WEBVTT NOTE The Fatal Conceit: The Myth of Limited Constitutional Government 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.780 Our next speaker let Abraham Lincoln off the hook for a few years, and then he figured 2 00:00:06.780 --> 00:00:13.080 out what he had done, and poor Abe hasn't been the same ever since. 3 00:00:13.080 --> 00:00:17.800 He's an economics professor at Loyola College in Maryland, he's a senior faculty member 4 00:00:17.800 --> 00:00:26.240 Ludwig von Mises Institute, PhD from Virginia Tech, he's written 10 books, The Real Lincoln, 5 00:00:26.240 --> 00:00:32.000 How Capitalism Saved America, Lincoln Unmasked, Hamilton's Curse, and today he's going to 6 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:38.560 talk about the fatal conceit, the myth of limited constitutional government. 7 00:00:38.560 --> 00:00:48.400 Please help me welcome Dr. Tom DiLorenzo. 8 00:00:48.400 --> 00:00:52.840 Thanks Doug and thanks for coming and leaving the pool to be here. 9 00:00:52.840 --> 00:01:22.840 You're supposed to laugh at that. It's a sick joke. For those of you who don't know, the title that I chose, The Fatal Conceit, was the title of Friedrich Hayek's last book, and it was about, the fatal conceit was the conceit that central planning could work, socialism and central planning could work, but there's another fatal conceit, and that is the conceit that government can be limited by a constitution, and I've increasingly become sort of a 10 00:01:22.840 --> 00:01:30.480 used, that so many conservatives, in particular, spend their lives, their whole lives, advocating 11 00:01:30.480 --> 00:01:35.640 if only we could enforce the Constitution, things would be better. 12 00:01:35.640 --> 00:01:40.720 But they never seem to spend a minute thinking of, well, how could this happen? 13 00:01:40.720 --> 00:01:43.800 How could we get the Constitution to be enforced? 14 00:01:43.800 --> 00:01:49.040 And they usually, their answer is usually, well, elect Supreme Court judges that are 15 00:01:49.040 --> 00:01:50.040 like us. 16 00:01:50.040 --> 00:01:54.040 Well, that hasn't worked too well, has it? I don't think it has worked too well. 17 00:01:54.040 --> 00:01:58.340 And that was never, ever the design of the founding fathers. 18 00:01:58.340 --> 00:02:04.440 In fact, most of the founders thought it was an absurd idea 19 00:02:04.440 --> 00:02:07.940 that you could ever trust any arm of the federal government 20 00:02:07.940 --> 00:02:13.340 to enforce the limits on its own powers, whether it's the judiciary or anywhere else. 21 00:02:13.340 --> 00:02:17.140 If this Constitution was ever to be enforced 22 00:02:17.140 --> 00:02:22.140 and limiting government, it would have to be the people that enforce, the people themselves, 23 00:02:22.140 --> 00:02:27.140 particularly the people themselves organized at the state and local level and political communities. 24 00:02:27.140 --> 00:02:31.140 That was always the original design of Jefferson in particular. 25 00:02:31.140 --> 00:02:37.140 And so the idea of putting the federal government in charge of the limits on its own power 26 00:02:37.140 --> 00:02:42.140 is really the classic case of putting the fox in charge of the hen house. 27 00:02:42.140 --> 00:02:47.820 and I'm going to start off in talking about my speech here by making a very 28 00:02:47.820 --> 00:02:53.120 politically incorrect statement and that I'm going to quote John C. Calhoun, okay, 29 00:02:53.120 --> 00:02:59.780 don't panic. Calhoun is a Calhoun a lot of you know was a vice president of the 30 00:02:59.780 --> 00:03:03.700 United States, secretary of war, he was a senator from the state of South Carolina 31 00:03:03.700 --> 00:03:09.260 and he was also one of Murray Rothbard's favorite political philosophers and he 32 00:03:09.260 --> 00:03:14.300 He wrote a great book, it's online now and it's for sale in various places, Liberty Fund 33 00:03:14.300 --> 00:03:19.820 sells it, it's called A Disquisition on Government and this was published in 1850, the year he 34 00:03:19.820 --> 00:03:26.540 died and it's this book that Rothbard quoted a lot all throughout his career because it 35 00:03:26.540 --> 00:03:34.580 was really a classic statement of the Jeffersonian states' rights position on the Constitution 36 00:03:34.580 --> 00:03:37.300 and on the role of government in society. 37 00:03:37.300 --> 00:03:42.300 So that Calhoun was really sort of the water carrier. 38 00:03:43.660 --> 00:03:47.260 He was the successor to Jefferson 39 00:03:47.260 --> 00:03:50.300 in terms of political philosophy. 40 00:03:50.300 --> 00:03:52.940 That's why the right-wing statists, 41 00:03:52.940 --> 00:03:55.100 who call themselves neoconservatives, 42 00:03:55.100 --> 00:03:58.020 always slander Calhoun, 43 00:03:58.020 --> 00:04:01.660 because that way they can criticize Jefferson's 44 00:04:01.660 --> 00:04:05.460 Small Government Decentralized State's Rights Position 45 00:04:05.460 --> 00:04:08.460 without actually attacking Thomas Jefferson. 46 00:04:08.460 --> 00:04:12.320 That would not be politically advisable 47 00:04:12.320 --> 00:04:14.460 because Jefferson is such an icon. 48 00:04:14.460 --> 00:04:16.940 But Calhoun is not an icon, he was a southerner. 49 00:04:16.940 --> 00:04:20.340 What more do you need to say, after all? 50 00:04:20.340 --> 00:04:23.000 And so, the left-wing statists, 51 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:25.940 who are known as left-wing statists, do the same thing. 52 00:04:27.660 --> 00:04:28.500 Do the same thing. 53 00:04:28.500 --> 00:04:30.740 They just, you know, he lived in South Carolina. 54 00:04:30.740 --> 00:04:33.100 They had slaves in South Carolina. 55 00:04:33.100 --> 00:04:36.140 Well, they had slaves in New York City for 300 years. 56 00:04:36.140 --> 00:04:37.940 That doesn't mean we should ignore everything 57 00:04:37.940 --> 00:04:40.860 every political figure in New York City ever said. 58 00:04:40.860 --> 00:04:44.100 Although I would like Michael Bloomberg to shut the hell up. 59 00:04:44.100 --> 00:04:44.940 He's... 60 00:04:44.940 --> 00:04:45.780 He's... 61 00:04:45.780 --> 00:04:49.060 Leave my salt alone. 62 00:04:51.060 --> 00:04:53.420 But I'm gonna read a few things from Calhoun. 63 00:04:53.420 --> 00:04:55.860 You know, what did he say about the Constitution? 64 00:04:57.100 --> 00:04:58.100 Well, here's one thing he said. 65 00:04:58.100 --> 00:04:59.500 He said, and I'm quoting, 66 00:04:59.500 --> 00:05:05.980 It is an error to believe that a written constitution alone is sufficient of itself without the 67 00:05:05.980 --> 00:05:13.220 aid of any organism except such as necessary to separate its several departments and render 68 00:05:13.220 --> 00:05:19.380 them independent of each other to counteract the tendency of the numerical majority to 69 00:05:19.380 --> 00:05:21.420 oppression and abuse of power. 70 00:05:21.420 --> 00:05:28.020 He said it is a great mistake to suppose that the mere insertion of provisions to restrict 71 00:05:28.020 --> 00:05:38.300 and Limit the Powers of the Government without investing for whose protection they are inserted 72 00:05:38.300 --> 00:05:42.940 with the means of enforcing their observance will be sufficient to prevent the major and 73 00:05:42.940 --> 00:05:45.700 dominant party from abusing its powers. 