.220 Why would we want this? 135 00:09:01.220 --> 00:09:05.260 And of course, the reason why they wanted it is the same reason why the King of England 136 00:09:05.260 --> 00:09:06.260 wanted it. 137 00:09:06.260 --> 00:09:10.660 He enriched himself and his friends with it at the expense of everybody else, but it was 138 00:09:10.660 --> 00:09:16.620 a way to enrich the politically connected and the elite, you know, who supported the 139 00:09:16.620 --> 00:09:17.620 government. 140 00:09:17.620 --> 00:09:23.620 And of course, when Hamilton and his cronies did not get their way, Hamilton himself denounced 141 00:09:23.620 --> 00:09:26.820 the Constitution as a Frail and Worthless Fabric. 142 00:09:28.020 --> 00:09:31.420 Here's another thing that John Taylor noted in his book. 143 00:09:31.420 --> 00:09:34.820 He said, the convention attendees view the Constitution 144 00:09:34.820 --> 00:09:37.260 as a compact among the free and independent states 145 00:09:37.260 --> 00:09:39.780 and not the creation of a national government. 146 00:09:39.780 --> 00:09:44.220 It was proposed and seconded to erase the word national, 147 00:09:44.220 --> 00:09:45.580 so somebody did propose this, 148 00:09:45.580 --> 00:09:49.700 and substitute the words United States in the plural 149 00:09:49.700 --> 00:09:53.860 in the Fourth Resolution, which passed in the affirmative. 150 00:09:53.860 --> 00:09:55.580 Thus, we see an opinion expressed 151 00:09:55.580 --> 00:09:57.540 at the Constitutional Convention 152 00:09:57.540 --> 00:09:59.820 that the phrase, quote, United States, 153 00:09:59.820 --> 00:10:03.460 did not mean a consolidated American people or nation, 154 00:10:03.460 --> 00:10:06.500 and all the inferences in favor of a national government 155 00:10:06.500 --> 00:10:08.300 are overthrown. 156 00:10:08.300 --> 00:10:10.060 In all the founding documents, by the way, 157 00:10:10.060 --> 00:10:12.940 the words United States are always in the plural, 158 00:10:12.940 --> 00:10:16.340 meaning the free, independent and sovereign states 159 00:10:16.340 --> 00:10:22.220 are united in creating a compact or a confederacy to achieve certain ends. 160 00:10:22.220 --> 00:10:27.220 There was no such idea of something called the United States government, the monolithic 161 00:10:27.220 --> 00:10:31.820 Leviathan that exists in Washington D.C. today. 162 00:10:31.820 --> 00:10:37.460 So Taylor also, as I said, smoked these people out in terms of their economic agenda. 163 00:10:37.460 --> 00:10:43.140 He said their intent was to create, and I'm quoting again, quote, monarchy and its handmaiden 164 00:10:43.140 --> 00:10:53.140 Consolidation, and its other handmaiden, Ambition, and a national government dressed up in popular guises such as national splendor and national strength. 165 00:10:53.140 --> 00:11:06.140 So these were the original neocons. They talked about national splendor. I can imagine Bill Kristol writing an article for the Weekly Standard or even a novel, National Splendor in the Grass, or something like that. 166 00:11:06.140 --> 00:11:13.380 The Neocons got their start in the 90s with Crystal and David Brooks writing an article 167 00:11:13.380 --> 00:11:17.180 in the Wall Street Journal called National Greatness Conservatism. 168 00:11:17.180 --> 00:11:19.260 So it's basically the same idea. 169 00:11:19.260 --> 00:11:23.120 I think in that article they proposed doing something like building a tunnel under the 170 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:25.220 Atlantic Ocean to England. 171 00:11:25.220 --> 00:11:29.100 They said now that the Cold War is over, we need to get the government to do something 172 00:11:29.100 --> 00:11:34.580 really, really, really big, like build a tunnel under the ocean to Europe, although today 173 00:11:34.580 --> 00:11:38.420 Today they would probably change their minds about that. They would fear that terrorists 174 00:11:38.420 --> 00:11:45.500 would come through the tunnel and nuke Americans. Now Taylor also knew, he understood, and it 175 00:11:45.500 --> 00:11:50.580 wasn't just John Taylor, it was all the Jeffersonians, they understood that this push for a monopoly 176 00:11:50.580 --> 00:11:55.340 government where all power is centered in the nation's capital was always tied to the 177 00:11:55.340 --> 00:12:01.420 economic agenda. And the economic agenda is sort of an example of early day Krugmanisms. 178 00:12:01.420 --> 00:12:07.880 In other words, it was convoluted, ass-backwards economics of the sort that you would read 179 00:12:07.880 --> 00:12:11.020 in a typical Paul Krugman New York Times column. 180 00:12:11.020 --> 00:12:16.040 Here's what John Taylor wrote in 1823 about what these people were up to. 181 00:12:16.040 --> 00:12:18.500 He's saying he's mocking their economic arguments. 182 00:12:18.500 --> 00:12:19.500 He's saying here's what they're saying. 183 00:12:19.500 --> 00:12:24.480 They're saying this, quote, I'm quoting John Taylor, the greater the government revenue, 184 00:12:24.480 --> 00:12:30.240 the richer are the people, so the more they tax you, the richer you are. 185 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:36.280 That frugality in the government is an evil thing, but in the people it's a good thing. 186 00:12:36.280 --> 00:12:40.760 So the more of your money you give the government, and the more you let the government spend, 187 00:12:40.760 --> 00:12:43.760 that's a good thing. 188 00:12:43.760 --> 00:12:50.640 That monopolies and exclusive privileges promote the general welfare, that a division of sovereignty 189 00:12:50.640 --> 00:12:57.760 will raise up a class of wicked, intriguing, self-interested politicians in the states, 190 00:12:57.760 --> 00:13:02.160 But that human nature will be cleansed of these propensities by a sovereignty consolidated 191 00:13:02.160 --> 00:13:05.240 in one government in the nation's capital. 