From the Declaration of Independence, one of the charges against the King that justified secession. It was built on a violent American raid on a British ship years earlier that few of us are ever taught about.

In the early hours of June 10, 1772, a band of Rhode Islanders rowed out in the dark, shot and seriously wounded a Royal Navy commander, captured the crew and burned his ship to the waterline.

The Crown moved to drag them 3000 miles across the ocean to hang because they called it treason. The Sons of Liberty called it self-defense.

THE CLAIM

We start this story after the event. On December 21st, 1772, an explosive article was published in the Newport Mercury.

“To be, or not to be, that’s the question ; whether our unalienable rights and privileges are any longer worth contending for, is now to be determined. Permit me, my countrymen, to beseech you to attend to your alarming situation.”

Signed by a writer using the pseudonym Americanus, it warned of a newly-established court system that would destroy the ancient right to trial by jury of your peers in your own vicinage.

“A court of inquisition, more horrid than that of Spain and Portugal, is established within this colony … and the persons who are the commissioners of this new-fangled court are vested with most exorbitant and unconstitutional power”

The author described a system where defendants, witnesses, and even mere suspects would be kidnapped and taken thousands of miles away for a “trial” – a mockery of the justice system.

“They are directed to summon witnesses, apprehend persons not only impeached, but even suspected! And them, and every of them to deliver to Admiral [John] Montagu, who is ordered to have a ship in readiness to carry them to England, where they are to be tried.”

He summed it up by calling this attack on liberty a fate worse than death.

“Ten thousand deaths, by the halter or the ax, are infinitely preferable to a miserable life of slavery, in chains, under a pack of worse than Egyptian tyrants” 

Americanus predicted the tyrants’ thirst for this power had no limits.

“Whose avarice nothing less than your whole substance and income will satisfy and who, if they can’t extort that, will glory in making a sacrifice of you and your posterity, to gratify their master the devil, who is a tyrant, and the father of tyrants and of liars.”

Read that again. Four years before Thomas Jefferson wrote a word of the Declaration of Independence, Americanus was already warning that these men would, as the Declaration later put it, “harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”

The vocabulary of Independence was already being written, in a Newport, Rhode Island newspaper, in 1772.

THE PROOF

The author, most likely Stephen Hopkins, may have sounded to some people like a nutcase with all that over the top rhetoric. But then on December 31, 1772 the Massachusetts Spy published a massive scoop proving it wasn’t mere rhetoric at all.

The Spy had gotten its hands on leaked government communications forwarded from Rhode Island to the printer Isaiah Thomas. It started by naming the source of the plans, the highest-ranking member of the King’s administration for the colonies.

“A genuine extract of the letter from Lord Dartmouth, to the Governor of Rhode Island, dated Whitehall, September 4, 1772.”

In Dartmouth’s own words came verification of the Crown’s intention to transport Americans across the ocean for trials in England.

“It is His Majesty’s intention, in consequence of the advice of his Privy Council, that the persons concerned in the burning the Gaspee schooner, and in the other violences which attended that daring insult, should be brought to England, to be tried.”

SEARCH AND SEIZE

What did these people do that was worth dragging them across the Atlantic to hang? They attacked a Royal Navy ship, shot the commander, captured the crew, and burned the ship to the waterline.

Considering this violent raid happened nearly three years before the battles of Lexington and Concord, it’s an incredible story.

In early 1772, Lieutenant William Dudingston sailed the HMS Gaspee into Narragansett Bay to enforce customs laws and to inspect cargo. They were looking for smugglers.

On February 17, he got his first big prize. The Fortune and its cargo of approximately 1,400 gallons of rum were seized. Duddingston sent the ship and seized rum to Boston because he was worried that any seized property kept in a Rhode Island port would be under threat of being reclaimed by the colonists.

The fortune was owned by a guy you might be familiar with – Nathanael Greene – the man who’d soon become George Washington’s most gifted and trusted general. Greene later wrote about how much he was driven to bring the thieves to justice.

It “created such a Spirit of Resentment that I have devoted almost the whole of my time in devising measures for punishing the offender,” the offender in this case, being Dudingston.”

The entire system was built on a perverse incentive, similar to civil asset forfeiture programs of modern times. Dudingston got a personal share of the proceeds from the sale of every ship and its cargo he seized, so taking the Fortune was just the start.

Within weeks, the Gaspee searched so many boats that even the Governor of Rhode Island wrote to complain.

“A considerable number of the inhabitants of this Colony have complained to me of your having,in a most illegal and unwarrantable manner, interrupted their trade, by searching and detaining every little packet boat plying between the several towns. As I know not by what authority you assume this power, I have sent off the high sheriff, to inform you of the complaint exhibited against you, and expect that you do, without delay, produce me your commission and instructions, if any you have, which was your duty to have done when you first came within the jurisdiction of this Colony.”

The governor didn’t get a response he was looking for, so he sent a second letter. Instead of responding, Dudingston escalated to his boss, admiral Montagu, who wasn’t too happy about it. The Lt. “sent me two letters he received from you of such a nature I am at a loss what answer to give them, and ashamed to find they come from one of his Majesty’s Governors”

The Admiral’s language made it quite clear that the military was definitely NOT subordinate to the civil authority.

“I shall report your two insolent letters to my officer, to his Majesty’s Secretaries of State, and leave them to determine what right you have to demand a sight of all orders I shall give to all officers of my squadron, and I would advise you not to send your Sheriff on board the King’s ships again on such ridiculous errands.”

He didn’t stop there. He told the governor that those under him didn’t need to show him anything.

“The Captain and Lieutenants have all my orders to give you assistance whenever you demand it, but further you have no business with them, and be assured it is not their duty to show you any part of my orders or instructions to them.”

And in true imperial fashion, he also casually threw out a threat of executing Americans who might resist their taxes and trade restrictions.

“I am also informed the people of Newport talk of fitting out an armed vessel to rescue any vessel the King’s schooner may take carrying on an illicit trade. Let them be cautious what they do; for as sure as they attempt it, and any of them are taken, I will hang them as pirates”

THE RAID

That brings us to the big event, which started with a chase on June 9, 1772.

Captain Benjamin Lindsey of the packet boat Hannah sailed north from Newport to Providence. The Gaspee promptly gave chase and the ships made their way up Narragansett Bay.

The Rhode Islanders claimed that Lindsey knew exactly what he was doing and set a trap for the Gaspee. In their version of the story, he intentionally lured the British ship across the shallows off Namquid Point where it ran hard aground on a sandbar.

According to Steven Park, who is by far the leading expert on this history, there was another side to that story.

“Dudingston claimed that he ran aground at Namquid Point because he did not have his local pilot with him and lacked knowledge of the Bay.”

Either way, the Gaspee was stuck – unable to move until the flood tide the following day.

Lindsey quickly spread the word, and later that evening, the town crier was in the streets beating a drum, the traditional call for the local militia to muster.  Around 10pm, the Sons of Liberty met at Sabin’s Taver  in Providence to plan a raid on the British ship.

The attack party was led by wealthy local merchant John Brown and the town sheriff Abraham Whipple. Shortly after midnight on June 10th. As Park documents, there were two different stories on the size of that raiding party.

“Colonists claim there were approximately eight longboats with about 64 men. Dudingston claimed there were dozens of vessels comprised of about 250 men.”

The men used a rowing technique known as muffling oars – where cloth, animal skins, or specialized rubber fittings are wrapped around the part of the oar that rests in the oarlock to help evade detection as long as possible. This technique dampens the scraping and creaking sounds of oars rubbing against metal, allowing the boat to move more quietly.

When the boats were finally discovered approaching the ship, Commander Dudingston gave out a “who goes there.”

According to local accounts, the sheriff – acting how the highest local law enforcement officer should act – announced that he had an arrest warrant.

“I  am the sheriff of the county of Kent, G… d ..n you. I have got a warrant to apprehend you, G.. d..n you; so surrender, G.. d..n you.”

While there is no documented proof of such a warrant being written up, at this point things still escalated quickly. 18-year-old Joseph Bucklin realized he had a clear line, so he fired shots at Dudingston, who was hit twice. As he was bleeding on the deck, dozens of Sons of Liberty boarded the ship and quickly overtook the crew. Dudingston surrendered the ship, and the raiders took the entire crew captive.

The crew was loaded on the longboats, and a local doctor, with the help of the shooter Bucklin, attended to Dudingston and saved his life.

Brown and Whipple stayed back to search the ship for official orders and other documents. When they finished, they set it on fire. It burned from the hull up. The powder magazine went last and the explosions were loud enough to be heard from land. By morning the Gaspee had burned to the waterline.

THE COMMISSION

Two days later, Governor Wanton issued a proclamation offering a reward of 100 pounds for information that would lead to a conviction of the perpetrators. But in true Rhode Island fashion, no one knew nuttin’ about nobody raiding any ship. That included the local sheriff, who was one of the leaders of the attack!

Ten weeks later, the ante was upped by the King himself, who raised the reward to 500 pounds. He also created a commission to investigate and punish the raiders on charges of treason.

But here’s the twist. The man the King put in charge of finding the culprits – Gov. Wanton – made sure no one ever could be. As Park documented, “He made certain that none of the Gaspee crew were ever in the colonial house for questioning at the same time as any of the Gaspee raiders in order to prevent crew members from identifying the raiders.”

The result?  No one was ever charged.

SELF-DEFENSE

Despite not being part of our normal history lessons today, this event was one of the most well-known at the time. A big reason for that was a sermon by the Rev. John Allen given on Thanksgiving day, 1772 at the request of the Boston sons of liberty.

In An Oration Upon the Beauties of Liberty, Allen hammered the Gaspee investigation and commission at least seven separate times.

The crown had a word for what happened with the Gaspee: treason. Allen had another one entirely

“It is no rebellion to oppose any king, ministry, or governor, that destroys by any violence or authority whatever, the rights of the people.”

He grounded this in the first law of nature – the duty of self-preservation – along with the natural right of self defense.

“Shall a man be deem’d a rebel that supports his own rights? it is the first law of nature.”

For Allen, refusing to exercise the right of self-defense is moral degeneracy – rejecting the gift of your creator.

“And he must be a rebel to God, to the laws of nature, and his own conscience, who will not do it.”

But Allen didn’t stop at the principle. He named the specific injustice: Exactly what the Crown wanted to do to those men. To make the point, he asked Lord Dartmouth to imagine it himself.

“How would your Lordship like to be fetter’d with irons, and drag’d three thousand miles, in a hell upon earth? No! but in a hell upon water, to take your trial?”

It didn’t matter where it came from. Anyone – and that meant anyone – who issued such an order is an enemy tyrant.

“Then, that man, that king, that minister of state, be who he will, is worse than a Nero tyrant that shall assume to drag him three thousand miles to be tried by his enemies.”

Three thousand miles. To be tried for self-defense against usurpations of power.

Less than four years later, Thomas Jefferson and company put it in list of charges against the King in the Declaration of Independence.

“For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.”

The post Shots Fired, Ship Burned: The Sons of Liberty vs the HMS Gaspee appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

But otherwise, the 13 future American states were largely self-governing. In each, the elected lower house in the colony’s legislature controlled taxes and spending. That body, in conjunction with a governor and upper house, regulated most aspects of colonial life. The colonies also controlled their own militias, which fought alongside British troops in the conflict known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and in America as the French and Indian War.

Once hostilities ended, however, the British government decided it was time to curb American autonomy. Colonial migration into the area west of the Appalachian Mountains was provoking retaliation from local Indian tribes, so the British issued the Proclamation of 1763, which restricted westward migration. The war had left Britain deeply in debt, so Parliament passed the Sugar Act (1764) to more effectively enforce the tax on molasses. The following year, it enacted the Stamp Act, which imposed duties (indirect taxes) on paper, playing cards, and nearly every colonial legal document.

Because the Stamp Act raised revenue without the consent of the colonists’ elected representatives, the measure provoked widespread alarm and resistance among Americans. To coordinate this resistance, the colonies met in New York City for a “Stamp Act Congress”—one of a long line of federal conventions that foreshadowed the Constitutional Convention and the Constitution’s “Convention for proposing Amendments.”

In response to colonial outrage and petitions from English merchants who relied on the colonial trade, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act. But about the same time, it also adopted the law known to history as the Declaratory Act (6 Geo. iii, c. 12). It provided in part:

“The said Colonies … have been, are, and of Right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependant upon, the Imperial Crown and Parliament of Great Britain; and that the King’s Majesty, by and with the Advice and Consent of [Parliament] had, hath, and of Right ought to have, full Power and Authority to make Laws … to bind the Colonies and People of America, Subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, in all Cases whatsoever.”

In other words, the British government claimed absolute supremacy over its American colonies. But Americans knew of the long struggle for liberty waged against the Crown by their British ancestors. Absolute submission to a government in which they had no representation was not a condition they were prepared to accept.

In 1767, in furtherance of its declaration of supremacy, Parliament imposed further taxes on America: the Townshend duties. These exactions provoked renewed colonial resistance. A series of essayists, most of them distinguished American lawyers, laid out the American case and pleaded for peaceful resistance. Their publications drew what their authors considered to be the proper lines between colonial and imperial prerogatives, and in doing so, they foreshadowed the Constitution’s division between state and federal powers.

Among the essayists were James Otis, John Adams, James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson. But it was John Dickinson’s “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania” that really set the colonies on fire. As explained in the next essay in this series, Dickinson played a major role in the subsequent debate over Independence.

Parliament eventually repealed all of the Townshend duties except the tax on tea. But it continued to insist on absolute British power over America. British intransigence was answered with similar intransigence on the colonial side, particularly in Massachusetts, where much of the unrest was provoked by Samuel Adams, an accomplished grassroots agitator.

The British government, therefore, sent troops into Boston, and on March 5, 1770, the inevitable occurred: A local mob taunted British troops, who, in panic, fired back. Five Americans lost their lives in this altercation, which Adams and his allies dubbed “The Boston Massacre.” The first to die was Crispus Attucks, a sailor of African and American Indian extraction—about whom, by the way, I wrote my college senior honors thesis more than 50 years ago.

The agitation continued, notably with the Boston Tea Party (1773), in which a group of citizens, dressed as Indians, protested the tax on tea by boarding a ship and tossing its cargo of tea into the harbor. Many Americans were incensed by this unlawful act, and the British even more so. In 1774, Parliament adopted four laws designed to punish Massachusetts: the Coercive Acts.

Even those Americans outraged by the conduct of the Boston “Indians” thought the British response to be far out of proportion to the transgression. Representatives of the Colonies again met in convention—this time in Philadelphia—to plan further peaceful resistance and to petition the King. But the British remained unmoved by the efforts of this “First Continental Congress.”

Colonial unrest continued, and in February 1775, the king declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion. Two months later, British troops moved to confiscate the arms of the Massachusetts militia. This provoked the April 19 hostilities at Concord and Lexington that marked the first battles of the American Revolution: In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s representation:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

In May, the colonies again convened in Philadelphia. This Second Continental Congress became a de facto treaty organization and the agency by which Americans prosecuted the war. It was also the entity that produced the Declaration of Independence.

Next installment: John Dickinson and the Case Against Independence.

This essay was first published in the May 19, 2026 Epoch Times.

This is the first in a five-essay series on the Declaration of Independence, written for its 250th anniversary.

The post The Runup to the Declaration of Independence appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Samuel Adams warned us – tyranny is built on people who lack knowledge and strong morals. That’s because he knew freedom is built on the opposite foundation.

“For they cannot live in any Country where Virtue and Knowledge prevail.”

He was far from alone.

Writing in December 1778, before the war for independence had even reached its bloodiest peak, Benjamin Rush recognized the greatest danger to liberty had already shifted away from the British government.

“The time is now past when the least danger is to be apprehended to our liberties from the power of Britain, the arts of commissioners, or the machinations of tories.”

He wasn’t talking about military battles. He was warning about the enemies within.

“Tyranny can now enter our country only in the shape of a whig. All our jealousy should be of ourselves. All our fears should be of our great men, whether in civil or military authority.”

He knew – freedom has a strict prerequisite.

“Virtue, virtue alone, my dear friend, is the basis of a republic.”

To Rush and the revolutionaries, a truly virtuous people would never tolerate or submit to arbitrary power, because they viewed compliance with tyranny as a moral failure that guarantees political slavery.

These views represent what might be the ultimate one-two punch for tyranny – one that has led to a complete betrayal of the principles of the American Revolution.

IGNORANCE

As Benjamin Rush warned, it starts with real education. A people cannot claim and defend rights they don’t even know or recognize.

“Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights.”

He quoted Cesare Beccaria to expose what tyrants fear most: a people who know too much.

“When the clouds of ignorance are dispelled by the radiance of knowledge, authority trembles.”

Thomas Paine saw this as a pattern across history. Tyrants have always weaponized ignorance for one simple reason: educated people argue and resist, while ignorant people obey.

“Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”

Paine was channeling Montesquieu, who knew the ignorant will “trust the experts” who gladly tell them what to do – even though they’re often pretty ignorant too.

“Excessive obedience supposes ignorance in the person that obeys: the same it supposes in him that commands; for he has no occasion to deliberate, to doubt, to reason; he has only to will.”

People with power have always known this well. So, as John Locke wrote, when faced with a population more interested in learning – “inquisitive,” as he put it – they weaponize language and twist the meaning of words to keep the truth hidden in plain sight.

“Thus learned ignorance, and this art of keeping, even inquisitive men, from true knowledge, hath been propagated in the world, and hath much perplexed whilst it pretended to inform the understanding.”

And when all else fails? John Dickinson reminded us of the obvious: they’ll just lie.

“All artful rulers, who strive to extend their power beyond its just limits, endeavor to give to their attempts as much semblance of legality as possible.”

Put it all together – and it’s pretty easy to see why Thomas Jefferson came to the conclusion that ignorance and freedom can never coexist.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free … it expects what never was and never will be.”

That’s the bad news. But Thomas Paine had some good news, the fatal weakness in their plan: they can never force anyone back to ignorance once they’ve broken through.

“Ignorance is of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.”

We’re all victims of a government-run and government-approved “education” system, so there’s no shame in starting from scratch. The real disgrace, as Benjamin Franklin put it, is choosing to stay there.

“Being ignorant is not so much a Shame, as being unwilling to learn.”

VICE

But that’s not the end of the story.

Ignorance alone is dangerous. As St. George Tucker warned, when combined with cowardice, it’s fatal.

“When ignorance is united with supineness, liberty becomes lethargic, and despotism erects her standard without opposition.”

Thomas Jefferson explained how it starts. The collapse of liberty doesn’t begin with gunfire or invasions – it begins with an internal rot. A quiet, invisible corrosion that spreads through the people until the entire system breaks.

“It is the manners and spirit of the people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.”

Benjamin Franklin also knew that freedom cannot survive the corruption of the people.

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

James Madison issued a strong warning on this as well. If the people themselves are corrupt, they won’t just tolerate tyrants in office, they’ll literally vote for them – over and over and over. And that makes every branch of government just as rotten as the people who put them there.

“To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.”

Understanding this history, John Dickinson saw how liberty really dies. It isn’t taken at gunpoint. It’s surrendered – willingly.

“They voluntarily fasten their chains, by adopting a pusillanimous opinion, ‘that there will be too much danger in attempting a remedy’ – or another opinion no less fatal – ‘that the government has a right to treat them as it does.’”

In short, they either lack the virtue – and the courage that goes with it – to defend their liberty, or they’re too ignorant to know that government has no right to treat them as it does.

That’s why Samuel Adams didn’t pull any punches. If the people refuse to protect and defend their own constitution and their own liberty, they don’t deserve sympathy, they’ve earned contempt.

“If therefore a people will not be free; if they have not virtue enough to maintain their liberty against a presumptuous invader, they deserve no pity, and are to be treated with contempt and ignominy.”

THE WARNING

This standard grew out of Adams’ one-two punch for freedom: Knowledge – a deep understanding of the source of their rights, along with an unbreakable moral duty to do so against all hazards, despite the odds stacked against them.

You can see the former reflected in one of the most famous passages near the beginning of the Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

While the latter is reflected in the final sentence, a solemn pledge.

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

That brings us to Benjamin Franklin’s chilling prediction. On September 17, 1787 – the final day of the Philadelphia Convention – he gave his approval to the newly drafted Constitution, but not without one final warning.

It likely raised some eyebrows then. It’s prophetic today.

“This is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”

We were warned.

Not in secret. Not in vague terms. Openly. Repeatedly. By the founders themselves, the people who knew firsthand how liberty is won – and how it’s lost.

“We the People” did not listen, but don’t just blame the tyrants.

Blame the people who’ve given them power, who’ve tolerated them, who’ve encouraged them – the ones who made them possible through their ignorance and moral corruption.

The post Ignorance and Vice: The One-Two Punch for Tyranny appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Despite those words in the Declaration of Independence, the establishment would have you believe that any effort to resist their power is anti-American.

But they have it backwards.

Under the founders’ framework, the right to “provide new guards” is a right that can also rise to the level of duty.

FOUNDATION

The Declaration of Independence is clear that the reason for government is to protect the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

And when it does a bad job of that, or worse, the opposite?

“Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

But it was also clear that you don’t just jump from one act of arbitrary power to the right to revolt in a single step.

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes”

At the same time, history proves that people often wait to act far longer than they should. Or they simply refuse to do what needs to be done.

“And accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

This historical truth went all the way back to the ancients. Aristotle made the case in 350 BC that even when the situation demands it, the people who should do something – usually don’t.

“Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel (for they alone can with reason be deemed absolutely unequal), but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.”

But for Thomas Jefferson and company – that was not the situation. They were clear that the present suffering in 1776 wasn’t due to weakness or cowardice – it was patience.

“Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”

And eventually it got to a point of “enough is enough!” Because they knew, as Thomas Gordon warned in Cato’s Letters, a failure to stop tyranny guarantees it will continue, keep getting worse.

“That not to resist any man’s wickedness, is to encourage it.”

THE RIGHT

That brings us to the famous line in the Declaration. Drafted by Jefferson, and edited primarily by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin:

“When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

As he later told Henry Lee – Jefferson said the goal of the Declaration wasn’t to invent something new, but to state what was already widely accepted by the people.

“Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before”

“It was intended to be an expression of the American mind”

One of the most important expressions of the American mind was the right, as John Allen put it, to resist and restrain tyrants.

“Though you cannot prevent the unconstitutional design of the arbitrary power of the British ministry; yet you have an undoubted right to resist and prevent their reigning over you; or ruining you in the Violation of your laws and rights.” 

But that still left a major question unanswered in the lead-up to 1776: when is that line crossed? When does usurpation of power get to the level of reducing the people “under absolute Despotism?”

As John Dickinson put it, there was no clear legal answer. It was a gray area.

“No English lawyer, as we remember, has pointed out precisely the line beyond which, if a king, shall “go,” resistance becomes lawful.”

Despite not having a clearly-written line in the sand, Dickinson insisted a line indeed existed.

“We assert, a line there must be, and shall now proceed with great deference to the judgment of others, to trace that line, according to the ideas we entertain.”

PATIENCE

Jefferson’s use of “patient sufference” – like everything else in the Declaration – was quite intentional.

“all it’s authority rests then on the harmonising sentiments of the day”

Few expressed this particular “harmonising sentiment” better than Simeon Howard. In his widely-read sermon to the “Ancient and Honorable Artillery-Company, in Boston,” he made the religious and philosophical justification for physically defending liberty against “external force and constraint.”

First – it started with the natural right of self-defense.

“NOW for men to stand fast in their liberty means, in general, resisting the attempts that are made against it, in the best and most effectual manner they can.”

That resistance took many forms, like peaceful non-compliance. And Howard explained the American view later expressed in the Declaration: hold the line on a long, patient process before taking more active measures.

“When any one’s liberty is attacked or threatened, he is first to try gentle methods for his safety; to reason with, and persuade the adversary to desist, if there be opportunity for it; or get out of his way, if he can; and if by such means he can prevent the injury, he is to use no other.”

Arthur Lee of Virginia made the same case. The Americans felt they had a moral duty to try everything as long as possible before going to force.

“Yet they are too much enlightened not to know, that they cannot be justified in proceeding to extremities, till they have tried every means of obtaining redress in vain”

In short, the first steps have to be non-violent. But Howard noted that even if you’re successful with petitions, boycotts and non-compliance? The worst tyrants often come back for more.

“BUT the experience of all ages has shewn, that those, who are so unreasonable as to form designs of injuring others, are seldom to be diverted from their purpose by argument and persuasion alone: Notwithstanding all that can be said to shew the injustice and inhumanity of their attempt, they persist in it, till they have gratified the unruly passion which set them to work.”

And Lee pointed to the same truth in the Declaration of Independence: Americans dealt with this patiently and peacefully.

For years.

“The Americans have in fact exhausted every peaceable means of ob|taining redress. for seven years they have incessantly complained and petitioned for redress; their return has invariably been a repetition of injuries, aggravated by the most intolerable insults. There has not been a single instance in which they have complained, without being rebuked, or in which they have been complained against, without be|ing punished”

THE DUTY

But patience that lasts forever isn’t really patience. It’s surrender. That’s where Howard shifted to the right of self-defense and the duty of self-preservation.

“And in this case, what is to be done by the sufferer? Is he to use no other means for his safety, but remonstrance or flight, when these will not secure him? Is he patiently to take the injury and suffer himself to be robbed of his liberty or his life, if the adversary sees fit to take it? Nature certain|ly forbids this tame submission, and loudly calls to a more vigorous defence.”

He showed how the dots were connected in practice – and where the line is crossed.

“Self-preservation is one of the strongest, and a universal principle of the human mind: And this principle allows of every thing necessary to self-defence, opposing force to force, and violence to violence. This is so universally allowed that I need not attempt to prove it.”

Jonathan Mayhew took it to the next level. There’s a point when the tyrant gets so bad that it’s morally criminal to NOT resist.

“And it would be highly criminal in them, not to make use of this means. It would be stupid tameness, and unaccountable folly, for whole nations to suffer one unreasonable, ambitious and cruel man, to wanton and riot in their misery. And in such a case it would, of the two, be more rational to suppose, that they that did NOT resist, than that they who did, would receive to themselves damnation.”

Samuel Adams gave us the logical conclusion. There’s nothing worse than waging war on your rights – or a failure to defend them against all enemies – foreign or domestic.

“The people hold the Invasion of their Rights & Liberties the most horrid rebellion and a Neglect to defend them against any Power whatsoever the highest Treason.”

Ultimately, as John Locke made clear, the best way to prevent things from getting this bad in the first place? Make them an offer they can’t refuse.

“The properest way to prevent the evil, is to shew them the danger and injustice of it, who are under the greatest temptation to run into it.”

The post It’s Not Just a Right. It’s a Duty. appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

American Independence was built on the understanding that compliance with arbitrary power isn’t safety – or peace.

It’s surrender.

That’s an essential, but long-forgotten foundation of the American Revolution: Laws made outside the limits of the constitution aren’t law at all.

And they should be treated that way too.

LIMITS

The starting point? Government doesn’t get to do whatever it wants. It has limits.

As third Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth put it, when it goes beyond those limits – those acts aren’t “law.” They’re void – right from the start.

“If they make a law which the Constitution does not authorize, it is void”

Declaring something void is one thing. But making it that way in practice is another. Algernon Sidney, whose book Discourses Concerning Government was highly influential on the American revolutionaries, said the people should treat them that way, too.

“That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed”

This view was widely held throughout the Revolution. For example, Patrick Henry, in his Virginia resolves against the Stamp Act, said that when government goes beyond its limits, the people are not required to obey.

“The Inhabitants of this Colony, are not bound to yield Obedience to any Law or Ordinance whatever, designed to impose any Taxation whatsoever upon them, other than the Laws or Ordinances of the General Assembly aforesaid.”

But the British persisted in passing more arbitrary acts. And by the time the First Continental Congress met in 1774, noncompliance was the American default. Obedience to arbitrary power was never even on the table.

“To these grievous acts and measures Americans cannot submit”

FOUNDATION

Ellsworth’s view that laws beyond the limits of the Constitution are void wasn’t new or radical when he made the statement in 1788. That went right back to the start of the revolution in 1761, and James Otis Jr.’s speech against the writs of assistance.

“An Act against the constitution is void”

Even under the unwritten British constitution, this explains the difference between free people and subjects. John Jay gave us the hierarchy: Creator > people > government at the bottom.

“You and all men were created free, and authorized to establish civil government, for the preservation of your rights against oppression, and the security of that freedom which God hath given you, against the rapacious hand of tyranny and lawless power.”

Government then, is supposed to be an agent of the people – the hired help. So the people themselves, as John Dickinson explained, get to decide when government goes too far.

“They will always have the same rights, that all free states have, of judging when their privileges are invaded, and of using all prudent measures for preserving them.”

Thomas Jefferson put that in practice in 1774 in response to a long list of British acts going back over a century. But first, he started with an important caveat, an act is not null and void because of its policy results.

“We do not point out to his majesty the injustice of these acts, with intent to rest on that principle the cause of their nullity”

Instead, it’s based on something much deeper – staying within the bounds of a constitution or not.

“The true ground on which we declare these acts void is, that the British parliament has no right to exercise authority over us.”

To reject this hierarchy – as James Madison wrote – is to reject the Declaration of Independence.

“A plain denial of the fundamental principle on which our independence itself was declared”

CHAINS

On the other side of the process, John Dickinson warned that compliance with unconstitutional acts – like the stamp act – guarantees tyranny

“If you comply with the Act by using Stamped Papers, you fix, you rivet perpetual Chains upon your unhappy Country.”

He knew – every time you let them get away with enforcing one unconstitutional act, you give them the precedent for more and more of the same in the future.

“You unnecessarily, voluntarily establish the detestable Precedent, which those who have forged your Fetters ardently wish for, to varnish the future Exercise of this new claimed Authority.”

This was similar to what Sidney warned of almost a century earlier: Submission doesn’t buy peace or safety, it guarantees destruction.

“People must certainly perish, who tamely suffer themselves to be oppress’d … by the injustice, cruelty and malice of an ill magistrate”

Understanding this, it’s easy to see why Dickinson called every unconstitutional act a test of the backbone and resolve of the people.

“If you quietly bend your Necks to that Yoke, you prove yourselves ready to receive any Bondage to which your Lords and Masters shall please to subject you.”

James Otis, Jr. took it even further. The people demanding endless, and even blind obedience? They’re traitors.

“He that would palm the doctrine of unlimited passive obedience and non-resistance upon mankind …is not only a fool and a knave, but a rebel against common sense, as well as the laws of God, of Nature, and his Country.”

LATER

Despite all this – there are always people who say “now is not the time.” Samuel Adams rejected that outright, warning the “wait till later” approach will guarantee the destruction of liberty.

“If the liberties of America are ever compleatly ruined, of which in my opinion there is now the utmost danger, it will in all probability be the consequence of a mistaken notion of prudence, which leads men to acquiesce in measures of the most destructive tendency for the sake of present ease”

Otis called these people – the ones who say “we’ll take action later!” – the greatest threat to liberty.

“There is however no character so dangerous to liberty as the man of prudence. You may possibly be right, but at this juncture it is not prudent to insist upon it, is the language of artful courtiers, and has done more hurt than can well be imagined.” 

His sister, Mercy Otis Warren, recognized that this is just part of human nature. It happens all the time, all through history. The people sleep on the job because they think doing the right thing is too dangerous – or requires too much effort.

“There is a certain supineness which generally overspreads the multitude, and disposes mankind to submit quietly to any form of government, rather than to be at the expense and hazard of resistance”

As a result, they get trapped in a cycle of obedience – no matter how tyrannical the laws may be.

“They become attached to ancient modes by habits of obedience, though the reins of authority are sometimes held by the most rigorous hand.”

But even the most submissive people have a limit, and sometimes find some backbone after living under “a long train of abuses and usurpations.”

“Thus we have seen in all ages the many become the slaves of the few; preferring the wretched tranquility of inglorious ease, they patiently yield to despotic masters, until awakened by multiplied wrongs to the feelings of human nature; which when once aroused to a consciousness of the native freedom and equal rights of man, every revolts at the idea of servitude.”

Waiting till the last moment, as John Adams warned, creates a far more difficult and dangerous environment.

“It is one of these early advances, these first approaches of arbitrary power, which are the most dangerous of all, and if not prevented, but suffered to steal into precedents, will leave no hope of a remedy without recourse to nature, violence, and war.”

So Rather than waiting, and waiting – and waiting – John Dickinson said the best approach for a free people is to stay vigilant: awake, aware and active

“A free people therefore can never be too quick in observing, nor too firm in opposing the beginnings of alteration either in form or reality, respecting institutions formed for their security.” 

BACKBONE

For James Otis – later is always the wrong time, and now is always the right time.

“When our rights are invaded, it is high time to throw aside prudence”

That’s because – as Joseph Hawley warned – if you won’t defend your rights, you will lose them, guaranteed.

“The people or state who will not or cannot defend their liberties and rights will not have any for any long time.”

Quoting Cato the Younger through the Roman historian Sallust, Benjamin Franklin reminded us that this defense has to be supported by courage.

“Be not deceived; Divine assistance and protection are not to be obtained by timorous prayers and. To succeed, you must join salutary counsels, vigilance, and courageous actions.”

Almost 4 years before the war for independence – Samuel Adams clearly articulated the hard line that built American Independence. When power is arbitrary – lawless, unconstitutional – resistance isn’t just optional.

It’s a moral imperative – a duty.

“Who will presume to say that the people have not a right, or that it is not their indispensible duty to God and their Country, by all rational means in their power to RESIST THEM.”

Of course, you’ll always find people who fearmonger. They warn of chaos and calamity if the people themselves resist government power. But as Thomas Gordon put it in Cato’s Letters, it’s really the other way around.

“It is said, that the doctrine of resistance would destroy the peace of the world: But it may be more truly said, that the contrary doctrine would destroy the world itself, as it has already some of the best countries in it.”

In the end, Thomas Paine was right. Freedom isn’t going to defend itself. Never did, and never will.

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”

The post Foundation of the Revolution: Compliance Destroys Freedom appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Even the catch-all Ninth Amendment, which recognized the existence of natural human rights, drew broad support.

The drafting occurred in a testy environment. The Federalists — the big government folks — controlled the Congress, the White House and the courts. Over Madison’s strenuous objections, his own party in Congress enacted the First Bank of the United States — a precursor to the current Federal Reserve. This so irritated and terrified the Anti-Federalists — the small government folks — that some state legislatures began to make noises about leaving the federal government that they had just created.

It is interesting that to the Founders of the country and to the Framers of the Constitution, the idea of secession was neither novel nor controversial; and it was not then racial, since it came from New England.

To temper this talk of secession, the Congress turned to Madison, who, after the creation of the Bank, had become an Anti-Federalist, joining the party of his friend and neighbor, Thomas Jefferson. His task was to craft a bill of restraints on the new federal government, focusing primarily on personal freedom.

Madison shared the colonial hatred of British agents and soldiers rummaging through colonial belongings in private homes, looking for whatever the government sought. The authority for these intrusions consisted of general warrants that were issued by a secret court in London, a process which Madison condemned.

General warrants permitted the bearer to search wherever he wished and seize whatever he found. In the new Constitution, ratified in 1788, there was no affirmative authorization for general warrants — just as there was no affirmative authorization for a government bank — but there was also no prohibition.

By crafting the bill of restraints as a bill of rights, and by recognizing the preexistence of these rights, Madison’s Bill of Rights was quickly ratified.

The most unique of these rights was the right to be left alone. In Madison’s day, privacy could only be violated by government using force, intimidation or deception. Today, of course, privacy is violated by government stealth; by federal agents hacking into computers or using software that gains them access without hacking.

And they do this in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits general warrants by requiring judicial warrants for all surveillance, based on probable cause of crime, sworn to under oath and specifically describing the places to be searched or the persons or things to be seized.

After the Watergate fiasco, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, which established a secret court in Washington, not unlike the London court Madison condemned in the pre-revolutionary days. The FISA court issues secret warrants allowing spying on Americans and foreigners in the U.S.

In 2008, Congress added Section 702 to FISA permitting warrantless surveillance of foreign persons who communicate with Americans. The FISA court interpreted 702 to permit warrantless surveillance of Americans to whom foreign persons had spoken, out to the sixth degree. Thus, if you call or email a hotel in Rome to book a room, you are subject to warrantless surveillance under 702. If you call your mom, she is subject. If she calls her sister, your aunt is subject to warrantless surveillance, and so forth to the sixth degree. Behold the monstrosity that FISA has wrought.

Can the data gathered by this warrantless surveillance be used by the FBI for prosecution purposes, as an end run around the Fourth Amendment? Congress said yes. That’s the American heresy, as it directly defies the history, values and plain meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Sec. 702 expires at the end of this month.

Justice Louis Brandeis gave us the most celebrated articulation of privacy in Supreme Court history in 1928. It was in a dissent — arguably the most famous dissent in Supreme Court history — which involved warrantless wiretapping of which the Supreme Court then approved. Two generations later, his dissent was embraced by the majority, and the court ruled that all planned surveillance constitutes a search and thus requires search warrants.

But the court has never ruled on the constitutionality of 702 because of the secrecy that surrounds it. In an effort to placate libertarians and progressives in Congress who oppose the extension of 702, the feds recently offered an amendment to it. The wording of the amendment was secret, the offering was done in secret, and its rejection by the FISA court was in secret.

What kind of democracy is this?

We have a so-called democracy that rejects Brandeis’ recognition that the Fourth Amendment was written to protect more than our “persons, houses, papers, and effects.” It was written to protect our beliefs, thoughts, emotions and sensations from the government’s insatiable appetite to know more about us than we know about it.