74 00:05:45.700 --> 00:05:50.940 So he's saying what I said at the beginning, that it's folly to think that this constitution 75 00:05:50.940 --> 00:05:56.860 could ever be enforced unless the people whose liberties are supposed to be protected by 76 00:05:56.860 --> 00:06:02.260 by this Constitution are the ones enforcing it, not the government. 77 00:06:02.260 --> 00:06:05.460 That is ridiculous to expect that to occur. 78 00:06:05.460 --> 00:06:08.940 These men were not naive about government, for goodness sake. 79 00:06:08.940 --> 00:06:15.220 And he goes on to say, the party in possession of government will always be opposed to any 80 00:06:15.220 --> 00:06:17.960 and all restrictions on its powers. 81 00:06:17.960 --> 00:06:23.460 They will have no need of these restrictions and would come in time to regard these limitations 82 00:06:23.460 --> 00:06:28.340 as Unnecessary and Improper Restraints and Endeavor to Elude Them. 83 00:06:28.340 --> 00:06:34.700 This is in 1850, and of course this is all totally true, and one more thing I'll read. 84 00:06:34.700 --> 00:06:39.460 He said it was folly, sheer folly, to suppose that the party in possession of the ballot 85 00:06:39.460 --> 00:06:45.620 box and the physical force of the country, the military force, could be successfully 86 00:06:45.620 --> 00:06:53.420 resisted by an appeal to reason, truth, justice, or the obligations imposed by the constant 87 00:06:53.420 --> 00:07:05.420 and then finally he predicted that the restrictions of government power would ultimately be annulled and the government would be converted into one of unlimited powers. 88 00:07:05.420 --> 00:07:14.420 He was absolutely right of course and that's been true for a long, long time and of course just to see how unlimited government is nowadays, 89 00:07:14.420 --> 00:07:32.420 One thing that sticks in my mind was how Bill Clinton, when he was president, gave up on a big tax increase because his Treasury Secretary told him it would have a very bad effect on the bond market and Clinton did not want to run for re-election during a recession and so he gave up on it. 90 00:07:32.420 --> 00:07:38.620 but this administration now they don't care about that they just they just run 91 00:07:38.620 --> 00:07:42.620 a full bore ahead to adopt as much socialism as they can adopt while they're 92 00:07:42.620 --> 00:07:46.500 in there before they get kicked out and they don't seem to have any care at all 93 00:07:46.500 --> 00:07:49.460 for the effects in the economy it's almost as though they're they're 94 00:07:49.460 --> 00:07:53.700 purposely trying to destroy the American economy with with the things that they're 95 00:07:53.700 --> 00:07:59.300 doing and proposing to do and not almost they are they are and so there are no 96 00:07:59.300 --> 00:08:01.700 and more limitations, that is certainly true. 97 00:08:01.700 --> 00:08:04.520 And what this was, what Calhoun was talking about 98 00:08:04.520 --> 00:08:09.220 is his rendition of libertarian class analysis, 99 00:08:09.220 --> 00:08:11.420 which is different than Marxian class analysis. 100 00:08:11.420 --> 00:08:13.700 And this goes back a long, long way, 101 00:08:13.700 --> 00:08:16.340 several hundred years, long before Calhoun's time. 102 00:08:16.340 --> 00:08:19.360 And the two classes that were in conflict 103 00:08:19.360 --> 00:08:23.300 were the net tax payers, people who paid more in tax 104 00:08:23.300 --> 00:08:25.180 than they got in benefits from government, 105 00:08:25.180 --> 00:08:28.120 and what he called net tax consumers, 106 00:08:28.120 --> 00:08:34.960 People who got more from government, mostly government employees, then they paid in taxes. 107 00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:40.720 And he predicted that the tax eaters or the tax consumers would ultimately overpower the 108 00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:41.720 taxpayers. 109 00:08:41.720 --> 00:08:46.060 And of course, that's a situation we've been in for a long, long time in the United States. 110 00:08:46.060 --> 00:08:52.880 And so this was libertarian class theory that goes way back to the French physiocrats in 111 00:08:52.880 --> 00:08:53.880 Europe. 112 00:08:53.880 --> 00:08:56.040 This is not even a Jeffersonian idea. 113 00:08:56.040 --> 00:08:58.120 This is before Jefferson. 114 00:08:58.120 --> 00:09:00.240 And so this whole book, as I said, 115 00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:03.240 was a classic statement of the Jeffersonian states' 116 00:09:03.240 --> 00:09:06.600 rights position on the Constitution. 117 00:09:06.600 --> 00:09:09.040 I should say a restatement. 118 00:09:09.040 --> 00:09:11.960 And so where did Calhoun get these ideas anyway? 119 00:09:11.960 --> 00:09:17.800 Well, he was a student of history, of politics. 120 00:09:17.800 --> 00:09:19.680 He understood the Jeffersonian position. 121 00:09:19.680 --> 00:09:21.220 And of course, he was a politician. 122 00:09:21.220 --> 00:09:22.600 He was in politics his whole life, 123 00:09:22.600 --> 00:09:52.600 and so he knew what he was talking about and he knew that there were a lot of sworn enemies of constitutional limitations in the American government from the very beginning and so the second part of what I'm going to have to say here is I'm going to talk about how at the beginning of the American founding there were the Jeffersonians who were the strict constructionists, for the most part, who wanted to use the Constitution as a way to protect the American people. 124 00:09:52.600 --> 00:09:55.640 as a way of enforcing limits on governmental power. 125 00:09:55.640 --> 00:09:57.800 And then there were the Hamiltonians, 126 00:09:57.800 --> 00:10:00.240 and Hamilton had a totally different view 127 00:10:00.240 --> 00:10:02.240 of the Constitution than Jefferson. 128 00:10:02.240 --> 00:10:05.480 Hamilton's view was that the Constitution 129 00:10:05.480 --> 00:10:08.000 could be a potential rubber stamp 130 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:11.120 on anything the state ever wanted to do 131 00:10:11.120 --> 00:10:13.520 as long as it was properly interpreted 132 00:10:13.520 --> 00:10:16.200 by clever, Ivy League-trained lawyers 133 00:10:16.200 --> 00:10:18.440 like Alexander Hamilton. 134 00:10:18.440 --> 00:10:20.880 And that was his position, a rubber stamp. 135 00:10:20.880 --> 00:10:30.880 And in my book, Hamilton's Curse, I quote the historian Clinton Rossiter, who wrote a whole book on Hamilton and the Constitution, as saying that and praising it. 136 00:10:30.880 --> 00:10:40.880 He's saying this is a great thing, that the words of the Constitution can be and have been twisted so that it's essentially a rubber stamp. 137 00:10:40.880 --> 00:10:49.880 To give you an example of what a good job the Hamiltonians have done, that Andy Napolitano in his book, The Constitution in Exile, 138 00:10:49.880 --> 00:10:57.240 mentions that between 1937 and 1995, the Supreme Court did not strike down a single 139 00:10:57.240 --> 00:11:03.200 piece of federal legislation as being unconstitutional. So what does that mean? That means between 140 00:11:03.200 --> 00:11:10.600 1937 and 1995, all the Congresses and all the Presidents were strict constructionists 141 00:11:10.600 --> 00:11:19.600 like Thomas Jefferson. If everything was constitutional, or alternatively, they were Hamiltonians. 