192 00:13:05.240 --> 00:13:10.120 So the state politicians are wicked and evil, but the ones in the faraway capital, where 193 00:13:10.120 --> 00:13:14.600 the citizens have no control over, they're saints. 194 00:13:14.600 --> 00:13:18.120 And he was right about every part of this. 195 00:13:18.120 --> 00:13:22.560 And you have to understand that the battle over the Constitution at the time was between 196 00:13:22.560 --> 00:13:28.560 Jefferson, who saw the document as something that would bind government in change. 197 00:13:28.560 --> 00:13:33.560 His famous phrase was, government needs to be bound by the change of the Constitution. 198 00:13:33.560 --> 00:13:36.560 The Hamiltonians, totally the opposite. 199 00:13:36.560 --> 00:13:42.560 They saw this document as, if it was properly interpreted by clever lawyers like themselves, 200 00:13:42.560 --> 00:13:47.560 as a potential rubber stamp on anything the government would ever do. 201 00:13:47.560 --> 00:13:53.000 As long as you could get enough government judges on the Supreme Court who are like-minded 202 00:13:53.000 --> 00:13:59.120 to go along with rubber-stamping everything, then it could be a useful document. 203 00:13:59.120 --> 00:14:06.360 And one of the historians of Hamilton, a biographer of Hamilton, said this of him. 204 00:14:06.360 --> 00:14:11.980 He said, it seems certain that Hamilton, had he had his way, would have affixed a certain 205 00:14:11.980 --> 00:14:17.520 certificate of constitutionality to every last tax. 206 00:14:17.520 --> 00:14:21.480 Clinton took a large view of the power of Congress to tax, because he took a large view 207 00:14:21.480 --> 00:14:25.760 of the power to spend, and that of course is where we are today. 208 00:14:25.760 --> 00:14:31.900 That statistic I mentioned from Judge Napolitano, that the Supreme Court did not declare a single 209 00:14:31.900 --> 00:14:38.120 law of any kind unconstitutional from 1937 to 1995, that's the Hamiltonian system, 210 00:14:38.120 --> 00:14:40.760 rubber stamp, big government. 211 00:14:40.760 --> 00:14:47.720 And Clinton Rossiter, the biographer of Hamilton, said this of him, he said, having failed to 212 00:14:47.720 --> 00:14:52.760 persuade his colleagues at the Philadelphia Convention of the beauties of a truly national 213 00:14:52.760 --> 00:14:59.080 plan of government, and he's not being sarcastic, Rossiter was a Hamiltonian, and having thereafter 214 00:14:59.080 --> 00:15:04.860 recognized the futility of persuading the legislatures of three-fourths of the states 215 00:15:04.860 --> 00:15:10.520 to surrender even a jot of their privileges, he set out to remold the Constitution into 216 00:15:10.520 --> 00:15:13.080 to an instrument of national supremacy. 217 00:15:13.080 --> 00:15:15.680 So in other words, as soon as they lost the political battle 218 00:15:15.680 --> 00:15:17.360 at the Constitutional Convention, 219 00:15:17.360 --> 00:15:20.920 they set out to reinterpret the Constitution 220 00:15:20.920 --> 00:15:24.080 so that the proper interpretation would be 221 00:15:24.080 --> 00:15:27.440 that it created a highly centralized government 222 00:15:27.440 --> 00:15:29.860 with dictatorial powers, with heavy taxes, 223 00:15:29.860 --> 00:15:32.800 heavy debt, corporate welfare, aggressive militarism, 224 00:15:32.800 --> 00:15:35.780 and all these things that the nationalists always wanted. 225 00:15:35.780 --> 00:15:38.760 So through subterfuge, through lawyerly subterfuge, 226 00:15:38.760 --> 00:16:08.760 Hamilton himself started rewriting the history of the American founding by saying that the states were, in 1787 he said this, the states were merely artificial beings and were never sovereign, he said the nation, not the states, was sovereign, and so you know the way in which the Constitution was adopted was each state held a political convention and each state held a political convention and each state held a political convention and each state held a political convention. 227 00:16:08.760 --> 00:16:13.800 and they voted up or down to ratify or not if you ever read article seven of 228 00:16:13.800 --> 00:16:17.680 the US Constitution it explains how the Constitution is to become the law of the 229 00:16:17.680 --> 00:16:22.800 land the states would ratify and go in or out and of course there are several 230 00:16:22.800 --> 00:16:27.720 states like Rhode Island that's in North Carolina that stayed out after this 231 00:16:27.720 --> 00:16:32.240 Constitution was actually in effect for a year year and a half and it took them 232 00:16:32.240 --> 00:16:36.120 a while to change their mind and during that time there was no proposal that I 233 00:16:36.120 --> 00:16:42.880 I know of, or that anybody knows of, I think, to invade New England, Rhode Island, bomb 234 00:16:42.880 --> 00:16:48.200 Providence and Newport into a smoldering ruins and murder their citizens by the thousands 235 00:16:48.200 --> 00:16:52.440 and sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic while they're doing it. 236 00:16:52.440 --> 00:16:58.540 It was seen as being a voluntary union, not a union that was, as Murray Rothbard once 237 00:16:58.540 --> 00:17:03.160 described it, as a Venus flytrap from which there would never be any escape. 238 00:17:03.160 --> 00:17:08.880 That was not the idea, they had just fought a revolution against that kind of system in their minds. 239 00:17:08.880 --> 00:17:13.880 And so Hamilton invented the lie that the states were never sovereign. 