I am surprised that the president now supports 702, as the Obama administration used this tool on him personally when he was a private citizen. But the world must look very different when on the inside looking out than it did when on the outside looking in.

Beware the American heresy as it undermines the core of that for which the Constitution was written.

The post American Heresy on the 4th Amendment appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

America was built on a foundation that constitutional violations are a deadly disease.

Give government an inch – and they’ll take a few thousand miles, and never stop. And before too long, it’ll get to a place where it’s no longer a Republic, but a long slow coup. Or, as the Declaration of Independence put it, eating “out our substance.”

Our rights. Our money. And everything in between.

The solution? The ancient Roman principle behind the American Revolution.

THE DISEASE

The Revolution was built on a hard truth: If the people let government get away with even the smallest usurpation of power that sets the stage for the deadly disease of total tyranny. As John Adams wrote, it gets worse over time.

“The nature of the encroachment upon [the] American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour.”

John Dickinson addressed the claim from some people that “now is not the time” to take a stand. That the usurpation is too small, or the ability to stop it too weak.

“Are these men ignorant, that usurpations, which might have been successfully opposed at first, acquire strength by continuance, and thus become irresistible?”

Adams walked us through just how government gets the people on their knees.

“The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue.” 

By pensioners, he wasn’t addressing retirement plans. This was referring to all the people who become financially dependent upon government. He warned that the more this happens, the more that society would devolve to immorality and corruption.

“The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society”

THE ANCIENT MAXIM

James Madison knew the United States wouldn’t even exist if the people hadn’t spotted the massive danger hidden inside a small tax on tea.

“The people of the U. S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent.”

He warned that Americans need to continue using that same wisdom by invoking an ancient warning that went back thousands of years.

“Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching agst. every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings. Obsta principiis.”

John Adams defined it plain English.

“Obsta principiis – Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people”

That maxim comes from the Roman poet Ovid around 2 AD. It means you must stop the disease at the very start. Because if you don’t, even if you eventually find a cure, it could arrive too late.

“Resist beginnings; too late is the medicine prepared, when the disease has gained strength by long delay.”

The Roman historian Tacitus captured the danger in one powerful line from a speech by the Emperor Claudius. What is done today will be used as the basis for more in the future.

“What we are this day justifying by precedents, will be itself a precedent.”

While the Empire saw this as a positive, the American Revolutionaries recognized its inherent danger. And, as Machiavelli documented, two centuries prior to Claudius, this principle was a common understanding in the Roman Republic.

“Thus in all these cases the Romans did what all wise princes ought to do; namely, not only to look to all present troubles, but also to those of the future, against which they provided with the utmost prudence.”

Drawing on the maxim that Ovid would later write, he noted they looked far in the future for potential dangers.

“For it is by foreseeing difficulties from afar that they are easily provided against; but awaiting their near approach, remedies are no longer in time, for the malady has become incurable.”

Machiavelli – also compared that danger to a deadly disease.

“It happens in such cases, as the doctors say of consumption, that in the early stages it is easy to cure, but difficult to recognize; whilst in the course of time, the disease not having been recognized and cured in the beginning, it becomes easy to know, but difficult to cure.”

He saw the same principles applied in the constitutions of our body as in the constitutions of our body politic. Resist the beginnings, or you could be done for.

“And thus it is in the affairs of state; for when the evils that arise in it are seen far ahead, which it is given only to a wise prince to do, then they are easily remedied; but when, in consequence of not having been foreseen, these evils are allowed to grow and assume such proportions that they become manifest to every one, then they can no longer be remedied.”

THE STANDARD

Fast forward back to the Revolution. Jonathan Mayhew took that ancient warning to the pulpit. In his famous sermon, The Snare Broken, he preached that preserving liberty means spotting every violation of it – and taking action to stop it.

“For those who would preserve and perpetuate their liberties, to guard them with a wakeful attention; and in all righteous, just and prudent ways, to oppose the first encroachments on them. “Obsta principiis.” After a while it will be too late.”

The following year, James Otis Jr said that should be the default American position. Every violation of rights, no matter how small, demanded immediate response

“It is my countrymen of the utmost consequence that we boldly oppose the least infraction of our charter, and rights as men. Obsta Principiis is a maxim never to be forgot: If we do not resist at the first attack, it may soon be too late.”

It’s not like the politicians don’t know all this. But as Dickinson wrote, they use it as a weapon. They first dress up their schemes in legitimacy.

“All artful rulers, who strive to extend their power beyond its just limits, endeavor to give to their attempts as much semblance of legality as possible.”

Then, he showed how precedent builds on precedent.

“Those who succeed them may venture to go a little further; for each new encroachment will be strengthened by a former.”

And finally, he brought it full circle – directly citing Tacitus.

“‘That which is now supported by examples, growing old, will become an example itself,’ and thus support fresh usurpations.”

Understanding this, it’s no surprise that this phrase from Montesquieu was a foundational one for the American Revolution.

“Slavery is ever preceded by sleep”

Using a well-known biblical parable, Mayhew drew on this to warn exactly what happens when the people sleep on the job, instead of taking action to resist beginnings.

“For in the states and kingdoms of this world, it happens as it does in the field or church, according to the well-known parable, to this purpose; That while men sleep, then the enemy cometh and soweth tares, which cannot be rooted out again till the end of the world, without rooting out the wheat with them.:

Dickinson, quoting the Roman satirist Persius, summed up this entire view with a single line that he used to sign off the ninth of his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.

“Oppose a disease at its beginning”

THE PATH

Thomas Jefferson took it even further, warning that it’s better to prevent the bad guys from getting started than to resist them after they do.

“The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”

No one summed up that take better than “Old” Abraham White, an anti-federalist at the Massachusetts Ratifying convention.

“I wouldn’t trust a flock of Moseses!”

Living under the largest government in history, this DEADLY DISEASE is everywhere. For us today, there are two essential lessons.

First – oppose any and all new usurpations of power – right away – no matter how small.

Second – and this one is even more difficult. There has to be significant action to cut out the cancer that’s already around us – everywhere. And that’s not going to be done by “voting bums out” in the hope that the new bums aren’t constitutional criminals too.

As Thomas Jefferson warned, getting from the largest government in history to a real land of the free?

That won’t be quick. Or easy.

“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty, in a feather-bed.”

That’s the bad news.

But here’s the good news from St. George Tucker – it’s never truly game over.

“The acquiescence of the people of a state under any usurped authority for any length of time, can never deprive them of the right of resuming the sovereign power into their own hands, whenever they think fit, or are able to do so, since that right is perfectly unalienable.”

The post Resist Beginnings: The Ancient Roman Maxim Behind the American Revolution appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

They might not be part of King George’s military, but their mindset, what they support and what they’re willing to impose, is everywhere. The founders didn’t just fight an army. They fought a long, bloody war to secede from a system built on a set of views they considered as a fate worse than death.

Here are 6 ways to spot a redcoat without ever seeing a uniform.

LOYALTY

The quickest way to spot a redcoat is one question: where does their loyalty lie?

Loyalty to a single person isn’t patriotism. It’s a complete rejection of the American Revolution. Decades before the War for Independence, Samuel Adams already warned again allegiance to one individual.

“It is a very great Mistake to imagine that the Object of Loyalty is the Authority and Interest of one individual Man, however dignified by the Applause or enriched by the Success of Popular Actions”

Adams knew this as a student of history: loyalty to one man leads to tyranny.

“This has led Millions into such a degree of Dependance and Submission that they have at length found themselves oblig’d to homage the Instruments of their Ruin, at the very Time they were at Work to effect it.”

John Adams saw the same kind of end game for those who bend the knee to a political party, and flat out refused to do it.

“I would quarrel with both parties, and with every individual of each, before I would subjugate my understanding, or prostitute my tongue or pen to either.”

Some founders, like Noah Webster, saw party-loyalty as the most dangerous of all.

“nothing is more dangerous to the cause of truth and liberty than a party-spirit.”

Loyalty to a person, a party, or even a nation: that’s a redcoat. The American view? According to Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson: it’s loyalty to liberty.

“our attachment to no Nation upon earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.”

ARBITRARY POWER

But as Samuel Adams warned, liberty can’t exist where government does what it wants.

“It cannot indeed subsist in an arbitrary Government,”

That’s the 2nd way to spot a redcoat. They support violating the constitution. The founders called that arbitrary power. James Otis Jr. defined it this way:

“arbitrary; which in plain English means no more than to do as one pleases.”

John Adams warned you have to stop it early, the moment you see it, not later.

“Obsta principiis – Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.”

Because once you give in, it’s like a deadly disease, and it’s game over.

“When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers and destroyers press upon them so fast that there is no resisting afterwards.”

NO EMERGENCY POWER

The next way to spot a redcoat? They make excuses for arbitrary power. John Milton gave us the most common one. It’s an emergency!

“So spake the Fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant’s plea, excused his devilish deeds.”

As Samuel Adams put it, when people with power get to decide if they have extra power or funding for an “emergency,” you’ll end up with never-ending emergencies.

“Those Kings by the way, being the sole judges when emergencies happen, they generally create them as often as they want money.”

Federal Farmer argued that even when the decision is left to the people, the trick is still the same: it’s always do or die right now. Manufacture urgency, slam the door on scrutiny, and hope nobody looks too closely at what’s being pushed through.

“It is natural for men, who wish to hasten the adoption of a measure, to tell us, now is the crisis – now is the critical moment which must be seized, or all will be lost: and to shut the door against free enquiry, whenever conscious the thing presented has defects in it, which time and investigation will probably discover. This has been the custom of tyrants and their dependents in all ages.”

St. George Tucker warned that it’s not just the size. Even the smallest step – the tiniest amount of arbitrary power – sets the precedent for even more in the future.

“Slight, and sometimes even imperceptible, innovations, occasional usurpations, founded upon the pretended emergency of the occasion: or upon former unconstitutional precedents”

That’s why George Washington called all arbitrary power – usurpation – a weapon to destroy freedom.

“let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”

WHO DECIDES

Because of this, the founders and old revolutionaries, like Samuel Adams and James Otis Jr., insisted on strict and fixed limits on government power.

“in all free states the constitution is fixed, and as the supreme legislative derives its power and authority from the constitution, it cannot overleap the bounds of it without destroying its own foundation”

The chain of command, Thomas Paine wrote, goes like this: people first, then constitution, and government at the bottom.

“A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government”

But who decides when the constitution is violated?

On this, spotting a redcoat is easy: they believe government gets to judge the limits of its own power. As Thomas Jefferson explained in his Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, this is putting the government above the constitution itself.

“the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the constitution, the measure of its powers”

Jefferson applied this same principle at the height of the revolution, referring to a whole list of British acts as nullities, and void.

“The true ground on which we declare these acts void is, that the British parliament has no right to exercise authority over us.”

The people don’t get to decide what’s void if the government is the top of the food chain.

STANDING ARMIES

That brings us to the next way to spot a redcoat, and their favorite: standing armies. Because when they use arbitrary power, they need the military to enforce it. The American view is the exact opposite, and few captured it better than Joseph Warren. Standing armies have been absolutely terrible all throughout history.

“The ruinous consequences of standing armies to free communities, may be seen in the histories of SYRACUSE, ROME, and many other once flourishing states; some of which have now scarce a name!”

George Mason made clear there is no special exemption for America: a standing army is a threat to liberty anywhere and everywhere it exists.

“when once a standing army is established in any country, the people lose their liberty.”

When you understand history, from the ancient world to the streets of Boston, you understand their warning. This is why the founding generation so vehemently opposed standing armies. As Gen. Henry Knox explained, the danger was greatest in times of peace.

“whatever may be the efficacy of a standing army in war, it cannot in peace be considered as friendly to the rights of human nature.”

OBEDIENCE

The final, and most obvious ways to spot a redcoat? They demand obedience. No one summed up the total American rejection of that view better than James Otis Jr.

“He that would palm the doctrine of unlimited passive obedience and non-resistance upon mankind, is not only a fool and a knave, but a rebel against common sense, as well as the laws of God, of Nature, and his Country.”

Compliance with arbitrary power, as John Dickinson wrote, sets the precedent and guarantees total tyranny.

“If you quietly bend your Necks to that Yoke, you prove yourselves ready to receive any Bondage to which your Lords and Masters shall please to subject you.”

John Adams recorded exactly what the American response to the Stamp Act was: even in the face of overwhelming power, compliance was a non-starter.

“The Cry was, if Parliament can tax Us, We are undone forever in Soul, Body and Estate. They can give Us, what Religion and Government they please: and do what they will, with our Property, Persons and Consciences. Resistance to the last Extremity, at whatever risque, must be made.”

Now that you know these six ways to spot a redcoat, it’s even easier to spot a real American. According to Samuel Adams, they’re the ones doing the complete opposite.

“The truth is, All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.”

The post 6 Ways to Spot the Modern-Day Redcoats in our Midst appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

When it comes to fiat paper “money,” Richard Sherman didn’t hold back. He saw it as an unjust and totally immoral weapon that turns government into a legalized protection racket for fraud. 

He made that case in his incredibly important, but almost completely unknown pamphlet A Caveat Against Injustice, where he called for criminal punishment for the perpetrators.

CRUSHING PAPER

Start with the Constitution itself, Article I, Section 10.

“No state shall…coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”

The man most responsible for this clause was Roger Sherman, with an assist from James Wilson. The record of the debates at the Philadelphia Convention show exactly what they were intending.

“Mr. WILSON & Mr. SHERMAN moved to insert after the words ’coin money’ the words ‘nor emit bills of credit, nor make anything but gold & silver coin a tender in payment of debts’ making these prohibitions absolute, instead of making the measures allowable (as in the XIII art:) with the consent of the Legislature of the U.S.”

After one objection from Nathaniel Gorham, Sherman made his goal clear: put an end to paper money.

“Mr. SHERMAN thought this a favorable crisis for crushing paper money. If the consent of the Legislature could authorise emissions of it, the friends of paper money, would make every exertion to get into the Legislature in order to licence it.”

INTRINSIC VALUE

Sherman didn’t come up with this out of nowhere. He learned about the dangers of paper money in person; watched it play out in real time. In 1752 he published A Caveat Against Injustice, one of the first major American tracts in support of hard money, gold and silver.

“For Money ought to be something of certain Value, it being that whereby other Things are to be valued.”

He argued that paper cash, which they called “bills of credit,” had no intrinsic value, like hard money. The subtitle for his essay took aim at this right at the start.

“An Inquiry in the Evils of a Fluctuating Medium of Exchange.”

Ron Michener at the Economic History Association wrote that these bills of credit were the precursor to the fiat paper money of today, something with no backing.

“For the most part, bills of credit were fiat money.”

Even worse, it wasn’t often that the law required government to allow people to redeem them for real money, gold or silver. It was optional, and up to the government agent.

“Although a colony’s treasurer would often consent to exchange these bills for other forms of cash in the treasury, there was rarely a provision in the law stating that holders of bills of credit had a legally binding claim on the government for a fixed sum in specie, and treasurers were sometimes unable to accommodate people who wished to exchange money.”

For Sherman, it was the fluctuating value of paper that made it totally immoral, even if it had been used as money for a long time.

“If what is us’d as a Medium of Exchange is fluctuating in its Value it is no better than unjust Weights and Measures, both which are condemn’d by the Laws of GOD and Man, and therefore the longest and most universal Custom could never make the Use of such a Medium either lawful or reasonable.”

Because of this, he saw it as illegitimate for any government to require people to accept fiat as money.

“Such Bills of Credit are of no intrinsick Value, and their Extriniscal Value is fluctuating and very uncertain, and therefore it would be unjust that any Person should be obliged to receive them in Payment as Money in this Colony.”

GOVERNMENT PROBLEMS

This wasn’t just theory. It was actively happening.

For some background, Bob Ruppert at the Journal of the American Revolution explained why bills of credit were circulating widely at the time – there was a shortage of gold and silver.

“During the first half of the eighteenth century, there was a limited amount of specie or ‘hard money’ in the American colonies.”

What a surprise – the whole problem was caused by government. And as Mike Maharrey wrote, it started with the British system of mercantilism.

“One of the key principles of mercantilism was maintaining a positive balance of trade with more exports than imports. To this end, the government aggressively intervened in the economy by levying high tariffs, restricting trade with various countries, granting monopolies, and subsidizing favored industries.”

Murray Rothbard described mercantilism as a tool to build up imperial state power. The historical record bears that out. Historian Thomas Ladenburg documented exactly how it worked against the colonies: the British treated them as a gold and silver ATM..

“Since each nation’s wealth in those days was measured in the amounts of gold and silver it possessed, England had yet another reason for establishing and ruling a vast colonial empire: the colonists would supply their British masters with gold and silver simply by selling their raw materials and buying England’s manufactured products.”

When factoring in trade restrictions, the colonists were trapped in a cycle that drained them of their hard money. Ladenburg described just how it played out in practice.

“The difference between what the colonists would pay through their sale of raw materials, and what they owed because of the purchase of manufactured goods, is called the balance of trade. Since the colonists bought more than they sold, their balance of trade was said to be unfavorable. The difference would have to be made up in such precious metals as gold and silver.”

Making things worse – it was against British law to export English coin. As a result, wrote economist Owen Humpage, the colonists suffered from a constant outflow of gold and silver, resulting in a shortage of coin to pay for goods.

“The mercantile policies of England kept the American colonies perpetually short of specie, the various silver and gold coins that served as money across the globe. Whatever specie the colonies acquired through their trade with the Caribbean and southern Europe was lost when they imported finished goods from England.”

Not everyone was opposed to paper money. Lewis Timothy, writing in South Carolina in 1732, summed up the view of those colonists who were in favor of bills of credit just so they could do business.

“Now I shall endeavor to shew, that by the Nature of our Trade, this Currency cannot be Silver or gold. For supposing we now had a sufficient Quantity of Gold and Silver for a Medium of Trade, our Trade is such, that the British Ships always do or can bring in more in Value of the British Commodities, than their Ships will carry back in our Produce.”

Timothy saw the drain playing out in real time. While he didn’t identify the root cause – the British mercantile system was working exactly as designed.

“Now this Overplus, or the Ballance of the Account, the Trader, when his Ship is loaded with our Produce, he will carry away in our Money, this would soon drain us of all our Money, unless we had Mines, or some Trade, the Returns whereof, in Silver, would be answerable to the Ballance of our Trade with England, which we have not.”

DEPRECIATION

As a result, there was a fiat paper money crisis, especially in the New England colonies of Rhode Island and New Hampshire. They were printing without restraint, and as Ruppert explained, the more paper you print, the less it is worth.

“Each colony printed different amounts. When too many were issued or they were retired slowly while new were already being issued, their value depreciated.”

Writing under the pseudonym “Phileunomos,” meaning “lover of good law,” Sherman saw the problems with the money printer as well. We call it inflation today – they called it depreciation, pointing to the source of the problem.

“Those Governments having issued much largers sums of Bills than were necessary to supply themselves with a competent Medium of Exchange, and not having supplied their Treasuries with any Fund for the maintaining the Credit of such Bills; they have therefore been continually depreciating and growing less in their Value.”

When it came to money printing, Rhode Island was likely the worst offender. Sherman documented the rapid deterioration of purchasing power, with price inflation more than doubling over eight years – because the value of the money had depreciated by half.

“For in the year 1743, it appears by the Face of the Bills then emitted that Twenty-seven Shillings Old-Tenor was equal to one Ounce of Silver. And by an Act of their General Assembly pass’d in March last, they stated Fifty-four Shilling Old-Tenor Bills equal to one Ounce of Silver, which sunk their Value one half. And by another Act in June last, (viz. 1751) they stated Sixty-four Shillings in their Old-Tenor Bills equal to one Ounce of Silver.”

It did not stop there. As Sherman pointed out, the depreciation was accelerating and Rhode Island knew it.

“And by another Act in August last they gave Order and Direction to the Courts in the Colony to make Allowance to the Creditors in making up Judgement from Time to Time as the Bills shall depreciate for the Future, which shews that they expect their Bills of Credit to depreciate for the Future.”

STATE-SANCTIONED FRAUD

While Sherman was primarily attacking paper from the New England colonies, the principle holds for all fiat.

“No Government has Right to impose on its Subjects any foreign Currency to be received in Payments as Money which is not of intrinsick Value.”

The reason? Hard money is moral money. Fiat is not.

“And this I would lay down as a Principle that can’t be denied that a Debtor ought not to pay any Debts with less Value than was contracted for, without the Consent or against the Will of the Creditor.”

Sherman also took on the famous debasement of gold and silver from both ancient Rome and 17th century England.

“Now suppose that Gold or Silver Coines that pass current in Payments at a certain Rate by Tale should have a considerable Part of their Weight filed or clipp’d off will any reasonable Man judge that they ought to pass for the same Value as those of full Weight?”

He answered his own question: debased gold and silver is still better than any fiat paper because 90% of gold or silver is still gold or silver, and 100% of paper is still worthless paper.

“But the State of Rhode Island Bills of Credit is much worse than that of Coins that are clipp’d, because what is left of those Coins is of intrinsick Value.”

So what does that make legal tender laws that require payment in fiat? A legalized ripoff.

“Because in so doing they would oblige Men to part with their Estates for that which is worth nothing in it self and which they don’t know will ever procure him any Thing.”

On top of it all, Sherman identified the great danger is that fiat money is based on trust in government, and that trust can evaporate – fast.

“And since the Value of The Bills of Credit depend wholly on the Rate at which they are stated and on the Credit of the Government by whom they are emitted and that being the only Reason and Foundation upon which they obtained their first Currency and by which the same has been upheld ever since their first being current and therefore when the Publick Faith and Credit of such Government is violated, then the Reason upon which such Bill obtained their Currency ceases and there remains no Reason why they should be any longer current.”

But wait, there’s more!  The entire fiat paper money system turns the government into a protection racket for fraudsters.

“And instead of having our Properties defended and secured to us by the Protection of the Government under which we live; we should be always exposed to have them taken from us by Fraud.”

Ultimately, Sherman’s final charge landed on the people themselves. As long as the people trade their real goods for worthless paper, they’re also participants in the fraud.

“But so long as we part with our most valuable Commodities for such Bills of Credit as are no Profit; but rather a Cheat, Vexation and Snare to us, and become a Medium whereby we are continually cheating and wronging one another in our Dealings and Commerce.”

A MORAL VERDICT

But Sherman didn’t just diagnose the disease. He also knew people would ask the essential question: what do we do about it?

“And now I have gone through with what I first proposed, But perhaps some, may be ready to say, that we are sensible that it is of bad Consequence to have a fluctuating Medium of Exchange, but what can we do to Remedy it?”

Sherman understood the root cause: the outflow of gold and silver. So his remedy was more domestic production to counteract it.

“Whereas if these Things were reformed, the Provisions and other Commodities which we might have to export yearly, and which other Governments are dependent upon for us, would procure us Gold and Silver abundantly sufficient for a Medium of Trade. And we might be as independent, flourishing and happy a Colony as any in the British Dominions.”

When it’s all said and done, it’s obvious why Roger Sherman wanted to crush paper money. He considered it a fraud that should be punished as a crime.

“I believe that every honest Man of Common Sense, upon mature Consideration of the Circumstances of the Case, will think that this is an Iniquity not to be countenanced, but rather to be punished by the Judges.”

The post The Evils of Paper Money: Roger Sherman and A Caveat Against Injustice appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Tragic, absolutely. Predictable, without a doubt.

This wasn’t hindsight. On the fifth anniversary of the bloodshed, Dr. Joseph Warren laid out exactly why:, it was part of  a formula that was built on standing armies.

“when the people on the one part, considered the army as sent to enslave them, and the army on the other, were taught to look on the people as in a state of rebellion, it was but just to fear the most disagreeable consequences. Our fears, we have seen, were but too well grounded.”

THE LINEAGE

The founders and old revolutionaries didn’t invent an opposition to large, permanent standing armies. They inherited it. It was a core part of their history, their heritage. Thomas Gordon documented a famous British example in his 1722 Discourse of Standing Armies.

“Oliver Cromwell headed an Army which pretended to fight for Liberty, and by that Army became a bloody Tyrant.”

Cromwell wasn’t the exception. Gordon explained he was part of a universal rule.

“Tis certain, that all Parts of Europe which are enslaved, have been enslaved by Armies, and ’tis absolutely impossible, that any Nation which keeps them amongst themselves, can long preserve their Liberties; nor can any Nation perfectly lose their Liberties, who are without such Guests”

Joseph Warren didn’t need to argue the principle. He had a powerful example: under English law, even the mere intent, just drawing up plans for a standing army, was itself grounds for a treason charge.

“Even in the dissolute reign of King Charles II when the House of Commons impeached the Earl of Clarendon of high treason, the first article on which they founded their accusation was, that ‘he had designed a standing army to be raised, and to govern the kingdom thereby.'”

GRAVEYARD OF REPUBLICS

Warren pointed to the graveyard of republics to show that this was a lesson written in the ruins of history.

“The ruinous consequences of standing armies to free communities, may be seen in the histories of SYRACUSE, ROME, and many other once flourishing states; some of which have now scarce a name!”

Take ancient Syracuse, for example. Gordon explained the play by play, which started with a supposed hero: Agathocles.

“Agathocles fought successfully for the city of Syracuse, and as successfully against it; and having defended the citizens against their enemies, he afterwards shewed himself their greatest, by killing in one great massacre all the chief and best of them, and by crowning himself tyrant over all the rest.”

And then there’s Rome, the most famous example of all. James Lovell invoked the classic story: a popular general, a loyal army, and a republic brought to its knees.

“Caesar by the length of his command in Gaul got the affections of his army, marched to Rome, overthrew the state, and made himself perpetual dictator.”

But you don’t have to start with legions to destroy a republic. Lovell gave a timeless reminder:, the original blueprint started with a much smaller step.

“Athens once was free; a citizen, a favorite of the people, by an artful story gained a trifling guard of fifty men; ambition taught him ways to enlarge that number; he destroyed the commonwealth and made himself the tyrant of the Athenians.”

That “artful story” had a name: Pisistratus. As David Hume explained, he staged a false flag, an attack on himself, to build a guard that became a standing army.

“Pisistratus, the Athenian, who cut and wounded his own body; and making the people believe, that his enemies had committed the violence, obtained a guard for his person.”

As Thomas Gordon detailed, it started with a seemingly pathetic force, just fifty men, armed only with wooden clubs.

“Pisistratus, having procured from the city of Athens fifty fellows armed only with cudgels, for the security of his person from false and lying dangers, improved them into an army, and by it enslaved that free state.”

THE BILL COMES DUE

With these lessons from centuries of history, Americans watched with alarm as 1763 brought a familiar danger to their own shores. At the end of the French and Indian War, the British decided to station 10,000 troops for “protection,” and to keep many of the troops from being out of work.

A standing army isn’t cheap. So the British decided the colonies would pay for it. That unleashed a wave of taxes: the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts.

John Adams saw the dangerous cycle: first the army, then the taxes, all based on unconstitutional power.

“We have the mortification to observe one Act of Parliament after another passed for the express purpose of raising a revenue from us; to see our money continually collecting from us without our consent, by an authority in the constitution of which we have no share, and over which we have no kind of influence or controul;”

Adams pushed the indictment further: their money was not only being stolen, but being actively used to pay for the tools of their own oppression.

“to see the little circulating cash that remained among us for the support of our trade, from time to time transmitted to a distant country, never to return, or what in our estimation is worse, if possible, appropriated to the maintenance of swarms of Officers and Pensioners in idleness and luxury, whose example has a tendency to corrupt our morals, and whose arbitrary dispositions will trample on our rights.”

As John Dickinson made clear: this wasn’t paranoia. It was pattern recognition.

“These facts are sufficient to support what I have said. It is true, that all the mischiefs apprehended by our ancestors from a standing army and excise, have not yet happened: But it does not follow from this, that they will not happen. The inside of a house may catch fire, and the most valuable apartments be ruined, before the flames burst out. The question in these cases is not, what evil has actually attended particular measures—but, what evil, in the nature of things, is likely to attend them.”

THE DEADLY CYCLE

The British followed the historical playbook to the letter. More taxes required more force and more power, like the Writs of Assistance. That created more resistance, like the Liberty riot of 3,000 people literally chasing British customs’ agents out of town after John Hancock’s ship was seized. When the British escalated in response by marching Redcoats into Boston in 1768, the final act was already written. No one was surprised when blood was spilled on March 5, 1770.

On the fourth anniversary of the massacre, John Hancock explained that the tragic consequences were predictable and inevitable.

“it was easy to foresee the consequences which so naturally followed upon sending troops into America to enforce obedience to acts of the British Parliament, which neither God nor man ever empowered them to make.”

Hancock didn’t excuse the soldiers’ conduct as the work of a few bad apples. He traced it directly to their orders: men sent to subjugate a population will act like it.

“It was reasonable to expect that troops, who knew the errand they were sent upon, would treat the people whom they were to subjugate, with a cruelty and haughtiness which too often buries the honorable character of a soldier in the disgraceful name of an unfeeling ruffian.”

A CONSTANT THREAT

When you understand this history, from the ancient world to the streets of Boston, you understand their warning. This is why the founding generation so vehemently opposed standing armies. As Gen. Henry Knox explained, the danger was greatest in times of peace.

“whatever may be the efficacy of a standing army in war, it cannot in peace be considered as friendly to the rights of human nature.”

And there’s no special exemption for America. As George Mason made crystal clear, a standing army is a deadly threat to liberty anywhere and everywhere.

“when once a standing army is established in any country, the people lose their liberty.”

The founders saw the formula in the history books, and then they lived it. It’s the oldest playbook for tyranny: war creates armies, armies create debt, debt creates taxes, and the army enforces all of it. No one broke down this vicious cycle better than James Madison.

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

Athens fell. Rome fell. Syracuse fell. The British learned the same lesson, more than once. The founders saw a pattern throughout history: people who build a permanent standing army lose their liberty. When Britain marched redcoats into Boston in 1768, the outcome was guaranteed.

“The greatest danger to liberty is from large standing armies.”

James Madison said it. History proved it.

The post Standing Armies: The Foundation of Tyranny appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Everything costs more. Everything is monitored.

Everything feels like it’s designed to take—from your wallet, your time, your freedom.

That’s because it is.

The government has turned everyday life into a revenue stream—funding endless wars, bloated agencies, surveillance systems, and profit-driven policing… all on your dime.

You’re not just paying taxes. You’re paying to be watched. Paying to be policed. Paying to be controlled.

This isn’t government. It’s a business model.

By now, it has become painfully clear that the only economic plan being advanced by the Trump administration is the kind that enriches the oligarchy at the expense of everyone else.

If the government’s newly dubbed “war on waste,” headed by Vice President J.D. Vance, is anything like its deceptively futile past efforts to drain the swamp and use DOGE to cut spending that is inefficient, we should expect to see corruption, graft and waste rise while vital programs that benefit the taxpayer get slashed.

The level of self-serving corruption, indulgence and excess by the elite ruling class while Americans struggle to make ends meet is off the charts.

Under President Trump, his gilding of the White House has coincided with the dawn of a new self-serving age of indulgence for the American oligarchy. As Debbie Millman writes for the New York Times: “Trump is showing the world that his presidency is a royal court where a select few are invited to pledge their allegiance… Trump is refashioning the presidential residence into a palace; our democracy is now a members-only club.”

This is Donald Trump’s “let them eat cake” moment.

Tens of millions in one year alone for the president’s weekend golf trips while government agencies are dismantled and tens of thousands of federal workers have their jobs slashed. According to the web tracker “Did Trump Golf Today?” Trump has spent 23.5% of his presidency golfing at an estimated cost of $141 million to the taxpayer.

An extra $200 billion in additional defense funding so Pete Hegseth can make a game out of war with Iran. More than $16 billion was spent in the first 12 days of Trump’s war on Iran. That does not include the rising cost of gas and consumer goods or the long-term costs of supporting those injured in the war.

$1 billion to a French company to not develop two wind projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York.

$14 billion in oil revenue to Iran to fund its war with the U.S.

$22 million in one month on lobsters and ribeye steak so the Defense Department wouldn’t have to risk losing some of their taxpayer-funded budget. $1.8 million for musical instruments, including a “$98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home, a $26,000 violin, and a $21,750 custom handmade flute from the luxury Japanese brand Muramatsu.”

$400 million for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom to which most taxpayers will never be invited.

$75 – $150 million to turn a public golf course into a championship-level golf course in the nation’s capital.

$100 million for a 250-foot “Arc de Trump” next to Arlington National Cemetery.

At least $60 million for a UFC event on the White House South Lawn to commemorate Donald Trump’s 80^th birthday.

While members of Trump’s inner circle dine on lobster and filet mignon, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggests that Americans struggling with the high cost of beef instead buy and eat “cheap cuts” like liver.

Meanwhile, the rest of the country is left to absorb a higher cost of living driven by Trump’s tariffs, inflation, and economic policies that punish the many to benefit the few.

At every turn, the Trump administration’s claims of slashing government spending have translated into even greater expense for the taxpayer with little to nothing to show for it.

All of those DOGE layoffs may have reduced the size of the federal workforce on paper, but in reality they have resulted in taxpayers footing the bill for unemployment benefits instead of salaries.

Trump may have dropped oversight into police misconduct—effectively giving a green light to police violence—but taxpayers will still be forced to pay for every lawsuit and settlement that follows.

In the eyes of Trump and his cohorts, you are not a citizen—you are a revenue stream, and the government is cashing in.

Call it what you will—taxes, penalties, fees, fines, regulations, tariffs, tickets, permits, surcharges, tolls, asset forfeitures—but the only word that truly describes the constant bilking of the American taxpayer by the government and its corporate partners is this: theft.

We’re living in a topsy-turvy Sherwood Forest where the government and its corporate allies aren’t stealing from the rich to feed the poor—they’re stealing from the poor, the middle class, and anyone not politically connected to further enrich the powerful.

The result is as predictable as it is devastating: the poor get poorer, the rich get richer, and the American Dream has been replaced by a surveillance state propped up by endless war, crippling debt, and legalized plunder.

What Americans still fail to grasp is this: if the government can take your property, your income, your privacy, and your freedom at will, you don’t have rights—you have privileges.

And privileges can be revoked.

The American police state, with its surveillance cameras, militarized police, SWAT raids, fusion centers, drones, AI tracking systems, predictive policing algorithms, asset forfeiture schemes, and privatized prisons, is not about keeping you safe.

It is about profit.

It is a sprawling, multi-trillion-dollar ecosystem designed to move money from taxpayers through government agencies and into corporate hands, all under the ever-shifting justifications of “security,” “law and order,” and “national emergency.”

The rationalizations never change.

We are told it is about terrorism, drugs, immigration, public safety, or civil unrest. Today, those justifications have simply been expanded to include artificial intelligence, foreign adversaries, domestic extremism, and a permanent state of war abroad.

But these are pretexts.

The real motive has remained the same for decades: control the population, monetize the system, and keep the money flowing upward.

Follow the money and the truth becomes impossible to ignore: The government isn’t serving you. It’s billing you.

The federal government is now barreling toward $1.5 trillion in annual military spending, a staggering escalation that will add trillions more to the national debt in the coming decade. At the same time, the Trump administration is pouring hundreds of billions more into a widening conflict with Iran, where the cost of war is measured not only in lives lost but in taxpayer dollars funneled directly into the coffers of defense contractors.

At home, policing has become a billion-dollar industry unto itself. Federal, state and local governments spend more than $80 billion a year on policing, much of it used to transform civilian police forces into paramilitary units equipped with battlefield weapons and surveillance technology.

The prison system continues to operate as a profit engine, costing more than $100 billion annually while warehousing nearly 2 million people and placing millions more under government supervision. It costs taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars each year to incarcerate a single individual, many of them nonviolent offenders, while private prison corporations reap the financial rewards of a system designed to keep cells full.

Through civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement agencies seize billions of dollars in cash, cars and property, often without ever charging the owner with a crime, creating a perverse incentive to police for profit rather than justice.

The Department of Homeland Security, once sold to the public as a temporary safeguard, has become a permanent fixture of the American landscape, consuming more than $100 billion annually while expanding its reach into every corner of domestic life.

Immigration enforcement has evolved into a sprawling detention and deportation machine fueled by tens of billions in taxpayer funding, increasingly targeting not only undocumented immigrants but also legal residents and individuals whose only offense is dissent.

Layered on top of all of this is a rapidly expanding digital dragnet in which government agencies partner with private tech companies to deploy artificial intelligence systems capable of tracking, predicting and cataloging human behavior, turning everyday life into a series of data points to be monitored, analyzed and controlled.

Even local governments have been drawn into the scheme, generating billions through fines, fees, traffic cameras and automated enforcement systems that disproportionately target those least able to pay, turning ordinary citizens into revenue streams.

This is not accidental. It is a business model.

The same government that claims it cannot afford healthcare, education or housing somehow always finds unlimited funds for war. As President Eisenhower warned, the military-industrial complex feeds on conflict, and today that machine has become both global and permanent.

The wars do not end.

The spending does not stop.

And the bill always comes due to the American taxpayer.

Every bomb that falls, every missile launched, every drone strike carried out carries a price tag, and that price tag has your name on it.

At home, the logic is no different.

Policing has shifted away from protecting communities and toward managing populations, particularly those deemed inconvenient, undesirable or expendable. SWAT raids are deployed for minor offenses, predictive policing programs target individuals before any crime has been committed, and surveillance technologies are used to monitor activists, journalists and political dissenters.

Poverty itself has been criminalized, with people fined, ticketed and jailed for low-level infractions, while homelessness is treated not as a social failure but as a law enforcement opportunity.

Even the nation’s schools have been folded into this pipeline, where zero-tolerance policies and truancy enforcement funnel children into the criminal justice system at an early age.