142 00:11:19.600 --> 00:11:32.600 and that they twisted the words of the Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause and other clauses so badly out of shape that the Constitution was used as a rubber stamp on everything. 143 00:11:32.600 --> 00:11:40.600 So one of those interpretations has to be true and I think the Hamiltonian interpretation is true. 144 00:11:40.600 --> 00:11:45.400 and this took a long time to happen this didn't just and it took the mighty 145 00:11:45.400 --> 00:11:50.760 efforts of a lot of famous people to subvert the Constitution but it started 146 00:11:50.760 --> 00:11:57.880 from the very beginning as Calhoun knew and as he wrote about in his book 147 00:11:57.880 --> 00:12:01.680 at the really at the very beginning you know as soon as the Constitution was 148 00:12:01.680 --> 00:12:07.600 finished Hamilton himself condemned it as he called it a frail and worthless 149 00:12:07.600 --> 00:12:10.960 This was Fabric, because he didn't get his way. 150 00:12:10.960 --> 00:12:15.440 He was the foremost proponent of a Constitutional Convention. 151 00:12:15.440 --> 00:12:21.120 For seven years he lobbied for a Constitutional Convention to supposedly revise our first 152 00:12:21.120 --> 00:12:26.760 Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and of course they didn't revise the Articles, 153 00:12:26.760 --> 00:12:29.960 they threw them out altogether. 154 00:12:29.960 --> 00:12:35.620 And so Hamilton laid out his plan at the Constitutional Convention, and his plan was for a permanent 155 00:12:35.620 --> 00:12:42.340 President, who would appoint all the governors, who would have veto power over all state legislation. 156 00:12:42.340 --> 00:12:45.940 And so the people of the states would have had nothing whatsoever to do with the central 157 00:12:45.940 --> 00:12:46.940 government. 158 00:12:46.940 --> 00:12:50.580 There was none of this 10th Amendment business with the Hamiltonians. 159 00:12:50.580 --> 00:12:51.580 They didn't want that. 160 00:12:51.580 --> 00:12:56.660 They didn't, you know, the 10th Amendment says that there are these few and well-defined 161 00:12:56.660 --> 00:13:03.280 powers that are delegated to the central government for the benefit of the states, for the benefit 162 00:13:03.280 --> 00:13:04.700 of the citizens of the states. 163 00:13:04.700 --> 00:13:05.700 and so on. 164 00:13:05.700 --> 00:13:06.900 That's why these powers are being delegated. 165 00:13:06.900 --> 00:13:10.140 But everything else is the prerogative of the citizens and the states. 166 00:13:10.140 --> 00:13:11.540 That's what the 10th Amendment was. 167 00:13:11.540 --> 00:13:14.380 So Hamilton was certainly opposed to that. 168 00:13:14.380 --> 00:13:17.900 He wanted the central government to be in charge of everything. 169 00:13:17.900 --> 00:13:19.500 But he didn't get his way, of course. 170 00:13:19.500 --> 00:13:24.300 The government did become a little more centralized, but Hamilton certainly didn't get his way. 171 00:13:24.300 --> 00:13:25.620 And so he condemned the whole thing. 172 00:13:25.620 --> 00:13:34.500 He left the Constitutional Convention, went back to huddle, presumably with his paymasters 173 00:13:34.500 --> 00:13:39.100 in New York City, like Robert Morris, and then condemned the whole thing as a frail 174 00:13:39.100 --> 00:13:42.900 and worthless fabric. 175 00:13:42.900 --> 00:13:49.060 And then after the Constitution was a done deal, Hamilton immediately went to work subverting 176 00:13:49.060 --> 00:13:51.980 it the best he could. 177 00:13:51.980 --> 00:13:54.340 How did he do this? 178 00:13:54.340 --> 00:13:55.860 Hamilton was a brilliant man. 179 00:13:55.860 --> 00:13:58.700 He was a lawyer, a brilliant lawyer, and he was a workaholic. 180 00:13:58.700 --> 00:14:04.480 He was a famous workaholic, and it's hard to beat that combination of extreme brilliance 181 00:14:04.480 --> 00:14:27.280 Hamilton set out to remold the Constitution into an instrument of national supremacy. 182 00:14:27.280 --> 00:14:30.640 How did he set out to remold the Constitution? 183 00:14:30.640 --> 00:14:38.200 Not by proposing amendments to it, by thinking up lawyerly subterfuges that could be used 184 00:14:38.200 --> 00:14:44.560 by judges, presumably, to reinterpret the plain language of the Constitution in order 185 00:14:44.560 --> 00:14:48.080 to destroy the limits on government that were in the Constitution. 186 00:14:48.080 --> 00:14:49.080 That's what he did. 187 00:14:49.080 --> 00:14:50.880 That's what he meant by this. 188 00:14:50.880 --> 00:14:51.880 And so how did he do that? 189 00:14:51.880 --> 00:14:57.680 Well, the first thing he did was in his big debate with Jefferson over the constitutionality 190 00:14:57.680 --> 00:15:04.440 of a National Bank, the Bank of the United States, which was Hamilton's Bank. 191 00:15:04.440 --> 00:15:09.160 This is a classic statement of Jefferson's strict constructionist views, where he essentially 192 00:15:09.160 --> 00:15:12.960 said there's nothing in the Constitution that allows this. 193 00:15:12.960 --> 00:15:17.480 In fact, the Constitutional Convention debated whether the government should have a national 194 00:15:17.480 --> 00:15:19.600 bank and they rejected it. 195 00:15:19.600 --> 00:15:24.920 And that would seem to be pretty strong evidence that the idea of a bank run by politicians 196 00:15:24.920 --> 00:15:30.120 out of the nation's capital was not only a bad idea, but unconstitutional. 197 00:15:30.120 --> 00:15:33.120 They considered it at the convention and rejected it. 198 00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:38.200 Hamilton came back and essentially said, you need to read between the lines of the Constitution. 199 00:15:38.200 --> 00:15:40.760 There are implied powers there. 200 00:15:40.760 --> 00:15:47.000 And so it was Hamilton who invented the idea of implied and not expressed powers of the 201 00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:48.000 Constitution. 202 00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:52.600 And of course, once you go down that road, once that's accepted, then there's no limit 203 00:15:52.600 --> 00:15:53.600 to the powers. 204 00:15:53.600 --> 00:16:04.600 The only limit is the imaginations of politicians, and you've got a totalitarian government if you allow that sort of thing to happen, which we have. 205 00:16:04.600 --> 00:16:09.600 And Jefferson, he didn't actually say this, but the essence of what he said in response was, 206 00:16:09.600 --> 00:16:14.600 I've read between the lines and there's only blank space there, and so that was their argument. 207 00:16:14.600 --> 00:16:22.600 But we did get the Bank of the United States, but I'm not going to talk about that, but that's where he invented this bad idea. 208 00:16:22.600 --> 00:16:28.600 And then the second thing Hamilton did in a public speech, even before the Constitution was ratified, 209 00:16:28.600 --> 00:16:32.600 this was in a speech in New York State where he was lobbying to get the Constitution ratified, 210 00:16:32.600 --> 00:16:40.600 he said this, he said, see this was a speech on June 29th, 1787, 211 00:16:40.600 --> 00:16:48.600 the states are merely artificial beings and were never sovereign, he said, they were never sovereign, 212 00:16:48.600 --> 00:16:53.600 and Artificial Beings, and he went on to say that it was the nation that created the states, 213 00:16:53.600 --> 00:16:58.600 meaning the central government, not the other way around. The states didn't create the central government. 