240 00:17:13.880 --> 00:17:17.520 And then he invented the myth of implied powers of the Constitution. 241 00:17:17.520 --> 00:17:20.080 And that really was the beginning of the end, wasn't it? 242 00:17:20.080 --> 00:17:24.600 When you had the Secretary of the Treasury, someone in that kind of a position, the sort 243 00:17:24.600 --> 00:17:30.680 of early-day Goldman Sachs former CEO type thing. 244 00:17:30.680 --> 00:17:33.960 And that is really not an exaggeration. 245 00:17:33.960 --> 00:17:37.520 The way in which Hamilton became the first treasury secretary 246 00:17:37.520 --> 00:17:41.240 is described in this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography 247 00:17:41.240 --> 00:17:44.200 of Hamilton by Ron Chernow. 248 00:17:44.200 --> 00:17:46.120 And he knew really nearly nothing 249 00:17:46.120 --> 00:17:48.040 about economics or finance. 250 00:17:48.040 --> 00:17:50.200 But at the very end of the revolution, 251 00:17:50.200 --> 00:17:55.200 he knew that some very influential and wealthy people 252 00:17:55.200 --> 00:18:00.440 in Philadelphia who wanted to essentially run the government 253 00:18:00.440 --> 00:18:04.520 and so he wrote them letters and pretty much saying, 254 00:18:04.520 --> 00:18:07.680 I agree with you that we need a centralized government 255 00:18:07.680 --> 00:18:10.320 with a central bank modeled after the Bank of England 256 00:18:10.320 --> 00:18:13.320 and high protective tariffs and subsidies 257 00:18:13.320 --> 00:18:16.080 for corporations pretty much. 258 00:18:16.080 --> 00:18:19.680 And these people got him put in as Secretary of Treasury. 259 00:18:19.680 --> 00:18:22.400 They wrote George Washington and recommended Hamilton. 260 00:18:22.400 --> 00:18:24.280 So he really was sort of a water carrier 261 00:18:24.280 --> 00:18:28.360 for the Goldman Sachs of the day as Treasury Secretary, 262 00:18:28.360 --> 00:18:30.240 even though he admittedly knew next to nothing 263 00:18:30.240 --> 00:18:32.520 about Finance himself. 264 00:18:32.520 --> 00:18:36.600 His defenders, like Ron Chernow, by the way, 265 00:18:36.600 --> 00:18:40.640 talk about funny passages like Bob Murphy read to you 266 00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:42.120 in his speech. 267 00:18:42.120 --> 00:18:45.480 If you read through this, you don't read any evidence 268 00:18:45.480 --> 00:18:47.960 that Hamilton ever read something like The Wealth of Nations 269 00:18:47.960 --> 00:18:50.560 by Adam Smith or anything like that. 270 00:18:50.560 --> 00:18:52.800 They keep saying over and over again, well, as a young man, 271 00:18:52.800 --> 00:18:57.080 as a teenager, he worked as a clerk in a molasses trading 272 00:18:57.080 --> 00:18:58.720 company on the island of St. Troy. 273 00:18:58.720 --> 00:19:07.600 That is somehow supposed to make him an economic genius, because he worked for some businessmen, slave-owning businessmen, by the way, in St. Croix. 274 00:19:07.600 --> 00:19:18.160 That's like saying, why should I send my son to Harvard? I'll get him a job at McDonald's instead, and he'll become an economic genius, like Alexander Hamilton did. 275 00:19:18.160 --> 00:19:24.560 If Hamilton can do it, why can't he? So he invented the idea of implied powers. 276 00:19:24.560 --> 00:19:37.160 He also was the first to invent the expansive interpretations of the general welfare and commerce clauses of the Constitution to interpret the general welfare clause to mean just about anything the government would ever do. 277 00:19:37.160 --> 00:19:42.120 And so it was Hamilton who really laid the template for how to destroy the Constitution. 278 00:19:42.120 --> 00:19:53.920 And he had a lot of devoted followers, the most important of which right after him was John Marshall, the Chief Justice from, I think, you know, he was appointed at the very, very end of the Adams administration. 279 00:19:53.920 --> 00:20:00.240 Jefferson became president in March of 1801 and John Adams became, John Marshall became 280 00:20:00.240 --> 00:20:07.640 Chief Justice for I think 36 years and he was very very devoted to the Hamiltonian agenda 281 00:20:07.640 --> 00:20:13.640 and I guess he's most closely associated with the famous Marbury versus Madison decision 282 00:20:13.640 --> 00:20:19.480 that planted into place the idea of judicial review of federal legislation. 283 00:20:19.480 --> 00:20:23.680 The Constitution makes no mention of this, there's no judicial review in the Constitution. 284 00:20:23.680 --> 00:20:28.540 This was John Marshall's idea that he, John Marshall, should be the final arbiter of what 285 00:20:28.540 --> 00:20:36.040 is and is not constitutional, and so he got away with it. 286 00:20:36.040 --> 00:20:40.180 But Jefferson himself, here's what Jefferson said about this, he says, when he was asked 287 00:20:40.180 --> 00:20:45.720 about it, he said, this was in 1819, Thomas Jefferson said, well, my construction or my 288 00:20:45.720 --> 00:20:51.760 understanding of the Constitution is that each department, that is each branch of government, 289 00:20:51.760 --> 00:20:53.560 is truly independent of the others. 290 00:20:53.560 --> 00:20:54.800 And he's saying, wait a minute, 291 00:20:54.800 --> 00:20:58.200 we have three branches of government, not one, not one, 292 00:20:58.200 --> 00:21:00.980 and has an equal right to decide for itself 293 00:21:00.980 --> 00:21:03.000 what is the meaning of the Constitution 294 00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:05.500 in the cases submitted to its action. 