What passes for law enforcement today is increasingly indistinguishable from revenue enforcement.

None of this happens in isolation.

Corporate America is deeply embedded in every aspect of this system. Defense contractors profit from war. Technology companies profit from surveillance. Private prison corporations profit from incarceration. Data brokers profit from harvesting and selling your personal information. Financial institutions profit from the ever-expanding national debt.

Even prison labor, paid pennies on the dollar, feeds directly into corporate supply chains, creating yet another incentive to keep the system running at full capacity.

When government power and corporate profit become intertwined in this way, the Constitution becomes optional and profit becomes policy.

In this new economy, you are no longer just a citizen.

You are a revenue stream, a data point, a potential suspect, and a body to be managed.

Whether through taxes, fines, surveillance or forced labor, the system is designed to extract value from you at every stage of your life.

And when you add it all up, the cost is not merely financial—it is constitutional.

Every dollar poured into this machinery comes at the expense of your privacy, your property, your due process rights, your freedom of movement, and your freedom of speech.

As I make clear in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is the real bottom line: you are paying for the erosion of your own freedoms.

If this system continues unchecked, the future is already taking shape—a nation in which everything is monitored, everything is monetized, and nothing is truly free.

The solution is not more funding, more surveillance or more enforcement.

It is the opposite.

It is time to defund the police state, dismantle the profit incentives, restore constitutional limits, and return power—and resources—to the people.

Because until that happens, the theft will continue.

And the only question left will be how much is left to steal.

The post The Stealing of America appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Noah Webster told us exactly what happens when people join a political party – they become mindless puppets of people in power.  His timeless warning that “faction is death to liberty” is one we can’t afford to ignore any longer.

FREEDOM LOST

Most people think the greatest threats we face come from foreign enemies or corrupt politicians. But not according to Noah Webster. He warned – if you really want to destroy everything good, you only need one thing: FACTIONS!

“Were the councils of hell united to invent expedients for depriving men of the little portion of good they are destined to enjoy on this earth, the only measure they need adopt for this purpose, would be, to introduce factions into the bosom of the country.”

And it starts the instant you sign up for a political party – you lose your freedom of thought.

“The moment a man is attached to a club, his mind is not free”

The simple act of joining starts the chain of loyalty.

“When men are once united, in whatever form, or upon whatever occasion, the union creates a partiality or friendship for each member of the party or society.”

And even when people join for one reason, they tend to get infected with all the others.

“A coalition for any purpose creates an attachment, and inspires a confidence in the individuals of the party, which does not die with the cause which united them; but continues, and extends to every other object of social intercourse.”

From there, people quickly stop thinking for themselves, and just start believing their party or faction over anything else.

“Hence arises what is called bigotry or illiberality. Persons who are united on any occasion, are more apt to believe the prevailing opinions of their society, than the prevailing opinions of another society.”

And that leads to the same place every time: MY TEAM RIGHT, OTHER TEAM WRONG.

“Hence the full persuasion in every society that theirs is right; and if right, others of course are wrong.”

Ultimately, the topic doesn’t matter, and neither does the country or the time in history. It happens everywhere. 

“Totally immaterial is it, what is the subject of controversy; or in what age or country the parties live. The object may change, but the imperious spirit of triumphant faction is always the same.”

Think about the implications of that. If people decide what’s right or wrong based on which team is saying it, that destroys the entire foundation of truth. Especially when sides so often change their tune based on which team is in power.

With that in mind, it’s pretty obvious why Webster’s conclusion is the only logical one.

“Nothing is more dangerous to the cause of truth and liberty than a party-spirit.”

The worst part? This approach gets handed down – generation after generation – long after anyone remembers what started it.

“Such is the progress of party-spirit; and a single question will often give rise to a party, that will continue for generations; and the same men or their adherents will continue to divide on other questions, that have not the remotest connection with the first point of contention.”

ENEMIES EVERYWHERE

But factions and parties don’t just corrupt your understanding of the truth. Anyone and everyone can be seen as the enemy.

“A party-spirit is hostile to all friendly intercourse: it inflames the passions; it sours the mind; it destroys good neighborhood”

Even worse – they completely infect all aspects of society.

“it warps the judgment in judicial determinations: it banishes candor and substitutes prejudice; it restrains the exercise of benevolent affections; and in proportion as it chills the warm affections of the soul, it undermines the whole system of moral virtue.”

And the excuse is always the same. 

Our way of life is under threat. These other people are dangerous, and dangerous people must be destroyed.

“It is only to revive the stale plea of necessity; the state or the church is in danger from opinions; then the rack, the stake or the guillotine must crush the heresy—the heretics must be exterminated.”

Once that excuse takes hold, it always ends the same way – open season for open violence.

“And when one party attempts in practice to interfere with the opinions of another party, violence most generally succeeds.”

This was nothing new to Webster. The worst empires in history used the same playbook.

“It is the precise mode in which the Roman emperors decided christianity to be dangerous—the precise mode in which the Chinese emperors reasoned to justify the expulsion of christians from their dominions; and a mode which a violent ruling faction always employs to silence opposition.”

PATH TO TYRANNY

Webster mapped out how this happens – a path – a chain reaction.

“It may be useful to trace the progress of party-spirit to faction first, and then of course to tyranny.”

It usually starts with something small.

“Contentions usually spring out of points which are trifling, speculative, or of doubtful tendency.”

For example, a political leader with a personal grudge is the one that seems to happen most often.

“Among trifling causes I rank personal injuries. It has frequently happened that an affront offered by one leading man in a state to another, has disquieted the whole state, and even caused a revolution. The real interest of the people has nothing to do with private resentments, and ought never to be affected by them, yet nothing is more common.”

Webster saw this personal grudge situation as much more likely and dangerous in a republic.

“And republics are more liable to suffer changes and convulsions, on account of personal quarrels, than any other species of government”

He explained why. When people choose their leaders, they tend to trust their guy and fall for anything he tells them.

“Because the individuals, who have acquired the confidence of the people, can always fabricate some reasons for rousing their passions—some pretext of public good may be invented, when the man has his own passions to gratify—the minds of the populace are easily enflamed—and strong parties may be raised on the most frivolous occasions.”

Factions also get violent over policies that are purely theoretical.

“Another cause of violent parties is frequently a difference of opinion on speculative questions, or those, whose real tendency to secure public happiness is equivocal.”

From there, both sides dig in their heels – and being right takes a back seat to beating the other side. It’s “win at all costs,” truth be damned.

“Both become assured they are right—confidence inspires boldness and expectation of success—pride comes in aid of argument—the passions are inflamed—the merits of the cause become a subordinate consideration—victory is the object and not public good” 

This just creates an endless cycle of domination, revenge and destruction. Back and forth, one side to the other.

“Success inspires one party with pride, and they assume the airs of conquerors; disappointment sours the minds of the other—and thus the contest ends in creating violent passions which are always ready to enlist into every other cause.”

HISTORY’S VERDICT

The wreckage from all this? It’s everywhere in the history books. The greatest ancient civilizations ripped themselves apart from the inside.

“It was faction that kept the states of Greece and Rome in perpetual perturbation; it was faction which was an incessant scourge of merit; it was faction which produced endless dissension and frequent civil wars” 

Parties and factions turn civilized people into absolute savages until the chaos gets so bad they willingly hand their freedom to a dictator.

“it was faction which converted a polite people, into barbarous persecutors, as it has done in France; and which finally compelled the brave republicans of Rome to suffer a voluntary death, or to shelter themselves from the fury of contending parties, beneath the scepter of an emperor.”

People who want more power know this too. So they always cloak their terror in the language of freedom.

“Liberty is the cry of these men, while with the grimace of a Cromwell, they deprive every man who will not go all the lengths of their rash measures, of both liberty and life. A free republic, is their perpetual cant; yet to establish their own ideas of this free government, they have formed and now exercise throughout France a military aristocracy, the most bloody and despotic recorded in history.”

THEY’RE PUPPETS

People aren’t able to support this kind of thing without losing some of their humanity. They first start by arguing over issues they never cared about just because their team demands it.

“He receives a biass from the opinions of the party: A question indifferent to him, is no longer indifferent, when it materially effects a brother of the society.”

Before long, they start ignoring their own morals and values just to avoid the wrath of the party.

“He is not left to act for himself; he is bound in honor to take part with the society—his pride and his prejudices, if at war with his opinion, will commonly obtain the victory; and rather than incur the ridicule or censure of his associates, he will countenance their measures, at all hazards”

Initially, they join these factions and parties thinking they are defending liberty. But they are really just volunteering to surrender their own minds – and get used by someone else.

“They do not consider, that when men become members of a political club, they lose their individual independence of mind; that they lose their impartiality of thinking and acting; and become the dupes of other men.”

In the end – Webster said they aren’t truly free anymore. They’re just mindless puppets controlled by the politicians in power.

“And thus an independant freeman is converted into a mere walking machine, a convenient engine of party leaders.”

The post Faction is Death to Liberty appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Commemorating the anniversary of the Boston Massacre – March 5, 1770 – John Hancock was issuing a challenge to all of us.

And he was far from alone.

For 13 years, from 1771 to 1783, the Sons and Daughters of Liberty held annual events to remember, with a keynote speaker each year. These speeches provide us with an uncompromising blueprint for a free people – the foundation of the Revolution.

As you read through them all, a number of themes become obvious. They tell us what they fought for – and against. And they leave us with a brutal question for today:

Have we remembered, or have we let this country become a den of thieves?

NATURAL RIGHTS

First, the basis of everything else. As Joseph Warren put it, you are born free.

“Personal freedom is the natural right of every man.” 

From this naturally flows an essential principle of the revolution: What’s yours is yours, and no one has a right to steal any of it from you.

“And that property or an exclusive right to dispose of what he has honestly acquired by his own labor, necessarily arises therefrom, are truths which common sense has placed beyond the reach of contradiction.” 

William Tudor kicked off his speech in 1779 with a phrase that should sound familiar.

“Ever vigilantly attentive to the sacred, unalienable rights of man; equally studious in the glorious princi?ples of liberty as intrepidly determined to preserve inviolate the inestimable privileges she bestows; you are now convened, not more to commemorate this anniversary, than solemnly to renew the resolves, which freedom, wisdom, virtue, honour inspire”

As Thomas Dawes put it, these unalienable rights don’t come from government. They’re from your creator.

“Liberty, sent from above, was their peculiar inmate: that Liberty, whose spirit, mingling with the nature of man at his formation, taught him, unlike the other animals, to look upward and hope for a throne above the stars”

ARBITRARY POWER

What’s the greatest threat to your natural rights?

For the American Revolutionaries, it was absolutely, without a doubt, a government that doesn’t stay within the limits of the constitution, even the unwritten British Constitution.

They called this arbitrary power.

No one hit this harder than Joseph Warren. 

“Nothing was so much the object of their abhorrence as a tyrant’s power: – They knew that it was more safe to dwell with man in his most unpolished state than in a country where arbitrary power prevails.”

And here’s the trick. Tyrants don’t always just take power. They often just convince you you’re too stupid for self-government. That’s exactly what Rev Peter Thacher called out in 1776.

“With Machiavellian subtilty, they have laboured to persuade mankind, that their public happiness consisted in being subject to uncontrouled power; that they were incapable of judging concerning the mysteries of government; and that it was their interest to deliver their estates, their liberties, and their lives, into the hands of an absolute Monarch.”

In the first Massacre Day Oration of 1771, James Lovell pointed to the greatest example of arbitrary power the colonists were facing, which guaranteed death to liberty.

“The declarative vote of the British Parliament is the death-warrant of our birthrights, and wants only a Czarish King to put it into execution.”

John Hancock explained exactly what Lovell was talking about – the Declaratory Act of 1766, where the British claimed unlimited power over the colonies,  the root of all the other arbitrary power they toiled under.

“They have declared that they have, ever had, and of right ought ever to have, full power to make laws of sufficient validity to bind the colonies in all cases whatever: They have exercised this pretended right by imposing a tax upon us without our consent”

STANDING ARMIES

But arbitrary power doesn’t enforce itself. And Hancock saw it play out in real time.

“And lest we should shew some reluctance at parting with our property, her fleets and armies are sent to inforce their mad pretensions.”

As Benjamin Hichborn explained, the very existence of a standing army means someone is likely enforcing arbitrary power.

“Every military force must necessarily imply a right of exerci?sing an arbitrary power, so far as respects the objects against which it is to be directed; and what will be the objects against which it will be in constant exercise in proportion to its extent, we may collect from the experience of ages, and the well-known source of human actions.”

Joseph Warren took this right back to the root cause of the Massacre. The British knew they couldn’t convince the people to voluntarily shackle themselves, to get on their knees and submit. So they did what all empires do – they sent in the troops

“As it was soon found that this taxation could not be supported by reason and argument, it seemed necessary that one act of oppression should be enforced by another … a standing army was established among us in a time of peace … namely for the enforcement of obedience to acts which, upon fair examination, appeared to be unjust and unconstitutional.”

And once the occupying army arrived? John Hancock knew the result was guaranteed.

“It was easy to foresee the consequences which so naturally followed upon sending troops into America, to enforce obedience to acts of the British parliament, which neither God nor man ever empowered them to make.”

Rev. Thacher – like all the others – didn’t hold back on that inevitable end result: bloodshed in the streets.

“We experienced the most provoking insults; and at length saw the streets of Boston strewed with the corpses of five of its inhabitants, murdered in cool blood, by the British mercenaries.”

But as Warren made clear, this wasn’t just a Boston problem. It’s universal – all through history.

“The ruinous consequences of standing armies to free communities, may be seen in the histories of SYRACUSE, ROME, and many other once flourishing states; some of which have now scarce a name! Their baneful influence is most suddenly felt, when they are placed in populous cities”

And there is no get-out-of-jail-free card, either. Standing armies are always – not sometimes – bad for liberty.

“Standing armies always endanger the liberty of the subject.”

But as Lovell warned, standing armies also lead to another dangerous result – they compete with militias.

“I must not omit to mention one more bad tendency: ’tis this,—a standing force leads to a total neglect of militias, or tends greatly to discourage them.”

THE MILITIA

That’s because, as Dr. Thomas Welsh explained in the final massacre day oration in 1783, people tend to just get lazy. They defer their own defense to the professionals.

“WHEN communities have so far mistaken their interest, as to commit the defence of every thing valuable in life to a standing army; the love of ease will scarcely permit them to reassume the unpleasing task of defending themselves.”

And that’s dangerous precisely because, as Lovell put it, the real defense of any society is the militia.

“The true strength and safety of every commonwealth or limited monarchy, is the bravery of its freeholders, its militia. By brave militias they rise to grandeur, and they come to ruin by a mercenary army. This is founded on historical facts; and the same causes will, in similar circumstances, forever produce the same effects.”

Welsh explained why. The militia – the people themselves – they have a strong incentive to defend themselves against all enemies – foreign and domestic.

“A MILITIA is the most natural defence of a free state, from inva?sion and tyranny: they who compose the militia, are the proprie?tors of the soil; and who are so likely to defend it, as they who have received it from their ancestors—acquired it by their labor—or obtained it by their valour?”

A militia, as Hancock pointed out, isn’t fighting for a paycheck. They’re free people, defending everything they love – for “hearth and home.”

“When a country is invaded, the militia are ready to appear in it’s defence … they fight for their houses, their lands, for their wives, their children, for all who claim the tenderest names, and are held dearest in their hearts, they fight pro aris & focis, for their liberty, and for themselves, and for their God.”

VIRTUE

But, as George Richards Minot explained, that kind of defense – that kind of courage – requires a virtuous people.

“Virtue and long life seem to be as intimately allied in the political as in the moral world: she is the guard which providence has set at the gate of freedom.”

You can see this clearly in John Hancock – the guy who had so much to lose, and financially, more than anyone on the continent. It would’ve been easy for him to risk nothing rather than everything.

“I glory in publickly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.”

Joseph Warren reminded the people in 1775 – just weeks before Lexington and Concord – that it was up to the people themselves to protect and defend their own liberty.

“On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.”

Acting worthy wasn’t about making a legal argument. Because, as Minot warned, written laws don’t stop governments that want to violate them.

“Let us not trust to laws: an uncorrupted people can exist without them; a corrupted people cannot long exist with them, or any other human assistance.”

RESISTANCE

Citing Cicero – Joseph Warren reminded the people of their DUTY to protect and defend their own constitution.

“Every member feels it to be his interest, and knows it to be his duty, to preserve inviolate the constitution on which the public safely depends.”

And Rev. Thacher saw resistance as a moral imperative – in essence, “rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

“We should be inexcusable to God, to our posterity, to the whole world, if we hesitated, a single moment, in asserting our right, and repelling the attacks of lawless power.”

There are so many different versions of these orators giving versions of the famous revolutionary phrase, “liberty or death,” but this one from John Hancock might be the best of them all. In his view, anyone who valued their skin more than their liberty?

Unmanly cowards.

“Death is the creature of a Poltroon’s brains; ’tis immortality, to sacrifice our|selves for the salvation of our country. We fear not death.”

THE PRIZE

Six themes of the American Revolution. Six links in one chain:

• Natural rights
• Arbitrary power
• Standing armies
• Militia
• Virtue
• Resistance

The people who gave these orations and the people who heard them – they understood and embraced every single one of them.

That’s who you come from – and John Hancock’s challenge still stands for us today.

“SURELY you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves. Remember, my friends, from whom you sprang.”

Will we act worthy of ourselves and honor the sacrifice of those who fought for freedom? Jonathan Williams Austin reminded us of the real American heroes who said liberty or death – and meant it.

“Let not the ashes of WARREN, MONTGOMERY, and the illustrious Roll of Heroes who died for Freedom, reproach our inactivity and want of spirit, in not compleating this grand Superstructure; the Pillars of which have been cemented with the richest Blood of America.”

Those great American heroes he named were Maj. Gen. Richard Montgomery – who was killed in action leading a charge during the Battle of Quebec. And Joseph Warren, who fought at Lexington and Concord, and then just weeks after giving this message during his second Massacre Day oration – March 6, 1775 – was killed in action at the battle of Bunker Hill.

“But, pardon me, my fellow-citizens, I know you want not zeal Or fortitude. You will maintain your rights or perish in the gene|rous struggle. However difficult the combat, you never will decline it when freedom is the prize.”

The post Boston Massacre: Have We Remembered, or Surrendered? appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

John Adams wasn’t talking about July 4, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence. 

He was referring to the beginning of the real American Revolution that kicked off years earlier on February 24, 1761. That’s when James Otis Jr delivered a fiery 5-hour speech railing against the writs of assistance. 

While the Declaration of Independence was a seminal moment in the Revolution, it was the culmination of more than 15 years of radical changes in the minds and hearts of the people that started with Otis’s speech. 

BACKGROUND

As the Seven Years’ War dragged on, Parliament found itself struggling under enormous levels of debt. In an effort to increase revenue, the British started strictly enforcing various long-standing mercantilist laws – referred to by the colonists as “acts of trade” and navigation – while aggressively cracking down on smuggling and enforcing tax collection. 

To crack down on tax evasion and undermine the thriving black market, British customs agents relied on writs of assistance. These were essentially open-ended general warrants authorizing the holder to search businesses and private homes for smuggled goods.

Writs of assistance did not require any specifications about the place to be searched or what types of goods the agents were looking for. They were also transferable from one agent to another, and could be used repeatedly for different searches.

They were used as a substitute for specific search warrants, and didn’t expire until six months after a King died.

Things came to a head when that happened. King George II died in 1760, meaning all of the writs tied to his reign expired. When customs officials in Massachusetts tried to obtain new writs under King George III, it created a procedural opening to challenge the validity of writs before they were reissued and put into constant use. 

The colonists believed the court should refuse to issue new writs because they were general warrants – and exceptionally intrusive.

With the door open to take on the writs, colonial merchants filed suit against customs officer Charles Paxton. The case landed in the Massachusetts Superior Court presided over by Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson. 

James Otis Jr. served as an advocate general in the vice-admiralty court. With the writs of assistance controversy coming to a head, he resigned his position and agreed to represent the Boston merchants. 

And he did so free of charge. In a letter to William Tudor, John Adams said “great fees” were offered, but Otis insisted, “In such a Cause, I despise all fees.”

THE SPEECH

Instead of merely arguing the case from a technical standpoint, Otis attacked the very constitutionality of the writs. In another letter to William Tudor, Adams said, “Otis demonstrated the illegality, the unconstitutionality, the Iniquity—& inhumanity of that writ in so clear a manner that every man appeared to me to go away ready to take arms against it.”

Otis opened his salvo against the writs by characterizing them as “the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book.” [Emphasis added]

A year later, Otis explained exactly what he meant by arbitrary power, saying in plain English, it means “no more than to do as one pleases.”

The idea that Parliament was exercising “arbitrary power” became a common refrain in the years leading up to the Declaration of Independence. It was often referred to as a “usurpation” or theft of power. 

In fact, the declaration refers to the list of objectionable actions taken by the British not as “grievances” but as “injuries and usurpations.” In other words, it was a list of grievances related to the exercise of arbitrary power. 

Otis argued that this exercise of arbitrary power, sanctioned by writs of assistance, trampled on “one of the most essential branches of English liberty – the freedom of one’s house,” and he famously declared, “A man’s house is his castle,” adding that “while he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle.”  

Writs of assistance, Otis argued, “totally annihilate that privilege.” 

Otis went on to declare that “reason and the constitution are both against this writ,” and he asked a rhetorical question, where are they authorized by law? 

“Let us see what authority there is for it. Not more than one instance can be found of it in all our law books.”

By virtue of their unconstitutionality, Otis called the writs “void.” In other words, they didn’t exist as a matter of law. He insisted, “No acts of Parliament can establish such a writ; though it should be made in the very words of the petition.”

This was the root of every colonial objection to British authority that would ultimately lead to independence: the British government was exercising power that it didn’t constitutionally possess. 

Otis hammered this point home, declaring that such acts were not law at all.

“An act against the constitution is void.” [Emphasis added]

Otis went beyond the constitutional ramifications, arguing “all these acts to be null and void by the law of nature,” as well as by “the American charters, because America was not represented in Parliament.”

We don’t have a full transcript of his long speech. As Adams pointed out, reconstructing the whole speech was impossible.

“No man could have written from memory Mr Otis’s Argument of four or five hours in length against The Acts of Trade, considered as Revenue Laws, and against Writts of Assistance, as tyrannical Engines to carry them into execution.” 

However, Adams noted that Otis went on to examine the acts of trade one by one, demonstrating “that if they were considered as Revenue Laws, they destroyed all our security of Property Liberty and Life; every Right of Nature and the English Constitution, and the Charter of the Province.”

NATURAL RIGHTS

Otis rooted his entire argument in natural rights dating back to the Magna Carta. 

Continuing his correspondence with William Tudor, John Adams summarized the speech, highlighting Otis’s natural rights arguments. 

“He asserted that every man, merely natural, was an independent sovereign, subject to no Law but the Laws written on his heart, and revealed to him by his Maker in the Constitution of his Nature and the inspiration of his understanding and his conscience.” 

Otis gave a nod to John Locke’s natural rights theory, insisting that a man’s “right to his Life, his Liberty, no created being could rightfully contest. Nor was his right to his Property less incontestable.”

Significantly, these natural rights were the foundation of the British system “wrought into the English Constitution as fundamental Laws.” As such, they weren’t negated simply because a person moved from England to a British colony. Those fundamental rights traveled with them.

“Our Ancestors as British Subjects and We their descendents and British Subjects were intitled to all those Rights by the British Constitution as well as by the Law of Nature, and our Provincial Charter as much as any Inhabitant of London or Bristol or any Part of England; and were not to be cheated out of them by any Phantom of ‘Virtual Representation,’ or any other Fiction of Law or Politicks, or any Monkish Trick of deceit and Hypocricy.”

CONCLUSION

At the time, nobody imagined that a long speech during a legal proceeding would light the fire of revolution, but that’s exactly what James Otis Jr. did. 

Adams certainly believed this to be the case. He called Otis “a flame of fire.”

“With a promptitude of Classical Allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events & dates, a profusion of Legal Authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity, and a rapid torrent of impetuous Eloquence, he hurried away all before him.”

Otis did more than attack the writs. He laid the philosophical groundwork that would birth independence, articulating the constitutional argument supporting the colonial cause. 

Adams said he did so with power and conviction and “comprehensive knowledge.

“[He] Shewed not only the Illegality of the Writt; its insidious and mischievous tendency; but he laid open the Views and designs of Great Britain of taxing Us; of destroying our Charters and assuming as the Powers of our Government, legislative Executive and Judicial, external and internal civil and ecclesiastical, temporal and Spiritual:

The speech spread a revolutionary fervor throughout the crowd of onlookers, and as news of the speech got out, the flames of revolution began to spread. As Adams described it, “Every Man of an immense crouded Audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take Arms against Writs of Assistants.”

He went on to call Otis’s stand in the courtroom that day the start of the American Revolution, calling it, “the scene of the first Act of opposition to the Arbitrary claims of Great Britain.”

Taking it further, Adams recognized that American Independence wasn’t born in 1776. It was right there in 1761.

“Then and there the Child Independence was born. In fifteen years i.e. in 1776. he grew up to Manhood, & declared himself free.

The post 1761: When American Independence was Born appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

There is no question but that the type of society in which, say, late 19th-century Americans lived was totally different from the type of society in which 20th-century Americans lived and in which 21st-century Americans continue to live.

Nineteenth-century Americans lived without such things as income taxation and the IRS, paper money; the Federal Reserve; a national-security state (i.e., the Pentagon, a massive permanent military force, a military-industrial complex, a CIA, and a NSA); FBI; drug laws and the DEA;  immigration controls and ICE and the Border Patrol; public (i.e., government) schooling systems; a government-managed economy; a government-regulated economy; foreign empire; foreign interventionism; foreign wars; foreign aid; foreign military bases; embargoes; sanctions; state-sponsored assassinations; coups; torture; indefinite detention without due process and trial by jury; and much more.

Twentieth-century and 21st-century Americans, on the other hand, live in a society that has all those things.

Obviously, two opposite systems cannot both be freedom. One is freedom and the other necessarily is not, no matter how much people might convince themselves of the contrary.

So, why did 20th-century Americans abandon freedom?

I believe that one answer lies in the concept of “security.” It’s human nature to want security in life, especially in such areas as personal financial matters, health, employment, business, retirement, and family.

Of course, the degree of risk that people are willing to take depends on each person. Some people are just naturally bigger risk-takers than others. They are willing to risk most everything to achieve a particular goal. Security is not as important to them as it is to others.

But I think that for most people, security is of the utmost importance.

The problem is that life itself is insecure. Even billionaires have been known to go bankrupt. A person in perfect health today might find himself diagnosed with pancreatic cancer tomorrow. Someone who has been happily married for 20 years might suddenly hear his or her spouse announce that he or she wants a divorce. People’s children end up embarking on a course of action that parents did not want. People suddenly find themselves at 70 years of age with no savings and possibly no children to help them out.

Life is filled with insecurity. It’s just part of life’s journey from birth to death.

Then the government steps in. It preys on this phenomenon by promising people that it will bring them the security for which they yearn. If people will just render their lives to the government, the government will keep them safe and secure from the dangers and vicissitudes of life.

That’s what the adoption of the welfare state, the regulated economy, and the managed economy in the 1930s was all about. The federal government presented itself as a backstop — a “safety net” — for the American people. No longer would people have to fear a loss of employment, death by starvation, injury at work, a severe illness, or a penniless retirement. The government would be there permanently to help them out.

That then was followed by the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state. With this conversion, the federal government promised to keep Americans safe from the scary creatures of the world, including the communists, terrorists, Muslims, drug dealers, illegal immigrants, and tattooed gang members.

There were some big prices that Americans had to pay, however, in exchange for these promises of security: the loss of freedom and, interestingly, the continued presence of insecurity, not to mention the ever-growing financial cost to Americans in terms of taxation and monetary debasement.

In fact, it’s ironic that modern-day Americans have the most powerful government in history — a massive totalitarian-like welfare-warfare state with omnipotent powers to keep Americans safe and secure — while, at the same time, the American people continue to be the most frightened people in the world.

Modern-day Americans are scared of everything, especially the thought of losing their governmental “security.”

This article was originally published at the Future of Freedom Foundation and is republished here with permission.

The post Why Did Americans Abandon Freedom? appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Benjamin Franklin wasn’t merely reciting history; he was warning us.

Because every empire follows the same script. And while the common themes are overextension, debt, or even running the printing press, those are merely symptoms of the deadly disease.

The root cause is always the same: Consolidate power. The eventual destruction of liberty and final collapse are guaranteed.

And now, it’s our turn.

This is the story of how empire destroys liberty, because liberty must die for empires to live.

THE STRUCTURE OF RUIN

First, the pattern. The architecture of empire is designed to centralize power, and as Jean Louis De Lolme explained, this is poison to liberty.

“Thus, for instance, the total ruin of the Roman Republic was principally brought about by the exorbitant power to which several of its Citizens were successively enabled to rise”

Machiavelli showed the inevitable next steps. As power consolidates, the ruling class abandons the hard work of defense for the comforts of the palace, buying off potential enemies and disarming the people.

“The Romans continued their high-minded course so long as they enjoyed liberty, but when they submitted to the rule of Emperors, and these Emperors began to be corrupted, preferring the shade of the palace to the sun of the camp, then they also began to buy off the Parthians, the Germans, and other neighboring peoples, which was the beginning of the ruin of this great empire. These are some of the unhappy consequences of disarming the people.”

That palace corruption is no accident. It’s baked into the system. As Thomas Gordan made clear, it’s not just about bad people with power, it’s structural and virtually inevitable.

“But in wide and over-grown empires, especially where all depends upon the will and care of one, let his heart be ever so upright, a thousand evils and injuries will be done, which he can never hear of, nor they who suffer them have the means of representing to him; and which probably are done or connived at by his own deputies, whom he employs to prevent or punish them.”

With this as a foundation, Montesquieu warned that it’s not a matter of “if,” but “when.”

“Empires, like men, must encrease, decay, and be extinguished.”

THE ANTIDOTE

Montesquieu argued that size is the primary enemy of self-government: a republic must stay small to stay free.

“IT is natural for a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise it cannot long subsist. In an extensive republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are trusts too considerable to be placed in any single subject; he has interests of his own”

The larger and more powerful the republic gets, the more likely it will have self-interested  rulers who destroy the country from within.

“he soon begins to think that he may be happy and glorious by oppressing his fellow-citizens; and that he may raise himself to grandeur on the ruins of his country.”

The Founders knew these warnings well. During the ratification debates, the Anti-Federalist Cato warned of that same scenario playing out under the new system.

“Whoever seriously considers the immense extent of territory comprehended within the limits of the United States, together with the variety of its climates, productions, and commerce, the difference of extent, and number of inhabitants in all”

He warned that the union would be too large, with too diverse a people in the different states, to deliver on the core promises in the preamble to the Constitution.

“the dissimilitude of interest, morals, and politics, in almost every one, will receive it as an intuitive truth, that a consolidated republican form of government therein, can never form a perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to you and your posterity.”

Even those who supported the new Constitution admitted that a lust for glory and imperial power is a terminal disease. John Dickinson identified this “thirst of empire” as the primary killer of republics.

“This is a vice, that ever has been, and from the nature of things, ever must be, fatal to republican forms of government.”

THE ENGINE 

Empire requires a specific mechanism to strangle liberty: consolidation. Thomas Jefferson identified this as the single greatest destroyer of rights in human history.

“What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? the generalising & concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter whether of the Autocrats of Russia or France, or of the Aristocrats of a Venetian Senate.”

And Thomas Gordon warned that destruction of liberty is part of a death spiral that results in the collapse of the empire itself.

“To increase power is, no doubt, the maxim of these princes; but their practice generally contradicts it, while they lessen their people and their wealth to enlarge their territory; every addition of this kind being an addition to their weakness: And therefore great empires, from the moment they are at their height, are in a continual decay;”

Empire is a zero-sum game. The state grows rich and powerful specifically by making the people poor and weak.

“the decay and discouragement of the people being the unnatural means of their first growth; and indeed their increase contained in it, and carried along with it, certain seeds of decrease and desolation.”

Patrick Henry recognized that this history has no exceptions. He warned that consolidation was the most destructive threat the new republic could face.

“Dangers are to be apprehended in whatever manner we proceed; but those of a consolidation are the most destructive.”

STRATEGY AND FORCE

The descent into tyranny doesn’t happen overnight. Emmerich De Vattel explained that sheer size can allow an empire to stand on its own for a while, but that doesn’t last forever.

“A powerful state may support itself for some time by its own weight; but at length it falls into decay; and this is perhaps one of the principal causes of those revolutions observable in great empires.”

James Otis Jr also explained that tyranny is a long process, and not a single, explosive event..

“A free government never degenerated into tyranny all at once, it is the work of years.”

As power grows and consolidates over time, abuses of power grow and expand with them. That’s exactly what the Anti-Federalist Brutus warned about, as this leads to people in power who believe they’re above the law.

“In so extensive a republic, the great officers of government would soon become above the control of the people, and abuse their power to the purpose of aggrandizing themselves, and oppressing them.”

To maintain this control, the empire requires a permanent military force. Thomas Gordon, in his Discourses on the Roman historian Tacitus, traced Rome’s demise to its standing army.

“Rome itself perished by her conquests, which being made by great Armies, occasioned such power and insolence in their Commanders, and set some Citizens so high above the rest, an inequality pernicious to free States, that she was enslaved by ingrates whom she had employed to defend her.”

John Trenchard stated this as a rule: You can have a standing army or you can have liberty, but you can’t have both.

“Great empires cannot subsist without great armies, and liberty cannot subsist with them. As armies long kept up, and grown part of the government, will soon engross the whole government, and can never be disbanded; so liberty long lost, can never be recovered.”

THE CHOICE

For Patrick Henry, the choice was clear: liberty OR empire.

You can’t have both.

“If we admit this consolidated government, it will be because we like a great, splendid one. Some way or other we must be a great and mighty empire; we must have an army, and a navy, and a number of things.”

Henry ended by reminding us what was at the core of America’s founding: the antidote to empire, liberty.

“When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different; liberty, sir, was then the primary object.”

The post Liberty OR Empire: You Can’t Have Both appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Current controversy over the power of President Trump to send the National Guard into American cities reminds us of perennial questions about the extent of federal jurisdiction: In a system of divided sovereignty, where does central power end and exclusive state authority begin?

Writers on this subject, when they are not merely expressing their political preferences, often focus on the Founding-era meanings of constitutional words such as “commerce.” Few have addressed how the Constitution’s sponsors represented the prospective scope of federal powers to the ratifying public.

For example, the Supreme Court case that construed the Constitution’s Taxation Clause to permit unlimited spending relied on a single claim by only one of the document’s sponsors, Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton’s claim had been hotly-disputed by other Founders and advanced only after the document had been ratified.

Moreover, in the first of the two cases principally responsible for widening the Commerce Clause into a power to regulate the entire economy, the court cited none of the Constitution’s sponsors. The second case cited only a statement by John Marshall (who had been a Virginia ratifier) issued long after the ratification, and the court depicted even that statement inaccurately.

The Importance of Sponsors’ Representations

Failure to consider the sponsors’ representations of the Constitution’s meaning seriously impairs the quality of interpretation. The Supreme Court has recognized that, when construing a legal text, pre-enactment comments from the sponsors about the text’s purpose or effect are entitled to “substantial weight.” This is so because voters presumably relied on the sponsors’ representations. By contrast, statements made by non-sponsors are entitled to little weight and those made by opponents are entitled to even less.

Founding-era lawyers understood the value of sponsors’ representations, although they stated it in Latin. Nemo contra factum suum venire potest (“No one may benefit [literally, “come”] in violation of his own deed”) and similar maxims implied that sponsors would not be heard to deny their own pre-enactment representations.

Availability

The historical record is rich with representations from advocates of the Constitution—directed specifically at the ratifying public—on the prospective limits of federal power. The Constitution’s promoters issued these representations before the Constitution was ratified to reassure the public that opponents’ histrionic warnings of central tyranny were baseless.

Some of these representations, such as those in The Federalist, were published in newspapers. Others were presented in speeches delivered in public or at state ratifying conventions. One pronouncement appeared in a private letter.

They took the form of enumerations of activities the Constitution would leave to exclusive state jurisdiction, so long as those activities occurred within state boundaries rather than within federal territories or enclaves.

The Enumerators

A few published enumerations remain unattributed. For the overwhelming majority, however, we know who the authors were. They were an extraordinarily impressive group.

Two of the most important were James Madison and Tench Coxe. Coxe was  a Philadelphia merchant and economist who later served under Hamilton as assistant secretary of the treasury. Coxe’s explications of the Constitution were published and re-published in newspapers throughout the country, and were among the essays most read during the ratification debates.

All of the other major enumerators were lawyers. Not just any lawyers, but some of the most distinguished of their profession. They were people who could read and accurately interpret a legal text, so their views are entitled to, as the Supreme Court might say, “substantial weight.” Their names and legal credentials follow. Most also had political careers, which I have not detailed:

*        Alexander Hamilton, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, was then at the apex of the New York bar and the leader of the pro-Constitution forces at the New York ratifying convention. Although he often is cited for his post-ratification claims promoting unlimited federal spending, Hamilton also issued pre-ratification pronouncements of a very different tenor.

*        James Wilson of Pennsylvania, another Constitutional Convention delegate, was at the top of his state’s bar. He was the leader of the pro-Constitution forces at the Pennsylvania ratifying convention.

*        Edmund Pendleton was Virginia’s chief justice and was widely known as “Virginia’s Mansfield,” a reference to England’s greatest chief justice. Pendleton chaired the Virginia ratifying convention.