214 00:16:58.600 --> 00:17:03.600 But of course, if you look at the Constitution itself, Article 7 explains that 215 00:17:03.600 --> 00:17:08.600 this document is to be ratified by the states, by nine of the thirteen states. 216 00:17:08.600 --> 00:17:14.600 Why? Well, because they were the sovereigns, that's why. Why would they be called on to ratify the Constitution 217 00:17:14.600 --> 00:17:21.600 of the Constitution if they didn't have the sovereign power over the constitution, which created the powers of the central government. 218 00:17:21.600 --> 00:17:33.600 Of course they were sovereign. So he did those two things, the implied powers idea and the idea that the citizens of the states were never sovereign over their own government. 219 00:17:33.600 --> 00:17:52.600 Those bad ideas were put into play by Alexander Hamilton, and they were repeated for the next 75 years by the advocates of national supremacy, of sort of a dictatorial monarchy, essentially, with a permanent president, as Hamilton wanted. 220 00:17:52.600 --> 00:17:58.600 They never gave up on that idea. They lost at the convention, but they never gave up on that idea. 221 00:17:58.600 --> 00:18:06.000 And Hamilton also was the first, as far as I can tell, to pervert the general welfare and commerce clauses. 222 00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:10.700 And a lot of you are familiar with how the commerce clause of the Constitution has been twisted 223 00:18:10.700 --> 00:18:17.000 to justify all sorts of government activity that was not really meant to be the purview of the central government. 224 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:21.000 Hamilton's original argument goes something like this. 225 00:18:21.000 --> 00:18:28.500 While the Constitution does give the central government the right to regulate trade between the states, 226 00:18:28.500 --> 00:18:32.000 because they wanted to advocate, they wanted to have free trade between the states. 227 00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:38.500 And Hamilton argued that, well, if the government can regulate trade between the states, 228 00:18:38.500 --> 00:18:45.500 well, surely everything that goes on within the states, producing, manufacturing goods and so forth, 229 00:18:45.500 --> 00:18:52.000 eventually leads to interstate commerce because people will sell some of this stuff across state lines. 230 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:55.500 Therefore, if the government has the right to regulate interstate trade, 231 00:18:55.500 --> 00:19:02.220 It should also have the right to regulate intra-state trade, and that was his argument for essentially 232 00:19:02.220 --> 00:19:08.020 unlimited government regulation of everything, of everything, because intra-state trade, 233 00:19:08.020 --> 00:19:15.580 all trade, and of course that has been carried out a thousand times over to justify everything. 234 00:19:15.580 --> 00:19:20.700 One of Hamilton's helpers in subverting the Constitution, and these are all the people 235 00:19:20.700 --> 00:19:24.700 that Calhoun was talking about in his 1850 book. 236 00:19:24.700 --> 00:19:27.700 Even if he didn't mention them in the passages that I read, 237 00:19:27.700 --> 00:19:29.700 this had to be who he had in mind. 238 00:19:29.700 --> 00:19:33.700 John Marshall was one of his assistants. 239 00:19:33.700 --> 00:19:39.700 Marshall was slavishly devoted to Hamilton 240 00:19:39.700 --> 00:19:42.700 and Hamilton's ideas about government. 241 00:19:42.700 --> 00:19:46.700 And when Marshall declared in Marbury versus Madison 242 00:19:46.700 --> 00:19:51.100 that something called judicial review would take place. 243 00:19:51.100 --> 00:19:53.660 This, of course, is nowhere in the Constitution. 244 00:19:53.660 --> 00:19:55.620 He just made this up out of thin air. 245 00:19:55.620 --> 00:19:57.580 There was nothing in the Constitution that allowed 246 00:19:57.580 --> 00:20:01.260 the Supreme Court to be the arbiter of constitutionality. 247 00:20:01.260 --> 00:20:03.260 He essentially meant that he, John Marshall, 248 00:20:03.260 --> 00:20:05.940 the Chief Justice, would decide for everybody 249 00:20:05.940 --> 00:20:08.540 what's constitutional and what's not. 250 00:20:08.540 --> 00:20:09.860 And of course, like I said, 251 00:20:09.860 --> 00:20:12.260 that's nowhere in the Constitution. 252 00:20:12.260 --> 00:20:14.380 And it wasn't until after the Civil War, 253 00:20:14.380 --> 00:20:16.060 which those of you who have read some 254 00:20:16.060 --> 00:20:21.100 My Lincoln Articles know I usually call the war to prevent southern independence. 255 00:20:21.100 --> 00:20:26.540 It wasn't until then that we had this judicial dictatorship really put into place, because 256 00:20:26.540 --> 00:20:33.300 prior to that, presidents would look at Supreme Court decisions and say essentially, thank 257 00:20:33.300 --> 00:20:38.100 you for your opinion, but mine is different, and then probably in private they'd say, 258 00:20:38.100 --> 00:20:40.620 na-na-na-na-na, something like that. 259 00:20:40.620 --> 00:20:43.460 Andrew Jackson was famous for that. 260 00:20:43.460 --> 00:20:48.620 When Marshall himself said the Bank of the United States is constitutional, Jackson responded 261 00:20:48.620 --> 00:20:50.580 by essentially saying, so what? 262 00:20:50.580 --> 00:20:52.860 He said, my view is different. 263 00:20:52.860 --> 00:20:57.980 He had a very eloquent response actually, but the essence of it was, thank you for your 264 00:20:57.980 --> 00:21:01.060 opinion, but my opinion is different. 265 00:21:01.060 --> 00:21:05.900 And we have a system of government here where we have co-equal branches. 266 00:21:05.900 --> 00:21:10.020 We have the executive branch, the congressional branch, and the judicial branch, and you, 267 00:21:10.020 --> 00:21:13.260 Mr. Marshall, are just one branch, you're the judicial branch. 268 00:21:13.260 --> 00:21:17.040 And my view of the Constitution is just as valid as yours. 269 00:21:17.040 --> 00:21:19.700 That was the essence of what Andrew Jackson said. 270 00:21:19.700 --> 00:21:25.700 Another decision that Jackson responded to, not related to the bank, he said Mr. Marshall 271 00:21:25.700 --> 00:21:30.060 has made his decision and now let him try to enforce it. 272 00:21:30.060 --> 00:21:34.460 And this was not only Andrew Jackson, there were other presidents, the state governments, 273 00:21:34.460 --> 00:21:40.220 Tom Woods is going to talk about this next, about how state governments for the whole 274 00:21:40.220 --> 00:21:52.220 The whole period prior to the war to prevent southern independence, north and south, all the states would take it upon themselves to declare that they were going to nullify federal laws that they thought were unconstitutional. 275 00:21:52.220 --> 00:22:06.220 So not only did a lot of Americans believe that constitutionality was the responsibility of the court, the president, the congress, but also the citizens of the states at the same time. 276 00:22:06.220 --> 00:22:26.220 Martin vs. Hunters-Lee See, John Marshall wrote The Opinion on 277 00:22:26.220 --> 00:22:32.220 The Federal Government had the right to veto state court decisions, and this is nowhere in the Constitution either. 