295 00:21:05.500 --> 00:21:07.560 So the Jeffersonian view was that, okay, 296 00:21:07.560 --> 00:21:10.280 the Supreme Court can tell us their opinion, 297 00:21:10.280 --> 00:21:11.840 but their opinion is no more important 298 00:21:11.840 --> 00:21:14.280 than the opinion of the President or the Congress 299 00:21:14.280 --> 00:21:16.520 or the people of the states. 300 00:21:16.520 --> 00:21:18.300 Jefferson considered the 10th Amendment 301 00:21:18.300 --> 00:21:20.720 to be the cornerstone of the entire document 302 00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:26.000 and the Constitution, and that means the powers that are not delegated to the federal government 303 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:29.000 are all reserved to the people and the states respectively. 304 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:34.680 And they should also have an equal say on what is and is not constitutional. 305 00:21:34.680 --> 00:21:39.840 The Jeffersonians thought it was insanity to allow everyone's liberty to be in the 306 00:21:39.840 --> 00:21:44.800 hands of five government lawyers given lifetime tenure. 307 00:21:44.800 --> 00:21:49.560 Well they have fought a revolution in the name of liberty and then put everybody's liberty 308 00:21:49.560 --> 00:21:55.400 in the hands of five government lawyers with lifetime tenure, that's the system we have, 309 00:21:55.400 --> 00:22:00.160 that's the nationalist argument, and it's the system we have now, but that was never 310 00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:02.480 the intent. 311 00:22:02.480 --> 00:22:03.800 And so what did Marshall do? 312 00:22:03.800 --> 00:22:07.240 Well, one of the things, I'll give you a few examples of some of the other bad things 313 00:22:07.240 --> 00:22:08.920 Marshall did. 314 00:22:08.920 --> 00:22:15.600 In a case called Martin v. Hunter's Leasee, Marshall invented out of thin air the notion 315 00:22:15.600 --> 00:22:19.040 that the federal government had the right to veto state court decisions. 316 00:22:19.040 --> 00:22:23.320 So the federal government essentially took over state court decisions. 317 00:22:23.320 --> 00:22:28.400 He also invented out of thin air the idea that the so-called Supremacy Clause of the 318 00:22:28.400 --> 00:22:33.720 U.S. Constitution makes the federal government supreme over everything the state and local 319 00:22:33.720 --> 00:22:35.260 governments do. 320 00:22:35.260 --> 00:22:36.260 It did not. 321 00:22:36.260 --> 00:22:41.280 All it did was to say that those things that are in Article I, Section 8, those are the 322 00:22:41.280 --> 00:22:44.700 prerogatives of the federal government, that the federal government is supreme only in 323 00:22:44.700 --> 00:22:46.240 those things. 324 00:22:46.240 --> 00:22:50.560 Everything else is left up to the states and the people respectively under the 10th Amendment. 325 00:22:50.560 --> 00:22:55.600 But the nationalists have always used this word supremacy and supreme law of the land 326 00:22:55.600 --> 00:22:58.720 out of context. 327 00:22:58.720 --> 00:23:04.080 They have argued that, well, this gives us sort of a Soviet-style government, centralized 328 00:23:04.080 --> 00:23:06.520 government, not an American-style government. 329 00:23:06.520 --> 00:23:11.960 But John Taylor, again, he wrote about this in his book based on Robert Bates' notes 330 00:23:11.960 --> 00:23:13.780 on the Constitutional Convention. 331 00:23:13.780 --> 00:23:16.700 He said this, the expression in the Constitution, quote, 332 00:23:16.700 --> 00:23:19.300 shall be the supreme law of the land, unquote, 333 00:23:19.300 --> 00:23:22.420 is restricted by its limitations and reservations 334 00:23:22.420 --> 00:23:25.500 and did not convey any species of supremacy 335 00:23:25.500 --> 00:23:27.740 to the government going beyond the powers 336 00:23:27.740 --> 00:23:29.500 delegated or those reserved. 337 00:23:29.500 --> 00:23:34.100 So it's only those primarily foreign policy and war-making 338 00:23:34.100 --> 00:23:38.220 powers that are in Article I, Section 8, that applies. 339 00:23:38.220 --> 00:23:40.180 Marshall repeated the bogus theory 340 00:23:40.180 --> 00:23:42.100 of the American founding, claiming 341 00:23:42.100 --> 00:24:10.260 In the name of the people, the federal government claimed the right to legitimately control 342 00:24:10.260 --> 00:24:15.060 All Individuals or Governments within the American Territory 343 00:24:15.060 --> 00:24:19.540 Think about that, here's the Chief Justice saying that the Federal Government of Washington 344 00:24:19.540 --> 00:24:25.060 can legitimately control all individuals, everything you do, and all governments within 345 00:24:25.060 --> 00:24:26.060 the American Territory. 346 00:24:26.060 --> 00:24:31.900 That was a totalitarian statement if ever there was one, and that was John Marshall. 347 00:24:31.900 --> 00:24:36.500 That's why there's a very good book that ranks the presidents called Recarving Rushmore 348 00:24:36.500 --> 00:24:41.380 by Ivan Eland, published by the Independent Institute and it ranks the presidents. You know, 349 00:24:41.380 --> 00:24:47.060 the historians who write these books that rank presidents, they usually have at the top, 350 00:24:47.060 --> 00:24:53.140 whatever president is involved in killing the most people, blowing up the most buildings, 351 00:24:53.140 --> 00:24:58.100 and spending the most money. That's why FDR, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, they're always way up 352 00:24:58.100 --> 00:25:04.420 there at the top. But Ivan Eland took a unique approach and he said, well, which presidents did 353 00:25:04.420 --> 00:25:08.900 the best job in defending the constitutional liberties of Americans. 