*        John Marshall was a spokesman for the Constitution at the Virginia ratifying convention and later was Chief Justice of the United States.

*        Alexander White was educated at the English Inns of Court and had served as King’s Attorney (i.e., attorney general) for the colony of Virginia. He, too, was a delegate to the Virginia ratifying convention.

*        James Iredell had served as a North Carolina judge and state attorney general. He led the pro-Constitution forces at the first North Carolina ratifying convention, and later became a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

*        Alexander Contee Hanson, another prominent lawyer, was a delegate to the Maryland ratifying convention. He later served as state chancellor, and became Maryland’s most famous legal codifier.

*        Nathaniel Peaslee Sargeant, a Justice (and shortly thereafter, Chief Justice) on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

*        Nathaniel Chipman had been educated at Yale College and at Judge Tapping Reeve’s famous Litchfield Law School in Connecticut. He was Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, and led the pro-Constitution cause at the Vermont ratifying convention.

A Consistent Message

Enumerations of exclusive state powers differed in length. Some included just two or three items, offered to exemplify the limited reach of the new federal government. Others were extensive. Illustrative of an extensive enumeration is one published by the Pennsylvania Gazette (Benjamin Franklin’s former newspaper) on December 26, 1787, at the height of the ratification controversy. This enumeration was anonymous, but probably was authored by Tench Coxe:

“The federal government neither makes, nor can without alteration make, any provision for the choice of probates of wills, land officers and surveyors, justices of the peace, county lieutenants, county commissioners, receivers of quit-rents, sheriffs, coroners, overseers of the poor, and constables; nor does it provide in any way for the important and innumerable trials that must take place among the citizens of the same state, nor for criminal offenses, breaches of the peace, nuisances, or other objects of the state courts; nor for licensing marriages, and public houses; nor for county roads, nor for any other roads other than the great post roads; nor for poor-houses; nor incorporating religious and political societies, towns and boroughs; nor for charity schools, administrations on estates; and many other matters . . .”

To restate the argument in modern terms: Within their boundaries, state governments will enjoy authority, to the exclusion of the central government, over wills and inheritance, real estate, local government, most areas of civil justice, criminal law, social services, schools, religious and political groups, local road construction, tavern licensing, and domestic relations.

A striking fact is that these enumerations, whether short or long, were remarkably consistent. The Constitution’s spokesmen did not alter these messages to suit different audiences.

What The Constitution’s Sponsors Said

Following is a summary of those activities that the Constitution’s sponsors listed as exclusively matters of state regulation. Where I mention specific sponsors, the designation is illustrative only; often I could list several other names.

Training the Militia and Appointing Its Officers. Federalist spokesmen, most notably Madison and Marshall, emphasized continued state control over the militia—what we now call the National Guard. Federal authority over the militia would be limited to repelling invasions, suppressing insurrections, enforcing federal law, and writing general regulations to be applied by the states. The militia would be employed for defensive purposes only, and would not be sent out of the country.

Local Government. Advocates such as Sargent and Coxe represented incorporation of local government, regulation thereof, and selection of local officers to be exclusively matters of state concern.

Regulation of Real Property. Pendleton, White, Marshall, Chipman, and others assured the public that only the states would govern real property within their boundaries. This included exclusive power over land titles, land transfers, descents, and other aspects of real estate.

Regulation of Personal Property Outside of Commerce. Marshall and other sponsors of the Constitution assured the public that regulation of personalty outside interstate commerce was to be exclusively a state responsibility. As examples, they itemized testamentary and intestate succession, firearms for hunting and self-defense, and titles to goods. Exceptions were the congressional powers to adopt patent and copyright laws.

Domestic and Family Affairs. Coxe, Sargent, and others affirmed that domestic life was exclusively a matter for state regulation. Specifically mentioned were guardianship, marriage, divorce, issues of legitimacy, and sumptuary laws. As an anonymous author put it, only states would protect men in “possession of their houses, wives, children.”

Criminal Law. Outside of a few areas, criminal law was exclusively a state concern. Thus, at the North Carolina ratifying convention, Iredell asserted that Congress could provide for the punishment of treason and that “[t]hey have power to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations,” but that “[t]hey have no power to define any other crime whatever.”

Civil Justice. Modern advocates of federal tort reform may find it discomforting, but the Constitution’s sponsors affirmed that—other than matters of federal law and disputes among citizens of different states—supervision of civil justice was reserved exclusively to the states. Specific examples encompassed libel, other forms of defamation, nuisance, debts, and contracts.

Religion and Education. Federalist spokesmen listed as exclusive state concerns religion, the establishment of religious institutions, the incorporation of religious entities, and establishment of schools.

Social Services. Several Federalist spokesmen such as Hanson and Coxe, ruled social services out of the national sphere.

Agriculture. Hamilton affirmed in Federalist No. 17 that “the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature . . . can never be desirable cares of a general [i.e., national] jurisdiction.” Justice Sargeant wrote that only the states would have power to regulate “common fields” and “fisheries.” These representations are consistent with the Constitutional Convention’s decision to reject a motion for a federal secretary of domestic affairs, who, among other duties, would regulate agriculture.

Other Business Enterprises. Federalists represented that, outside the immediate stream of commerce across political boundaries, regulation of non-agricultural business was exclusively a state prerogative. Thus, Hamilton, Wilson, and others affirmed that (even before the First Amendment) the central government would have no power over the press. Hanson identified promotion of “useful arts” (technology) as exclusively a state concern. Coxe added to the exclusive state sphere “public houses, nuisances, and many other things of like nature.”

Also cited as matters of exclusive state concern were roads, including ferries and bridges, unless they fell under the federal post road power. (During the Founding era, a “post road” was an intercity highway punctuated by rest stops called “stages” or “posts.”).

Conclusion

The consistency and clarity of these representations, the authoritative status of their authors, and the likelihood that the ratifying public relied on them all underscore their value in constitutional interpretation.

These representations also raise uncomfortable questions about the legitimacy of much of the modern federal establishment. But that is a topic for another day.

Readers seeking further detail, including specific citations, should consult the following by the author:

The Enumerated Powers of States, 3 Nev. L. J. 469 (2003)

The Founders Interpret the Constitution: The Division of Federal and State Powers, 19 Fed. Soc’y. Rev. 60 (2018)

More News on the Powers Reserved Exclusively to the States, 20 Fed. Soc’y. Rev. 92 (2019)

A version of this essay was first published at Civitas Outlook (University of Texas) on January 14, 2026.

The post How the Founders Explained Limits on the Federal Government appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

They were wrong.

Instead, the crackdown sparked a willingness to physically resist unconstitutional taxation and British assertions of “unlimited” power.

SETTING THE STAGE

In the first act of widespread resistance to British power, colonial opposition to the Stamp Act made it impossible to enforce.

On March 18, 1766, Parliament relented and repealed the hated tax. However, the British government wasn’t backing down. On the same day, it passed the Declaratory Act, asserting that it had the unlimited power to make laws binding the American colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”

This set the stage for additional taxes.

In the summer of 1767, Parliament enacted four laws together known as the Townshend Acts. These laws imposed new levies on the importation of paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea.

The British also established the American Board of Commissioners, empowered with “writs of assistance,” to step up tax collections and crack down on smuggling.

In practice, these writs served as open-ended search warrants that authorized customs officials to search ships, warehouses, and even homes if they even suspected the presence of smuggled goods.

This further antagonized Americans and set the stage for further protests and resistance.

THE LYDIA AFFAIR

Things came to a head in the spring of 1768 when tidesmen (customs agents) boarded the Lydia, a merchant ship owned by John Hancock.

Hancock imported manufactured goods from England and exported a variety of colonial wares, including whale oil, fish, and rum.

When British agents boarded the Lydia, Hancock didn’t just comply. Instead, he demanded to see their authorization to board and search the ship.

Lacking even a broad Writ of Assistance to authorize a search, the agents were barred by Hancock from going below deck. But the British agents persisted. Lydia crewmembers caught one of the tidesmen, Owen Richards, snooping below deck twice, attempting to search the hold anyway.

What followed is a timeless example of how the American Revolutionaries understood a free people should act in the face of arbitrary government power.

Rather than accept the situation and sue for damages later, John Hancock drew a hard line in the sand. He ordered his crew to forcibly remove Richards from below deck and have him brought topside, making clear that he saw the ship’s deck as the limit of their jurisdiction.

The British attempted to prosecute Hancock, but their efforts were thwarted when Massachusetts Attorney General Jonathan Sewall, a close friend of John Adams, determined that Hancock had not committed an offence due to the lack of a writ, and refused to proceed with a case.

If Hancock hadn’t already been on the British radar, he was now. His willingness to physically resist gave him the status of a hero to many in Boston. And given this prominence, he was the perfect target for the British to make a statement.

The Board of Commissioners wrote to London seeking to overrule Sewall; however, a second incident gave them a better opportunity to go after Hancock.

THE LIBERTY SEIZED

On May 9, 1768, another Hancock ship entered Boston Harbor, reportedly carrying 25 casks of wine. The British were suspicious because the Liberty had the capacity to carry four times that cargo.

Customs agents boarded the Liberty (this time with the proper paperwork), but initially claimed they didn’t see anything suspicious. However, officials still suspected smuggling.

Rumors spread everywhere, including one repeated by Royal officials that Hancock was even boasting that he could unload the wine without paying the taxes.

Without hard proof, the British had to settle for rumors.

Weeks later, however, things changed. Thomas Kirk, one of the tidesmen who initially reported that nothing was amiss, suddenly gave a different story in an affidavit.

He claimed that he was forcefully held on the ship while the cargo was offloaded before entering the harbor. He said he was subsequently bribed and threatened with violence by Captain Marshall, who helmed another of Hancock’s ships, to keep quite. But in the meantime, Marshall suddenly died.

No longer fearing retribution, and likely emboldened by the presence of the newly-arrived 50-gun naval vessel HMS Romney, Kirk said he finally felt safe enough to change his story.

He said he “heard a noise as of many people upon deck at work hoisting out goods,” as well as “the Noise of the Tackles.”

Despite finding no additional witnesses to corroborate Kirk’s story, the commissioners determined that Kirk’s affidavit provided sufficient grounds to seize the Liberty for unloading before entry.

On the evening of Saturday, June 10, Collector of the Port Joseph Harrison, Comptroller Benjamin Hallowell and several other customs officials showed up at Hancock’s wharf, where the Liberty was moored. The officer boarded the sloop and executed the legal procedure to seize her.

Hoping to avoid a rescue mission staged by angry Bostonians, the customs officials enlisted the help of the Romney. Once the formal seizure was complete, they signaled the British warship, and two boats filled with sailors rowed to the Liberty and took charge of Hancock’s ship.

Despite assurances from a growing onshore crowd that they would not interfere with the seizure and their efforts to hold the Liberty at the wharf, the sailors cut the ship loose and had it towed into the harbor under the guns of the Romney.

VIOLENT PROTEST

This set off a mass protest that quickly grew to a riot with an estimated 3,000 colonists. They attacked the customs house and pelted customs officials with rocks.

As Massachusetts Bay Governor Thomas Hutchinson described it, “A Mob presently gathered & insulted the Custom H Officers & carried them in triumph up the Wharffe tore their cloaths & bruised & otherways hurt them until one after another they escaped.”

They also seized a personal boat belonging to Collector of the Port Joseph Harrison, hauling the vessel to the Liberty Tree and burning it.

The riot was intense. Customs agents in varying degrees were physically attacked, beaten, had their clothes torn off and were even dragged out or chased away. Four of the British commissioners were forced to flee and take shelter on the Romney, where they stayed for several days before retreating further to Castle William in Boston Harbor.

More violence was expected on the following Monday, but instead, the Sons of Liberty called a meeting at Liberty Hall. The crowd was so large that the meeting moved to Faneuil Hall.

Hutchinson wrote, “It is now the talk among the populace that neither the Commissioners nor the Comptroller shall be suffered to Return to Town & just before noon today (June 16) I saw a printed notification upon the Change Requiring a full meeting tomorrow as the fate of the province & of America depended upon the measures to be then taken.”

Meanwhile, in an early application of nullification, the sheriff refused to take any action against the protestors. Hutchinson explained why.

“It is very natural to ask where the Justices & Sheriffs are upon these occasions. The persons who are to assist the Sheriff in the execution of his Office are Sons of Liberty & determined to oppose him in every thing which shall be contrary to their Schemes. Some of the Justices are great favourers of them & those who are not are afraid of being sacrificed by them & will issue out no warrants to apprehend them.”

AFTERMATH

The Liberty affair didn’t end there. The British wanted a show of force in an attempt to prevent a repeat.

On September 28, 1768, eight more British warships arrived in Boston Harbor, joining six others already anchored there. The following evening, the ships launched skyrockets, lighting up the fleet as crew members sang “Yankee Doodle,” an effort to taunt the people of Boston.

Days later, hundreds of redcoats landed and marched into the hostile city.

This was the beginning of what is now known as the Boston Campaign, or the Occupation of Boston.

Rather than restore order after the riot, this militarization only made things worse. The presence of British regular troops in the streets of Boston enraged the people, who now felt they were being occupied by a foreign standing army.

Over the next two years, tensions heated up and then boiled over in March 1770 with the Boston Massacre, and ultimately, American independence.

The post Writs, Riots, and Redcoats: Hancock’s Spark of the Revolution appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution authorizes Congress to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal.”

This is a power that is rarely discussed and almost never exercised.

Before applying this constitutional grant of power to the waging of the “War on Terror,” I’ll start with a bit of history of this unfamiliar provision of the Constitution.

In the 13th century, King Henry III of England began issuing what were then known as privateering commissions. According to Dutch jurist and natural rights philosopher Hugo Grotius, letters of marque and reprisal were similar to a declaration of a “private war.” By issuing such a letter, the sovereign of one nation commissioned a private individual or individuals to enter territory governed by a foreign prince and exact retribution against person or persons believed to have committed a great wrong against the subjects of the authorizing monarch.

The American concept of letters of marque and reprisal was substantially informed by the Commentaries on the Laws of England published in 1765 by English jurist William Blackstone. In Section I, page 249 of his influential work, Blackstone wrote:

These letters are grantable by the law of nations, whenever the subjects of one state are oppressed and injured by those of another; and justice is denied by that state to which the oppressor belongs. In this case letters of marque and reprisal (words in themselves synonymous and signifying a taking in return) may be obtained, in order to seize the bodies or goods of the subjects of the offending state, until satisfaction be made, wherever they happen to be found. Indeed this custom of reprisals seems dictated by nature herself; and accordingly we find in the most ancient times very notable instances of it.

American founder and legal practitioner St. George Tucker summarized Blackstone, writing that letters of marque and reprisal were justified “where individuals of one nation are oppressed or injured by those of another, and justice is denied by the state to which the author of such oppression or injury belongs.”

In April 1781, during the War for American Independence, the Continental Congress passed a resolution giving to “captains or commanders of private armed vessels commissioned by letters of marque or general reprisals” the following instructions and guidelines:

You may by force of arms attack, subdue, and seize all ships, vessels and goods, belonging to the King or Crown of Great Britain, or to his subjects, or others inhabiting within any of the territories or possessions of the aforesaid King of Great Britain, on the high seas, or between high-water and low-water marks. And you may also annoy the enemy by all means in your power, by land as well as by water, taking care not to infringe or violate the laws of nations, or laws of neutrality.

The use of this constitutionally sound method for capturing and trying enemies of the state hiding out in less-than-friendly countries is not just a matter of history and theory, however.

In October 2001, then-Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) sponsored H.R. 3074, the Air Piracy Reprisal and Capture Act of 2001, and H.R. 3076, September 11 Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001. Paul introduced a similar measure in 2007.

These bills would authorize the president of the United States:

to commission, under officially issued letters of marque and reprisal, so many of privately armed and equipped persons and entities as, in his judgment, the service may require, with suitable instructions to the leaders thereof, to employ all means reasonably necessary to seize outside the geographic boundaries of the United States and its territories the person and property of Osama bin Laden, of any al Qaeda co-conspirator, and of any conspirator with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda who are responsible for the air piratical aggressions and depredations perpetrated upon the United States of America on September 11, 2001, and for any planned future air piratical aggressions and depredations or other acts of war upon the United States of America and her people.

All these constitutionally sound bills died in committee and the “shock and awe” of the “War on Terror” waged on.

Imagine, for a moment, if the bills — any of them — had passed. Instead of spending billions and billions of dollars on an endless, undeclared, and unconstitutional war that has caused the needless deaths of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, as well as the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen, the former public enemy number one — Osama bin Laden — could have been tracked and captured by any one of a number of private organizations with operatives trained to carry out these types of missions.

It is likely, that we would have exchanged all that death, destruction, and debt for a quick capture, trial, and execution of the man believed to have led the legion of terrorists who fly the flag of al-Qaeda.

Or, as retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and former congressional candidate Karen Kwiatkowski wrote in 2007 in the book Ron Paul and the New Revolutionaries, “Had Ron Paul’s proposed legislation been acted upon in 2001, as a key part of the so-called ‘War on Terror,’ we would probably already have concluded the trial of Osama bin Laden and he would likely be sitting in a lonely cell in Florence, Colorado.”

That, sadly, was not the way the story played out in real life.

Knowing now the manner in which bin Laden met his demise, the use of letters of marque and reprisal would have seemed the perfect plan. The operation could have been carried out under similar circumstances, only instead of sending SEAL Team Six and violating the Constitution and international law, the president, under authority from Congress, could have empowered a private army to do the job and kept this country on strong constitutional footing and prevented over a decade of blowback.

Consecutive presidents have explained that since 9/11 we face a “new kind of enemy.” Isn’t this type of supranational foe exactly the kind that could be best fought using the immense and elastic power of issuing letters of marque and reprisal?

Add to the mix the fact that because of the multi-million-dollar bounties offered for the capture of these public enemies, these “privateers” possessing letters of marque and reprisal would perform acts that are simultaneously selflessly patriotic and selfishly enriching.

Regardless of the rationality of this approach, the claque of neocons in Congress and without (not to mention their billion-dollar benefactors in the military-industrial complex) would never embrace it. They deny the role of blowback in the ongoing terrorist activities aimed at Western concerns. Furthermore, the shrinking of markets through the reduction in enormous regional combat operations is unacceptable, regardless of the collateral damage, including that done to the rule of law and the Constitution.

The irrefutable fact remains, however, that the issuing of letters of marque and reprisal is an effective and available constitutional alternative to the launching of missiles from drones or “boots on the ground” inside the borders of foreign countries with whom we are not at war.

This tactic is commendable not only for the protection of constitutional limits on power, the respect for international law, and the protection of the American people from terrorists who think they can run from justice, but it would have already prevented the tragedy that is the loss of thousands of American fighting men and women and civilians. Not to mention, sadly, the lamentable and lasting psychological impact the waging of this war has had on those servicemen and -women who returned home.

Americans have the right and the obligation to demand that those elected to act in our name defend this nation, and that they do so in a moral and constitutional manner.

The issuing of letters of marque and reprisal would achieve all these important goals.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is an excerpt of an article that was originally published at The New American. It is reposted here with permission from the author.

The post Missing the Marque: Reviving a Forgotten Constitutional Clause appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

That warning came from John Taylor of Caroline over two centuries ago. The subject: What we now call “legislating from the bench.”

He wrote an entire book smacking down Chief Justice John Marshall, who followed Alexander Hamilton’s playbook to twist the necessary and proper clause into a blank check to justify creating a national bank.

Taylor saw exactly where this was heading. Judges rewriting the Constitution to create unlimited federal power.

CONSTRUCTION

In 1819, the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in McCulloch v Maryland. On the surface, it was about whether states could tax a bank. But John Taylor saw the con underneath. The Court had justified a national bank using powers the Constitution never delegated.

Taylor responded by publishing one of the most important and most forgotten books of the era: Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated.

“That gigantick institution, the Bank of the United States… has been justified by the supreme court of the United States, on principles so bold and alarming, that no man who loves the constitution can fold his arms in apathy upon the subject.”

Taylor understood that once you break the limits of the Constitution to justify one thing, you’ve broken the entire system. He saw what was coming: a thousand more unconstitutional acts.

“Those principles, so boldly uttered from the highest judicial tribunal in the United States, are calculated to give the tone to an acquiescent people, to change the whole face of our government, and to generate a thousand measures, which the framers of the constitution never anticipated.”

For Taylor, “construction” meant constitutional interpretation. But not all interpretation is created equal. He saw two completely different approaches to reading the Constitution. One approach is honest. The other is designed to destroy constitutional limits.

“There are two kinds of construction; one calculated to maintain, the other to corrupt or destroy the principles upon which governments are established.”

Here’s how you tell the difference: common sense versus academic word games.

“one visible to common sense, the other consisting of filaments so slender, as not to be seen except through some magnifying glass; one which addresses the understanding, the other which addresses prejudice or self-interest”

THE WORD GAME

To understand the construction Taylor was warning about, we need to go back to 1791. Alexander Hamilton needed to justify a national bank. The problem? No delegated power for it in the Constitution.

Hamilton’s solution? Redefine the English language. He argued that “necessary” doesn’t actually mean necessary. It means something completely different: “convenient.”

“necessary often means no more than needful, requisite, incidental, useful, or conducive to. It is a common mode of expression to say, that it is necessary for a government or a person to do this or that thing, when nothing more is intended or understood, than that the interests of the government or person require, or will be promoted, by the doing of this or that thing.”

But Thomas Jefferson rejected the notion that convenience trumps constitutional limits.

“It has been much urged that a bank will give great facility, or convenience in the collection of taxes. Suppose this were true: yet the constitution allows only the means which are ‘necessary’ not those which are merely ‘convenient’ for effecting the enumerated powers.”

Jefferson saw exactly where Hamilton’s word game would lead: unlimited power.

“If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non – enumerated power, it will go to every one, for these is no one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience, in some way or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one phrase as before observed.”

THE ESCALATION

Fast forward to 1819. In McCulloch v Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall ignored Jefferson, along with both James Madison and Edmunad Randolph who also issued similar warnings.

Instead, he adopted Hamilton’s definition of necessary as convenient. In some places, he copied Hamilton almost word for word. Here’s the moment where he redefined necessary.

“we find that it frequently imports no more than that one thing is convenient, or useful, or essential to another.”

That brings us back to John Taylor. He saw exactly what Marshall had pulled off, and the Chief Justice didn’t even try to hide it: He just swapped out the Constitution’s words for his own.

“But this interpolation of the words, ‘convenient, useful and essential,’ into the constitution, is in my view not even a plausible argument. It is merely a tautology of the phrase ‘necessary and proper,’ but excluding the restriction attached to the latter.”

Like Jefferson before him, Taylor saw the danger: once you accept this word game as constitutional, you’ve destroyed all constitutional limits.

“In short, if the argument of convenience be sufficient to establish the constitutionality of the law in the case of the banks, every power whatsoever, delegated to congress, may reward its coadjutors with exclusive privileges, and embrace within its means, monopolies of every description.”

Here’s what made Taylor’s warning so devastating. This wasn’t some new legal theory the Court invented. It was the exact same trick the British used against the American colonies.

“Previously to our revolutionary war, the colonies had been thoroughly lectured upon the subjects of sovereignty, supremacy, and a division of powers. The English parliament contended, that its sovereignty or supremacy included all means necessary or convenient, in its own opinion, to effect its ends.”

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM

The founders rejected this. In the American constitutions, no government is sovereign, and, as Taylor emphasized, the word isn’t even used.

“Neither the declaration of independence, nor the federal constitution, nor the constitution of any single state, uses this equivocal and illimitable word.”

They didn’t just avoid the term. They rejected the entire concept of government sovereignty – unlimited power – and instead built a system of limited, delegated powers.

“In none, is there the least intimation of a sovereign power; and in all, conventional powers are divided, limited and restrained.”

Taylor understood exactly why the framers were careful to avoid using the word. You cannot give servants final authority over their masters. Otherwise, they’re not servants at all.

“The language of all these sacred, civil authorities, is carefully chastened of a word, at discord with their purpose of imposing restrictions upon governments, by the natural right of mankind to establish societies for themselves.”

To Taylor, government claiming sovereignty over the people of the states was just as absurd as claiming sovereignty over foreign nations.

“It could not be correctly used as a vehicle of power, either external or internal. The idea of investing servants with sovereignty, and that of investing ourselves with a sovereignty over other nations, were equally preposterous.”

MARSHALL’S MOVE

What did John Marshall do with this foundation? He ignored it completely. In McCulloch:

“The creation of a corporation, it is said, appertains to sovereignty. This is admitted. But to what portion of sovereignty does it appertain? Does it belong to one more than to another?”

Marshall then smuggled in the word the framers had rejected.

“In America, the powers of sovereignty are divided between the Government of the Union and those of the States. They are each sovereign with respect to the objects committed to it, and neither sovereign with respect to the objects committed to the other.”

Taylor saw the trap: if the federal government has even a portion of sovereignty, then the people of the several states don’t have it.

“By contending that the federal government, created in virtue of their retained and inherent sovereignty, has acquired any species of sovereignty, it as clearly asserts, that they do lose it. By asserting, that our political spheres are limited by their constitutional spheres of action, it admits, that they are not invested with sovereignty. By investing them with the right of creating corporations, as resulting from the power appertaining to sovereignty, it declares that they are.”

Taylor caught Marshall in a basic logical error. You can’t divide final authority, there can only be one.

“Sovereignty implies superiority and subordination.”

Because of that, the term the framers explicitly excluded from the Constitution can’t be shoehorned into its interpretation.

“The word being rejected by our constitutions, cannot be correctly adopted for their construction; because, if this unanimous rejection arose from its unfitness for their design of defining and limiting powers, its interpolation by construction for the purpose of extending these same powers, would be an evident inconsistency.”

The framers weren’t just being academic. They understood this one word – sovereignty – was poison to the Constitution.

“Our constitutions, therefore, wisely rejected this indefinite word as a traitor of civil rights, and endeavored to kill it dead by specifications and restrictions of power.”

THE WEAPON

As Taylor explained, they learned this firsthand. Even good guys will become tyrants when you give them sovereign, or unlimited, power.

“By our constitutions, we rejected the errors upon which our forefathers had been wrecked, and withheld from our governments the keys of temporal and eternal rights, by usurping which, their patriots had been converted into tyrants; and invested them only with powers to restrain internal wrongs, and to resist foreign hostility; without designing to establish a sovereign power of robbing one citizen to enrich another.”

That’s the whole point. Governments love broad and vague terms because they can use them as weapons to expand power.

“governments love obscurity better than specification. The unknown powers of sovereignty and supremacy may be relished, because they tickle the mind with hopes and fears.”

He understood the stakes. The word game isn’t a mistake. It’s a weapon. And if it works, the entire constitutional system is destroyed:

“No sphere has a power of doing what is good or bad, generally, but constitutionally only; and that if these principles can be overturned by an ingenious management of words, all our checks, balances, limitations and divisions of power, are good for nothing.”

Here’s exactly how it happens. Taylor saw the step-by-step process, and it starts with the same trick Hamilton and Marshall used.

“Usurpation begins with weaving a shroud for free principles by the woof and warp of little conveniences and pretended necessities, and ends by inflicting the slavish quietism of a perfect subordination.”

BECOMING THE BRITISH

Taylor front-loaded the warning. In his Preface – before a single page of argument – he told readers exactly where this ends. Once you let “convenience” become the standard for expanding federal power, there’s no stopping it.

“Thus, representative power may be made despotick; a co-ordinate sphere may be made supreme; convenience, like the waves produced by a pebble thrown on smooth water, may be made to undulate indefinitely.” 

As federal power continues to expand, its appetite for more turns to the states, and the courts erase the line in the sand between federal and state power, dangerously similar to the British system they once toiled under.

“a subordinate judicial power may start up into a dictator to the state governments; divisions and limitations of power may be confounded and abolished. And English follies are converted from objects of our abhorrence, into models for our imitation.”

The end result?

Taylor predicted this would convert a free republic – a union of states – into the consolidated system of tyranny the founders fought a long, bloody war to secede from.

“Under a reconciliation between republican and despotick principles, effected by the new idea of “sovereign servants,” our legislatures are converted into British parliaments, daily new-modelling the substance of our government, by bodies politick, exclusive privileges, pensions, bounties, and judicial acts, comprising an arbitrary power of dispensing wealth or poverty to individuals and combinations, at their pleasure.”

The post John Taylor’s Forgotten Warning about Judges Rewriting the Constitution. appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

January 8, 1790. George Washington walked into the Senate Chamber of Federal Hall in New York City and delivered his first annual message to a joint session of Congress. Today, we call it the State of the Union.

In his speech, Washington set the standard for how a president should act. From the clothes he wore to how he approached the separation of powers in the Constitution, to his support for an educated and armed people, ready to defend their own constitution and liberty.

Once you read just what he said and did, it’s pretty obvious this blueprint has been betrayed for a long, long time.

ANTI-SPECTACLE

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution mandates a simple, but important task for the President: reporting to Congress.

“He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

Washington treated it as duty, not theater. No applause lines. No guests. No pomp.

In his diary, he simply referred to it as “my speech.”

Washington didn’t just talk about American independence or how to preserve a free republic. He walked the walk, even in the clothes he wore.

He could have dressed like a general or an aristocrat. He chose neither. As the Virginia Herald reported, everything on him was American made.

“was dressed in a crow coloured suit of clothes, of American manufacture … This elegant fabric was from the manufactory in Hartford.”

Even the buttons, Washington noted, were 100% American-made.

He didn’t waste anyone’s time either. At 1,089 words, it remains the shortest State of the Union in history. But the impact was still massive.

UNION OF CONSENT

Washington kicked off his address by celebrating some good news.

“I embrace with great satisfaction the opportunity which now presents itself of congratulating you on the present favorable prospects of our public affairs.”

First on the list, after nearly 18 months as an independent republic, North Carolina had finally decided to join the union.

“The recent accession of the important state of North Carolina to the Constitution of the United States (of which official information has been received)”

As Dave Benner points out, during that time Washington didn’t act like a conqueror – at all.

“During this time, the United States did not attempt to use coercion against the state, view North Carolina’s status as an independent republic as a ‘rebellion,’ or raise an army to force its approval.”

This proves that the union was voluntary right from the start.

DEFENSE

After celebrating the good news, Washington moved to his top priorities. First on the list? What he called the common defense.

“Among the many interesting objects which will engage your attention that of providing for the common defense will merit particular regard. To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”

But Washington wasn’t giving us the modern take on defense. Instead, he understood that a truly free country required a heavily armed population.

“A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite”

Ten days later, Secretary of War Henry Knox spelled that plan out.

“An energetic national militia is to be regarded as the Capital security of a free republic; and not a standing army, forming a distinct class in the community.”

General Knox, like General Washington, wanted the people to be their own first line of defense. Because they – like almost the entire founding generation – understood that large, permanent standing armies are always a great danger to liberty.

And Knox grounded his position in natural rights.

“But whoever seriously and Candidly estimates the power of discipline and the tendency of military habits, will be Constrained to Confess, that whatever may be the efficacy of a standing army in war, it cannot in peace be considered as friendly to the rights of human nature.”

Back to the speech, and Washington wasn’t done. An armed people are essential to a free country, that much was already widely understood from the War for Independence. But that won’t last long if you give up your independence by relying on foreigners for the tools of defense.

“and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.”

WAR POWERS

Washington wasn’t speaking in theory. There were active hostilities on the frontier. But instead of deciding to take action on his own, he came to Congress with a status report.

“There was reason to hope that the pacific measures adopted with regard to certain hostile tribes of Indians would have relieved the inhabitants of our southern and western frontiers from their depredations”

He didn’t ask them to just take his word for it, either. He put the documented proof right on the table.

“but you will perceive from the information contained in the papers which I shall direct to be laid before you (comprehending a communication from the Commonwealth of Virginia)”

Despite all this, Washington didn’t move troops. He didn’t issue orders. He wasn’t even asking to act in response. In a show of constitutional restraint that would sound incredible to any modern observer, he was asking Congress for permission to merely prepare militarily, in case there arose a need to punish aggressors later.

“We ought to be prepared to afford protection to those parts of the Union, and, if necessary, to punish aggressors.”

THE MACHINERY

He continued his respect for the constitution’s separation of powers as he went on to ask Congress for the practical machinery of government – naturalization, currency, paying foreign diplomats, post roads, and the like.

Basic government functions, Washington checked those boxes quickly. But then he got to what really mattered for a free republic to survive.

“Nor am I less persuaded that you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature.”

Washington considered education not just the foundation of happiness, but essential to the system under the Constitution.

“Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours it is proportionably essential.”

His vision for education was explicitly about teaching people to understand their rights, recognize when government violates them, and take action to defend them.

“by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them”

Washington was calling for the people to be smart enough to stop the government if it got out of line. And to know the difference when it didn’t.

“uniting a speedy but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws.”

PUBLIC CREDIT

Washington opened his speech celebrating some wins – like North Carolina joining. But also the improved financial status of the union, which he referred to as “the rising credit and respectability of our country.”

He ended the speech by warning that public credit must be protected.

“I saw with peculiar pleasure at the close of the last session the resolution entered into by you expressive of your opinion that an adequate provision for the support of the public credit is a matter of high importance to the national honor and prosperity.”

Congress was already on record. Washington made sure they knew where he stood.

“In this sentiment I entirely concur.”

THE BLUEPRINT BETRAYED

This is the blueprint, the standard that President George Washington set for what a president looks like under the Constitution.

Washington didn’t act without Congress. He wouldn’t even prepare for military action without their say-so. He asked for basic government machinery, then immediately pivoted to what really mattered: an educated population capable of checking government power.

Every point in his 1,089-word address shows restraint. Constitutional restraint. The kind that treats the legislature as a co-equal branch, not a rubber stamp.

He celebrated a voluntary union, called for well-armed people instead of standing armies, and emphasized protecting public credit.

Compare that to any modern State of the Union. Compare it to any modern presidency.

Here’s how Washington ended his address:

“The welfare of our country is the great object to which our cares and efforts ought to be directed, and I shall derive great satisfaction from a cooperation with you in the pleasing though arduous task of insuring to our fellow citizens the blessings which they have a right to expect from a free, efficient, and equal government.”

The blessings of a free government.

The gap between Washington’s standard and today’s reality isn’t an accident. It’s not drift. It’s a complete betrayal of the blueprint he laid out on January 8, 1790.

The post First State of the Union: George Washington’s Blueprint Betrayed appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

This timeless lesson, along with many others drawn from his legendary Poor Richard’s Almanack, continues to inspire and guide us nearly three centuries after its first publication.

On Dec. 28, 1732, at just 27 years of age, Benjamin Franklin published the first edition of Poor Richard’s under the pseudonym Richard Saunders. Over the next 25 years, it became a cultural phenomenon, and it garnered him wealth and fame. It also helped solidify his image as a self-made man, a model of American ingenuity and perseverance, earning him the title “the first American.”

The Almanack was more than a calendar or weather guide – it was a treasure trove of moral lessons, proverbs, and practical advice. Some of Franklin’s aphorisms have become part of the fabric of American life, including:

• A penny saved is a penny earned
• Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

WISDOM FOR THE AGES

Franklin didn’t just write for entertainment. His Almanack was a vehicle to educate and inspire –  and he intentionally used his platform to teach timeless lessons to the “common people.”

“I consider’d it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books.”

It was filled with sharp observations on human nature and practical advice for life, many of which remain as relevant today as they were in the 18th century:

“Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.”

“The Wolf sheds his Coat once a Year, his Disposition never.”

“There’s none deceived but he that trusts.”

“The second Vice is Lying; the first is Running in Debt.”

Franklin also posed profound questions that cut to the heart of human ambition:

“Who is wise? He that learns from every One.
Who is powerful? He that governs his Passions.
Who is rich? He that is content.
Who is that? Nobody.”

These pithy reflections illustrate Franklin’s remarkable ability to distill complex truths into simple, memorable phrases.

Beyond daily advice, Poor Richard’s offered keen insights into the dangers of unchecked power – truths foundational to the Revolutionary American ideal of self-governance:

• “Distrust and caution are the parents of security”
• “There is no little enemy”
• “Anoint a villain and he’ll stab you, stab him and he’ll anoint you.”

THE HUMBLE ORIGINS OF A LEGEND

The Almanack’s first edition, introduced on Dec. 28, 1732, in the Pennsylvania Gazette, showcased Franklin’s wit and charm. With tongue-in-cheek humor, he described his reasons for writing it.

“I might in this place attempt to gain thy Favour, by declaring that I write Almanacks with no other View than that of the publick Good; but in this I should not be sincere… I am excessive poor, and my Wife, good Woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud.”

Franklin even teased readers by predicting the death of a rival almanac publisher, Titan Leeds, displaying his penchant for playful competition and marketing genius.

His choice of the pseudonym Richard Saunders and the title Poor Richard’s Almanack were strokes of marketing brilliance. The name was borrowed from Poor Robin’s Almanack, a long-standing and very popular British publication, which evoked an everyman appeal.

This humble, relatable persona contrasted with the sharp satire of other writers like Jonathan Swift. Richard Saunders was a philomath (lover of learning) with an approachable tone, offering wisdom that appealed to both farmers and philosophers.

Over time, Poor Richard’s Almanack became a staple of colonial life, selling 10,000 copies annually – a staggering number for the era. Franklin noted its widespread influence:

“I endeavour’d to make it both entertaining and useful, and it accordingly came to be in such demand, that I reap’d considerable profit from it, vending annually near ten thousand”

Franklin filled the Almanack with proverbs on frugality, industry, and self-sufficiency, believing that financial independence fostered moral character. He observed:

“It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.”