278 00:22:32.220 --> 00:22:40.220 He just declared this to be a new power that he, John Marshall, the Chief Justice, would have to veto the state court decisions. 279 00:22:40.220 --> 00:22:52.220 Another thing he did in trying to codify Hamilton's ideas into the law was he made up the theory that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution 280 00:22:52.220 --> 00:22:56.860 makes the Constitution the supreme law of the land over everyone and everything, 281 00:22:56.860 --> 00:22:58.860 but it doesn't. 282 00:22:58.860 --> 00:23:06.180 All the Supremacy Clause says that those specific powers delegated to the central government by the states 283 00:23:06.180 --> 00:23:08.180 in Article 1, Section 8, 284 00:23:08.180 --> 00:23:11.740 the central government is supreme over the states in those. 285 00:23:11.740 --> 00:23:16.740 But then the Tenth Amendment says everything else is the prerogative of the citizens in the states. 286 00:23:16.740 --> 00:23:22.820 It doesn't make the central government the supreme dictator over all of us and over all 287 00:23:22.820 --> 00:23:24.620 the states. 288 00:23:24.620 --> 00:23:27.420 That's been the thinking for many, many years. 289 00:23:27.420 --> 00:23:32.260 In fact, the Obama administration recently threw that out in their argument with Arizona 290 00:23:32.260 --> 00:23:37.300 over immigration laws, the supremacy clause, you know, what do you mean Arizona law? 291 00:23:37.300 --> 00:23:43.160 We can't have state laws, you know, the federal government is supreme over everything. 292 00:23:43.160 --> 00:23:48.880 And so you have these people in the Obama administration just echoing Hamilton and his 293 00:23:48.880 --> 00:23:50.780 buddy John Marshall. 294 00:23:50.780 --> 00:23:54.680 When I first started writing about this, some articles on the Internet, by the way, I had 295 00:23:54.680 --> 00:24:01.160 an email from a law student at New York University who thanked me for criticizing Hamilton and 296 00:24:01.160 --> 00:24:07.920 he said, I'm just sick of sitting here in Nadine Strossen's class at NYU Law School 297 00:24:07.920 --> 00:24:12.920 where she goes on and on and on every day praising the Hamiltonian interpretation of the Constitution 298 00:24:12.920 --> 00:24:18.560 and which he as a libertarian understood was all subversive, it was all, that's what you 299 00:24:18.560 --> 00:24:22.560 learn when you go to law school and you take a course in constitutional law, you learn 300 00:24:22.560 --> 00:24:27.080 the history of all the clever arguments that have been used to undermine constitutional 301 00:24:27.080 --> 00:24:28.400 limits on government. 302 00:24:28.400 --> 00:24:33.400 You don't study the actual constitution, you study the subterfuge of the constitution, 303 00:24:33.400 --> 00:24:37.440 even at prestigious schools like NYU. 304 00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:43.060 And so, another thing that Marshall did in another decision is he repeated Hamilton's 305 00:24:43.060 --> 00:24:45.940 bogus theory of the American founding. 306 00:24:45.940 --> 00:24:51.400 He said this, in the name of the people, the federal government claimed the right to legitimately 307 00:24:51.400 --> 00:24:57.440 control all individuals or governments within the American territory, and it sounds like 308 00:24:57.440 --> 00:25:03.800 Soviet-style totalitarianism, you know, control, do you mean control, enslave all individuals 309 00:25:03.800 --> 00:25:07.240 and governments within American territory? 310 00:25:07.240 --> 00:25:37.240 The author of Hamilton's Helpers was Justice Joseph Story, a famous Supreme Court justice who wrote a very famous book called Commentaries on the Constitution, and Clinton Rossiter, who I mentioned, who wrote the book on Hamilton and the Constitution, he said this book should have been called Commentaries on Alexander Hamilton's Commentaries on the Constitution, because it was essentially a big long-winded repetition of Hamilton's superstition. 311 00:25:37.240 --> 00:25:51.240 This is essentially what most Americans for the last seven or eight or nine or ten generations have been taught about the Constitution, Hamilton's superstitions about the Constitution. 312 00:25:51.240 --> 00:25:57.240 Here's what Rossiter said about Hamilton. 313 00:25:57.240 --> 00:26:04.040 He construed the powers of Congress liberally, and he upheld the supremacy of the nation, 314 00:26:04.040 --> 00:26:09.440 which means the central government or monopolistic governments, and he says, stories commentaries, 315 00:26:09.440 --> 00:26:14.540 this book Commentaries and the Constitution, quote, provided a political roadmap for the 316 00:26:14.540 --> 00:26:20.840 legal professions elite, or at least among the part of it educated in the north during 317 00:26:20.840 --> 00:26:24.160 the middle years of the 19th century, end quote. 318 00:26:24.160 --> 00:26:33.000 So this provided the political roadmap essentially for the New England Ivy League political elite. 319 00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:37.760 How many members of the current U.S. Supreme Court are not members of the New England Ivy 320 00:26:37.760 --> 00:26:40.320 League political elite? 321 00:26:40.320 --> 00:26:41.320 Maybe one or two? 322 00:26:41.320 --> 00:26:42.320 One? 323 00:26:42.320 --> 00:26:43.320 Maybe Scalia? 324 00:26:43.320 --> 00:26:44.320 I don't think... 325 00:26:44.320 --> 00:26:51.240 Clarence Thomas went to Yale, you can count them, but it seems as though these people 326 00:26:51.240 --> 00:26:53.380 knew what they were talking about. 327 00:26:53.380 --> 00:27:00.140 And Story's famous, his famous book, his commentary's book, is filled with phony history and illogic. 328 00:27:00.140 --> 00:27:06.900 Here's one of the things he says, quote, it is heresy to maintain that a party to a compact 329 00:27:06.900 --> 00:27:12.100 has a right to revoke the compact. 330 00:27:12.100 --> 00:27:16.340 So once you enter into any compact, you have no right to revoke that compact. 331 00:27:16.340 --> 00:27:22.400 The unwritten second sentence there is that we will shoot you if you try to do it. 332 00:27:22.400 --> 00:27:28.360 If you're talking about the compact creating the United States government, but of course, 333 00:27:28.360 --> 00:27:32.240 the Articles of Confederation, he was referring to the Articles of Confederation, which was 334 00:27:32.240 --> 00:27:39.120 a compact, which was revoked, they did revoke it, his people revoked it, his fellow nationalists 335 00:27:39.120 --> 00:27:41.640 revoke the Articles of Confederation. 336 00:27:41.640 --> 00:27:47.160 He also said this, secession of a single state would mean dissolution of the government, 337 00:27:47.160 --> 00:28:01.160 Well, eleven southern states seceded in 1860 and 1861, and the federal government proceeded to field the largest and best equipped army in the history of the world for four years after that. 338 00:28:01.160 --> 00:28:11.160 That's not what I would call dissolution of the government. The government would have been just different. It would have been smaller. It would have been dissolved. The US government wouldn't have disappeared. 339 00:28:11.160 --> 00:28:17.880 And Abe Lincoln would have vanished like Captain Kirk called him back up to the Spaceship Enterprise. 