354 00:25:08.900 --> 00:25:12.740 Let's rank him according to that. 355 00:25:12.740 --> 00:25:18.280 He puts John Adams way down near the dead bottom, and the main reason he gave is he 356 00:25:18.280 --> 00:25:25.580 appointed John Marshall Chief Justice of the United States. 357 00:25:25.580 --> 00:25:26.580 So he repeated that. 358 00:25:26.580 --> 00:25:29.620 And the subversion continued for many decades. 359 00:25:29.620 --> 00:25:34.400 This is when you get into the 1830s here when John Marshall was still the Chief Justice. 360 00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:40.680 And the two other big shots in this endeavor through the court system and through politics 361 00:25:40.680 --> 00:25:45.680 to create a centralized unconstitutional government were Joseph Story and Daniel Webster. 362 00:25:45.680 --> 00:25:48.440 Joseph Story was a Supreme Court justice. 363 00:25:48.440 --> 00:25:52.400 He wrote a famous book called Commentaries on the Constitution. 364 00:25:52.400 --> 00:25:56.520 Clinton Rossiter, the Cornell historian, says in one of his books that it should have been 365 00:25:56.520 --> 00:26:01.340 called Commentaries on Alexander Hamilton's Commentaries on the Constitution. 366 00:26:01.340 --> 00:26:06.100 And this pretty much laid out the legalistic groundwork for subverting the Constitution 367 00:26:06.100 --> 00:26:11.820 and claiming that America was a consolidated monopoly government and not the decentralized 368 00:26:11.820 --> 00:26:15.220 system of government that was actually created by the Constitution. 369 00:26:15.220 --> 00:26:21.020 And here's what Rossiter says, and he says this by praising, you know, he says this positively, 370 00:26:21.020 --> 00:26:27.380 he says, stories commentaries provided a political roadmap for the legal professions elite or 371 00:26:27.380 --> 00:26:30.660 or at least among the part of it's educated in the North, 372 00:26:30.660 --> 00:26:32.860 during the middle years of the 19th century. 373 00:26:32.860 --> 00:26:35.500 So it's a political roadmap for monopoly government. 374 00:26:35.500 --> 00:26:36.900 And it was very popular in the North, 375 00:26:36.900 --> 00:26:38.940 but not so much in the South. 376 00:26:38.940 --> 00:26:41.980 And there always was a North-South dichotomy here, 377 00:26:41.980 --> 00:26:45.020 although there were Jeffersonians from the North 378 00:26:45.020 --> 00:26:48.420 and there were nationalists in the South. 379 00:26:48.420 --> 00:26:51.140 For the most part, most of these nationalists came 380 00:26:51.140 --> 00:26:53.940 from New England, New York, Philadelphia, 381 00:26:53.940 --> 00:26:56.740 and the associated business interests 382 00:26:56.740 --> 00:27:08.620 Some of the other things Story said, he essentially laid the ideological groundwork for the destruction 383 00:27:08.620 --> 00:27:10.580 of federalism in America. 384 00:27:10.580 --> 00:27:14.420 He claimed, I'll just mention a few of the things that are in this book, I don't have 385 00:27:14.420 --> 00:27:16.420 that much time. 386 00:27:16.420 --> 00:27:21.020 He claimed that, this was in the 1820s when he was writing this, secession of a single 387 00:27:21.020 --> 00:27:24.380 state would mean, quote, dissolution of the government. 388 00:27:24.380 --> 00:27:30.940 Well, when the southern states did secede in 1860, 1861, the federal government responded 389 00:27:30.940 --> 00:27:35.820 by creating the largest army in the history of the world up to that time for four years. 390 00:27:35.820 --> 00:27:39.900 That was hardly the dissolution of the government, so it wouldn't mean the dissolution of the 391 00:27:39.900 --> 00:27:47.740 government. In fact, just the opposite was proven to happen. Story says this, he said, 392 00:27:47.740 --> 00:27:53.100 the original compact of society in no instance has ever been formally expressed at the first 393 00:27:53.100 --> 00:28:04.100 It's really a myth that people ever got together and formed a state to be some sort of peaceful, benevolent organization that would benefit everyone. 394 00:28:04.100 --> 00:28:09.100 That's a social contract theory. It's a theory, but it was never reality anywhere. 395 00:28:09.100 --> 00:28:16.100 In academe, there's something called the conquest theory of the state that goes back hundreds of years. 396 00:28:16.100 --> 00:28:22.100 It says the origins of every state is really based on one group conquering another and exploiting that other group. 397 00:28:22.100 --> 00:28:26.660 Group. That's the origins of every state. And this is what Joseph's story is saying here, and as he's 398 00:28:26.660 --> 00:28:32.060 recognizing this, that the social compact theories are really just theories designed sort of to get 399 00:28:32.060 --> 00:28:37.540 the public to acquiesce in what the state does. And then he goes on to say, however, even though 400 00:28:37.540 --> 00:28:45.660 the citizens never really agreed to obey everything the state does, he says still, quote, every part 401 00:28:45.660 --> 00:28:53.620 of the Society should pay obedience to the will of the whole, and who is to define the 402 00:28:53.620 --> 00:28:54.620 will of the whole? 403 00:28:54.620 --> 00:28:57.700 Well, not the people, they don't have to have anything to do with it. 404 00:28:57.700 --> 00:29:01.380 It's the politicians, Joseph Story said, the political rulers. 405 00:29:01.380 --> 00:29:05.380 They'll decide for us what the will of the whole is. 406 00:29:05.380 --> 00:29:11.020 This is the French Jacobin philosophy that animated the French Revolution, not the American 407 00:29:11.020 --> 00:29:12.020 Revolution. 