This philosophy wasn’t just about wealth but about empowering individuals to build virtuous and self-reliant communities – a principle that resonates with those who value liberty today.

TIMELESS TRUTHS FOR THE NEW YEAR

The enduring popularity of Poor Richard’s Almanack lies in its universal wisdom, capturing both the humor and the hard truths of life:

“The greatest monarch on the proudest throne is oblig’d to sit upon his own arse.”

“Laws like to Cobwebs catch small Flies, Great one break thro’ before your eyes.

“Necessity never made a good bargain.”

“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

Franklin’s sayings remind us to temper ambition with humility, guard against the corruption of power, and take personal responsibility in all aspects of life.

Through wit, wisdom, and practicality, Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack became more than a book – it became a cultural institution. As we reflect on the close of another year, let us carry his lessons forward to the New Year:

• Strive for self-improvement.
• Pursue virtue.
• Be ever cautious with power
• Remain vigilant in the preservation of liberty.

And in the spirit of Poor Richard himself:

Reader, farewell, all Happiness attend thee:
May each New Year better and richer find thee.

As the new year begins, Franklin’s words challenge us to not just reflect but to act – pursuing virtue, fostering peace, and striving to improve ourselves year after year.

The post Be at War with Your Vices: Benjamin Franklin’s New Year’s Challenge appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Thomas Jefferson warned that just one solitary act lays the foundation for unlimited power.

Consider the road to 1776. It wasn’t about a tiny tax on tea; it was about the claimed authority to levy it. From the Revolution back to ancient Greece, the Founders knew the score: once government seizes power, it keeps growing and it never gives it back.

THE PRINCIPLE, NOT THE PRICE

John Adams described this relentless expansion of power as a deadly disease.

“The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour.”

In late 1774, 19-year-old Alexander Hamilton cut through the noise to the only question that mattered.

“What then is the subject of our controversy with the mother country?”

He attacked the motives of those trying to fool the public into thinking this was a dispute over pocket change.

“What can actuate those men, who labour to delude any of us into an opinion, that the object of contention between the parent state and the colonies is only three pence duty upon tea?”

Focusing on the cost was absurd – a trap. The real battle was against a government claiming the power to do whatever it wanted.

“The parliament claims a right to tax us in all cases whatsoever: Its late acts are in virtue of that claim. How ridiculous then is it to affirm, that we are quarrelling for the trifling sum of three pence a pound on tea; when it is evidently the principle against which we contend.”

Decades later, James Madison traced American Independence back to that specific wisdom. The people spotted the massive danger hidden inside that tiny tax.

“The people of the U. S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent.”

Madison insisted we apply that same wisdom to spot the evil lurking behind even the most innocuous government acts. And he invoked an ancient warning that went back thousands of years.

“Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching agst. every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings. Obsta principiis.”

THE ANCIENT WISDOM

Madison was quoting a maxim from Roman poet Ovid: Stop the disease at the start. If you wait, even if you find a cure, it might be too late.

“Principiis obsta; sero medicina paratur, Cum mala per longas convaluere moras.” 

“Resist beginnings; too late is the medicine prepared, when the disease has gained strength by long delay.”

James Otis Jr. made this the primary directive of the American Revolution. You cannot wait for the fire to spread. You must stomp out the spark the moment it appears.

“It is my countrymen of the utmost consequence that we boldly oppose the least infraction of our charter, and rights as men. Obsta Principiis is a maxim never to be forgot: If we do not resist at the first attack, it may soon be too late.”

Jonathan Mayhew brought this maxim to the pulpit in his famous sermon, The Snare Broken. He warned that you cannot maintain freedom on autopilot. You must block the first move, or eventually it’ll be game over.

“For those who would preserve and perpetuate their liberties, to guard them with a wakeful attention; and in all righteous, just and prudent ways, to oppose the first encroachments on them. ‘Obsta principiis.’ After a while it will be too late.”

He cited the well-known biblical parable of the wheat and the tares to warn that apathy creates a permanent trap. The corruption becomes so entangled with the system that you cannot extract the poison without killing the patient.

“For in the states and kingdoms of this world, it happens as it does in the field or church, according to the well-known parable, to this purpose; That while men sleep, then the enemy cometh and soweth tares, which cannot be rooted out again till the end of the world, without rooting out the wheat with them.”

THE PATH TO RUIN

To the Founders, this wasn’t just a Latin slogan. It was a history lesson written in the wreckage of nations. John Dickinson pointed to a well-known example from Spain.

“Spain was once free. Their cortes resembled our parliaments. No money could be raised on the subject, without their consent. One of their Kings having received a grant from them, to maintain a war against the Moors, desired, that if the sum which they had given, should not be sufficient, he might be allowed, for that emergency only, to raise more money without assembling the Cortes.”

The good guys fought against it – but they lost. And that single step – the precedent – is what set the stage for unlimited power in the future.

“The request was violently opposed by the best and wisest men in the assembly. It was, however, complied with by the votes of a majority; and this single concession was a PRECEDENT for other concessions of the like kind, until at last the crown obtained a general power of raising money, in cases of necessity.”

They never recovered from that fatal mistake. One single step in an “emergency” and freedom was permanently destroyed.

“From that period the Cortes ceased to be useful – the people ceased to be free.”

Samuel Adams identified the same pattern in France. The “fatal moment” came in 1439.

“France afterwards fell into the same snare.”

In Cato’s Letters, Thomas Gordon showed how France replicated Spain’s mistake. King Charles VII asked the legislature, the Estates General, for emergency power to unilaterally fund a standing army for war against the British. They granted it, believing it was temporary. But as Gordon documented, once government could define “great necessity,” every subsequent problem became one.

“I have read somewhere, of the States of a country, who having wildly granted to their prince a power of raising money by his own authority, in cases of great necessity; every case, ever afterwards, was a case of great necessity; and his necessities multiplied so fast, that the whole wealth of the country was swallowed up to supply them.”

Samuel Adams traced how quickly things progressed across generations. Charles VII started with modest sums. His son Louis XI tripled the revenue. Their successors kept expanding the tax burden until they confiscated everything.

“Charles the seventh, who began them, never rais’d annually more than one hundred and eighty thousand Pounds. His Son Lewis the eleventh almost trebled the Revenue; and since then, all that the Kingdom and People had, even to their Skins, has hardly been thought sufficient for their Kings.”

James Lovell found the pattern running back to ancient Athens in his 1771 Massacre Day oration.

“Athens once was free; a citizen, a favorite of the people, by an artful story gained a trifling guard of fifty men; ambition taught him ways to enlarge that number; he destroyed the commonwealth and made himself the tyrant of the Athenians.”

Pisistratus was the tyrant Lovell referenced. David Hume documented the specific deception: he inflicted wounds on his own body, blamed his political enemies for the attack, and used the manufactured threat to justify a new armed guard.

“Pisistratus, the Athenian, who cut and wounded his own body; and making the people believe, that his enemies had committed the violence, obtained a guard for his person.”

As Thomas Gordon detailed, it started with a seemingly pathetic force: just fifty men, armed only with wooden clubs. And that single step was the foundation for total tyranny.

“Pisistratus, having procured from the city of Athens fifty fellows armed only with cudgels, for the security of his person from false and lying dangers, improved them into an army, and by it enslaved that free state.”

These aren’t random tragedies separated by centuries. They’re the same story repeating. Because, as Dickinson explained, power operates on one iron principle. What they take – they never give back.

“Power is of a tenacious nature: What it seizes it will retain.”

THE RIGHT TO RECLAIM

Knowing this history, it’s easy to understand why George Washington called unconstitutional power a weapon that destroys freedom in the long run – even if you like the short-term results.

“Let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”

That brings us full circle back to Thomas Jefferson. He understood that even one small step beyond the limits of the constitution? That’s the foundation for unlimited power.

“To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”

Obviously that’s the bad news, since that first step was taken a long, long time ago. But here’s the good news from St. George Tucker. It’s never truly game over.

“The acquiescence of the people of a state under any usurped authority for any length of time, can never deprive them of the right of resuming the sovereign power into their own hands, whenever they think fit, or are able to do so, since that right is perfectly unalienable.”

Ultimately, these warnings about a single step might be the most important constitutional lesson there is. The founders saw, as James Madison described, “the magnitude of the evil” in the smallest of precedents. And when they exercised their right to “alter or abolish,” they won independence by doing exactly what Tucker described.

The post A Single Step: The Ancient Wisdom that Won American Independence appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

As if cut from today’s headlines, patriot farmers and small ranchers in North and South Carolina led a rebellion against armed government officials trying to exercise control over western lands. History has dubbed the uprising the War of the Regulation, the final battle of which happened on May 16 in 1771.

The West in this case, of course, was not Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, but the rural counties of the Carolina backcountry.

Historian James Whittenburg described the events as “the last and greatest of the social upheavals” that led to the War for Independence.

As economic depression and extreme drought threatened to destroy the livelihood of the small farmers and ranchers that called western Carolina home, colonial bureaucrats appointed by the royal governor were financing the plans of wealthy merchants and lawyers to buy out the land owned by impoverished Scots-Irish settlers who were on the brink of bankruptcy.

A central part of the scheme was one that the farmers found most reprehensible and worthy of revolt. Knowing that the rural ranchers and planters were in dire economic need as a result of the drought and the depression, government-backed newcomers were offering pennies on the dollar for the formerly fertile farmlands. This would give the government monopoly control over valuable tracts of land, forcing independent-minded, strong-willed settlers into towns and away from the desirable acreage.

When the resentful farmers tried to stop the seizures in court, the lawyers used their superior legal knowledge to support their plan, increasing the frustration and firing up the tempers of the residents.

Deciding they had suffered long enough at the hands of a government that was not only deaf to their demands, but “cruel, arbitrary, tyrannical, and corrupt,” the ranchers and farmers formed a group called the Regulators.

The main goal of the Regulators was to replace corrupt officials with those who would end the overreach and reduce the tax burden that was crushing their efforts to regain a fiscal toehold over their land. The loyal colonial representatives of the crown were determined to flood the area with their cronies in a “perennial pursuit of gain.”

Eventually, the government responded to the revolt, sending the militia to crush the uprising and hang the leaders.

Small skirmishes began breaking out in the western counties of North Carolina as the landowners began blocking access to the land by surveyors the royal governor had sent to divide up the land into tracts he could control and sell.

These confrontations culminated in the only full-scale battle of the War of the Regulation: the Battle of Alamance (battleground historic site shown) on May 16, 1771.

With a force numbering just over 1,000 troops, the royal governor, William Tryon, arrived in the area on May 9, about the same time as a smaller contingent of colonial soldiers commanded by General Hugh Waddell. Upon arriving at the flashpoint of the fighting, Tryon and Waddell realized they were outnumbered by the patriot force and they retreated.

On May 14, the men and officers of the colonial army set up camp in Alamance and a platoon was sent to find the Regulator location.

What they found was a unit of at least 2,000 Regulators encamped about 10 miles away. The band was without a clear leader and was poorly provisioned — not much of a challenge to the colonial army.

After a Regulator squad captured a couple of the royal governor’s soldiers, Governor Tryon ordered the Regulators to stand down or they would be punished as traitors and rebels. The Regulators would not surrender, believing themselves to be justified in their armed defense of their lands, their families, and their way of life.

On May 16, Tryon himself shot the Regulator leader, Robert Thompson. The battle commenced, but ended relatively quickly after each side suffered less than a dozen casualties.

The government forces captured the Regulators and demanded they swear an oath of allegiance to the king of Great Britain and to the governor he had appointed. Seven of these planter patriots refused to take the oath and they were summarily executed for treason.

Among the obvious comparisons, there is one aspect of the Regulator War that is remarkable for its similarity to our own situation.

Edmund Fanning was “the man most detested by the Regulators.” Relying on his ties to the “eastern oligarchy,” Fanning became the most powerful government official in western North Carolina. Securing help from the royal governor to acquire political position, Fanning began straight away manipulating these connections and exercising despotic rule over the residents of the rural counties over which he was placed.

Historians record that it was Fanning’s “haughty, despotic, and tyrannical spirit” that made him the center of the Regulator insurrection.

Academics are not alone in this assessment, however. In 1765, an anonymous Regulator from Orange County, North Carolina, wrote the following poem about Fanning and the reason for the fierce anger he stoked among the backcountry ranchers and farmers:

When Fanning was first to Orange came

He looked both pale and wan,

An old patched coat upon his back,

An old mare he rode on.

Both man and mare want worth five pounds,

As I’ve been often told;

But by his civil robberies 

He’s laced his coat with gold.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is an excerpt of an article that was originally published at The New American. It is reposted here with permission from the author.

The post The Regulator War of 1771: A Forgotten Rebellion Against Corruption appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

It was birthed out of a brutal political battle between Federalists and Anti-Federalists over a question that nearly killed ratification: When the Constitution doesn’t mention a power, who gets to exercise it – the federal government or the people of the several states?

Federalists insisted a Bill of Rights was unnecessary, even dangerous. The Constitution, they argued, was already designed to limit federal power to those delegated, and nothing more. Anti-Federalists shot back with a dark reality: government always assumes it can do whatever you haven’t explicitly forbidden.

That fight got settled with a deal. And the deal’s centerpiece – the answer that saved ratification – was the Tenth Amendment. Understanding this forgotten debate reveals how the entire Constitution was designed to work.

INITIAL EFFORTS REJECTED

During the Philadelphia Convention on Sept. 12, 1787, George Mason proposed adding a declaration of rights to the Constitution, but his motion was overwhelmingly rejected. Only Massachusetts abstained from voting against it.

Just three days later, Edmund Randolph proposed a new approach: allow state conventions to submit amendments for consideration in another general convention.

“That amendments to the plan might be offered by the State Conventions, which should be submitted to and finally decided on by another general Convention.”

This motion was rejected as well. This time, unanimously. The framers didn’t even want to leave that door open.

After the Philadelphia Convention sent the proposed Constitution to the Confederation Congress, Anti-Federalists like Richard Henry Lee tried again. He wanted amendments attached before the states ever saw it. His argument: forcing an all-or-nothing choice was ridiculous.

“To insist that it should go as it is without amendments is like presenting a hungry man 50 dishes and insisting he should eat all or none.”

Despite Lee’s efforts, the plan was rejected. The Constitution was sent to the states without any amendments.

THE FEDERALIST ARGUMENT

During the ratification debates, Federalists such as James Wilson, Tench Coxe, and Alexander Hamilton made their case: listing specific rights was redundant, even dangerous. It would imply the government had powers beyond those delegated.

Wilson’s widely-read State House Yard Speech emphasized that the federal government could only exercise powers expressly delegated to it.

“Every thing which is not given, is reserved. This distinction being recognized, will furnish an answer to those who think the omission of a bill of rights, a defect in the proposed Constitution”

That summed up the entire Federalist argument. If powers not delegated are automatically reserved, then why waste ink declaring what the government can’t do?

“for it would have been superfluous and absurd to have stipulated with a federal body of our own creation, that we should enjoy those privileges, of which we are not divested either by the intention or the act, that has brought that body into existence.”

Tench Coxe pointed to the precedent of the Articles of Confederation. The Union’s first constitution didn’t have a bill of rights either, and the states already protected personal rights in their own state constitutions.

“The old federal Constitution contained many of the same things, which from error or disingenuousness are urged against the new one. Neither of them have a bill of rights, nor does either notice the liberty of the press, because they are already provided for by the State Constitutions; and relating only to personal rights, they could not be mentioned in a contract among sovereign states.”

Coxe drove the point home with an example: trial by jury. There was no power expressly delegated in the Constitution that would authorize the federal government to abolish it, so such a power didn’t exist.

“There is nothing in the new constitution to prevent a trial by jury.”

In Federalist 84, Hamilton warned that listing rights could imply that any unlisted rights were within the purview of federal power, a dangerous precedent.

“I go further and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted.”

To illustrate the problem, Hamilton pointed to freedom of the press. The Constitution never delegated any power over it, so why declare it off limits?

“For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?”

Hamilton’s bottom line: if the federal government can only exercise delegated powers, rights are already protected. Listing them is redundant because any power not delegated doesn’t exist in the first place.

“The Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, a bill of rights.”

ANTI-FEDERALIST REBUTTALS

However, Anti-Federalists weren’t convinced, not even close.

In the weeks following the Philadelphia Convention, George Mason’s objections were widely circulated. His first and foremost concern was “There is no Declaration of Rights.”

A week after James Wilson’s speech dismissing the need for a Bill of Rights, the Federal Farmer published his fourth essay. In it, he directly challenged the Federalist claim that it would be unnecessary under the Constitution’s system of delegated and reserved powers.

“It is said, that when the people make a constitution, and delegate powers, that all powers not delegated by them to those who govern, is reserved in the people”

But there was another interpretation entirely, Federal Farmer noted. Politicians adopt whichever view serves their goals.

“It is said, on the other hand, that the people, when they make a constitution, yield all power not expressly reserved to themselves. The truth is, in either case, it is mere matter of opinion, and men usually take either side of the argument, as will best answer their purposes.”

Federal Farmer’s central warning: governments expand their power wherever limits are unclear. Wise constitution-makers draw clear lines between powers delegated and powers reserved.

“But the general presumption being, that men who govern, will, in doubtful cases, construe laws and constitutions most favorably for increasing their own powers; all wise and prudent people, in forming constitutions, have drawn the line, and carefully described the powers parted with and the powers reserved.”

The Articles of Confederation provided the proof. Federal Farmer pointed to the critical difference. The Articles clearly drew this line in the sand. The new Constitution didn’t.

“And that the people, in the present case, have reserved in themselves, and in there state governments, every right and power not expressly given by the federal constitution to those who shall administer the national government.”

He was referencing Article II of the Articles, which explicitly reserved powers not delegated.

“Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”

Richard Henry Lee agreed with Alexander Hamilton on principle. A bill of rights could be unnecessary – but only with explicit limits. That, he noted, was the system under the Articles, where a bill of rights was “not necessary in the Confederation because it is expressly declared that no power should be exercised, but such as is expressly given.”

Clear language in the new Constitution about delegated and reserved powers so “no constructive power can be exercised,” Lee noted, was the fundamental principle at hand. He said preventing such misconstruction of power “is the great use of a bill of rights.”

In the Virginia Ratifying Convention, Patrick Henry argued that this federalist view of delegated and reserved powers was novel – because it had always been the other way around.

“I repeat, that all nations have adopted this construction – That all rights not expressly and unequivocally reserved to the people, are impliedly and incidentally relinquished to rulers; as necessarily inseparable from the delegated powers. It is so in Great-Britain: For every possible right which is not reserved to the people by some express provision or compact, is within the King’s prerogative.”

For Patrick Henry and many other Anti-Federalists, this new kind of system – without an express declaration – dangerously left the reservation of rights and powers to implication.

“If you intend to reserve your unalienable rights, you must have the most express stipulation. For if implication be allowed, you are ousted of those rights. If the people do not think it necessary to reserve them, they will be supposed to be given up.”

Henry then pointed to the Revolution as the ultimate example. Americans fighting the British demanded explicit reservations because they labored under the tyranny of arbitrary power.

“How were the Congressional rights defined when the people of America united by a confederacy to defend their liberties and rights against the tyrannical attempts of Great-Britain? The States were not then contented with implied reservation. No, Mr. Chairman. It was expressly declared in our Confederation that every right was retained by the States respectively, which was not given up to the Government of the United States.”

THE TENTH

For much of the ratification process, Federalists insisted that the Constitution be approved or rejected in its entirety, vehemently rejecting any suggestions for amendments. This stance quickly changed when it became clear that Massachusetts would likely vote against ratification.

A loss there – Federalists understood – would send them reeling in states where it was expected to be a very close call at best – like New York and Virginia.

The entire Constitution was close to failure.

That was when Federalists made a deal with two powerful, but mostly silent, likely opponents – John Hancock and Samuel Adams: Support the Constitution if the ratification included a number of recommended amendments.

On Feb. 6, they did just that, and the very first recommended amendment was a precursor to the 10th Amendment.

“First. That it be explicitly declared, that all powers not expressly delegated by the aforesaid Constitution are reserved to the several states, to be by them exercised.”

This language was crucial in addressing Anti-Federalist fears that the Constitution would lead to unchecked federal power.

South Carolina quickly followed their lead with a similar recommended amendment.

“This Convention doth also declare that no Section or paragraph of the said Constitution warrants a Construction that the states do not retain every power not expressly relinquished by them and vested in the General Government of the Union.”

On June 21, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify, making the Constitution official. Their first recommended amendment: the same precursor to the 10th from Massachusetts.

Virginia, and then New York followed, both with precursors to the 10th prominently included in their recommended amendments.

In the end, the debate over a bill of rights – and ratification itself – boiled down to an explicit line in the sand between delegated and reserved powers.

It’s no wonder that Thomas Jefferson, who repeatedly approved of “the plan of Massachusetts,” later called the 10th Amendment “the foundation of the Constitution.”

The post Bill of Rights: Born From the Fight Over Delegated and Reserved Powers appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

That, George Mason warned, is what the Constitution would produce. His objections to ratification became the foundation for some of the most influential Anti-Federalist arguments.

Born December 11, 1725, Mason was one of the most influential political thinkers and leaders of the American Revolution. It would be hard to exaggerate the impact of his Virginia Declaration of Rights, which served as the foundation for the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights – and other constitutional documents around the world.

But today, we are exploring his forgotten warnings about the Constitution during the ratification debates. They focus almost completely on his core fear that the new system would centralize power in a national government and destroy liberty.

Mason did not start as an opponent, but he grew sharply dissatisfied with the Convention’s direction, especially after the compromise to allow the international slave trade to continue. As the Convention neared its end, he famously declared that he would rather “chop off his right hand than put it to the Constitution as it now stands.” 

His public objections quickly became a rallying cry and a platform for critics of the Constitution, echoed throughout the ratification debates.

THE CORE WARNING: CONSOLIDATION

Mason’s primary objection? Consolidation – the fundamental shift from a union of sovereign states (a confederation) to a centralized national government. This, he warned, was a rejection of the principles of the American Revolution.

“The very idea of converting what was formerly a confederation, to a consolidated Government, is totally subversive of every principle which has hitherto governed us.”

He argued that the new system was built to enable this centralization, identifying two key mechanisms:

1. The General Welfare Clause

Mason argued that giving the federal government direct taxing power would guarantee the dreaded consolidation, turning the confederation into a “national government.” He warned that the taxing power was “calculated to annihilate totally the State Governments.”

Here, he was pointing to the general Welfare clause – Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, which delegates to Congress the power to “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

Mason held that this one clause was all that was needed to turn a confederation into a consolidated, national government.

“The assumption of this power of laying direct taxes, does of itself, entirely change the confederation of the States into one consolidated Government. This power being at discretion, unconfined, and without any kind of controul, must carry every thing before it.”

2. The Necessary and Proper Clause

Mason also warned that the Necessary and Proper Clause, combined with the general Welfare Clause, would hand the federal government vast, unchecked power.

Mason questioned whether any real safeguards existed: “Is there any thing in this Constitution which secures to the States the powers which are said to be retained? Will powers remain to the States which are not expressly guarded and reserved?”

Mason illustrated the danger with a concrete example – suppressing criticism of government through restrictions on the freedom of the press.

“Now suppose oppressions should arise under this Government, and any writer should dare to stand forth and expose to the community large, the abuses of those powers. Could not Congress, under the idea of providing for the general welfare, and under their own construction, say, that this was destroying the general peace, encouraging sedition, and poisoning the minds of the people? And could they not, in order to provide against this, lay a dangerous restriction on the press?”

THE FIX

To prevent this, Mason proposed a simple fix: “a clause in the Constitution with respect to all powers which are not granted, that they are retained by the States,” modeled after Article II of the Articles of Confederation.

“Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”

He warned that without such a safeguard, “the power of providing for the general welfare may be perverted to its destruction.”

THE MACHINERY OF CONSOLIDATION

Mason believed that the Constitution’s structural design in every branch of government was flawed in a way that would accelerate centralization and tyranny.

The following points were echoed by Anti-Federalists throughout the ratification fight:

• The Militia and Standing Army: Mason feared federal power over the militia would be used to “harass and abuse” citizens until they demanded a permanent standing army in its place, a system he “abominate[d] and detest[ed].”
• Executive Power: Without a Constitutional Council, the President would rely on “minions and favorites.” Mason saw the pardon power as an invitation to presidential corruption, warning it could be used to “screen from punishment those whom he had secretly instigated to commit the crime.”
• Congress: Mason objected that the House of Representatives offered just “the shadow only of representation.” He criticized the Senate’s structure, including long terms, lack of recall, and lack of rotation, along with its “other great powers” would allow them to accomplish “what usurpations they please upon the rights and liberties of the people.”
• Judiciary: Mason warned the proposed system was so extended as to “absorb and destroy the judiciaries of the several States.” Furthermore, he charged that the system would empower “the rich to oppress and ruin the poor,” and its structure would ensure a bias in favor of federal officials. Together, it would render “justice as unattainable.”
• The Federal District: Mason believed it would protect and encourage bad rulers, creating a cesspool of the worst political criminals. He warned that “this ten miles square” that would later become Washington D.C., “may set at defiance the laws of the surrounding States and may… become the sanctuary of the blackest crimes.”

THE ESSENTIAL QUESTION

Mason doubted that such a vast, consolidated republic could ever preserve liberty, arguing that history proved freedom could only survive in small, self-governing communities.

That brings us full circle to his sharpest final prediction, his most potent warning:

“This government will set out a moderate aristocracy: it is at present impossible to foresee whether it will, in its operation, produce a monarchy, or a corrupt, tyrannical aristocracy; it will most probably vibrate some years between the two, and then terminate in the one or the other.”

On his 300th birthday, perhaps it’s worth asking: was George Mason right?

The post Consolidation: George Mason’s Core Anti-Federalist Warning appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Decades before the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams understood the foundation of what became the American Revolution. It was a complete rejection of the ancient mode of humanity – allegiance to a person, or even a group of people.

But here’s the trick that’s been played for centuries: those in power flip the script. They make criminals out of anyone who stands on principle, and saints out of those who bow to tyranny.

Adams and the founders saw this scam clearly. They knew exactly how tyrants use language to enslave people, how they twist words like “loyalty” and “sedition” into weapons against liberty itself.

THE DEFINITION OF LOYALTY

Before we can define true loyalty, we have to start at the source of all political manipulation: Language. In 1748, a 26-year-old Samuel Adams opened his essay on Loyalty and Sedition by exposing how those in power had corrupted the language itself.

“Perhaps no Words have been more misunderstood or perverted, than the Words Loyalty and Sedition.”

To clear up any confusion, Adams gave us a proper definition of loyalty by tying it to the Constitution.

“The former I take to signify a firm and inviolable attachment to a legal Constitution.”

With moral duty as his foundation, Adams laid out exactly what this attachment requires: the people must know the Constitution thoroughly, defend it relentlessly, and be ready to support laws that preserve it.

“True Loyalty in the Sense just now Explain’d … includes in it a thorough Knowledge of our Constitution, its Inconveniences and Defects, as well as its real Advantages; a becoming Jealousy of our Immunities, and a steadfast Resolution to maintain them. A habitual Readiness to support and strengthen the Execution of those Laws which flow from the Constitution, and tend to preserve it.”

Adams drew this definition from other writers such as Thomas Gordon, whose Cato’s Letters had a huge influence on the founders and old revolutionaries. Gordon anchored loyalty to law and constitutional government.

“In an honest sense, indeed in common sense, it means no more than the squaring our actions by the rules of good laws, and an attachment to a constitution supported by such.”

For Adams, loyalty doesn’t exist in a government that doesn’t follow the constitution – one that wields arbitrary power.

“It cannot indeed subsist in an arbitrary Government, because it is founded in the Love and Possession of Liberty.”

THE DEFINITION OF SEDITION

Adams next turned to sedition, and he described it like a deadly disease.

“But Sedition is founded on the deprav’d and inordinate Passions of the Mind: It is a weak, feverish, sickly thing, a boisterous and unnatural Vigour, which cannot support it self long, and oftentimes destroys the unhappy Patient.”

With this as the foundation, Adams defined sedition as virtually anything aimed at destroying the constitution.

“the latter, all Tendencies, Machinations, and Attempts to overset a legal Constitution.”

Adams made the principle concrete. Restricting liberty and any power outside the constitution means you’re disloyal and verging on treason.

“But as the Love of Liberty is the very Soul of Loyalty, and the Lust of Preeminence and Money the Main Spring of Sedition, so all Attempts to curtail and destroy our Liberties, or to introduce selfish and arbitrary Measures, are equally a Deviation from true Loyalty, and an Approach to Sedition.”

THE REAL REBELS

Adams left no room for compromise. He didn’t limit disloyalty to those breaking the constitution. Merely suggesting violations of the constitution, or tolerating any such attempts, means you’re disloyal.

“Whosoever therefore insinuates Notions of Government contrary to the Constitution or in any degree winks at any Measures to suppress or even to weaken it is not a loyal Man.”

Adams went further. Those who actively work to defend and spread unconstitutional power are the worst offenders.

“He that leaves no Stone unturn’d to defend and propagate the Schemes of illegal Power, cannot be esteem’d a Loyal Man.”

Thomas Gordon gave us the hard truth. People who exercise power that violates the constitution? They’re not just misguided – they’re real insurrectionists.

“Every lawless prince is a rebel.”

Gordon didn’t just limit this to people in government. The people who obey a rebel are a rebel right along with him.

“To obey one who obeys no law, is a departure from all loyalty, and an outrage committed upon it; and that both he who commands, and he who obeys, are outlaws and disloyalists.”

THE TACTIC

There are always plenty of tools for tyrants, and they cheerlead everything their leader does. Gordon exposed this as a deliberate strategy used throughout history.

“Whoever is lawless, is disloyal; and to boast of loyalty to disloyalty, is strange nonsense; a paradox first invented by solemn and pernicious pedants, whose trade it is to pervert the use of words and the meaning of things, to abuse and confound the human understanding, and to mislead the world into misery and darkness.”

Samuel Adams understood the tactic: People who seek to expand and support unconstitutional power flip the meanings of words upside down.

“But we oftentimes perceive such Signification assum’d by those who find the wrong Use of these Words conducive to the Support and Increase of Power and Gain, that it is difficult to tell whether Loyalty be really commendable, or Sedition blameworthy.”

The result? As Gordon explained, the good guys are called the bad guys and vice versa.

“In short, that all the instruments and partners of his crying crimes are loyalists; and all who defend law, virtue, and mankind, against such monsters, are rebels, and assuredly damned, for preventing or resisting actions which deserve damnation.”

TRUE LOYALTY

Gordon understood this perversion of language as deliberate scam. They want to make loyalty all about the person with power. Support him – you’re great. But don’t oppose their leader.

“It is indeed a trick, more than a mistake; I mean of those who would assert or rather create a sort of loyalty to ministers, and make every thing which they do not like an offence against their master.”

Algernon Sidney understood the irony. The people demanding blind loyalty to one man? They not only turn him into a monster, they put him in danger too.

“Those who boast of their loyalty, and think they give testimonies of it, when they addict themselves to the will of one man, tho contrary to the law from whence that quality is derived, may consider, that by putting their masters upon illegal courses they certainly make them the worst of men, and bring them into danger of being also the most miserable.”

For Samuel Adams, it all came down to one key point. Loyalty to a person rather than to the constitution and liberty? He condemned that as a fatal error.

“It is a very great mistake to imagine that the Object of Loyalty is the Authority and Interest of one individual Man, however dignified by the Applause or enriched by the Success of Popular Actions.”

Twenty-seven years later, on July 6, 1775, this was no longer theory. Authored by Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson, the Second Continental Congress unanimously passed the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms with the same message. This was the American Revolution’s foundation: true loyalty belongs to liberty.

“Our Attachment to no Nation upon Earth should supplant our Attachment to Liberty.”

The founders understood what Americans have forgotten. Those who demand loyalty to people rather than principles aren’t patriots – they’re the enemies of the America the founders sacrificed so much to create.

The post True Loyalty vs Sedition and Treason appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

These are some of the questions the Supreme Court will address in two consolidated tariffs cases: Learning Resources, Inc v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections.

This essay unpacks the principal constitutional issues for you. It examines those issues through the lens of the Constitution’s original meaning, irrespective of any mistaken later interpretations.

When Are Tariffs Taxes?

Tariffs are financial impositions on imported items. The Constitution refers to them as “imposts.” That word, in turn, is part of the Constitution’s larger category of “duties.” (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1)

In the current litigation, both sides claim all tariffs are taxes or all tariffs are regulations of commerce. But from the standpoint of the Constitution, both sides are wrong.

Here’s the background:

Before and during the time the Constitution was adopted, governments employed tariffs for several reasons. Sometimes governments imposed them to raise revenue to fund the government. A tariff designed to raise money was considered a “tax.”

On other occasions, government imposed tariffs at rates so high that they effectively discouraged or banned imports of particular goods. The usual reason for this was to protect local producers or local shippers by pricing foreign goods out of the domestic market. Another reason was to prosecute a trade war against a foreign government. These “prohibitory tariffs” were not considered taxes but regulations of trade. Similarly, if the tariff produced some revenue, but the money was directed solely at funding inspection programs, the tariff was a regulation of trade.

The distinction between imposts for revenue (taxes) and imposts for regulating commerce is crucial for understanding the arguments the American colonists leveled against the British parliament before independence. Americans were willing to pay tariffs levied by parliament in order to regulate trade for the general welfare. But Americans were unwilling to pay tariffs for raising revenue. Because the colonists were not represented in parliament, any efforts by that assembly to raise revenue through tariffs was “taxation without representation.” Taxation without representation violated the sacred rights of all Englishmen not to be taxed without their consent.

The parties in the current litigation are not the first to question the viability of the “tax versus regulation” distinction. But there is no doubt most of the Founders accepted it. And, as we shall see, they wrote it into the Constitution.

A more difficult issue is the following: If the tariff significantly restricts trade but also raises some money, is it a tax or a trade regulation?

Fortunately, the Founders addressed this question. For example, in 1767-1768, John Dickinson penned a series of newspaper op-eds called “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.” Dickinson’s letters were celebrated and admired everywhere—except perhaps in the British ministry. The “Farmer Letters” made Dickinson an international celebrity. He subsequently served as one of the Constitution’s leading framers, and played a significant role in its final ratification.

Dickinson explained that a tariff was a tax only if levied “FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF RAISING A REVENUE” (his capitalization). Thus, a mixed-purpose tariff is a regulation of commerce, not a tax.

It is true that a tariff intended solely to raise money may have the incidental effect of reducing imports. But if that is not a legislative purpose, then the measure is a tax.

The Constitutional Plan

The Constitution assumes this tax versus regulation distinction. In the Taxation Clause, the Constitution grants Congress power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1). The phrase is somewhat repetitive, since duties and imposts may (or may not be) taxes, and excises always are. But the effect of the clause is to give Congress authority to adopt tariffs for the purpose of raising revenue.

Congress’s power to impose prohibitory tariffs, on the other hand, comes from the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). This provision permits Congress to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” including prohibitory or regulatory tariffs. (The frequent claim that the Commerce Clause granted only power to sweep away trade barriers is, therefore, incorrect.)

Article I, Section 9 also rests in part on the difference between tariffs-as-taxes and tariffs-as-regulations. Clause 5 reads, “No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.” This provision covers both those tariffs that qualify as taxes and those that do not, but still qualify as “duties.” Clause 6 adds, “No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another.” This provision covers tariffs of both kinds.

What About the Trump Tariffs?

The president has repeatedly said that his tariffs serve both to raise money and to regulate trade. And, as a factual matter, they do both raise money and regulate trade. Under John Dickinson’s formulation, therefore, they are regulations of foreign commerce rather than taxes.

But this doesn’t tell us whether the president may impose them. The Constitution says nothing about the president regulating “Commerce with foreign Nations.” That is the prerogative of Congress. Moreover, the Constitution specifies that only Congress holds “the legislative Power” (Article I, Section 1) and that only the president holds “the executive Power” (Article II, Section 1). Isn’t regulating trade a legislative rather than an executive function?

As a matter of fact, during the eighteenth century, in the British system the Crown (i.e., the chief executive) had theoretical authority to regulate trade. But in practice, this authority had been ceded to Parliament, and the Constitution accordingly lodged it in Congress rather than in the executive.

On the other hand, Founding-era legislatures did sometimes grant and define authority for the executive branch. For example, Congress might say that the president could impose or remove a prescribed tariff upon the occurrence of a particular event. We commonly think of this as “delegating” authority to the executive. But I think it is merely Congress defining the scope and conditions of a law, and therefore prescribing the content of the president’s “executive Power.”

As the source of his tariff authority, President Trump relies on two principal statutes. One is the National Emergencies Act of 1976. The other is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (“IEEPA”).

The National Emergencies Act permits the president to declare a national emergency simply by notifying Congress of his decision. The law originally provided that Congress could veto that decision, but the Supreme Court ruled that the congressional veto was unconstitutional. So now the president’s decision is final unless Congress adopts a law contradicting it and the president either signs the law or Congress overrides his veto.

The effect is to allow the president to declare emergencies almost at will.

Once the president has declared an emergency, Section 1701(b) of the IEEPA empowers him to “deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which [the] national emergency has been declared.” Then Section 1702 explains how he may “deal with” that threat. It states that the president may

“… regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit … transfer … transportation, importation of, or dealing in … any property in which any foreign country or national thereof has any interest by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States …”

If you had trouble reading that passage, it is because this language is the sort of gibberish for which modern Congresses have become infamous. For our purposes, the significant phrase is that the president may “regulate … importation.”

Accordingly, President Trump

1. Relied on the National Emergencies Act to declare emergencies by executive order, and then
2. imposed tariffs to “regulate importation” by executive order.