340 00:28:17.880 --> 00:28:21.480 They still would have had their government in Washington, D.C. 341 00:28:21.480 --> 00:28:28.680 But this was long before the Civil War that Story was saying this. 342 00:28:28.680 --> 00:28:33.080 Story did make an honest statement here. 343 00:28:33.080 --> 00:28:39.040 He said that the original compact of society, meaning American society, in no instance has 344 00:28:39.040 --> 00:28:44.280 has ever been formally expressed at the first institution of a state. 345 00:28:44.280 --> 00:28:51.560 What he's saying here is that there was never any, really, a voluntary state. 346 00:28:51.560 --> 00:28:55.960 He said this is a fanciful theory, the social contract theory of the state where citizens 347 00:28:55.960 --> 00:29:01.240 get together and voluntarily agree to have a state that will coerce them in certain ways. 348 00:29:01.240 --> 00:29:02.240 This never actually happened. 349 00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:05.440 It's a nice theory, but it never actually happened. 350 00:29:05.440 --> 00:29:11.880 But then he goes on to say, nevertheless, everyone and every part should pay obedience 351 00:29:11.880 --> 00:29:14.680 to the will of the whole. 352 00:29:14.680 --> 00:29:20.640 So we never agreed to this state, but we nevertheless should pay obedience to something called the 353 00:29:20.640 --> 00:29:22.260 will of the whole. 354 00:29:22.260 --> 00:29:26.000 And then he goes on to say, who is to define this will? 355 00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:29.020 Well, the government, of course. 356 00:29:29.020 --> 00:29:32.800 People like Joseph Story on the Supreme Court, that's who will define for us what our will 357 00:29:32.800 --> 00:29:33.800 is. 358 00:29:33.800 --> 00:29:38.720 And of course the whole idea of a general will is nonsense. We all have our individual 359 00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:44.060 preferences and likes and dislikes. There's no way you can't conglomerate a whole country 360 00:29:44.060 --> 00:29:52.720 into one will of any kind. That, by the way, is why in his famous book, The Road to Serfdom, 361 00:29:52.720 --> 00:29:58.640 Friedrich Hayek wrote that this whole language of general welfare, the common good, is really 362 00:29:58.640 --> 00:30:04.440 is a recipe for totalitarianism because anyone who purports to know what is in the minds 363 00:30:04.440 --> 00:30:11.280 of millions of people and is in their good or their general welfare is someone who just 364 00:30:11.280 --> 00:30:16.080 wants to use the coercive powers of the state to do what they want to do in the name of 365 00:30:16.080 --> 00:30:18.400 the common good, the general welfare. 366 00:30:18.400 --> 00:30:22.760 And so Hayek didn't really distinguish between the general welfare clause of the constitution 367 00:30:22.760 --> 00:30:35.760 and say the language of Germany and Italy in the 1930s that were the common good before the private good was the essence of fascism as the same thing and it's pretty much the same idea if you read the Road to Serfdom. 368 00:30:35.760 --> 00:30:49.760 And so what he is saying here, what Joseph's story is saying here, this is an expression of the French Jacobin philosophy that comes from Rousseau that there is some sort of general will in the minds of the ruling elite 369 00:30:49.760 --> 00:30:58.760 and that ruling elite has the right, therefore, to use the power of the state, the military power of the state, to enforce their version of the general will. 370 00:30:58.760 --> 00:31:05.760 That's not the American view of government, of the Constitution. That's the French Jacobin view of government. 371 00:31:05.760 --> 00:31:11.760 And ironically, it's Jefferson who has been smeared as being too friendly toward the French during their revolution, 372 00:31:11.760 --> 00:31:18.760 when it was really his nemesis, Hamilton, whose ideas were pure Jacobin ideas, as far as I'm concerned. 373 00:31:18.760 --> 00:31:25.760 So how is government to be constrained? How is this constitution to be enforced according to Joseph Story? 374 00:31:25.760 --> 00:31:32.760 Well, he presents the elementary schoolish view that the appropriate response to governmental oppression should be 375 00:31:32.760 --> 00:31:36.760 quote, the proper tribunals constituted by the government. 376 00:31:36.760 --> 00:31:41.760 Elections, things like that, hasn't really worked out that well. 377 00:31:41.760 --> 00:31:46.760 He says, appeal to the good sense and integrity and justice of the majority of the people. 378 00:31:46.760 --> 00:31:55.760 A story also repeated John Marshall's fable that the Supremacy Clause makes the central government supreme in everything. 379 00:31:55.760 --> 00:32:06.760 Another helper, another of the helpers of Hamilton was Daniel Webster. 380 00:32:06.760 --> 00:32:14.160 Daniel Webster, and he was in a famous debate in the United States Senate with Senator Robert 381 00:32:14.160 --> 00:32:19.560 Hayne of South Carolina, and according to the members of the Senate and the media of 382 00:32:19.560 --> 00:32:26.440 the time, Hayne won the debate, hands down, but history has been rewritten since the nationalists 383 00:32:26.440 --> 00:32:29.240 eventually won this political war. 384 00:32:29.240 --> 00:32:35.860 It's been rewritten to say that Webster won the debate, and he must have been a big 385 00:32:35.860 --> 00:33:05.860 The Big Bag of Hot Air, Daniel Webster. I read through these whole debates word by word, and it's a real struggle, but the advocates of national power, centralized power, in academe, who discussed this debate between Hayne and Webster, they always quote one line that Webster said about union and liberty forever, and that is supposed to be a substitute for an analysis of the substance of what he was actually saying here, which I don't think it was. 386 00:33:05.860 --> 00:33:30.860 The Constitution of the United States confers on the government itself the power of deciding ultimately and conclusively upon the extent of its own authority. 387 00:33:30.860 --> 00:33:33.300 That's what Daniel Webster said. 388 00:33:33.300 --> 00:33:34.300 Well, no, it does not. 389 00:33:34.300 --> 00:33:38.540 John Marshall may have wished it did, but it does not. 390 00:33:38.540 --> 00:33:47.380 Senator John Taylor of Virginia, who wrote a book about the Constitutional Convention 391 00:33:47.380 --> 00:33:52.260 based largely on notes taken by Robert Yates, the New York Supreme Court Chief Justice who 392 00:33:52.260 --> 00:34:00.020 was there, and they were published posthumously by Yates' widow, as was his book. 393 00:34:00.020 --> 00:34:12.060 The Constitution never could have designed to destroy liberty by investing five or six 394 00:34:12.060 --> 00:34:19.220 men installed for life with the power of regulating the constitutional rights of all political 395 00:34:19.220 --> 00:34:21.340 departments. 396 00:34:21.340 --> 00:34:22.340 Think about that. 397 00:34:22.340 --> 00:34:26.900 The founders fought this revolution against the British Empire and then they're going 398 00:34:26.900 --> 00:34:40.900 A Constitution that would save them, presumably, from the evils of an empire and of a mercantilist empire and it's a revolution for liberty, not equality like the French Revolution. 