408 00:29:12.020 --> 00:29:17.380 The idea that there exists such a thing as the will of the people, the general will, 409 00:29:17.380 --> 00:29:22.180 but that idea of that general will is in the minds of the ruling class, it's not created 410 00:29:22.180 --> 00:29:27.420 by any sort of plebiscite or vote or even opinion poll, the ruling class will tell us 411 00:29:27.420 --> 00:29:33.940 what the general will is and that we therefore have no right to disobey that will. 412 00:29:33.940 --> 00:29:40.420 Felix Morley, one of the old right conservatives of the 1950s wrote about this, he said, you 413 00:29:40.420 --> 00:29:43.980 You know, if you believe in this idea of a general will, as the Nationalists did, like 414 00:29:43.980 --> 00:29:48.820 Joseph Story, he said, quote, no aspect of life is excluded from the control of the general 415 00:29:48.820 --> 00:29:49.820 will. 416 00:29:49.820 --> 00:29:54.660 And whoever refuses to obey the general will must, in that instance, be restrained by the 417 00:29:54.660 --> 00:29:59.740 body politic, which actually means that he is forced to be free. 418 00:29:59.740 --> 00:30:02.980 So you're going to be forced to be free, okay? 419 00:30:02.980 --> 00:30:09.980 Felix Morley, another mid-19th century, 20th century conservative, he said he noted in 420 00:30:09.980 --> 00:30:14.540 in one of his books that the Jeffersonians hated and feared this philosophy for, quote, 421 00:30:14.540 --> 00:30:20.460 if the general will were to become a political reality, then all voluntary associations would 422 00:30:20.460 --> 00:30:26.180 be subject to totalitarian control in the name of the whole people and their will. 423 00:30:26.180 --> 00:30:30.620 So whenever you hear somebody giving a political speech and uses this phrase, the whole people, 424 00:30:30.620 --> 00:30:38.740 if they talk about the founding of the Constitution, reach for your firearm, or at least go to 425 00:30:38.740 --> 00:30:53.300 The majority must have a right to accomplish its objective by the means which they deem 426 00:30:53.300 --> 00:30:56.420 adequate for the ends. 427 00:30:56.420 --> 00:31:02.100 The will of the majority of the people is absolute and sovereign, and it is limited 428 00:31:02.100 --> 00:31:06.980 only by its means and power to make its will effectual. 429 00:31:06.980 --> 00:31:13.260 So politicians will make up for us what they say our will is in the name of the majority. 430 00:31:13.260 --> 00:31:16.820 And then there are no limits to what they can do, he's saying. 431 00:31:16.820 --> 00:31:21.100 There should be no limits to what the government can do in the name of the will of the majority. 432 00:31:21.100 --> 00:31:25.940 The only limits are, quote, its means and power to make its will effectual. 433 00:31:25.940 --> 00:31:28.700 In other words, the barrel of a gun. 434 00:31:28.700 --> 00:31:33.860 How many guns do they have to force us to obey their version of our will? 435 00:31:33.860 --> 00:31:34.980 That's what he's saying. 436 00:31:34.980 --> 00:31:38.540 This is what really laid the groundwork for Abraham Lincoln and the invasion of his own 437 00:31:38.540 --> 00:31:39.540 country. 438 00:31:39.540 --> 00:31:45.740 So, ladies and gentlemen, when you go to vote, what you're really doing is you're adding 439 00:31:45.740 --> 00:31:49.860 credibility to this idea that the will of the people have spoken and you're telling 440 00:31:49.860 --> 00:31:56.420 our rulers, go ahead, keep doing it to us because the people have spoken, you won the 441 00:31:56.420 --> 00:32:00.460 majority rule vote, good luck. 442 00:32:00.460 --> 00:32:04.620 If you want to hear more about this, one of my articles on lewrockwell.com is entitled 443 00:32:04.620 --> 00:32:09.620 be patriotic, don't vote, and this is one of the reasons why. 444 00:32:09.620 --> 00:32:15.620 So if government does become tyrannical, what should we do? 445 00:32:15.620 --> 00:32:21.620 Joseph's story said, well, we should rely on the proper tribunals constituted by the government. 446 00:32:21.620 --> 00:32:26.620 Vote, go ahead and vote if you have a problem with what they're doing. 447 00:32:26.620 --> 00:32:31.620 He repeated the fable that the supremacy clause creates a monopoly government. 448 00:32:31.620 --> 00:32:39.540 He also repeated the whole people lie about the origins of the Constitution, and of course, 449 00:32:39.540 --> 00:32:44.740 probably the most famous lie he said was that the preamble of the Constitution uses the words, 450 00:32:44.740 --> 00:32:50.100 we the people, and so the nationalists to this day refer to that as saying, well, it doesn't say we 451 00:32:50.100 --> 00:32:54.900 the people, so didn't the Constitution create a government created by the whole people? Well, 452 00:32:54.900 --> 00:32:59.780 no, the original version of the Constitution, in the original version, the preamble said this, 453 00:32:59.780 --> 00:33:05.780 We the people of the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Providence, Plantations, Connecticut, 454 00:33:05.780 --> 00:33:12.780 named all the states individually until somebody said, well, wait a minute, we don't know that every state is going to ratify. 455 00:33:12.780 --> 00:33:17.780 How can we put in a document every state listed? What if Connecticut says no thanks? 456 00:33:17.780 --> 00:33:22.780 They shouldn't be listed in the document. They're not a part of the United States, so they just left it as we the people. 457 00:33:22.780 --> 00:33:26.780 That's what actually happened, and it's been lied about ever since. 458 00:33:26.780 --> 00:33:31.820 But of course, Madison himself, James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, number 39, explained 459 00:33:31.820 --> 00:33:34.700 how the Constitution is to be ratified, not by the whole people. 