However, the Constitution, when read with its historical and legal background, makes it clear that Congress may not simply abdicate to the president its power to regulate commerce. But by the National Emergencies Act and the IEEPA, Congress seems to have done so. Those laws are only two examples of how Congress has unloaded massive areas of governance onto the executive branch.

Many scholars believe this wholesale transfer is unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court has given some support for that opinion. The court agrees that Congress may charge the executive with important responsibilities, but Congress must define them more precisely and more narrowly. If this view is correct (and I believe it is), then the Supreme Court should strike down the president’s tariffs—not so much because he has exceeded his constitutional power, but because Congress has done so by transferring congressional functions to him.

The Case in the Courts

The current Supreme Court has been willing to void state laws and federal regulations. It also has been willing to interpret federal laws and regulations narrowly. But it has been extraordinarily unwilling to void congressional laws on the grounds that they exceed Congress’s enumerated powers.

In continued defiance of the media’s efforts to label the court as “conservative,” the justices repeatedly have deferred to congressional pretensions to regulate everything and anything. A premier example is Obamacare. The Supreme Court went through judicial contortions to uphold this constitutionally-flawed statute not just once—but a second and a third time.

Litigants and jurists on the lower courts know that the Supreme Court is not prone to void federal laws. So those concerned about the excesses in the National Emergencies Act and the IEEPA have discussed other ways to approach the president’s tariffs. The U.S. Court of International Trade, for example, ruled that some tariffs were void—not because the statutes themselves were unconstitutional, but because the tariffs were unlimited rather than tied to any statutory criteria. The same bench held another group of tariffs void because they did not, as required by Section 1701(b) of the IEEPA, “deal with” the purported subject of the emergency declaration.

Other jurists propose applying the Supreme Court’s “major questions doctrine.” This doctrine says that when Congress delegates powers of “vast economic and political significance,” it must “speak clearly.” In other words, in doubtful cases, the courts should avoid interpreting a statute more widely than Congress intended.

The Supreme Court has used the major questions doctrine in several other high-profile cases. One was its decision striking down former President Biden’s order forcing more than 100 million people to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Another occasion was when the justices voided Biden’s effort to transfer billions of dollars in student debt to taxpayers. In neither case, the court ruled, did the statute “speak clearly” to give the president such enormous power.

But in this case, Trump seems to have interpreted the law better than Biden. The most natural reading of the National Emergencies Act does give the president authority to declare an emergency on almost any topic he chooses. The most natural reading of the IEEPA gives the president, once he has declared an emergency, seemingly-unlimited power to “regulate importation”—and thus to impose prohibitory tariffs.

So if it is a step too far to allow a single person to impose major tariffs whenever he wills it, then the fault is not primarily with Trump. The fault is primarily with Congress for passing unconstitutional statutes.

The Best Resolution

Whether or not you are a supporter of Trump, the fact remains that no one person should be entrusted with the vast powers that the National Emergencies Act and the IEEPA purport to give. The Supreme Court should muster some grit and rule that, by adopting these laws in their current form, Congress has exceeded its power.

Moreover, this is a good case for the court to declare a federal law unconstitutional. If the justices had struck down Obamacare (for example), they would be saying, “Congress has exceeded its constitutional authority; it has claimed the power to regulate in an area in which it has none.” But by voiding portions of the National Emergencies Act and the IEEPA, the justices would be saying only, “Congress, you have this power, but you must exercise it yourself—or at least define more clearly when the president can exercise it.”

Such a message respects, rather than confronts, congressional pretensions. 

This originally was a two part essay appearing in the Epoch Times on November 19 and November 20, 2025. It is republished here with the permission of the author.

The post The Constitution and the Trump Tariffs appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

John Dickinson, the “Penman of the American Revolution,” posed this timeless question in 1767.

His answer defied the modern narrative.

It’s not a system where you hope to find rulers who respect your constitution and liberty. That’s just luck. A population on its knees, begging for scraps.

In his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, Dickinson defined a true “land of the free.” In doing so, he exposed the trap governments use to establish tyranny, and the fatal error the people make that guarantees it.

ARTFUL RULERS

Why are so many people confused about the limits of the constitution? Government-run schools fail to properly teach them. And, as Dickinson noted, politicians have long-mastered the art of making tyranny look legal.

“All artful rulers, who strive to extend their power beyond its just limits, endeavor to give to their attempts as much semblance of legality as possible.”

He cited the Roman historian Tacitus to remind us that every time they get away with doing this, it sets the stage for more of the same.

“That which is now supported by examples, growing old, will become an example itself, and thus support fresh usurpations.”

As a student of history, Dickinson understood that if you trust these people and their claims of legality, you’ll eventually end up in chains.

“Indeed we ought firmly to believe, what is an undoubted truth, confirmed by the unhappy experience of many states heretofore free, that UNLESS THE MOST WATCHFUL ATTENTION BE EXERTED, A NEW SERVITUDE MAY BE SLIPPED UPON US, UNDER THE SANCTION OF USUAL AND RESPECTABLE TERMS.”

THE TRAP

Here’s how the system of tyranny works. Tolerate one abuse, and you’ve already lost. Because they’re coming back for more.

“When an act injurious to freedom has been once done, and the people bear it, the repetition of it is most likely to meet with submission.”

Simple psychology explains why this has happened all through history. Once people submit to the first attack, they rationalize the second.

“For as the mischief of the one was found to be tolerable, they will hope that of the second will prove so too; and they will not regard the infamy of the last, because they are stained with that of the first.”

Politicians know exactly what they are doing. They start small on purpose so people dismiss the danger. Discussing the Townshend duties, Dickinson identified this as the greatest danger.

“Some persons may think this act of no consequence, because the duties are so small. A fatal error. That is the very circumstance most alarming to me. For I am convinced, that the authors of this law would never have obtained an act to raise so trifling a sum as it must do, had they not intended by it to establish a precedent for future use.” [emphasis added]

That’s the trap. They trick people into conceding the power that never should have been used in the first place.

“To console ourselves with the smallness of the duties, is to walk deliberately into the snare that is set for us, praising the neatness of the workmanship.”

Even the smallest violation of the Constitution, a single step beyond its limits is the precedent for unlimited power. For Dickinson, this was an unauthorized tax of just a single penny.

“In short, if they have a right to levy a tax of one penny upon us, they have a right to levy a million upon us: For where does their right stop? At any given number of Pence, Shillings or Pounds? To attempt to limit their right, after granting it to exist at all, is as contrary to reason – as granting it to exist at all, is contrary to justice.”

People have been fooled by this trap all through history. Dickinson cited the Roman historian Sallust to warn that bad precedents have good beginnings.

“Indeed nations, in general, are not apt to think until they feel; and therefore nations in general have lost their liberty: For as violations of the rights of the governed, are commonly not only specious…”

Because the violations look harmless, the people get complacent and ignore them.

“…but small at the beginning, they spread over the multitude in such a manner, as to touch individuals but slightly. Thus they are disregarded.”

Citing a leading biography of Cicero, Dickinson left us with the harsh reality that the bad guys always put in more work than the good guys.

“The republic is attacked always with greater vigor, than it is defended.”

OPPOSE A DISEASE AT ITS BEGINNING

Dickinson repeatedly warned us that waiting to oppose violations of the constitution is a death sentence for liberty. A power grab that is possible, or even difficult to stop today becomes nearly impossible to stop over time..

“Are these men ignorant that usurpations, which might have been successfully opposed at first, acquire strength by continuance, and thus become irresistible?”

Citing Montesquieu, he reminded us that the pattern never changes. Complacency leads to tyranny every single time.

“Let us take care of our rights, and we therein take care of our prosperity. SLAVERY IS EVER PRECEDED BY SLEEP.”

Constant vigilance isn’t paranoia – it’s survival.

“A FREE people therefore can never be too quick in observing, nor too firm in opposing the beginnings of alteration either in form or reality, respecting institutions formed for their security.”

Dickinson closed each of his Letters with a Latin phrase. He signed off his ninth with a reminder that government by precedent is like a deadly disease. The most likely cure? Cut it out right at the start.

“Venienti occurrite morbo. Oppose a disease at its beginning.”

But even with success, the work for liberty never ends.

“A perpetual jealousy, respecting liberty, is absolutely requisite in all free states.”

THE FOUNDATION

Throughout his letters, Dickinson also emphasized the foundation of freedom: Property rights and consent. In short, if you don’t have the right to say “NO!,” you are not free.

“Let these truths be indelibly impressed on our minds – that we cannot be HAPPY, without being FREE – that we cannot be free, without being secure in our property – that we cannot be secure in our property, if, without our consent, others may, as by right, take it away.”

One question, he wrote, is all that’s needed to determine if your freedom is real.

“THE SINGLE QUESTION IS whether the parliament can legally take money out of our pockets, without our consent. If they can, our boasted liberty is but a sound and nothing else.”

Dickinson didn’t pull any punches. If government can take your property without your consent, you are in chains.

“Those who are taxed without their own consent, expressed by themselves or their representatives, are slaves. We are taxed without our own consent, expressed by ourselves or our representatives. We are therefore – SLAVES.”

LAND OF THE FREE

That returns us to Dickinson’s timeless question: “For WHO ARE A FREE PEOPLE?”

It’s not just about getting the right people in power and hoping they do the right thing.

“Not those, over whom government is reasonable and equitably exercised…”

Instead, it’s a people who live under a system where anytime government gets out of line and attempts to go beyond its constitutional limits, it gets slapped right back into place.

“…but those, who live under a government so constitutionally checked and controlled, that proper provision is made against its being otherwise exercised.”

Dickinson knew that getting from the largest government in history to a real “land of the free” wouldn’t be quick or easy. That’s why he signed off the first of his letters with a timeless strategy lesson:

“Concordia res parvae crescunt,” which translates to “Small things grow great by concord.”

In the end, the “Penman of the American Revolution” was right. Small things did grow great in the years leading up to and after 1776.

The post What Really Makes a “Land of the Free” appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

The Gift of Liberty. What the Founders Wanted Us to Know About Natural Rights

The Founders left us something extraordinary. Not just a country. Not just a Constitution. They handed down a complete understanding of natural rights and the law of nature – principles they considered self-evident truths that no government could legitimately abolish.

As the Declaration of Independence declares:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This wasn’t abstract philosophy. This was the bedrock foundation they built everything on.

Four years earlier, Samuel Adams articulated this principle in The Rights of the Colonists, asserting that “among the natural rights” of the people are life, liberty, and property, “together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.”

Adams described these “as evident branches of … the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.”

Natural law. Natural rights. The duty of self-preservation.

This was the gift. This was the inheritance. Understanding that your rights don’t come from government.

But the Founders understood something crucial: natural rights without the means to defend them are just words on paper.

Freedom and Independence

They knew an armed society was essential to preserving liberty – because they lived it firsthand.

George Washington, in his Sentiments on a Peace Establishment, emphasized that a well-armed and disciplined populace was critical to preserving “the happiness, dignity, and Independence” of the young union. His goal was to make it “universally reputable to bear arms.”

Washington knew freedom and independence only existed because the people were well-armed and willing to exercise those rights – even against the mighty British Empire.

As Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson put it in the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, passed unanimously by the Second Continental Congress, just over two months after Lexington and Concord and the shot heard ‘round the world:

“In our own native land, in defence of the freedom that is our birth-right, and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it; for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.”

First Line of Defense

The Founders understood that a well-armed people would continue to serve as the first line of defense in a free society. General Henry Knox, the first Secretary of War, recommended to Pres. Washington:

“An energetic national militia is to be regarded as the Capital security of a free republic; and not a standing army, forming a distinct class in the community.”

The militia wasn’t a select group but the entire populace. As George Mason famously declared, “I ask, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”

The Anti-Federalist writer Federal Farmer asserted, “A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves.”

Everyone Armed

Since the militia was considered the “capital security of a free republic,” and the militia consisted of “the whole people,” it’s no surprise that President Washington underscored this in his First Annual Address to Congress.

“A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined.”

Patrick Henry emphasized the same principle during the Virginia Ratifying Convention:

“The great object is that every man be armed.”

Federal Farmer echoed this sentiment, writing:

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them”

St. George Tucker warned that governments often have different goals:

“This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. … The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible.”

And Tucker identified the one-two punch for tyranny:

“Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”

A Defense Against Tyranny

For the Founders, an armed society wasn’t just about defending against criminals or foreign invaders – it was also the ultimate defense against domestic tyranny.

Noah Webster captured this clearly: “before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed.”

Luther Martin explained that the militia served as “the only defence and protection which the States can have for the security of their rights against arbitrary encroachments of the general government.”

Writing in Federalist No. 46, James Madison argued that the natural right to bear arms, combined with the structure of federalism under the Constitution, created a powerful check against centralized power and tyranny.

“Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”

Taken together, the 2nd and 10th Amendments form a one-two punch in defense of liberty – a stark reminder of the Founders’ distrust of centralized power and standing armies.

A Forgotten Legacy

Mercy Otis Warren explained the foundation that so many have forgotten:

“Self-defense is a primary law of nature, which no subsequent law of society can abolish.”

But, as the old saying goes, “use ‘em or lose ‘em.”

The Founders understood that preserving liberty required an engaged and self-reliant populace, ready, willing and able to defend their rights against all threats. Madison, Mason, and others made this abundantly clear: a well-armed militia, made up of the whole people, is the cornerstone of a free society.

John Hancock hammered it home, reminding us that it’s up to us: “the powers reserved by the people render them secure.”

But here’s the hard truth: those reserved powers mean nothing if the people fail to use them.

Samuel Adams summed it up best – we can’t let up. Ever.

“Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance.”

Adams understood the cost of complacency. It dooms generations to come.

“Let us remember, that ‘if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.’ It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers in the event.”

We’ve all been given some incredible gifts – something to be thankful for every single day of the year. The gifts of natural rights from our Creator, the wisdom and principles of the Founders, and the tools to preserve freedom.

But this isn’t what the government-run “education” system teaches. At all.

That’s why we work so hard every single day to reach and teach more and more people about these essential foundational principles. And nothing helps us get that job done more than the financial faith and support of our members.

You can join us for as little as 2 bucks/month over at
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/members/

Brick-by-brick. Person-by-person. Building a strong foundation for liberty – whether the government happens to like it, or not.

(they definitely do not)

If you prefer a one-time donation, you can pitch in online at this link:
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/donate/

The post A Gift to be Thankful For: Our Natural Rights Foundation appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Benjamin Rush dropped that warning in 1778 at the height of the War for Independence. But he wasn’t talking about Redcoats. Recognizing the nature of power and humanity, he was giving us a timeless warning about “ourselves” and our own “great men.”

The Founders knew the score. History is littered with power-hungry rulers who use deception. They stage false flags. They manufacture crises or exploit real ones. The worst of them pretend to love liberty just to destroy it.

In the end, it all leads to tyranny, and the greatest threat is from within.

THE TRAP

The Founders understood that the story of the Trojan Horse was more than ancient mythology. It was a strategy for infiltration. They knew tyrants don’t need to burn a city down if they can trick the people into opening the gates themselves.

In his 1766 sermon celebrating the repeal of the Stamp Act, Reverend Jonathan Mayhew called the victory exactly what it was: a “snare broken.” Mayhew identified the Trojan Horse: The British sold the tax under the guise of security after the Seven Years War. But under the surface, it was a trick to fund a standing army and destroy liberty from within.

“And the golden temptation, it is said, took with too many, for while. A Pandora’s box, or Trojan horse, indeed!”

The previous year in his broadside urging noncompliance with the act, John Dickinson warned the people to not fall for the trap.

“If you quietly bend your Necks to that Yoke, you prove yourselves ready to receive any Bondage to which your Lords and Masters shall please to subject you.”

But even after repeal, Mayhew knew this single victory wasn’t the end of the story – not even close. He continued his sermon, quoting the desperate warning from the priest in Virgil’s ancient epic: Don’t let your guard down – it’s insanity to think they won’t come back for more.

“O wretched citizens, what so great a madness is this? Do you believe the enemies have gone away? Or do you think that any gifts of the Greeks lack treachery?”

THE FALSE FLAG

This strategy wasn’t new to Mayhew or the Revolutionaries. They knew history is filled with tyrants using these pretexts to seize power. Today, we call them false flags.

Machiavelli documented the master playbook. In 6th Century BC Athens, Pisistratus staged a fake attack on himself to justify a standing army and seize total power.

“As to the employment of deceit and cunning, I give the following instances. Pisistratus, after the victory which he had gained over the people of Megara, was greatly beloved by the people of Athens. One morning he went forth from his house wounded, and charged the nobility with having attacked him from jealousy, and demanded permission to keep a guard of armed followers for his protection, which was accorded him.”

In Cato’s Letters, Thomas Gordon explained that the fatal danger wasn’t the final army – it was the first step that this established: a tiny force of just 50 men armed only with wooden clubs.

“Pisistratus, having procured from the city of Athens fifty fellows armed only with cudgels, for the security of his person from false and lying dangers, improved them into an army, and by it enslaved that free state.”

Machiavelli knew it – one tiny step is all an ambitious tyrant needs.

“This first step enabled him easily to attain such power that he soon after made himself tyrant of Athens.”

THE FATAL PRECEDENT

It’s not just false flags.

In the early years of the American Revolution, John Dickinson gave a powerful example to show how rulers will also exploit a real crisis to establish a single precedent that will eventually destroy freedom.

“Spain was once free. Their cortes resembled our parliaments. No money could be raised on the subject, without their consent. One of their Kings having received a grant from them, to maintain a war against the Moors, desired, that if the sum which they had given, should not be sufficient, he might be allowed, for that emergency only, to raise more money without assembling the Cortes.”

The good guys fought against it – but they lost. And that loss became the template for unlimited power in the future.

“The request was violently opposed by the best and wisest men in the assembly. It was, however, complied with by the votes of a majority; and this single concession was a PRECEDENT for other concessions of the like kind, until at last the crown obtained a general power of raising money, in cases of necessity.”

They never recovered from that fatal mistake, and freedom was obliterated.

“From that period the Cortes ceased to be useful – the people ceased to be free.”

THE PROTECTION RACKET

The ancients knew this game well. Sometimes, all a tyrant needs to do is frighten the people.

Gordon told the story of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. 150 years after Pisistratus, he used the same strategy, but only through fear mongering.

“He told Them, (and this was Argument enough to gain their Belief) that he went in hourly Peril of his Life; and begged them to appoint him a Guard: They readily granted him what he wanted, and he readily took what they had thus helped him to; even the Prerogative of putting Chains upon them All.”

Like Pisistratus, he was also granted just a small force to start, 600 men. Being loyal only to him, this was quickly expanded and used to seize total control.

Being well-versed in this history, it’s no surprise James Madison understood that government will always use fear of foreign danger, real or fake, to attack freedom at home.

“Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions agst. danger real or pretended from abroad.”

ENGINEERED CHAOS

As John Trenchard wrote in Cato’s Letters, there’s also a domestic version of this ploy: manufacture a crisis at home.

“They will, by all practicable means of oppression, provoke the people to disaffection; and then make that disaffection an argument for new oppression, for not trusting them any further, and for keeping up troops; and, in fine, for depriving them of liberties and privileges, to which they are entitled by their birth, and the laws of their country.”

This isn’t theory. As Gordon documented, Nero, the most infamous tyrant in history, pioneered this tactic.

“Nero, who, disguised in the habit of a slave, went roaming about the streets, and scoured the public inns and stews, followed by a set of companions, who seized as prey whatever stood exposed to sale, and assaulted whomsoever they met; and all these violences were committed upon people so unapprized of the author, that he himself was once wounded, and bore the scar in his face.”

Once people learned it was Nero, there were copycats – and this led to widespread violence and disorder, so severe it was like the city was under siege.

“The name of Nero being once used to warrant licentiousness, was falsly assumed as a cloak by others, and many with their own separate gangs boldly practised the same excesses. So that such were the nightly combustions at Rome, as if the city had been stormed and the inhabitants taken captive.”

Nero then used these riots, which he started and provoked, as justification to expand military rule.

“These tumults went on, till the people being heated and rent into dissensions, and commotions still more terrible apprehended, no other remedy was found but that of driving the players out of Italy, and of recalling the soldiers to guard the theatre.”

THE FALSE SAVIOR

The lesson is clear: if it happened in Rome, it can happen anywhere. That’s exactly what the Anti-Federalist writer Cato warned us about in 1787.

“Americans are like other men in similar situations, when the manners and opinions of the community are changed by the causes I mentioned before, and your political compact explicit, your posterity will find that great power connected with ambition, luxury, and flattery, will as readily produce a Caesar, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian in America, as the same causes did in the Roman empire.”

That brings us to the most dangerous kind of Trojan Horse: the ruler who pretends to love liberty but destroys it once they get power. For that, we have Imperator Caesar Augustus. Gordon explained that at first, he made it look like he was on the side of the people and their liberty.

“Augustus paid great court to the people: the very Name that covered his Usurpation was a compliment to them: he affected to call it the Power of the Tribuneship, an Office first created purely for their protection, and as the strongest effort and barrier of popular Liberty.”

His tactics were masterful. First, he resigned the consulship, making it seem like he was returning power to the people. In exchange, the Senate gave him the power of the tribune, which the people understood as an office that fought against tyranny.

Then he used that power, under the guise of protecting national security, to seize total control.

“It was for their sake and security, he pretended to assume this power, though by it he acted as absolutely as if he had called it the Dictatorial power; such energy there is in words! The Office itself was erected as a bulwark against Tyranny; and by the name of it Tyranny is now supported.”

THE ENEMY WITHIN

The founders were very aware of their own 17th century Augustus: Oliver Cromwell.

He was supposed to be the champion of English liberty. But, as Gordon documented, he sold a military dictatorship to the people under the oldest trick in the book: protecting them from the opposing party.

“The Partizans of Oliver Cromwell, when he was meditating Tyranny over the Three Nations, gave out, that it was the only Expedient to ballance Factions, and to keep out Charles Stuart; and so they did worse Things to keep him out, than he could have done if they had let him in.”

That’s the ultimate lesson from history: the wolf always comes dressed as a sheep. Benjamin Rush knew this – even at the height of the war for Independence.

“Tyranny can now enter our country only in the shape of a whig. All our jealousy should be of ourselves. All our fears should be of our great men, whether in civil or military authority.”

The post Enemy Within: The Greatest Danger to Liberty appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Thomas Jefferson understood what most people ignore today: Freedom demands a price: knowledge.

Tyrants across history have weaponized ignorance for one reason: educated people argue. Ignorant people obey.

They play whack-a-mole with control: When one tactic fails, they switch to another. Ban knowledge, then deceive, then outright lie. That pattern leaves us with one choice today.

IGNORANCE IS A CAGE

You can’t claim rights you can’t recognize. Benjamin Rush nailed it: ignorance isn’t a gap, it’s a cage.

“Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights.”

Rush continued, noting that knowledge has to be widespread. When it’s hoarded by a few, this is freedom denied to the rest. Liberty can’t survive behind locked doors or under intellectual gatekeepers.

“Where learning is confined to a few people, liberty can be neither equal nor universal.”

Rush quoted Cesare Beccaria to expose what tyrants fear most: people who know too much.

“When the clouds of ignorance are dispelled by the radiance of knowledge, authority trembles.”

Every tyranny needs a foundation. St. George Tucker identified it: ignorance.

“The ignorance of the people is the footstool of despotism.”

Thomas Paine saw the pattern: ignorant people obey. They “trust the experts” who gladly tell them what to do.

“Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”

Ignorance this widespread isn’t accidental, it’s strategy. Samuel Adams called it what it is: a weapon to keep people blind.

“It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice.”

KNOWLEDGE BREEDS OPPOSITION

In the early 17th Century, Sir Francis Bacon exposed why tyrants hate real education. Knowledge breeds opposition to power.

“It introduces a relaxation in government, as every man is more ready to argue than obey.”

Bacon reached back to Plutarch for proof this fear is ancient. Cato the Elder saw a visiting Greek philosopher and panicked. Not a diplomat, a threat. He convinced the senate to expel him immediately.

“Whence Cato the censor—when Carneades came ambassador to Rome, and the young Romans, allured with his eloquence, flocked about him—gave counsel in open senate, to grant him his despatch immediately.”

Why? Cato’s fear wasn’t that Carneades was wrong – it was that he made people think. And thinking people just might not like their government.

“Lest he should infect the minds of the youth, and insensibly occasion an alteration in the State.”

THE MECHANISM: FEUDAL LAW

That was Ancient Rome. In 1765, John Adams wrote about what came after.

He examined over 1000 years of European history from the 5th century through the mid-16th century and identified how tyranny maintained itself across the continent through ignorance.

“They have accordingly laboured, in all ages, to wrest from the populace, as they are contemptuously called, the knowledge of their rights and wrongs, and the power to assert the former or redress the latter.”

The mechanism? Feudal law – which, as Adams pointed out – was implemented everywhere.

“Adopted by almost all the princes of Europe, and wrought into the constitutions of their government.”

The result? Controlled education: enough knowledge to be a useful servant, not enough to rebel.

“In this manner, the common people were held together, in herds and clans, in a state of servile dependance on their lords; bound, even by the tenure of their lands to follow them, whenever they commanded, to their wars; and in a state of total ignorance of every thing divine and human, excepting the use of arms, and the culture of their lands.”

But that kind of forced, widespread ignorance couldn’t last forever. As Adams pointed out, knowledge eventually spread.

“From the time of the reformation, to the first settlement of America, knowledge gradually spread in Europe, but especially in England; and in proportion as that increased and spread among the people, ecclesiastical and civil tyranny, which I use as synonimous expressions, for the cannon and feudal laws, seem to have lost their strength and weight.”

WHACK-A-MOLE

The more people learned, the more tyrants had to adapt. So, as John Locke pointed out, they shifted to a propaganda-style approach where they kept the truth hidden.

“Thus learned ignorance, and this art of keeping, even inquisitive men, from true knowledge, hath been propagated in the world, and hath much perplexed whilst it pretended to inform the understanding.”

And when all else fails? They’ll just lie.

John Dickinson saw this exact pattern at the height of the American Revolution.

“All artful rulers, who strive to extend their power beyond its just limits, endeavor to give to their attempts as much semblance of legality as possible.”

George Washington explained why the lies work: ignorance provides fertile soil for deception to grow.

“Ignorance & design, are difficult to combat. Out of these proceed illiberality, improper jealousies, and a train of evils which oftentimes, in republican governments, must be sorely felt before they can be removed. The former, that is ignorance, being a fit soil for the latter to work in.”

But that’s not the end of the story. Ignorance alone is deadly. Combined with cowardice, it’s fatal. As St. George Tucker pointed out, with that one-two punch, liberty doesn’t stand a chance.

“When ignorance is united with supineness, liberty becomes lethargic, and despotism erects her standard without opposition.”

THE REAL DISGRACE

Here’s the good news. Thomas Paine exposed their fatal weakness: they can never make us ignorant.

“Ignorance is of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.”

That means ignorance is ultimately a choice. The solution, however, isn’t a walk in the park.

Ignorance and obedience – those are easy. Knowledge and freedom? As Abigail Adams wrote, that takes work.

“Learning is not attained by chance; it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.”

Getting the job done won’t be quick and it won’t be easy. We’re all victims of a government-run “education” system. So there’s no shame in starting from scratch.

The real disgrace, as Benjamin Franklin put it, is choosing to stay there.

“Being ignorant is not so much a Shame, as being unwilling to learn.”

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Yes, there were paper bills and notes and other debt instruments issued by the federal government. And yes, oftentimes people would use them as a convenient way to pay for things. But everyone understood that these were nothing more than promises to pay money, not money themselves. The money that these debt instruments were promising to pay consisted of gold coins and silver coins, which, again, were the official money — or “legal tender”— of the American people for more than a century.

How did this gold-coin/silver-coin monetary system come into being? It came with the Constitution, the document that called the federal government into existence. The Constitution gave the federal government the power to coin money but not the power to print money. Everyone understood that coining money meant gold coins and silver coins.

At the same time, the Constitution expressly prohibited the states from making anything but gold coins and silver coins legal tender or official money. State banks would oftentimes issue bills and notes but, again, everyone understood that these were debt instruments that were promising to pay money — that is, promising to pay gold coins and silver coins.

Once the Constitution was ratified and the federal government came into existence, the federal government began issuing gold coins and silver coins. Those coins became the official money of the United States and continued being such for more than a century. The stability they afforded in terms of value was a major factor contributing to the enormous increase in the overall standard of living of the American people in the late 1800s.

Why did the Framers adopt a gold-coin, silver-coin standard and reject a paper-money standard? Because they knew that with a paper-money standard, federal officials would inevitably begin inflating the amount of paper money in circulation by simply using a printing press to print any amount of paper money they wanted, in order to pay for their ever-growing expenditures. The Framers knew that that is what regimes had done ever since Gutenberg invented the printing press.

While it was possible to debase the value of gold coins and silver coins by surreptitiously and fraudulently reducing their gold and silver content, that never happened with U.S. coins. America’s gold coins and silver coins were among the most honest and reputable coins in world history.

This remarkable constitutional monetary system came to an abrupt end in the 1930s. Using the Great Depression as an excuse, President Franklin Roosevelt decreed a permanent end to America’s gold-coin, silver-coin monetary system. He ordered that it be replaced with a paper-money system — the very system that the Framers and our American ancestors had rejected. FDR did this without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

Thus, for some 90 years, Americans have lived under the paper-money system that FDR established. When we examine what his paper-money system has done to the value of people’s money, we can understand why the Framers and our American ancestors were so ardently opposed to a paper-money system and why they chose instead a gold-coin/silver coin monetary system.

Take a look at this U.S.-issued gold coin. It is a $20 St. Gauden’s one-ounce gold coin. It was issued in 1907, when the United States still had its gold-coin/silver coin monetary system.

Take a look at the image of the $20 paper gold certificate beneath the coin. It’s looks very much like a $20 bill today, only notice that it promises to pay gold coin on demand to the bearer of the certificate. In other words, the holder of this $20 gold certificate could exchange his paper certificate any time he wanted by demanding that the federal government give him a $20 one-ounce gold coin (or 20 silver dollars).

Thus, the two items — the $20 gold coin and the $20 paper gold certificate were interchangeable in terms of value. If someone went into a store and was going to purchase something that cost twenty dollars, the store owner would be willing to receive in payment either the $20 gold coin or the $20 gold certificate.

After FDR placed the United States on a paper-money standard, the federal government no longer was bound to exchange its gold certificates — or, for that matter, its bills and notes — for gold coins. Americans were ordered to surrender their gold coins and their gold certificates to the federal government. They received $20 bills in exchange. Those $20 bills were  decreed to be the new official money in and of themselves. While they continued promising to pay money, the only thing the federal government would give people on demand was just paper money.

The federal government proceeded to do what the Framers said it would do if the Constitution had established a paper-money system. Decade after decade, the federal government printed ever-growing quantities of paper money, thereby enormously inflating the overall quantity of paper money in circulation.

Over time, increasing the supply of paper money naturally decreased its value. We can easily see the consequences of FDR’s paper-money system by comparing the value of a paper $20 bill today to the current value of a $20 St. Gauden’s one-ounce gold coin under the gold-coin/silver coin system.

Remember: Under the gold-coin, silver coin standard, a $20 St. Gauden’s gold coin and a $20 gold certificate (or a $20 bill) were interchangeable in terms of value. Not so today. Today, it takes about $4,300 to purchase a $20 St. Gauden’s gold coin. In other words, to purchase the St. Gauden’s $20 gold coin, a person needs to pay around 215 $20 bills rather than simply one $20 bill.

That means that if a family held onto a St. Gauden’s $20 gold coin, it could sell it today for more than $4,000 and then buy something that costs $4,000.

Here is an example of a $20 bill today. Notice that it still has the trappings of a promise to pay. It’s called a “Federal Reserve Note.” A note is a promise to pay. But notice something else: It doesn’t promise to pay anything. Instead, it decrees on its face that it — the paper note itself — is legal tender or official money.

Today, that $20 paper bill can be used to purchase a couple of packs of cigarettes. Today, that $20 St. Gauden’s gold coin can be used to purchase something that costs around $4,000 in paper money. In other words, if someone offered you a choice between a $20 bill and a $20 St. Gauden’s gold coin, which would you choose?

That’s what the federal government and the much-vaunted paper-money system that FDR foisted onto the American people have done to our money.

This article was originally published at the Future of Freedom Foundation and is republished here with permission.

The post What FDR Did to Our Money appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

That’s what George Mason predicted we’d get under the constitution. And he was far from alone.

The Anti-Federalists repeatedly warned that the constitution wouldn’t actually create a federal union. Instead, they argued, it would result in a consolidated national government. They pointed to specific parts of the document – what they considered weapons baked into the system – that would guarantee this outcome.

What follows are five of those weapons – including taxation – straight from Mason, Cato, Elbridge Gerry, the Pennsylvania Dissent, and Luther Martin.

THREE WORDS

The Pennsylvania Dissent started right at the top. The first three words of the preamble – “We the People.” This, they warned, proved the document was intentionally creating a consolidated national system instead of a federal union.

“In short, every species of consolidation pervades the whole constitution. It begins with an annunciation that such was the intention.” 

A union of states, they explained, is fundamentally different from a compact between all the people.

“The preamble begins with the words, “We the people of the United States,” which is the style of a compact between individuals entering into a state of society, and not that of a confederation of states.”

Cato also pointed to the preamble as proof the system wasn’t built for  federalism.

“The recital, or premises on which the new form of government is erected, declares a consolidation or union of all the thirteen parts, or states, into one great whole, under the firm of the United States, for all the various and important purposes therein set forth.”

Such a consolidation, as George Mason explained, would be a rejection of all the principles of the American Revolution and the Articles of Confederation.

“The very idea of converting what was formerly a confederation, to a consolidated Government, is totally subversive of every principle which has hitherto governed us.”

Elbridge Gerry took direct aim at the claim that the constitution took a middle ground – and would create a partly federal, partly national system.

“The constitution proposed has few if any federal features; but is rather a system of national government.”

Luther Martin explained the primary difference: A federal system is one of states, and that’s it.

“A federal government is formed by the States, as States, that is, in their sovereign capacities, in the same manner as treaties and alliances are formed.”

This was the biggest change from the system under the Articles of Confederation, and the Federalists weren’t hiding it. The Constitution was intentionally designed to empower the federal government to operate directly on individuals instead of using requisitions on the states.

As a result, the Pennsylvania Dissent warned this could only end in tyranny.

“An iron-handed despotism as nothing short of the supremacy of despotic sway could connect and govern these United States under one government.”

TAXATION

These Anti-Federalists didn’t just name the “dreaded consolidation” as the inevitable end result. They repeatedly pointed to the weapons they believed would guarantee it, starting with federal taxing power.

This was just the power to tax under the general Welfare clause, Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution, over a century before the 16th Amendment made federal taxing power much greater, and the results much worse.

“in short, every species of taxation, whether of an external or internal nature is comprised in section the 8th, of article the 1st, viz. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States.”

George Mason held that this one clause – on its own – was all that was needed to turn a confederation into a consolidated, national government.

“The assumption of this power of laying direct taxes, does of itself, entirely change the confederation of the States into one consolidated Government. This power being at discretion, unconfined, and without any kind of controul, must carry every thing before it.”

Luther Martin warned they’d use this power to squeeze the people dry, until not a drop was left.

“it will, by the imposition of the variety of taxes, imposts, stamps, excises, and other duties, squeeze from them the little money they may acquire, the hard earnings of their industry, as you would squeeze the juice from an orange, till not a drop more can be extracted”

With a brutal analogy, Elbridge Gerry added that this endless taxation would spell the end of liberty.

“the people will bleed with taxes at every pore, & that the existence of their liberties will soon be terminated.”

STANDING ARMIES

All that taxation would require enforcement, and the Pennsylvania Dissent warned this would create an excuse for a standing army – the bane of liberty.

“A standing army in the hands of a government placed so independent of the people, may be made a fatal instrument to overturn the public liberties; it may be employed to enforce the collection of the most oppressive taxes, and to carry into execution the most arbitrary measures. An ambitious man who may have the army at his devotion, may step up into the throne, and seize upon absolute power.”

George Mason predicted the power to establish a standing army would destroy the militia in practice and effect.

“There are various ways of destroying the militia. A standing army may be perpetually established in their stead. I abominate and detest the idea of a Government, where there is a standing army. The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practised in other parts of the world before.”

That meant disarming the people themselves.

“That is, by rendering them useless, by disarming them.”

JUDICIARY

Of course, some people just think that the courts will save us. The Anti-Federalists weren’t buying it. As Gerry explained, they predicted the federal judiciary would make things worse.

“The judicial department will be oppressive”

Article III, Section 1 delegated to Congress the power to establish inferior federal courts, while Article III, Section 2, Clause 2 allowed Congress to regulate the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction.

The Pennsylvania Dissent targeted this power to structure and regulate the federal judiciary. They predicted it would create a monster that turned every case into a federal case.

“The judicial powers vested in Congress are also so various and extensive, that by legal ingenuity they may be extended to every case, and thus absorb the state judiciaries”

Mason warned this would make justice expensive and nearly impossible for ordinary people to obtain.

“The Judiciary of the United States is so constructed & extended, as to absorb & destroy the Judiciarys of the several States; thereby rendering Law as tedious intricate & expensive, and Justice as unattainable, by a great Part of the Community, as in England, and enabling the Rich to oppress* & ruin the Poor.”

Like Mason did with taxation, the Pennsylvania dissenters warned that judicial power alone was enough to produce the dreaded consolidation.

“We do not hesitate to pronounce that this power, unaided by the legislative, would effect a consolidation of the states under one government.”