399 00:34:40.900 --> 00:34:49.900 How are they going to defend liberty? Well, let's get five government lawyers with lifetime tenure and let them decide for everybody. 400 00:34:49.900 --> 00:34:52.500 How stupid would you have to be to believe that? 401 00:34:52.500 --> 00:34:55.300 But that's what all Americans mostly believe these days, 402 00:34:55.300 --> 00:35:00.500 when they sort of, they bow down to the black-robed deities of the Supreme Court. 403 00:35:00.500 --> 00:35:03.300 Okay, yes, masters, we will obey. 404 00:35:03.300 --> 00:35:06.700 That was not always the case, that was not always the case. 405 00:35:06.700 --> 00:35:14.900 Taylor was a Jeffersonian, and of course, the Jeffersonians thought it was ridiculous to think of that. 406 00:35:14.900 --> 00:35:17.700 In fact, they always predicted that if the day ever came 407 00:35:17.700 --> 00:35:46.700 Webster also presented a totally false scenario. One of two things is true. Either the laws of the Union are beyond the discretion and beyond the control of the states, or else we have no constitution of general government. 408 00:35:46.700 --> 00:35:53.700 So, either the people of the states have nothing whatsoever to do with the central government's powers, 409 00:35:53.700 --> 00:35:57.700 or we just have no central government. We can't have central government. 410 00:35:57.700 --> 00:36:02.700 And of course, some of you are snickering. This is Daniel Webster. 411 00:36:02.700 --> 00:36:07.700 Weren't you all taught to revere Daniel Webster when you were in elementary school, saying these things? 412 00:36:07.700 --> 00:36:14.700 Well, this is a totally false scenario. I don't want to steal Tom Woods' thunder, 413 00:36:14.700 --> 00:36:24.200 But what Webster was referring to is the fact that everyone in the country, everyone, every state in the country, disagreed with this during his time. 414 00:36:24.200 --> 00:36:29.700 There were states, his own state, Massachusetts, was nullifying the fugitive slave law. 415 00:36:29.700 --> 00:36:37.200 Ohio nullified the Bank of the United States. They refused to allow the Bank of the United States to operate within its borders. 416 00:36:37.200 --> 00:36:44.200 They passed a law and they imposed a tax of $100,000 in the 1820s on the Bank of the United States. 417 00:36:44.200 --> 00:36:48.200 The first central bank to try to drive it into bankruptcy. 418 00:36:48.200 --> 00:36:52.200 The citizens of the states everywhere disagreed with Daniel Webster. 419 00:36:52.200 --> 00:36:56.200 In fact, they thought the only way we could have a general government 420 00:36:56.200 --> 00:37:00.200 that would protect our liberty was if the people could constrain it 421 00:37:00.200 --> 00:37:04.200 and tame it with such things as nullification and secession 422 00:37:04.200 --> 00:37:08.200 and the right of secession. After all, America was created by a war of 423 00:37:08.200 --> 00:37:12.200 secession from the British Empire. How could you deny that Americans had 424 00:37:12.200 --> 00:37:23.880 Another thing that he says, he repeats the line that the government was a national government 425 00:37:23.880 --> 00:37:28.080 and not created by the states, he says the Constitution creates a popular government 426 00:37:28.080 --> 00:37:29.080 erected by the people. 427 00:37:29.080 --> 00:37:32.000 It is not a creature of the state governments. 428 00:37:32.000 --> 00:37:35.680 Like I said, read Article 7 of the Constitution where it says, yeah, it is a creature of the 429 00:37:35.680 --> 00:37:36.680 state governments. 430 00:37:36.680 --> 00:37:42.040 And remember, this is a diatribe on the Constitution by Daniel Webster. 431 00:37:42.040 --> 00:37:47.080 And then he says this, who shall interpret the people's will? 432 00:37:47.080 --> 00:37:48.680 Guess what his answer is? 433 00:37:48.680 --> 00:37:51.560 He said, quote, the government itself. 434 00:37:51.560 --> 00:37:56.440 There's that French Jacobin dictatorial mindset again. 435 00:37:56.440 --> 00:38:02.120 Here's one thing that really laid the ideological groundwork for Abraham Lincoln's invasion 436 00:38:02.120 --> 00:38:03.120 of the southern states. 437 00:38:03.120 --> 00:38:08.020 It was Webster's redefinition of treason in the Constitution. 438 00:38:08.020 --> 00:38:13.460 If you want to know what treason is, read Article 3, Section 3 of the United States Constitution. 439 00:38:13.460 --> 00:38:20.620 Here's what it says, quote, treason against the United States, keep in mind, I'm interrupting 440 00:38:20.620 --> 00:38:26.980 myself here, in all the founding documents, when the words United States are in them, 441 00:38:26.980 --> 00:38:29.840 it's in the plural, the states are. 442 00:38:29.840 --> 00:38:34.260 It's not the United States government is, the states are, meaning the independent states 443 00:38:34.260 --> 00:38:39.060 The States are united in creating this central government for their mutual benefit. 444 00:38:39.060 --> 00:38:40.560 That's always the meaning. 445 00:38:40.560 --> 00:38:46.320 Articles of Confederation, Declaration of Independence, Constitution, all in the plural. 446 00:38:46.320 --> 00:38:47.980 And so I'll start over again. 447 00:38:47.980 --> 00:38:54.060 Treason against the United States shall consist in levying war against them, the States, or 448 00:38:54.060 --> 00:38:58.240 in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. 449 00:38:58.240 --> 00:39:04.940 So, waging war against the states is what is treason under the plain language of the 450 00:39:04.940 --> 00:39:09.620 U.S. Constitution. That's why Abraham Lincoln's invasion of the southern states was the very 451 00:39:09.620 --> 00:39:15.920 definition of treason under the Constitution. There's no way anyone could ever deny that. 452 00:39:15.920 --> 00:39:20.320 Waging war against the states. What was the Civil War? It was the central government waging 453 00:39:20.320 --> 00:39:31.960 How did Webster redefine treason? He redefined treason as meaning the opposite of that. Resisting 454 00:39:31.960 --> 00:39:37.380 an invasion of the federal government is treason. This is what he said, quote, to resist by 455 00:39:37.380 --> 00:39:47.680 force the execution of a federal law generally is treason, end quote. And he didn't say 456 00:39:47.680 --> 00:39:49.400 Constitutional Federal Law. 457 00:39:49.400 --> 00:39:51.880 He said federal law, any federal law. 458 00:39:51.880 --> 00:39:53.760 He didn't put any qualifiers in there. 459 00:39:53.760 --> 00:39:55.920 So presumably no matter how oppressive 460 00:39:55.920 --> 00:39:58.920 and how tyrannical the federal government would be, 461 00:39:58.920 --> 00:40:02.560 resisting it, and he didn't say violent resistant either. 462 00:40:02.560 --> 00:40:06.660 He said resisting, we did say resisting by force, 463 00:40:06.660 --> 00:40:08.680 but he didn't really define what he meant by force. 464 00:40:08.680 --> 00:40:09.520 That's treason. 465 00:40:09.520 --> 00:40:12.400 Well, that's bogus, that's nowhere in the Constitution. 466 00:40:12.400 --> 00:40:14.360 In fact, it's the exact opposite 467 00:40:14.360 --> 00:40:16.080 of what's in the Constitution. 468 00:40:16.080 --> 00:40:22.080 So how are we to protect ourselves from oppression, according to Daniel Webster? 469 00:40:22.080 --> 00:40:28.080 Well, quote, trust in the efficacy of frequent elections. 470 00:40:28.080 --> 00:40:32.080 What are you laughing at? 471 00:40:32.080 --> 00:40:38.080 Then he also said, quote, trust in the judicial power. 