460 00:33:34.700 --> 00:33:39.980 He says, it says this, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing 461 00:33:39.980 --> 00:33:44.220 the distinct and independent states to which they respectively belong. 462 00:33:44.220 --> 00:33:48.820 And so it doesn't take a lot of searching to find out how the Constitution was ratified. 463 00:33:48.820 --> 00:33:54.740 Daniel Webster was another one, a famous nationalist, who carried this argument further. 464 00:33:54.740 --> 00:33:59.900 And he, of course, he was in a famous debate over the nature of the union with Robert Haynes, 465 00:33:59.900 --> 00:34:04.260 Senator Robert Haynes of South Carolina in 1830. 466 00:34:04.260 --> 00:34:10.220 And he says this, the Constitution of the United States confers on the government itself 467 00:34:10.220 --> 00:34:17.160 the power of deciding ultimately and conclusively upon the extent of its own authority. 468 00:34:17.160 --> 00:34:22.340 So could you imagine that the founding fathers would have given the government in Washington, 469 00:34:22.340 --> 00:34:29.340 The Constitution never could have designed to destroy liberty by investing five or six men, installed for life, with the power of regulating the Constitution. 470 00:34:52.340 --> 00:34:55.340 The Constitutional Rights of All Political Departments 471 00:34:55.340 --> 00:34:57.340 That just never happened. 472 00:34:57.340 --> 00:35:02.340 But Daniel Webster used his authority to say that. 473 00:35:02.340 --> 00:35:06.340 And he went on and on and on in this debate about the people, the people, the people, the whole people. 474 00:35:06.340 --> 00:35:09.340 Here's one of his statements in this debate. 475 00:35:09.340 --> 00:35:16.340 He says, It is, sir, the people's constitution, the people's government, made for the people, made by the people and answerable to the people. 476 00:35:16.340 --> 00:35:21.340 The people of the United States have declared this constitution shall be the supreme law. 477 00:35:21.340 --> 00:35:22.340 of the Supreme Law. 478 00:35:22.340 --> 00:35:26.380 So that was two big lies that the whole people adopted the Constitution and they created a 479 00:35:26.380 --> 00:35:29.100 supremacy clause that makes it the Supreme Law. 480 00:35:29.100 --> 00:35:33.460 And this is, by the way, is where Abraham Lincoln plagiarized and is famous of the people, 481 00:35:33.460 --> 00:35:38.340 by the people, for the people speech in the Kettysburg Address, it came from Webster. 482 00:35:38.340 --> 00:35:46.100 He was a devotee of the story, Hamilton's story, Webster play, view of politics. 483 00:35:46.100 --> 00:35:51.260 And then Webster asked, well, he talked also about the general will. 484 00:35:51.260 --> 00:35:53.860 And he was more forthright than the story was. 485 00:35:53.860 --> 00:35:58.060 He asked in this debate, well, who shall interpret the people's will? 486 00:35:58.060 --> 00:36:02.840 And his answer is, and I quote, the government itself, of course, not the people. 487 00:36:02.840 --> 00:36:05.220 The people shouldn't have anything to do with it. 488 00:36:05.220 --> 00:36:06.220 Okay. 489 00:36:06.220 --> 00:36:07.220 And so this is what happened. 490 00:36:07.220 --> 00:36:12.940 We had this long battle in the courts and in public opinion and in politics over the 491 00:36:12.940 --> 00:36:15.060 nature of the union. 492 00:36:15.060 --> 00:36:22.100 And that battle finally ended in the 1860s when the nationalists quit arguing. 493 00:36:22.100 --> 00:36:26.820 They just gave up arguing and grabbed firearms instead. 494 00:36:26.820 --> 00:36:32.060 And that was finally ended, that argument was finally ended by the Civil War, so-called. 495 00:36:32.060 --> 00:36:38.300 And so after the Civil War, there was no more talk of decentralized government put into 496 00:36:38.300 --> 00:36:42.740 place by states' rights or the right of nullification or the right of secession. 497 00:36:42.740 --> 00:36:44.460 The argument ended, okay? 498 00:36:44.460 --> 00:36:50.380 And so they didn't win this battle through legal means, or through public opinion, or 499 00:36:50.380 --> 00:36:52.140 through political elections. 500 00:36:52.140 --> 00:36:57.020 The South dominated the political elections, the big majority of American presidents up 501 00:36:57.020 --> 00:37:01.740 to the Civil War were from the South and were Jeffersonians, you know, opposed all of this. 502 00:37:01.740 --> 00:37:05.980 And so I'm going to close with a quote from Murray Rothbard, since I started with a quote 503 00:37:05.980 --> 00:37:11.520 from Murray Rothbard, and this is a book that I think is probably for sale out front. 504 00:37:11.520 --> 00:37:16.640 It's called Strictly Confidential, The Private Volcker Fund Memoes of Murray Rothbard. 505 00:37:16.640 --> 00:37:22.120 And this is on page 131, where Murray Rothbard is talking about the consequences of the Civil 506 00:37:22.120 --> 00:37:23.120 War. 507 00:37:23.120 --> 00:37:24.480 And you might remember my title. 508 00:37:24.480 --> 00:37:31.200 My title is Why the Constitution Had to be Destroyed and How They Did It. 509 00:37:31.200 --> 00:37:33.960 And so this is why the Constitution had to be destroyed. 510 00:37:33.960 --> 00:37:38.280 Murray Rothbard hit the nail on the head in this quote, which I'm going to read to you. 511 00:37:38.280 --> 00:37:41.320 It's kind of a long quote, but it really just says it all, I think. 512 00:37:41.320 --> 00:37:45.920 So this is why the Constitution had to be destroyed in my view, and probably also Murray's 513 00:37:45.920 --> 00:37:47.880 view if he was still around. 