CONGRESS

The Anti-Federalists repeatedly warned the House of Representatives would have far too few members to actually represent the people. Cato’s warning about the corruption and treachery this would produce sounds prophetic.

“It is a very important objection to this government, that the representation consists of so few; too few to resist the influence of corruption, and the temptation to treachery, against which all governments ought to take precautions”

When it came to the Senate, the Pennsylvania dissent saw the same problem, only worse. At the time, just 25 or 26 men could make decisions for millions.

“The sense and views of 3 or 4 millions of people diffused over so extensive a territory, comprising such various climates, products, habits, interests, and opinions, can not be collected in so small a body.”

One of the leading Anti-Federalist themes was strict separation of powers, where legislative, executive, and judicial powers would be distinct. Elbridge Gerry pointed to the Senate and President as dangerously mixed.

“The executive is blended with, and will have an undue influence over, the legislature”

The Anti-Federalists hammered the Senate’s structure from every angle. Long six-year terms and no recall power, as George Mason predicted, would produce a national aristocracy rather than a branch that represented the states.

“Those Gentlemen who will be elected Senators will fix themselves in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of our State.”

Put it all together, and Cato saw where this would lead: Senate power would be impossible to resist.

“When the senate, so important a branch of the legislature, is so far removed from the people, as to have little or no connexion with them; when their duration in office is such as to have the resemblance to perpetuity, when they are connected with the executive, by the appointment of all officers, and also, to become a judiciary for the trial of officers of their own appointments: added to all this, when none but men of opulence will hold a seat, what is there left to resist and repel this host of influence and power?”

PRESIDENT

The Anti-Federalists believed the executive branch placed far too much control in the hands of a single individual. Luther Martin predicted this would become an elective monarchy – powers that “will enable him, when he pleases, to become a king in name, as well as in substance.”

The pardon power was of particular concern for George Mason. He saw it as an open invitation for crime and corruption.

“The President of the United States has the unrestrained Power of granting Pardons for Treason; which may be sometimes exercised to screen from Punishment those whom he had secretly instigated to commit the Crime, & thereby prevent a Discovery of his own Guilt.”

Cato’s chief target was the four-year presidential term. He argued this was far too long, and would give a president time to build a system of patronage and personal loyalty.

“the deposit of vast trusts in the hands of a single magistrate enables him in their exercise to create a numerous train of dependents.”

A four-year term doesn’t just enable corruption, it nurtures something more dangerous: unchecked presidential appetite for power.

“This tempts his ambition, which in a republican magistrate is also remarked, to be pernicious, and the duration of his office for any considerable time favors his views, gives him the means and time to perfect and execute his designs.”

As a result, you’d end up with a kind of royal court with almost unlimited power. And death to liberty.

“He therefore fancies that he may be great and glorious by oppressing his fellow citizens, and raising himself to permanent grandeur on the ruins of his country.”

END GAME

The Anti-Federalists saw each of these as a weapon for consolidation on its own. But tied together? Much worse, an impossible scenario for liberty to survive.

Cato emphasized how, even back then, the political, economic, and social views of the people were vastly different.

“whoever seriously considers the immense extent of territory comprehended within the limits of the United States, together with the variety of its climates, productions, and commerce, the difference of extent, and number of inhabitants in all; the dissimilitude of interest, morals, and politics, in almost every one”

Because of this, it would be impossible to achieve the promises of the preamble in such a system.

“will receive it as an intuitive truth, that a consolidated republican form of government therein, can never form a perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to you and your posterity”

Instead, we’d end up with competing interests fighting against each other for power and control.

“This unkindred legislature therefore, composed of interests opposite and dissimilar in their nature, will in its exercise, emphatically be like a house divided against itself.”

George Mason gave us the final diagnosis. We’d end up with one of two results. And either one would be a deadly disease for liberty.

“This Government will commence in a moderate Aristocracy; it is at prese[nt] impossible to foresee whether it will, in its operation, produce a Monarchy, or a corrupt oppressive Aristocracy; it will most probably vibrate some years between the two, and then terminate in the one or the other.”

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It was about tariffs.

This was, as James Madison called it, the subject of “the greatest magnitude” – demanding, he insisted, their first attention. Yet today, this foundational debate, and all its messy details, is almost completely forgotten.

REVENUE ALONE

The story begins in 1789. The Treasury was empty, and Madison’s immediate goal was simple: “revenue.” He proposed a national impost on a range of imported goods, stating that while commerce “ought to be as free as the policy of nations will admit,” the point of this first measure was “revenue alone.”

This wasn’t just some minor housekeeping item. The lack of such a Congressional power under the Articles of Confederation was a primary driver for those who wanted to scrap the system and write a new one with the Constitution.

Those who later became the Federalists had tried to implement a similar 5% impost in 1783. But it was dead in the water by 1786 because, under the Articles, any such plan required unanimous consent from all states – and the plan never got it.

This history is why the debate under the Constitution was so critical; for the first time, Congress finally had the power to act.

SPECIAL INTERESTS

But Madison’s simple “revenue” plan didn’t last long at all.

His revenue-focused bill was quickly hijacked by a Pennsylvania representative, Thomas Fitzsimmons, who derailed the plan by introducing a protectionist amendment to “encourage the productions of our country, and protect our infant manufactures.”

And just like that, America’s first economic debate exploded into a messy, multi-front clash – a regional brawl for special interests.

• New Englanders “declaimed loudly” against a proposed six-cents-per-gallon duty on molasses, which they denounced to the end as “ruinous to their rum distilleries and fisheries”
• Southerners, meanwhile, feared high duties on foreign ships would result in prohibitive freight rates
• Pennsylvanians urged protective duties on local manufactures, which representatives from other areas slammed as a tax on their agriculture

The only real common ground seemed to be a strong tendency for virtually everyone to rail on duties they didn’t like as “oppressive to the poor.”

South Carolina’s Thomas Tudor Tucker blasted the plan warning that tariffs would hit some states hard, while others would pocket the burden as a subsidy, what they called a “bounty.”

New York’s John Lawrence argued that the government shouldn’t interfere at all, stating that merchants “should be left to themselves, like the industrious bee, to gather from the choicest flower the greatest abundance of commercial sweets.”

Despite the regional and special interests clash, the bill was eventually passed through a spirit of mutual concession.”

And to prove just how high-priority this first debate was, on the symbolic date of July 4, 1789, George Washington signed the Tariff Act of 1789 into law. It was only the second act he signed as president.

THE DEBATE RAGES ON

But this compromise was not the end of the story. The debate immediately ramped up again.

In early 1790, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton presented his “Report on Public Credit,” which called for raising more money to deal with the war debt. This led directly to the Tariff Act of 1790, which increased the rates passed in 1789.

Only after that did Hamilton try to shift the entire purpose of the debate.

Through his 1791 “Report on Manufactures,” he made his goal clear: shift tariffs away from just raising money and toward “protecting duties.” He was intellectually honest enough to call this what it was: a “virtual bounty” on domestic products, or a subsidy by another name, to prop up his preferred industries.

On the other side, you had Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. While they opposed Hamilton’s subsidy plan, they had their own interventionist goals. They wanted to use tariffs as a foreign policy weapon.

Jefferson, in his 1793 “Report on Commerce,” argued that if a nation “imposes high Duties on our productions… it may be proper for us to do the same by theirs.”

This wasn’t just academic. By spring 1794, Britain had seized over 200 American ships, and “War looked imminent.” In response, Madison launched a drive in Congress in January 1794 to pass resolutions implementing this retaliatory trade policy, with measures clearly aimed at British trade and shipping.

To head off the war that this growing crisis threatened to start, George Washington sent Chief Justice John Jay to London. The resulting Jay Treaty created a mutual “most favored nation” status. This blocked the U.S. from imposing the special, discriminatory tariffs on Britain that Jefferson and Madison had wanted; in turn, Britain had to give America the same lowest rates it gave any other friendly nation.

The treaty averted war, but it made Jay one of the most hated men in America. He was hung and burned in effigy so many times that he reportedly said “he could find his way across the country by the light of his burning effigies.”

That is how high the stakes were in this first, forgotten debate.

THE ESSENTIAL LESSON

But here is the most important, most forgotten lesson of all.

Read through all their arguments. They fought bitterly over how to use this new tariff power under the Constitution. But not one of them – not Hamilton, not Jefferson, not Madison, anyone – ever claimed the President could just impose tariffs on his own.

Every tariff had to be expressly passed by Congress and signed as law by the President before it could be implemented.

And no one ever suggested that Congress bypass this constitutional requirement by simply re-delegating its constitutionally-degated power to the executive, allowing a president to unilaterally decide later.

They all knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the power “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” was a legislative power, and a legislative power only.

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Part I: Rome in Founding-Era Culture

Last year, the Internet resounded with chatter about how much American and British men ponder the subject of ancient Rome. Women started asking their husbands and boyfriends, “Honey, how often do you think about the Roman Empire?”

And based on the responses, American and British men actually think about Rome a lot. Saturday Night Live even produced a very humorous video on the subject.

Still, the interest modern men have in Rome pales compared to that of the American founding generation. By “founding generation,” I mean Americans living between 1763 and 1791—that is, from the time when tension with Great Britain began until the Bill of Rights was ratified. Moreover, members of the founding generation were not only fascinated by Rome, but they also knew a great deal about it.

This new series is about the lessons the Founders drew from Rome when writing and debating the Constitution. I wrote it to help fill a gap left by the modern American public school system.

During the 20^th century, public schools stopped requiring the study of Latin, and eventually most removed Latin from their curriculum entirely. They also terminated their courses in civics (although since that time, civics has been making a comeback).

These actions were part of a wider project of downgrading Western civilization. Schools apparently did this to render the curriculum less demanding and to make room for the politically-driven subjects called for by the “diversity” and “multicultural” agenda.

These educational changes largely severed modern Americans from their own traditions. After all, Latin was not only the language of ancient Rome, but for centuries afterward was a principal vehicle for the transmission of learning and culture: Aquinas, Newton, Galileo, Francis Bacon, and many other architects of the modern world wrote some of their greatest works in Latin.

Additionally, courses in Civics had been where students learned the underlying assumptions of the American system of government, its basic components, and how it all worked.

One result from these curricular changes is that today many Americans are ignorant of even the rudiments of Western tradition—including the Constitution: A recent poll found that fewer than half of Americans can name the three branches of the federal government.

Unfortunately, ignorance makes it easier for unscrupulous people to spread misinformation and misunderstanding. But this series, like two earlier ones I authored for the Epoch Times (see here and here), may help readers re-connect with the Constitution, the American Founding, and America’s Founding ideals.

Rome Fascinated the Founders

Have you ever examined the Great Seal of the United States? You can find it on the back of the one-dollar bill.

On the right side of the back is the front of the Great Seal. Its centerpiece is an eagle, which, not coincidentally, was the emblem carried by the Roman legions. The eagle holds a ribbon in his beak. It reads E pluribus unum—“out of many, one.” This Latin phrase is derived from a Roman poem called Moretum: the salad or pesto. In the poem, a farmer uses a variety of ingrediants to make his pesto, fashioning from many foods just one.

When the Confederation Congress approved the Great Seal in 1782, most people believed that the author of Moretum was the Roman poet Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70 – 19 BCE). Although most scholars now doubt Virgil’s authorship, the point remains that the Founders believed it. Anyway, irrespective of who wrote it, the poem is unquestionably Roman.

On the one-dollar bill’s left side is the Great Seal’s reverse. It contains two other legends, also in Latin. The first is Annuit coeptis. This is an abbreviation of two separate lines in Virgil’s poetry, one from his lengthy agricultural poem the Georgics and one from his epic, the Aeneid. It means that “He [i.e., God] has approved our undertakings.”

The second legend is Novus ordo seclorum, “A new order of the ages.” It comes from Virgil’s Eclogues, his first published book of poetry. The specific source is the fourth or “Messianic” eclogue, about which I’ll say more later in this series.

On either side of the dais of the House of Representatives are other indications of the Founders’ interest in Rome. On the back wall are two fasces —that is, bundled of rods enclosing an axe. Bodyguards protecting high Roman officers carried fasces as symbols of imperium or executive authority. Their further symbolism was strength in unity: Although a single rod can be cracked easily, a bundle is virtually unbreakable.

Rome in Founding-Era education

During the Founding Era, schoolgirls were instructed in “reading, writing, and ‘rithematic,” and then went on to study modern languages, music, household arts, and other useful subjects.

Boys, on the other hand, were immersed in ancient Rome.

Around age eight, after acquiring basic literacy and numeracy, boys began the study of Latin. They read works of history, oratory, drama, poetry, and philosophy. The minority headed for college later began studying Greek. Part of a typical college entrance examination was to take a designated passage from the Greek New Testament and translate it into Latin.

The college curriculum was heavy with the Greco-Roman classics. Students read advanced Latin authors, such as Seneca and Tacitus, and Greek writers like Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Polybius, and Plutarch. We shall have more to say about Polybius and Plutarch later.

Colleges supplemented classical studies with theology, modern history, mathematics, geography, science, and other subjects.

Rome in the Wider Culture

The eighteenth century thought of itself as a classical age. Certainly, classical learning had a great influence on the wider culture. As just mentioned, Latin was dominant in the grammar school curriculum. Although only a small fraction of boys attended college, the college-educated exercised an outsized influence. One reason was the popularity of almanacs, which were disproportionately written and published by the college-educated. Another was that college-educated men often were elected to public office. For example, 27 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence had at least some college education, as did 23 of the 39 signers of the Constitution.

Men and women who never attended college but aspired to an education often undertook to study the Greco-Roman classics. Patrick Henry, to name one, did not attend college. But his father introduced him to the Roman historian Livy. For the rest of his life, Henry annually re-read Livy in English. Benjamin Franklin had very little formal education, but taught himself Latin and became conversant with Roman history.

In 1767 and 1768, John Dickinson of Delaware and Pennsylvania (later one of the Constitution’s most influential drafters and promoters) penned a series of newspaper op-eds entitled Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. They outlined the colonial case against Great Britain. Americans loved them, and Dickinson became, after Franklin, America’s first national celebrity. In his Letters, Dickinson included quotations—attributed and unattributed—from Romans like Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus, and Virgil, and from Greeks such as Demosthenes and Plutarch.

No one seems to have thought it the least bit odd to cite such authors in op-eds directed at the general public.
 

Part II: Roman History and Founding-Era Faves

The Sweep of Roman History

The Roman state, together with its Byzantine successor, existed for about two thousand years. According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BCE as a small city-state, ruled by a king with the assistance of a senate or council of elders. In 509 BCE, a revolution overthrew the monarchy and established an aristocratic republic. The king was replaced with two annually-elected executives, initially called praetors (leaders) but eventually renamed as consuls. The praetors continued as judicial officers.

Romans showed an aptitude for war, and gradually absorbed other peoples, either by conquest or alliance. By the year 287 BCE, Rome had become the dominant power in Italy. However, the fact that all male citizens were subject to military service had domestic consequences: Men who served in war had a claim to a say in government. That year witnessed adoption of the Hortensian Law. It allowed an assembly composed only of the common people (the plebians) to enact laws without regard to the wishes of the aristocracy.

Still, the aristocracy remained powerful, and Rome never became a constitutional democracy in the modern sense.

Over the ensuing century and a half, Rome waged three successful wars with the north African state of Carthage and four with Macedonia, enabling it to extend its influence around the Mediterranean. This expansion also had domestic consequences: It created severe strains in the Roman republican constitution and gave more power to military commanders. After a series of civil wars and several dictatorships (including the dictatorship of Julius Caesar), the constitution underwent a fundamental change. Caesar’s grandnephew and heir, Octavian, became the most influential man in the state. He assumed the name Augustus (“revered”) and is considered the first Roman emperor. Historians commonly designate his reign as extending from 27 BCE to 14 CE. Thus, as the New Testament reports, Augustus was emperor when Jesus of Nazareth was born.

For over 160 years following the death of Augustus, republican institutions continued to exist side-by-side with the imperial authority. The Senate continued to meet—and in some ways expanded its power. Consuls and other magistrates were still elected, either by the popular assemblies or by the Senate. In theory, the emperor was merely the first citizen or princeps. For this reason, historians call the period from the ascension of Augustus until the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 CE the principate. It was during this period that the Roman Empire was most prosperous and reached its greatest extent.

The century following the principate, however, was a very unsettled time. The empire almost collapsed under the challenges of civil war, plague, and foreign invasion. The emperors became mere military dictators, and most of them died in war or from assassination. Fortunately, near the end of the period a series of hardworking and capable emperors managed to stabilize the situation. The last of these was Diocletian, who assumed office in 284. He reorganized the empire into an oriental-style despotism, but with separate emperors in the east and west. Thus began the period known as the Dominate—a word reflecting the emperor’s status as absolute dominus or lord.

The stability of authoritarian government came at the cost of freedom, prosperity, and strength. Many citizens fled the empire for freer lands to the north and east. At the same time, military pressure from the north and east caused the weakened empire to lose large swaths of territory, particularly in the west. In 476, Rome and Italy came under Germanic (“barbarian”) rule.

However, emperors continued to reign from the eastern capital at Constantinople (modern Istanbul), and one of them—Justinian (reigned: 527-565)—even recaptured Italy and some other western provinces. After Justinian’s death, however, the eastern empire gradually became little more than a large Greek state. Historians call it the Byzantine Empire, and it lived on until 1453.

This video illustrates expansion and contraction of Roman and Byzantine territory over time. This timeline summarizes the full sweep of Roman history:

Founding-Era Favorites

The American founding generation showed little interest in Roman history before the republic or after the early principate. All of their favorite writers lived between 200 BCE and 120 CE, and the stories they told were of that period and of the old Roman republic. Among the authors read by the American Founders, six stand out as particularly influential on the Constitution: Polybius, Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Tacitus, and Plutarch.

Polybius
Polybius (c.200 BCE – c. 118 BCE) was a Greek who became famous writing about Rome. He was born in Megalopolis, in southern Greece. Polybius’ father was on the town council, and when Polybius was about 30, he was elected as a councilor as well. At the time, the Greek states were still independent. Rome—anxious to assure that they did not ally themselves with its enemies—demanded that Greece send hostages to Italy. Polybius was among those sent.

The hostages were treated well and allowed considerable freedom of movement. Polybius impressed leading Romans and became the mentor of the patrician Scipio Aemilianus—the man who eventually would destroy Carthage. Scipio was enthusiastic about learning, and through him Polybius became acquainted with some of Rome’s best scholars. Eventually, he became a Roman citizen and a magistrate, and led diplomatic delegates and a voyage of discovery down the western coast of Africa.

Polybius wrote a history of Rome for his fellow Greeks to explain why the republic had been so successful. That history proved to be influential on the American Founders’ constitutional thinking.

Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BCE – 43 BCE) was born in Arpinum (now Arpino), in Italy, about 50 miles southeast of Rome. His father sent him to Rome to be educated, and he made his mark through the sheer force of his personality, his ability as a lawyer, and the power of his oratory. After election to several lesser offices, he served as consul (63 BCE). While in that position, Cicero suppressed a dangerous rebellion led by one Lucius Sergius Catilina (whom English speakers call “Catiline”).

Cicero’s greatest contribution came later: He wrote a series of essays and dialogues synthesizing Greek ideas (and his own) for a Latin audience. During the centuries between the collapse of the empire in Europe and the modern era, Cicero’s writings were central to the educational canon. His views of government and civic obligation were immensely influential on the American Founders.
 
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil) (70 BCE – 9 BCE)—whom we call Virgil or Vergil—was yet another product of a family prominent only locally. He was born in a small place called Andes, near Mantua, in northern Italy. He did not pursue a political, legal, or military career, but decided to write poetry. After some youthful efforts—of which the Moretum (mentioned in our first installment) may be one example— he published the Eclogues, a series of ten pastoral poems averaging about 83 lines each. The Eclogues made Virgil famous. He followed with his long agricultural poem, the Georgics, and with a grand epic on Roman origins, the Aeneid.

The American Founders frequently quoted other Roman poets. But as the Great Seal of the United States testifies, Virgil was their favorite. During the constitutional debates of 1786-1791, he was quoted so often he became the de facto Poet Laureate of the American Founding.

Livy
Titus Livius (64 or 59 BCE – 19 CE) lived through the last years of the Roman republic and throughout the reign of Augustus. He was born in Patavia—modern Padua—in northeastern Italy, just west of Venice. Like all the other authors examined here, Livy’s family was, at most, only locally prominent. Like Virgil, he chose not to pursue a civic career, instead electing to write history. His vivid portrayals of republican heroes, exemplifying Roman courage and virtue, appealed enormously to the Founders.

Tacitus
Cornelius Tacitus (56 CE- c. 120) lived during the height of the Roman Empire. He was born into a family so obscure that we do not know his birthplace—although some speculate it was in northern Italy or Gaul (France). As a boy, however, Tacitus showed promise, and was educated in Rome. Like Alexander Hamilton, he compensated somewhat for his modest origins by marrying into a leading family.

Tacitus rose through the ranks of civil office, becoming consul for part of the year 97. He later served as governor of one of Rome’s most important provinces.

Scholars rate Tacitus as perhaps the greatest of all Roman historians. He focused on the history of the Empire during the eighty years after the death of Augustus. His was largely a tale of misrule and corruption. Eighteenth-century Americans who found Livy’s history to be rich in positive examples found Tacitus’s account to teem with sobering but useful negative examples.

Plutarch
Plutarch (46 – after 119) was, like Polybius, a Greek who wrote about Rome. He was born in Chaeronea, a small village in Greece. His father was a biographer and philosopher, and Plutarch studied in Athens, then a university town. On trips to Rome, he befriended influential people, including, perhaps, the Emperors Trajan (reigned 98-117) and Hadrian (117-138). But he always returned to Chaeronea, where he lived and operated a school.

The American founding generation admired Plutarch’s essays on morals, but it was his biographies of great Greeks and Romans that captured their imagination.

Note a common fact about these six authors: All rose to fame and influence from modest origins—testimony to the upward mobility of Roman society during the popular republic and the principate.

Part III: The Constitution’s Adoption and Moral Lessons the Founders Learned from the Romans

The Constitution’s Adoption

In 1786, the delegates at a convention of states meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, recommended to their home states that they call a wider convention for the following May in Philadelphia to

“take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union . . . .”

The surrounding history makes it clear that the delegates used the word “constitution” to refer to the entire political system (as the word was used in the Declaration of Independence), not merely to the Articles of Confederation. In December, 1786, Virginia—one of the states represented at Annapolis—issued the formal convention call for Philadelphia. All the other states except Rhode Island agreed to participate, although the Confederation Congress, Massachusetts, and New York tried unsuccessfully to limit the agenda to amending the Articles.

The convention proceedings continued from May 25 through September 17, 1787. Despite frequent modern comments about the “long hot summer,” in fact the summer of 1787 was a relatively cool one.

On the last day of the proceedings, the convention sent its proposed Constitution to Congress, which unanimously transmitted it to the states. Eventually, elected conventions in all thirteen states ratified it, culminating in approval by Rhode Island on May 29, 1790. The Republic of Vermont ratified in January, 1791 and became the fourteenth state.

The new Federal Congress met in 1789 and, pursuant to a “gentlemen’s agreement” by which the Constitution was ratified, proposed twelve amendments as a new Bill of Rights. By the end of 1791, the requisite number of states had approved ten of them.

When these essays refer to “the constitutional debates,” they mean the public debates over the entire period of 1786 through 1791. They included discussions leading up to the Constitutional Convention (1786-1787), the Convention itself (1787), the ratification debates (1787-90), and the proceedings in 1791.

Lessons in General

 Lessons from ancient Rome impacted the constitutional debates at every stage. They included lessons in morality, constitutional history, and rhetoric.

A disproportionate share of these lessons derived from the six classical authors discussed in the second installment: Polybius, Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Tacitus, and Plutarch. But some participants in the debates learned them from intermediate sources rather than reading those authors directly. For example, Baron Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws was one of the most quoted works during the constitutional debates. But Montesquieu’s book relied very heavily on Roman authors.

Moral Lessons

Although both Roman and modern authors frequently have depicted Romans as morally depraved, with some exceptions (gladiatorial contests, for example) basic moral standards were not that different from those prevailing in America before 1960.

Romans, like the authors of the Bible, often interpreted history from a moral point of view. The American Founders drew inspiration from the heroism depicted by Livy, accepted instruction from the Moralia (moral essays) written by Plutarch, and shuddered in revulsion at the depravity described by Tacitus.

Livy told of republican virtue: How people facing oppression, danger, and other challenges persevered and overcame. But he also related how, during times of crisis, the two consuls could be paralyzed by their differences, forcing the Senate to grant a six-month appointment to a single “dictator.”

Livy related the story of Lucius Quinctus Cincinnatus: How he came out of retirement to save Rome from the hostile armies surrounding the city. How he accepted the office of dictator, rallied his country’s troops, defeated the enemy, and then laid down his power—all in a period of sixteen days.

Livy also related how the general Quintus Fabius had frustrated Hannibal by avoiding pitched battles (which Hannibal always won) and adopting guerrilla tactics instead.

Tacitus, by contrast, told of the moral depravity of emperors selected for their family connections and remaining in office for life.

In statues and in other ways, members of the founding generation portrayed George Washington as “the American Cincinnatus”—because he left his plow to save his country, and then returned to his plow—and as “the American Fabius,” because he won the Revolutionary War largely by tactics of avoidance and delay.

Washington, however, did not model himself on either Cincinnatus or Fabius, preferring yet another Roman moral hero: Cato the Younger.

The moral lessons taught by Roman authors help explain the sentiment expressed by some Founders to the effect that a republican government can survive only as long as the people remain virtuous. Despite that sentiment, though, the Founders shaped the Constitution to account for the fact that people often are not virtuous.

Roman Moral Examples in the Ratification Debates

 During the debates over whether to ratify the Constitution, participants on both sides—the pro-Constitution “Federalists” and the anti-Constitution “Antifederalists”—often called on Roman moral illustrations to underscore their messages. Cicero was viewed as the archetype of the wise and good statesman, who showed wisdom and courage in suppressing the evil insurrectionary Catiline. Accordingly, a Pennsylvania Antifederalist writing under the pseudonym “Cicero” announced he would respond to a Federalist “Catiline.” And a Massachusetts Federalist branded an anonymous opponent as a “MODERN CATILINE.”

Participants, particularly Antifederalists, employed the writings of Tacitus to demonstrate the risks of power and corruption. Thus, a Virginia Antifederalist writing as “Brutus” recounted abuses by the Emperors Tiberius and Nero. A Rhode Island Antifederalist writing as “Cato junior,” relied on Tacitus to show that corrupt governments endeavor to corrupt the people:

“Ill governments, subsisting by vice and rapine, are jealous of private virtue, and enemies to private property . . . . Hence it is, that to drain, worry, and debauch their subjects, are the steady maxims of their politics, their favourite arts of reigning. In this wretched situation the people to be safe, must be poor and lewd . . . .”

“Cato junior” added that the contagion is mutual. A corrupted people idolize corrupt leaders:

“Even Nero (that royal monster in man’s shape) was adored by the common herd at Rome …. Tacitus tells us, that those sort of people long lamented him ….”

Can you think of modern American political leaders who have sought to retain power by corrupting the people?

Part IV: Historical and Constitutional Lessons the Founders Learned from the Romans

General Principles and Mixed Government

Before getting into the details of writing a constitution, Americans had to consider their goals. This entailed identifying the basic principles the constitution would reflect. John Adams was serving as a diplomat in Europe during most of the constitutional debates. While there, he wrote an encyclopedia of republican governments: A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States. (The “Constitutions” referred to were those then in force in the states.) The first volume was issued in early 1787 and was cited frequently during the constitutional debates.

In that volume, Adams relied on Cicero for some basic political propositions, including the following:

• Law is built on justice; where there is no justice, there is no law.
• A nation is not just a mass of individuals, but an association based on consent.
• The best constitution mixes elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.
• Unmixed governments degenerate into corrupt forms, particularly into tyranny. A tyranny is not a true republic because a republic is the property of the people, while in a tyranny everything belongs to the ruler.

The points about mixed and unmixed government were particularly important to the constitution-makers. Aristotle had divided uncorrupted constitutions into monarchies, aristocracies, and democracies. But he observed that each uncorrupted form tends to deteriorate into a corresponding corrupt form. Monarchies degenerate into tyrannies, aristocracies into oligarchies, and democracies into mob rule.

When explaining the Roman republic’s success to his fellow Greeks, Polybius emphasized Rome’s unwritten constitution as a major contributor to that success. He pointed out that its government was neither a monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, but a mixture of all three: The republic’s popular assemblies were (somewhat, but not entirely) democratic, the Senate was (somewhat, but not entirely) aristocratic, and the consuls shared the power formerly exercised by kings. Each element checked the other, preventing degeneration into corrupt forms.

The following chart depicts a simplified version of the government of the Roman republic. It shows three of the four popular assemblies, omitting one that served purely religious purposes. The chart suggests how the different branches checked each other.

Note that under the republic, the Senate was primarily an executive rather than a legislative body. During the early empire, it took on more legislative functions.

Federalism

The Constitution’s greatest contribution to political theory may have been its system of federalism, under which the people divided sovereignty, granting some to the central government and the rest to the states. While developing this concept, the Founders consulted a number of federal models, including confederacies of city- states in ancient Greece and more recent confederacies in Switzerland and the Netherlands. The Founders also took into account the British empire’s working arrangement before 1763, in which the central government in London controlled foreign affairs, the post office, and commerce with foreign nations and among units of the empire, while the colonies otherwise governed themselves.

Among these models, the pre-1763 colonial arrangement probably was the most influential among the Founders. However, they also considered seriously the Greek confederacies. Their information on those confederacies derived primarily from Polybius and Plutarch.

Polybius and Plutarch were the source of John Adams’ discussion of Greek confederacies in his treatise on republican governments. They likewise were sources for James Madison’s famous pre-convention research notes, Of Ancient and Modern Confederacies. Madison deployed his knowledge of the subject in Federalist No. 18, where he compared the Greek Amphictyonic Council to the United States under the Articles of Confederation:

“The powers [of the Council], like those of the present Congress, were administered by deputies appointed wholly by the cities in their political capacities; and exercised over them in the same capacities. Hence the weakness, the disorders, and finally the destruction of the confederacy. The more powerful members, instead of being kept in awe and subordination, tyrannized successively over all the rest . . . .”

Madison concluded that the new federal government should act primarily on individuals, not on the states. By contrast, Madison’s then-rival James Monroe—the future president, but at the time an Antifederalist—relied on Polybius’ account of the Greek Achaean League to argue that the Articles of Confederation, if amended somewhat, would be adequate for American needs.

Another lesson drawn from Polybius and Plutarch was that if a confederation has some members that are monarchies and others that are republics, the monarchies will try to undermine the republics. This lesson led to the Constitution’s Guarantee Clause (Article IV, Section 4), by which the United States guarantees to every state a republican form of government.

In Federalist No. 34, Alexander Hamilton drew on his knowledge of the Roman constitution to answer opponents’ claims that sovereignty could not be divided:

“To argue . . . that this co-ordinate authority cannot exist, is to set up supposition and theory against fact and reality. . . . It is well known that in the Roman republic the legislative authority, in the last resort, resided for ages in two [actually four!-ed.] different political bodies not as branches of the same legislature, but as distinct and independent legislatures . . . It will be readily understood that I allude to the COMITIA CENTURIATA and the COMITIA TRIBUTA . . . [T]hese two legislatures coexisted for ages, and the Roman republic attained to the utmost height of human greatness.”

 Other Constitutional Lessons

 During the course of the constitutional debates, participants looked to Roman sources for other lessons as well. Thus, a Virginia Federalist cited Cicero in support of the Constitution’s grant of the pardon power to the president and its bans on state and federal ex post facto laws (retroactive criminal laws).

In Federalist No. 63, Madison used the Roman example to underscore the need for a federal Senate. “[H]istory informs us,” he wrote, “of no long-lived republic which had not a senate.” And Hamilton, writing in Federalist No. 70, emphasized the need for a single President rather than an executive council or other plural executive:

“Every man the least conversant in Roman history, knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of Dictator. . . . A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.”

On the other hand, an opponent, writing under the name of “Caveto” (Latin for “Be ye warned!”) cited Tacitus’s Histories on the Risks of a Unitary Executive:

“They who would put their country under such a form of government, and think thereby to render its condition more safe and easy, must suppose that none but good Princes shall be upon the throne, which did not happen to the Romans, when they had the choosing of their own masters—They were often mistaken in their choice; some had good inclinations, but were corrupted by those about them. In others, the seeds of vice and cruelty lay undiscovered as in Tiberius [the emperor immediately succeeding Augustus]; others’ nature had formed well enough, but so much power turned their heads, and made them worse—Solusque Vespasianus Omnium ante se Principum in melius mutatus est.” (Compared to all the emperors before him, only Vespasian turned out for the better.”)

Part V: Lessons in Language the Founders Learned from the Romans

The Value of Rhetoric

Because Latin was such an important part of the eighteenth-century educational curriculum, many of the leading Founders were bilingual. Because so many educated people understood at least some Latin, speakers resorting to Latin words and phrases could be assured that their messages were received.

This bilingual and cultural knowledge provided an enormous vocabulary and a massive store of literary references. As a result, educated members of the founding generation were highly adept in expressing their ideas and sentiments.

Understanding how Founding-Era speakers employed Roman history and Latin expressions can be useful for grasping the purpose and scope of constitutional clauses. By way of illustration, an Antifederalist writing under the name “A Farmer” quoted lines from the poem known as Virgil’s third eclogue to compare the collection of direct taxes to over-milking female sheep. As explained below, this comparison helps us understand the definition of the Constitution’s phrase “direct Taxes.”

Another incident involved the Constitution’s impeachment-and-removal procedure for federal officers. The framers adopted a compromise between those who favored impeachment-and-removal for almost any reason and those who either wanted no impeachment procedure at all or one that was severely limited. When the Antifederalist framer George Mason stated that the Constitution’s method for impeaching the President “brings to my recollection the remarkable trial of Milo at Rome,” he was telling his audience that the document’s impeachment-and-removal provisions were defective. His point was that even after being impeached, the President—before and during trial in the Senate—would still be commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and might use those armed forces to intimidate the Senate into acquitting him.

On the other hand, popular acceptance of the Constitution suggests (although it does not prove) that most people did not think this was a significant risk and that the framers’ impeachment-and-removal compromise was adequate.

Plutarch and Pseudonyms

After the Constitution was drafted and proposed, the in-state debates over ratification ensued. Participants in the ratification debates, like participants earlier in the constitutional process, relied on Polybius, Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Tacitus, Plutarch, and other authors. But they utilized Plutarch, Cicero, and Virgil most of all.

The fourth installment of this series discussed the influence on the framers of Plutarch’s reports on Greek confederations. During the ratification era, his influence was felt more in how disputants used his biographies of famous Greeks and Romans. To explain this, however, some background is necessary:

Modern writers on the Constitution—including, alas, the Supreme Court—regularly confuse the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech with its protection of freedom of the press. In the Founders’ view, they were different. “Speech” was in-person discourse. “The press” was communication through a medium, such as a newspaper, pamphlet, or poster. “Speech” once uttered disappeared into air. “The press” preserved communication in permanent form. “Speech” was local. “The press” could be world-wide. In the course of “speech,” the audience knew, or easily could find out, the identity of the speaker. When communication was via “the press,” the identity of the author usually was hidden.

For these reasons, the rules limiting freedom of speech were different from those limiting freedom of the press. Moreover, the right to remain anonymous, except in cases of defamation or crime, was absolutely central to freedom of the press. Most participants in the ratification debates who used “the press” hid their identity with pen names. They wanted their arguments assessed on their merits, rather than dismissed or accepted because of who they were.

Writers in the ratification debates commonly used characters in Plutarch’s biographies as pen names. Among the principal subjects of Plutarch’s biographies, about 40 percent were employed as pseudonyms. Authors identified themselves as “Brutus,” “Caesar,” “Camillus,” “Cato,” “Cicero,” and “Fabius,” among many others.

Sometimes the author selected his or her pen name to send a message. A populist writer might adopt the name “Publicola” to indicate that he was a “friend of the people.” A person seeking to communicate rustic values might call himself “Agricola” (farmer). Several called themselves “Brutus” to indicate dedication to republican values, because the Brutus who assassinated Caesar purportedly did it to preserve the republic, which five centuries earlier an ancestor also named Brutus had helped to establish.

Cicero

Cicero’s fervid oratory provided a rich supply of expressions for communicating ideas and emotions. Consider an essay by an anonymous New York Antifederalist. His argument was that the Constitution’s advocates were trying to rush Americans into approving a defective document. He could have written it that way, but it was much more effective to compare Federalist pressure to Cicero’s description of Rome during Catiline’s conspiracy:

“There is treachery within, danger within, an enemy within; we must fight against dissipation, insanity, and crime!”

(Original: Intus insidiae sunt, intus inclusum periculum est, intus est hostis. Cum luxuria nobis, cum amentia, cum scelere certandum est!

On the other hand, a supporter of the Constitution, North Carolina’s James Iredell (later a Supreme Court justice), argued that the Constitution embodied another saying by Cicero: Salus populi suprema lex esto. “The safety of the people shall be the supreme law.”

Virgil

The poetry of Virgil was an even more powerful vehicle for communicating ideas and emotions than the oratory of Cicero. Here are some illustrations:

Antifederalists who believed the Constitution’s supporters were railroading the public quoted the lines from the Aeneid describing how the trusting Trojans dragged the infamous and fateful wooden horse into their city:

Instamus tamen immemores caecique furore

et monstrum infelix sacrata sistimus arce.