472 00:40:38.080 --> 00:40:44.080 Trust in the Ivy League, New England Ivy League trained judges, and we'll be fine. 473 00:40:44.080 --> 00:40:55.080 Remember what I said from 1937 to 1995, according to Judge Napolitano and others, other legal scholars that I've read that said this, not one federal law was ruled unconstitutional. 474 00:40:55.080 --> 00:41:08.080 Everything was rubber-stamped. In fact, those of you who have studied the Great Depression in the New Deal know that there were quite a few big Supreme Court cases that simply overturned ideas. 475 00:41:08.080 --> 00:41:19.080 The Minimum Wage Law was held to be unconstitutional several years before the Supreme Court changed over new personnel and they discovered that it was constitutional after all. 476 00:41:19.080 --> 00:41:31.080 A lot of that went on in the 1930s. I think that's why Napolitano picked 1937 because that's when it all started. 477 00:41:31.080 --> 00:41:39.080 Now, all of this rhetoric, what this is, these ideas are all the nationalist interpretation of the Constitution. 478 00:41:39.080 --> 00:41:50.080 This is 50 years of legal rhetoric that was designed to destroy the Jeffersonian interpretation of the Constitution, 479 00:41:50.080 --> 00:41:57.080 to overthrow the Jeffersonian interpretation of the Constitution so that the government could be much more centralized, 480 00:41:57.080 --> 00:42:02.080 was much more powerful and essentially unlimited in its powers. 481 00:42:02.080 --> 00:42:08.080 That was the original design of the Hamiltonians once the revolution was over. 482 00:42:08.080 --> 00:42:11.080 But the people did not accept this. 483 00:42:11.080 --> 00:42:18.080 After Jefferson was elected, the New England Federalists plotted for 10 years to secede. 484 00:42:18.080 --> 00:42:22.080 They actually held a convention in Hartford, Connecticut in the year 1814 485 00:42:22.080 --> 00:42:26.080 to vote up or down on secession on whether they would create their own country in New England. 486 00:42:26.080 --> 00:42:32.080 They voted against it, but for 10 years they debated it. There's several big books on this. 487 00:42:32.080 --> 00:42:37.080 By the 1850s there was a secession movement in the middle Atlantic states. 488 00:42:37.080 --> 00:42:43.080 The middle states were generally considered Maryland, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware. 489 00:42:43.080 --> 00:42:47.080 There's a whole book on it called The Secession Movement in the Middle States. 490 00:42:47.080 --> 00:42:51.080 And again, all the people in these states assumed that they had a right of secession. 491 00:42:51.080 --> 00:42:55.080 They didn't buy the nationalist interpretation of the Constitution. 492 00:42:55.080 --> 00:43:04.080 Abolitionists, a lot of abolitionists from the northern states wanted to secede because they didn't want to be a part of slavery. 493 00:43:04.080 --> 00:43:21.080 The famous abolitionist journal by William Lloyd Garrison, I think the slogan was no constitution with death or something like that, no covenant with death. 494 00:43:21.080 --> 00:43:51.080 and that meant, that was a secessionist statement. He advocated the northern states seceding and I think he probably was smart enough to know that if he did that, the fugitive slave law would have become defunct, that is this was a law that was passed in 1850 that put a bounty, a federal government bounty on runaway slaves. I think Garrison was smart enough to know that if the northern states formed their own country, then this law would be defunct and if a slave 495 00:43:51.080 --> 00:44:21.080 In the 1960s, Abraham Lincoln escaped into, say, Pennsylvania, he would no longer have a federal bounty on his head, he would be free, that's why the Underground Railroad ended up in Canada, and Abe Lincoln, by the way, was a very firm supporter of the Fugitive Slave Act, if you just read his speeches, but I think Garrison was smart enough to understand that, and so people all over the country didn't buy this until the 1860s, and as I said, if you would ever read Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, 496 00:44:21.080 --> 00:44:26.080 He said the states were never sovereign, therefore they have no right to secede. 497 00:44:26.080 --> 00:44:28.080 That's his basic argument. 498 00:44:28.080 --> 00:44:36.080 When I was in a debate years ago with a well-known neocon Lincoln idolater, 499 00:44:36.080 --> 00:44:41.080 he made a reference to Hitler, as he always does, with his debating opponents. 500 00:44:41.080 --> 00:44:48.080 And so what I did is, and of course he tried to associate me with Hitler somehow. 501 00:44:48.080 --> 00:44:53.000 and so but so what I did anyway I went back and I wrote an article you know I 502 00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:57.680 had actually read Mein Kampf as a college student and I don't know how I 503 00:44:57.680 --> 00:45:01.320 ever remembered this but it kind of popped in my head that when I was 504 00:45:01.320 --> 00:45:05.640 suffering being forced to read Mein Kampf as a sophomore in college there was a 505 00:45:05.640 --> 00:45:10.720 whole chapter on states rights and state sovereignty in Mein Kampf by Adolf 506 00:45:10.720 --> 00:45:17.360 Hitler and Adolf Hitler actually quoted Abe Lincoln's first inaugural address 507 00:45:17.360 --> 00:45:23.960 When he says the union wasn't created by the states, the union created the states, 508 00:45:23.960 --> 00:45:28.860 and Hitler here was making his case for the abolition of federalism, for the abolition 509 00:45:28.860 --> 00:45:33.200 of state sovereignty, state rights, because he was making his case for the centralization 510 00:45:33.200 --> 00:45:41.240 of all power in Berlin, and he was using Abraham Lincoln as his role model in Mein Kampf. 511 00:45:41.240 --> 00:45:45.100 So this nationalist interpretation of the Constitution didn't really play until the 512 00:45:45.100 --> 00:45:51.980 in the 1860s, but of course it was all put in place at gunpoint during the war to prevent 513 00:45:51.980 --> 00:45:56.860 southern independence and ever since then, that's what Americans have been taught. Americans 514 00:45:56.860 --> 00:46:03.300 have been taught this false nationalist history, these superstitions about the American founding 515 00:46:03.300 --> 00:46:10.100 that say that you, the people of the sovereign states, have no right to challenge the supremacy 516 00:46:10.100 --> 00:46:15.380 of the Federal Government, that we're all slaves to Washington, D.C. and will be forever. 517 00:46:15.380 --> 00:46:21.460 And the only way that will ever change is if we have the courage to confront our own 518 00:46:21.460 --> 00:46:27.340 history and realize that we've been sold the bill of goods about our own history. 519 00:46:27.340 --> 00:46:31.860 And so one way of doing that, that I would recommend, is for all of you to go out and 520 00:46:31.860 --> 00:46:38.500 buy my books, The Real Lincoln, Lincoln Unmasked and Hamilton's Curse, and also Tom Woods's 521 00:46:38.500 --> 00:46:51.500 This New Book, Nullification, and he's our next speaker and that's what he's going to talk about and so in your journey to educate yourself about real American history, you should stick around for our next speaker, Tom Woods, and that's about all I have to say for now.