514 00:37:47.880 --> 00:37:52.600 He said, and I'm quoting, it is the major of the status consequences of the Civil War 515 00:37:52.600 --> 00:37:54.520 that America never recovered from it. 516 00:37:54.520 --> 00:37:57.940 And of course Murray is writing in full knowledge that all the other countries of the world 517 00:37:57.940 --> 00:38:03.200 ended slavery peacefully, that ended slavery, the British, the French, the Dutch, the Danes, 518 00:38:03.200 --> 00:38:07.400 everybody, New Yorkers, read the book Slavery in New York if you want to know how New Yorkers 519 00:38:07.400 --> 00:38:12.840 Ended Slavery by the 1850s. There were no wars involved there. And then he goes on to say, 520 00:38:12.840 --> 00:38:19.800 Hamiltonian neo-federalism, beyond the wildest dreams of even a John Quincy Adams, had either 521 00:38:19.800 --> 00:38:25.400 been foisted permanently on America or had been inaugurated to be later fulfilled. Let us trace 522 00:38:25.400 --> 00:38:30.840 the leading consequences of the war against the South. There is first the enormous toll of death, 523 00:38:30.840 --> 00:38:35.480 injury and destruction. There's a complete setting aside of the civilized rules of war 524 00:38:35.480 --> 00:38:39.640 that Western civilization had laboriously been erecting for centuries. 525 00:38:39.640 --> 00:38:44.600 Instead, a total war against the civilian population was launched against the South. 526 00:38:44.600 --> 00:38:48.440 The symbol of this barbaric and savage oppression was of course Sherman's march 527 00:38:48.440 --> 00:38:52.040 through Georgia and the rest of the South, the burning of Atlanta, etc. 528 00:38:53.320 --> 00:38:58.920 He says, further, the Civil War foisted upon the country the elimination of Jacksonian hard money. 529 00:38:58.920 --> 00:39:04.520 The Greenbacks established government fiat paper, which it took 14 long years to tame, 530 00:39:04.520 --> 00:39:08.280 and the National Bank Act ended the separation of government from banking, 531 00:39:08.280 --> 00:39:13.160 effectively quasi-nationalizing and regulating the banking system and creating an engine of 532 00:39:13.160 --> 00:39:18.520 governmentally sponsored inflation. So ruthlessly did the Lincoln administration overturn the old 533 00:39:18.520 --> 00:39:25.400 banking system that it became almost impossible to achieve a return. Impossible, that is, without 534 00:39:25.400 --> 00:39:31.480 a radical and almost revolutionary will for hard money, which did not exist. On the tariff, the 535 00:39:31.480 --> 00:39:35.920 The virtual destruction of the Democratic Party led to the foisting of a high protective tariff 536 00:39:35.920 --> 00:39:37.720 to remain for a generation. 537 00:39:37.720 --> 00:39:43.720 In fact, the average tariff rate was about 45% and remained there until 1913 when the 538 00:39:43.720 --> 00:39:46.080 income tax came in. 539 00:39:46.080 --> 00:39:51.240 Continuing on with Rothbard, indeed, permanently for the old pre-war low tariff was never to 540 00:39:51.240 --> 00:39:52.240 return. 541 00:39:52.240 --> 00:39:55.800 It was behind this wall of tariff subsidy that the trusts were able to form. 542 00:39:55.800 --> 00:40:01.160 Further, the administration embarked on a vast program of subsidies to favored businesses, 543 00:40:01.160 --> 00:40:06.680 and grants to railroads, etc. The post office was later monopolized and private postal services 544 00:40:06.680 --> 00:40:11.240 outlawed. The national debt skyrocketed. The budget increased greatly and permanently and 545 00:40:11.240 --> 00:40:17.320 taxes increased greatly, including the first permanent foisting on America of excise taxation, 546 00:40:17.320 --> 00:40:22.040 especially on whiskey and tobacco. Go ahead and boo if you want to boo the whiskey and 547 00:40:22.040 --> 00:40:26.920 tobacco. So he says, thus on every point of the old Federalist wig versus Democrat-Republican 548 00:40:26.920 --> 00:40:32.480 and Controversy. He means Hamiltonian versus Jeffersonian. The Civil War and the Lincoln 549 00:40:32.480 --> 00:40:38.640 administration achieved a neo-Federalist triumph that was complete right down the line. But 550 00:40:38.640 --> 00:40:44.280 that's not all. They had their version of the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization 551 00:40:44.280 --> 00:40:50.600 Act also in those days. Rothbard describes it this way. But this was not all. The Civil 552 00:40:50.600 --> 00:40:56.040 War saw also the inauguration of despotic and dictatorial methods beyond the dreams 553 00:40:56.040 --> 00:41:03.240 of the so-called despots of 98, militarism rand rampant with the arrogant suspension of habeas corpus, 554 00:41:03.240 --> 00:41:08.360 the crushing and mass arrests in Maryland, Kentucky, etc., the suppression of civil liberties 555 00:41:08.360 --> 00:41:14.760 and opposition against the war. Sound familiar? Among the peace copperheads, the persecution of 556 00:41:14.760 --> 00:41:22.200 Congressman Volandegam, who was exiled, and the institution of conscription. And then he goes on 557 00:41:22.200 --> 00:41:52.200 I want to say, here's the final thing, almost everything in short, that is currently evil on the American political scene, had its roots and its beginnings in the Civil War, and that was Murray Rothbard, and none of this, as I said at the beginning, was constitutional under the original Constitution, that's why we had to have this long political and legal war that ended up in a shooting war to finally destroy the Constitution and create a monolithic centralized monopoly government in Washington D.C., 558 00:41:52.200 --> 00:42:02.200 which we have slaved ever since, and I guess my time is up, now I'm going to be able to brag that I had a standing ovation because it's time for you all to stand and go to lunch, okay?