“Yet we push forward, unmindful, blinded by madness,

and erect the ill-omened monstrosity within our sacred citadel.”

The Virginia Antifederalist George Mason believed adoption of the Constitution could lead to the dispossession of thousands of Virginia farmers. He drove home his point by paraphrasing the lament of a dispossessed farmer Virgil’s first eclogue: Nos patriae fines et dulcia linquimus arva—“We leave the bounds of our homeland, we leave our sweet fields.”

As mentioned earlier, an author writing as “A Farmer” quoted Virgil’s third eclogue to warn that the Constitution would permit Congress to levy direct taxes. In doing so, Congress would act like the unscrupulous custodian of sheep entrusted to his care:

hic alienus ovis custos bis mulget in hora,

et sucus pecori et lac subducitur agnis.

“This custodian milks sheep that don’t belong to him twice an hour;

Thus, the juice of the ewe is taken stealthily from the lambs.”

As noted earlier, this quotation is useful for interpreting the Constitution’s phrase “direct Taxes.” Again, some background is necessary:

For many years, apologists for federal power have tried to circumvent the Constitution’s restrictions on direct taxes by arguing that only head taxes and real estate levies are direct—that all other taxes are indirect, and therefore free from the Constitution’s restrictions. But the quoted lines suggest that direct taxes may burden milk (i.e., the products of property) as well as sheep (the property itself). In other words, direct taxes include income as well as property levies. My own research has shown that this is definitely the case.

Another example—this one from advocates of the Constitution:

Virgil’s fourth eclogue was particularly famous for its prediction that the birth of a special child would usher in a new “reign of Saturn”—that is, a new Golden Age. This poem is called the Messianic Eclogue, and for centuries Christians identified it with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

While the Constitution’s ratification was pending, some Federalist newspapers in Massachusetts printed cartoons depicting thirteen columns representing the thirteen states. As each state ratified the Constitution, its column rose from a prostrate to a vertical position, producing a growing colonnade. The Massachusetts Centinel celebrated the predicted ratification by Virginia with a cartoon showing vertical columns for the eight states that already had approved the Constitution together with Virginia’s column in a 45-degree position. Above the columns was the fourth eclogue’s phrase, REDEUNT SATURNIA REGNA—“the reign of Saturn (i.e., the Golden Age) returns.”

However, as it turned out, New Hampshire ratified before Virginia. Shortly thereafter, the Boston Independent Chronicle commemorated New Hampshire’s adherence to the Union with a similar cartoon. It showed nine vertical columns, with Virginia’s column in the 45-degree position, and New York’s still lying flat. The legend over this cartoon was another line from the fourth eclogue: INCIPIENT MAGNI PROCEDERE MENSES!—“The great months (i.e., the new era) will now begin!”

Conclusion

The Founders were fascinated with the history of Ancient Rome and educated in Roman language, history, and literature. In writing and adopting the Constitution, they drew many lessons from the Roman experience—lessons in morality, constitutional history, and rhetoric.

Understanding how they resorted to ancient Rome is central to a deeper understanding of the Constitution itself.

This post combines all five installments in my Epoch Times series entitled “Ancient Rome and the Constitution.” It is edited for brevity and clarity.

The post Ancient Rome and the Constitution appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

On June 19, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in Newsom v. Trump that the President could deploy the Guard to protect federal property in Los Angeles. On October 4, a federal district judge ruled in Oregon v. Trump that the President could not use the Oregon National Guard for the same purpose in Portland.

The term “National Guard” is somewhat misleading. There is a different national guard in every state. Each is governed largely by state law, and the governor is its commander-in-chief. Historically, a state’s national guard was referred to as its “militia” — and the Constitution uses that term.

From the point of view of a Trump administration lawyer, both the Newsom and Oregon cases are questionable. Even though the Newsom court ultimately ruled for the President, it failed to abide by a longstanding Supreme Court precedent holding that the chief executive alone has discretion to determine the scope of his deployment authority. On different facts, the Oregon court also disregarded this precedent to rule against the administration.

Both cases support the view that there is a judicial double standard — a forgiving one for other chief executives, and a much more demanding one for President Trump.

Yet if we follow the Constitution, it may well be that the outcomes (although not all the reasoning) of both cases are correct. To understand why, we must review the Constitution’s militia rules and examine why the federal government is out of compliance with them.

The Founding-Era Background

The Declaration of Independence created not one new nation but thirteen “free and independent states.” Beginning in 1781, the Articles of Confederation came into effect. The Articles created not a government, but a treaty organization, somewhat akin to NATO. It was not until the people of the states ratified the Constitution that the United States became a single nation — and even then, three states (North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Vermont) remained independent for a time. There is, to be sure, a common claim that federal sovereignty limited state sovereignty even before the Constitution was ratified. But history and international law show that the claim is clearly erroneous.

As sovereign nations, the states had full power to wage both defensive and offensive war. Under the Articles, the states reserved power to conduct defensive war and ceded to the Confederation Congress both defensive power and near-exclusive authority over offensive operations. The Constitution kept this scheme mostly intact, although it actually recognized somewhat more state defensive war power than did the Articles.

Throughout this period, each state maintained a body of part-time soldiers called its militia. Militiamen were used for state defense only. For offensive and multi-state defensive operations, the Confederation Congress, and later the federal government, raised regular armies.

During this period, popular attachment to state militias was very strong. The founding generation saw state militias as vital to defense. Moreover, as Federalist No. 45 demonstrates, they considered state militias important checks on the central government and counterbalances to a federal standing army.

The Constitution’s Language

Yet the constitution-makers also recognized that state militias could be a useful federal tool for fighting defensive war and enforcing federal law. Accordingly, the Constitution’s Calling Forth Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 15) granted to Congress the power

“To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

Additionally, the Militia Organization Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 16) granted Congress authority

“To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”

The Newsom court erred when it stated that “Congress has delegated some of its power to call forth the militia to the President.” In fact, the Constitution did not grant Congress authority to call forth the militia, but to define when the President, in the execution of his own duties, could call forth the militia. (In eighteenth-century English, the phrase “provide for” looked toward the future, as in “making provision for.”) Of course, the congressional definition of the President’s calling-forth power cannot exceed constitutional limits.

After the President calls forth state militia units, he serves as their commanding officer while they remain in federal service (Article II, Section 2, Clause 1).

In the exercise of its militia powers, Congress may authorize the President to call forth the militia in some constitutionally-authorized cases, but not in others. As detailed below, this is exactly what Congress has done.

Constitutional Limitations

In a document granting enumerated powers, there is a strong presumption that powers not enumerated are not granted. The Founders drafted and ratified the Constitution with the explicit understanding that this presumption would apply. Thus, the Militia Organization Clause tells us that Congress may delineate the rules whereby states train the militia, but it leaves the training itself to the states. The Calling Forth Clause authorizes federal use of the militia to enforce federal law and wage defensive war (“suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions”) — but to those purposes alone.

These limits were emphasized in the debates over the adoption of the Constitution. The Virginia ratifying convention provided the most thorough discussion of this subject.

Participants on both sides emphasized the defensive role of the militia, much as Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 29 did when he referred to the militia as “the most natural defense of a free country.” However, Antifederalists worried that the Constitution might give the new government too much control over the militia. With too much control, they said, federal officials might deploy state units in “distant and hopeless expeditions.” Or they might under-supply the militia, thereby weakening state defense against invasion, a standing federal army, or federal overreaching.

The Constitution’s supporters responded, and their responses were as authoritative as one could wish. Their spokesmen included (1) James Madison, (2) Governor Edmund Randolph, (3) the future Chief Justice John Marshall, and (4) George Nicholas, a talented friend of Madison’s who had studied under George Wythe and later briefly became a law professor himself. Here are some examples of what they said:

*        Madison:

“The authority of training the militia, and appointing the officers, is reserved to the states. Congress ought to have the power to establish a uniform discipline throughout the states, and to provide for the execution of the laws, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions: these are the only cases wherein they can interfere with the militia . . . .”

*        Nicholas:

“These powers only amount to this—that they can only call them forth in these three cases, and that they can only govern such part of them as may be in the actual service of the United States . . . There is a great difference between having the power in three cases, and in all cases. They cannot call them forth for any other purpose than to execute the laws, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions.”

*        Randolph:

“Does [the Constitution] provide that the laws are to be enforced by military coercion in all cases? No, sir. All that we are to infer is, that when the civil power is not sufficient, the militia must be drawn out . . . They are only to be called out in three cases.”

*        Marshall:

For Continental purposes Congress may call forth the militia, — as to suppress insurrections and repel invasions. But the power given to the states by the people is not taken away; for the Constitution does not say so . . . When invaded, [the states] can engage in war, as also when in imminent danger. This clearly proves that the states can use the militia when they find it necessary.

The Breakdown in Constitutional Limits

In Houston v. Moore (1820), the Supreme Court acknowledged the Constitution’s state-federal division of authority over the militia. Since that decision, though, the federal government has extended its power over state militias, with the Supreme Court meekly deferring to federal actions. Thus, in Martin v. Mott (1827), a militiaman claimed a presidential order did not comply with the “calling forth” grounds specified in the Militia Act of 1795. But the Supreme Court ruled that “the authority to decide whether the exigency has arisen, belongs exclusively to the President, and that his decision is conclusive upon all other persons.”

In 1933, Congress enacted a “dual enlistment” system. Under this system, any person enlisting in a state National Guard automatically enlists in the Army Reserve. Because the federal government may call up reservists at any time, it effectively may nationalize guardsmen at any time.

The Supreme Court should have voided this scheme as an end run around the limits of the Calling Forth and Militia Organization Clauses. Instead, it effectively endorsed the dual enlistment system in Perpich v. Department of Defense (1990). The court claimed this was a proper exercise of the Constitution’s power to “raise and support Armies” (Article I, Section 8, Clause 12). The bench also held that by the “plain reading” of the Constitution, federal authority to prescribe a training regimen for the states included the power to train guardsmen itself.

Also illustrative of the court’s dismissal of state, as opposed to federal, military interests is Torres v. Tex. Dept. of Public Safety (2022). There, the justices relied on Perpich to uphold congressional authorization of private damage suits against non-consenting states:

“By ratifying [the Constitution] the States well knew that their sovereignty would give way to national policy to build and maintain the Armed Forces. Consistent with this structural understanding, Congress has long legislated regarding military forces at the expense of state sovereignty.”

Constitutional Problems

Significantly, none of these Supreme Court decisions acknowledged the representations made to the ratifying public (and to the states) about reserved state war powers or the limits on the federal militia power.

These decisions also contained other flaws. Disallowing an individual militiaman from contesting a military order (as in Martin) might be useful as a rule of prudential standing. But it is difficult to understand why no one should have standing to contest a presidential action.

The Perpich ruling was worse. The court claimed to reach its conclusions based on the “plain reading” of the text. But the conclusion that the federal power to prescribe the mode of training includes the training itself directly contradicted the text (“reserving to the States respectively . . . the Authority of training the Militia”). That conclusion also contradicted specific Federalist representations made during the ratification debates.

Nor did Perpich explain how training in Central America was relevant to the militia’s quintessentially defensive role. And the Court’s use of the Armies Clause to convert two other constitutional provisions into surplusage violated the rule that one interprets documents in ways that avoid surplusage.

Most fundamentally, all these cases seem grounded in the notion that federal military powers are exclusive, and that the states have none worth considering. This is far from the actual constitutional settlement, as both the Constitution itself and the surrounding history tell us.

Effects

As suggested above, these cases may well have prompted President Trump’s legal counselors to advise him that the courts allow federal officials to do pretty much whatever they want with state militias. United States Code, title 10, § 12406 permits the President to call forth a state’s national guard

“Whenever—

(1) the United States, or any of the Commonwealths or possessions, is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation;

(2) there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States; or

(3) the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States . . .”

The third ground in the statute grants the President less power than the Constitution authorizes. But under Martin v. Mott, no one should have been able to question President Trump’s decision that existing federal guards were inadequate for protecting federal facilities. Under the other cases just discussed, the courts have deferred obsequiously to federal decisions in this realm.

But that was before Donald J. Trump became President. Both the Newsom and the Oregon courts applied a different standard to him. The Newsom court admitted that Martin was settled Supreme Court precedent. It admitted that Congress had accepted that precedent. It admitted that legal experts agreed that Martin was established law. Yet it opined:

All that said, Martin does not compel us to accept the federal government’s position that the President could federalize the National Guard based on no evidence whatsoever, and that courts would be unable to review a decision that was obviously absurd or made in bad faith.

The court offered no real explanation of why Martin contained that exception or why the President’s determination must be a “colorable” one.

Although Newsom ultimately held that the President’s decision to deploy national guardsmen in Los Angeles was “colorable,” on different facts, the Oregon v. Trump judge ruled that the President’s decision to deploy guardsmen to Portland came too long after the threat had passed to be “colorable.”

Again, both rulings suggest that the judiciary applies stricter standards to President Trump than to other chief executives.

Recommendation

This area of the law should be overhauled to better conform to the Constitution. If either of these cases arrives at the Supreme Court, the justices should begin the job.

First, they should clarify that federal use of state militia units is limited to the three cases enumerated in the Constitution, and that neither the Armies Clause nor the “dual enlistment” system can be used to circumvent those limits.

Second, the court should uphold the validity of 10 U.S.C. § 12406 as a valid exercise of the Calling Forth Clause.

Third, it should clarify that, because there is nothing in the Constitution to suggest that presidential militia decisions are non-justiciable, the holding in Martin should be limited to its facts. That is, the ruling should apply to militiamen, but not to responsible state functionaries.

Fourth, because military and law enforcement decisions are primarily entrusted to the executive branch, the part of the non-justiciability rule now applying to responsible state officials should be replaced with one merely granting deference to the President. For that purpose, perhaps, the “colorable” formula adopted in Newsom and Oregon might be an appropriate substitute.

But that standard should apply to all chief executives, not just President Trump.

Professor Natelson acknowledges the assistance of Liam McCollum (Univ. of Mont. Law, ’26) in reviewing this essay.

A version of this essay first appeared in Civitas Outlook on October 20, 2025 – and this version is republished here with permission from the author.

The post President Trump, the Constitution, and the National Guard Cases appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

That was the fiery attitude of a 19-year-old Alexander Hamilton in 1774 – and it perfectly explained the principle behind the economic shutdown the colonies were implementing in response to the Coercive Acts: they refused to be bullied into submission.

Today, a “shutdown” is a political game designed to manipulate the people. But the original American shutdown was a weapon of revolution.

This is the story of the Continental Association.

COORDINATED ECONOMIC SHUTDOWN

On October 20th, 1774, the First Continental Congress made it official when they passed the Continental Association, long considered the first of the founding four documents along with the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution for these United States.

The document’s opening line wasn’t a polite request; it was a diagnosis of the threat.

“To obtain Redress of these Grievances, which threaten Destruction to the Lives, Liberty, and Property, of his Majesty’s Subjects in North America”

And then, the prescription: a muilti-part plan of economic warfare, which they considered their only “peaceable” option.

“we are of Opinion that a Non-importation, Non-consumption, and Non-exportation Agreement, faithfully adhered to, will prove the most speedy, effectual, and peaceable Measure; and therefore we do, for ourselves and the Inhabitants of the several Colonies whom we represent, firmly agree and associate, under the sacred Ties of Virtue, Honour, and Love of our Country.”

This agreement created a four-pronged attack designed to cripple the vaunted British economic system.

1. Non-Importation

They started with a total ban on British imports. The Association’s language was clear: if a product came from or even just passed through Great Britain or Ireland, it was prohibited.

“That from and after the first Day of December next we will not import into British America, from Great Britain or Ireland, any Goods, Wares, or Merchandise whatsoever, or from any other Place, any such Goods, Wares, or Merchandise, as shall have been exported from Great Britain or Ireland.”

And that was just the headline. The full text was a hit list including East India tea and indigo, molasses, coffee and more from the Caribbean, and wines from Madeira and the Western Islands.

Alexander Hamilton – the good one we should’ve gotten years later – explained the choice: boycott or war.

“This being the case, we can have no resource but in a restriction of our trade, or in a resistance vi & armis. It is impossible to conceive any other alternative. Our congress, therefore, have imposed what restraint they thought necessary. Those, who condemn or clamour against it, do nothing more, nor less, than advise us to be slaves.”

2. Non-Consumption

The second prong took the boycott from the ports to the people. It wasn’t enough to simply turn down British goods from arriving; colonists had to stop buying and using the goods that had already arrived.

The agreement first took aim at tea, the most politically charged product of all.

“From this Day, we will not purchase or use any Tea imported on Account of the East India Company, or any on which a Duty hath been or shall be paid; and, from and after the first Day of March next, we will not purchase or use any East India Tea whatever.”

Then, it expanded this boycott to include every single product on the non-importation list.

“Nor will we, nor shall any Person for or under us, purchase or use any of those Goods, Wares, or Merchandise, we have agreed not to import.”

3. Frugality and Industry

The Association wasn’t just about boycotting. The third prong was about replacing British goods and culture with American alternatives.

“We will, in our several Stations, encourage Frugality Economy, and Industry; and promote Agriculture, Arts, and the Manufactures of this Country, especially that of Wool.”

This real AMERICA FIRST shutdown was much more than just trade policy; it was a cultural rebellion. They also chose to starve out British culture, cutting off the expensive, extravagant habits that drained colonial wealth and establish a leaner, more virtuous way of life that could survive the coming siege.

“And will discountenance and discourage every Species of Extravagance and Dissipation, especially all Horse-racing, and all Kinds of Gaming, Cock-fighting, Exhibitions of Shows, Plays, and other expensive Diversions and Entertainments.”

The strategy even extended to funerals.

“None of us, or any of our Families, will go into any farther Mourning Dress than a black Crape or Riband on the Arm or Hat for Gentlemen, and a black Riband and Necklace for Ladies, and we will discontinue the giving of Gloves and Scarfs at Funerals.”

4. Export Ban

The final prong was the colonists’ ultimate threat: a total export ban. They put the ban on a timer, giving London a deadline of September 10, 1775, to repeal not just the Coercive Acts, but a whole decade’s worth of unconstitutional taxes and statutes.

“The said Acts, and Parts of Acts of the British Parliament herein after mentioned, are not repealed, we will not, directly or indirectly, export any Merchandise, or Commodity whatsoever, to Great Britain, Ireland, or the West Indies, except Rice, to Europe.”

The single exception for rice was no accident. It was a calculated political compromise pushed by South Carolina’s pragmatic delegates, led by John Rutledge. The move was so contentious it was fiercely opposed by their own more radical colleague, Christopher Gadsden, who demanded shared sacrifice. But rice was an economic lifeline for South Carolina and Georgia. Without that carve-out, the powerful planters would have walked away, and the united colonial front would have collapsed before it began.

A UNANIMOUS VOTE

The groundwork for the Association was laid weeks earlier, on September 16, 1774. That day, an express rider from Boston named Paul Revere galloped down 2nd Street in Philadelphia carrying the Suffolk Resolves from Massachusetts. The document was a blueprint for resistance: noncompliance with the Coercive Acts, defiance of British courts, sheriffs refusing to enforce British laws, and outright tax resistance.

The Resolves also proposed the strategy that would unite the colonies: a widespread boycott of British goods to retaliate for the shutdown of Boston’s port.

And the very next day, Congress unanimously approved the resolves in its first official act.

Ten days later, as recorded by John Adams in his notes of the debates, Virginia’s Richard Henry Lee moved to turn that endorsement into action.

“Mr. Lee made a Mo[tion] for a Non Importation.”

The blueprint for this motion was the Virginia Association of 1769, a boycott drafted by George Mason and introduced by George Washington. It was passed after Virginia’s royal governor dissolved the House of Burgesses, forcing the members to defiantly regroup and push forward without royal permission.

Mike Maharrey identified this move as the key shift from operating within the British system to creating an independent one:

“By regrouping outside official channels, the Burgesses took a revolutionary step – organizing independent political action without royal approval. This laid the groundwork for self-government.”

JUSTIFY A REVOLUTION

Virginia wasn’t the only assembly shut down by the British. They repeatedly used government shutdowns as a political weapon to punish the people and manipulate them into compliance, including New York and South Carolina.

But with the Coercive Acts, they went for the kill shot. Under the Massachusetts Government Act of 1774, they outlawed all meetings without approval from the crown.

“No meeting shall be called by the select men, or at the request of any number of freeholders of any township, district, or precinct, without the leave of the governor, or, in his absence, of the lieutenant-governor, in writing, expressing the special business of the said meeting, first had and obtained.”

John Adams said this ALONE justified revolution..

“A settled plan to deprive the people of all the benefits, blessings and ends of the contract, to subvert the fundamentals of the constitution—to deprive them of all share in making and executing laws, will justify a revolution.”

The First Continental Congress debated for weeks, but the question wasn’t over whether to resist, but how. For weeks, the delegates argued logistics: when the boycott should start, what it should include, and whether to ban exports.

By October 14, they had the primary framework set, and shifted to pass the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress. This was a full list of grievances, the specific British acts that needed to be repealed, a declaration of rights, and a plan of action, promising to follow up with a “non-importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation association.”

For Alexander Hamilton, the choice was simple. The temporary cost of a commercial shutdown was nothing compared to the permanent cost of living under despotism. He argued that anyone who couldn’t see that was either a moral coward or a fool.

“No person, that is not lost to every generous feeling of humanity, or that is not stupidly blind to his own interest, could bear to offer himself and posterity as victims at the shrine of despotism, in preference to enduring the short lived inconveniencies that may result from an abridgment, or even entire suspension of commerce.”

ENFORCEMENT

But without enforcement, a declaration is just words on paper. To give the Association teeth, Congress included a revolutionary enforcement system.

“That a Committee be chosen in every County, City, and Town, by those who are qualified to vote for representatives in the Legislature, whose Business it shall be attentively to observe the conduct of all Persons touching this Association.”

When a violation was confirmed, the committee’s power was in public shaming. They were instructed to:

“Cause the truth of the case to be published in the Gazette, to the End that all such foes to the rights of British America may be publickly known and universally contemned as the Enemies of American Liberty.”

Once a person was publicly named, the community’s role was to completely ostracize them.

“And thenceforth we respectively will break off all Dealings with him, or her.”

To show the seriousness of their unity, Article 14 applied the same approach to any non-compliant colony:

“And we do farther agr[ee and resolve, that we will have] no Trade, Commerce, Dealings, o[r intercourse whatsoever, with any] Colony or Province in North Ame[rica, which shall not accede to, or] which shall hereafter violate, thi[s association, but will hold them as] unworthy of the Rights of Free[men, and as inimical to the liberties of] their Country.”

UNION ESTABLISHED

All twelve colonies present voted to pass the Association. Georgia, which had not sent delegates, joined the following year.

This was the moment the American union was truly born. For the first time, all thirteen colonies formally agreed to a single, coordinated, and enforceable policy against Britain.

Nearly a century later, Abraham Lincoln made this same connection: the union started with the Association. But the irony with his observation is thick, because he was making this case to argue against secession in a country birthed in secession.

“The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774.”

MAJOR IMPACT

According to historian T.H. Breen, the Association didn’t just create a union on paper; it sparked a revolutionary takeover of government from the ground up.

“During the months following the announcement of the Association, in October 1774, the insurgency gathered momentum. Indeed, no sooner had the Continental Congress authorized this infrastructure for enforcing a commercial boycott than hundreds of committees throughout America seized control of local government, quickly becoming the face of revolution.”

These new local committees had one primary mission: enforce the boycott. As historian Alan Taylor documents, the economic impact was immediate and devastating to British merchants. In just a few months, imports from Britain collapsed by over 85 percent.

“The committees proved remarkably effective, for the value of British imports plum­meted from about £3,000,000 in 1774 to just £220JJ000 during the first six months of 1775.”

This economic pain sparked fury from British loyalists. The Rev. Samuel Seabury, writing as “A Farmer,” voiced the establishment’s outrage and condescension.

“Can we think to threaten, and bully, and frighten the supreme government of the nation into a compliance with our demands? Can we expect to force a submission to our peevish and petulant humours, by exciting clamors and riots in England? We ought to know the temper and spirit, the power and strength of the nation better.”

Alexander Hamilton issued a blistering, point-by-point response to Seabury. First, he flatly rejected the loyalist’s condescending caricature of the colonists as childish bullies.

“No, gentle Sir. We neither desire, nor endeavour to threaten, bully, or frighten any persons into a compliance with our demands. We have no peevish and petulant humours to be submitted to.”

Hamilton continued with one of the best quotes of the entire Revolution.

“All we aim at, is to convince your high and mighty masters, the ministry, that we are not such asses as to let them ride us as they please.”

He concluded with a defiant promise, declaring that the colonists knew the value of liberty and would not surrender it without a fight – an attitude that’s seriously lacking today.

“We are determined to shew them, that we know the value of freedom; nor shall their rapacity extort, that inestimable jewel from us, without a manly and virtuous struggle.”

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On October 14, 1774, the First Continental Congress drew its line in the sand.

They met that fall to confront the Coercive Acts – Parliament’s brutal retaliation for the Boston Tea Party. They had a decision: submit to tyranny, or resist.

Their answer was the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress. It is one of the most important, and most forgotten, documents of the American Revolution, providing a foundation for both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

THE HISTORY LESSON

The opening paragraph of the Declaration and Resolves is a charge sheet against Parliament, listing a decade of abuses.

The delegates traced the tyranny to a single moment: the end of the French and Indian War in 1763. They argued the escalating conflict that followed was driven by the single grievance that spawned all others: Parliament’s claim of unlimited power, formalized in the Declaratory Act of 1766.

“Whereas, since the close of the last war, the British parliament, claiming a power of right to bind the people of America by statute in all cases whatsoever…”

Next, they listed Parliament’s first attempt at direct, internal taxation: the Stamp Act of 1765.

“…hath, in some acts expressly imposed taxes on them”

Then came the Sugar and Townshend Acts. Parliament disguised them as “duties” and trade regulations, but the colonists recognized them for what they were: taxes designed to raise revenue.

“and in others, under various pretenses, but in fact for the purpose of raising a revenue, hath imposed rates and duties payable in these colonies…”

To enforce these taxes and regulations, the Townshend Acts created a new bureaucracy: the American Board of Customs Commissioners.

“…established a board of commissioners with unconstitutional powers”

These “unconstitutional powers” included writs of assistance – general open-ended search warrants that gave customs officials the authority to enter and search any ship, warehouse, or even private home they suspected might contain smuggled goods.

Aggressive enforcement sparked immediate resistance. When customs agents boarded John Hancock’s ship, the Lydia in 1768, he didn’t file a petition – he had his men throw them off. Some considered this the first act of physical resistance in the Revolution.

In retaliation, the Board’s agents seized Hancock’s sloop, the Liberty. This led to a riot of 3,000 people who pelted the agents with rocks, smashed windows of their homes, and even burned a boat of one of the customs agents.

The British responded by marching redcoats into Boston.

This military occupation created a powder keg. Two years later, it exploded into the Boston Massacre.

The delegates concluded their opening indictment by showing the attacks on liberty were not just in the streets, but also in the courts. By claiming the power to move cases to courts of admiralty, the British were dismantling the right to a trial by jury.

“…and extended the jurisdiction of courts of Admiralty not only for collecting the said duties, but for the trial of causes merely arising within the body of a county.”

THE LIST OF GRIEVANCES

In early 1774, the British Parliament passed a series of acts to punish the colonies, particularly Massachusetts, after the Boston Tea Party.

They were known as the Coercive Acts, but are more commonly called the Intolerable Acts today.

These acts included the Boston Port Act, which closed the port; the Massachusetts Government Act, which stripped virtually all authority from the colonial government; the Administration of Justice Act, which stripped authority from local courts and authorized trials to be held faraway in Great Britain; and the Quartering Act, which allowed British troops to take over private buildings.

In their Declaration and Resolves, the delegates delivered the verdict: the Coercive Acts were not just bad policy, they were fundamentally illegal.

“All which statutes are impolitic, unjust, and cruel, as well as unconstitutional, and most dangerous and destructive of American rights.”

They then condemned statutes creating a system of total control: a judiciary no longer independent, but paid by the Crown, and the bane of liberty itself, standing armies in peacetime.

“in consequence of other statutes, judges who before held only estates at will in their offices, have been made dependent on the Crown alone for their salaries, and standing armies kept in times of peace”

And when colonial assemblies tried to push back? Parliament shut them down. Dissolved them for daring to complain.

“Assemblies have been frequently dissolved, contrary to the rights of the people, when they attempted to deliberate on grievances; and their dutiful, humble, loyal, & reasonable petitions to the crown for redress, have been repeatedly treated with contempt.”

A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS

After laying out their grievances, they pivoted to a declaration of rights.

“The inhabitants of the English Colonies in North America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following Rights”

First on the list: natural rights as the starting point.

“That they are entitled to life, liberty, and property, & they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without their consent.”

Next, rights so important that they laid the foundation for the 6th and 7th Amendments.

“That the respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of that law.”

Then came the core of the First Amendment.

“That they have a right peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the King; and that all prosecutions, prohibitory proclamations, and commitments for the same, are illegal.”

Standing armies? They considered them so dangerous, they said it a second time.

“That the keeping a Standing army in these colonies, in times of peace, without the consent of the legislature of that colony in which such army is kept, is against law.”

They closed their declaration of rights with what would become the foundational structure of the Constitution: separation of powers.

“It is indispensably necessary to good government, and rendered essential by the English constitution, that the constituent branches of the legislature be independent of each other; that, therefore, the exercise of legislative power in several colonies, by a council appointed during pleasure, by the crown, is unconstitutional, dangerous, and destructive to the freedom of American legislation.”

The declaration also included other key rights.

• Their ancestors were entitled to all the rights of free subjects in England.
• Those rights were not forfeited by emigration and were inherited by them as descendants.
• They were entitled to the protection of English statutes applicable to the colonies that existed at the time of settlement.
• They were also entitled to immunities and privileges secured by royal charters and provincial laws.

The delegates also asserted the right to exclusive legislation in their own provincial legislatures for taxation and internal policy. This key legislative claim set the stage for a debate over Parliament’s power over external regulation.

THE DEAL BREAKER?

The delegates were unified, except on that one issue that mattered most: Parliament’s authority. John Adams’s account reveals they weren’t just divided – they were splintered into factions.

“After several days deliberation, We agreed upon all the Articles excepting one, and that was the Authority of Parliament, which was indeed the Essence of the whole Controversy. Some were for a flatt denyal of all Authority: others for denying the Power of Taxation only. Some for denying internal but admitting [ex]ternal Taxation.”

Thomas Jefferson took the radical position in his draft guidance to Virginia delegates. He rejected Parliament’s authority completely.

“The true ground on which we declare these acts void is, that the British parliament has no right to exercise authority over us.”

With the delegates deadlocked after days of bitter debate, South Carolina’s John Rutledge gave John Adams a critical task: draft a compromise to unite the colonies.

The result, as Adams wrote, was a compromise nobody loved but everyone knew they needed to survive.

“When it was read I believe not one of the Committee were fully satisfied with it, but they all soon acknowledged that there was no hope of hitting on any thing, in which We could all agree with more Satisfaction. All therefore agreed to this, and upon this depended the Union of the Colonies.”

The final version is almost totally misrepresented by the mainstream history books today, which claim the delegates conceded the power of the British to regulate external trade.

That’s just false.

Instead, the John Adams text was actually a clever trap.

They allowed the British – with their consent – to regulate external trade as long as it wasn’t for raising revenue.

“we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British parliament, as are bona fide restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members excluding every idea of taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in America without their consent.”

THE LIST

With their rights declared, the delegates stated the price of peace: a non-negotiable list of every law that had to be repealed.

“We … proceed to state such acts and measures as have been adopted since the last war, which demonstrate a system formed to enslave America.”

They weren’t begging for reform. It was repeal or nothing.

“The following acts of Parliament are infringements and violations of the rights of the colonists; and that the repeal of them is essentially necessary, in order to restore harmony between Great Britain and the American colonies”

The list detailed a decade of abuse, naming all the major acts already covered: Sugar, Townshend, and Coercive.

They also included the Currency Act, the Postage Act, the Revenue Act, Commissioners of Customs Act, the Colonial Trade Act, the Dockyards Act, and the Quartering Act.

Want proof they absolutely despised standing armies? They mentioned it here as well, for a THIRD time.

“Also, that the keeping a standing army in several of these colonies, in time of peace, without the consent of the legislature of that colony in which the army is kept, is against law.”

FINAL WARNING

They closed the Declaration and Resolves with a three-step plan of peaceful action – a veiled threat that more could be on the way.

“we have for the present, only resolved to pursue the following peaceable measures: 

• To enter into a non-importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation agreement or association. 
• To prepare an address to the people of Great-Britain, and a memorial to the inhabitants of British America: and 
• To prepare a loyal address to his majesty, agreeable to resolutions already entered into.”

The petitions and boycotts? That was ultimately their final, peaceable offer.

But obedience to the acts themselves? That was never even on the table.

“To these grievous acts and measures Americans cannot submit.”

The post Forgotten Foundation: Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

The American Revolution kicked off in 1761 with a single principle from James Otis Jr.: an unconstitutional law is NO LAW AT ALL.

Any government act exceeding its legitimate authority is void the moment it is passed. It has no more legal power than a law passed by a foreign government.

Call it what it is: usurpation, a theft of power. And stolen power is not to be obeyed, it is to be resisted.

HIERARCHY OF POWER

Government possesses no inherent power. It is a created agent, and as George Mason explained, any authority it holds comes from its boss: the people.

“All power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people.”

The people didn’t just hand government a blank check. As John Jay made clear, they gave it the Constitution: a strict, enumerated list of what it is authorized to do.

“The proposed government is to be the government of the people; all its officers are to be their officers, and to exercise no rights but such as the people commit to them.”

This was so essential to the structure of the constitution they made it explicit with the Tenth Amendment, which Thomas Jefferson called the foundation of the entire system.

“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’”

James Wilson then locked in this hierarchy of power: the people at the top, the Constitution as their instructions, and the government at the bottom.

“As our constitutions are superior to our legislatures; so the people are superior to our constitutions.”

USURPATION

That hierarchy reveals the crime. Thomas Paine distinguished legitimate, delegated authority from theft.

“All delegated power is trust. All assumed power is usurpation.”

Usurpation, by definition, is an exercise of unauthorized power. In essence, stealing power from those who rightly hold it, the people. A common dictionary definition of the era came from Thomas Sheridan’s 1789 A Complete Dictionary of the English Language:

“Forcible, unjust, illegal seizure or possession.” 

A usurper is “One who seizes or possesses that to which he has no right.”

The Declaration of Independence demonstrates this view. Most people today refer to the list of charges against the king as “grievances.” But that word isn’t even in the document.

Instead, the founders used phrases like “A long train of abuses and usurpations” and “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations” to define their opposition to unconstitutional powers like the Stamp Act, the Declaratory Act, the Coercive Acts and so much more.

VOID

Usurpation justified a revolution, secession, and a long war for Independence. But the Founders knew any government could be just as dangerous. James Iredell issued the same warning against their own.

“Any law not warranted by the Constitution is a barefaced usurpation.”

St. George Tucker broadened it beyond just legislation to any exercise of power beyond constitutional limits.

“Every extension of the administrative authority beyond its just constitutional limits, is absolutely an act of usurpation.”

This is the legal doctrine of void ab initio. It’s a legal nullity from the beginning, and never rises to the level of law, and 3rd Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth applied that principle to the constitution.

“If they make a law which the Constitution does not authorize, it is void.”

As James Wilson made clear, this means government has no legal authority to enforce such acts.

“That a void act can confer no authority upon those, who proceed under colour of it, is a self evident proposition.”

In the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Thomas Jefferson took no prisoners. A usurpation of power – an unconstitutional law – is no law at all.

“Whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”

Even Alexander Hamilton took this position on the supremacy clause. Only acts in pursuance of delegated constitutional powers are supreme.

“But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the large society which are NOT PURSUANT to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land.”

PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE

The obvious objection to all this: government doesn’t care about theory or constitutional principles. They’ll do what they want anyway.

Hamilton continued with the practical application – acts beyond the limits of the constitution don’t stop themselves.

“These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such.”

Complying with stolen power just encourages more theft. That’s why James Iredell explained that a free people would resist any such acts.

“The people will resist if government usurps power not delegated to it.”

Roger Sherman explained how that works in a union of states under the Constitution.

When the people refuse to comply, and the states back them up, there’s not much the feds can do to shove their so-called “laws,” regulations and orders down our throats.

“All acts of the Congress not warranted by the constitution would be void. Nor could they be enforced contrary to the sense of a majority of the States.”

That’s constitutional enforcement in action: people refuse, states end enforcement, federal overreach fails.

James Otis helped launch the Revolution on one foundational principle: unconstitutional acts do not rise to the level of “law.” The fiery Anti-Federalist Luther Martin tied it all together: When government steals unauthorized power, resistance is duty.

“By the principles of the American revolution, arbitrary power may and ought to be resisted.”

The post Unconstitutional “Laws” Don’t Exist appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Who gets the credit for calling the most important convention of all—the gathering that drafted our U.S. Constitution? Writers most often claim the Confederation Congress did, citing its resolution of February 21, 1787. However, the honor also has been claimed for the New Jersey legislature, the Virginia legislature, and the 1786 Annapolis Convention.

Ironically, the most common assertion—that Congress called the convention—is the most obviously wrong.

Let’s examine the sequence of events:

The first entity to act was the Annapolis Convention, which was convened to discuss issues of trade. Commissioners (delegates) from only five states showed up on time: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia. Professing themselves unable to fulfill their mission, on September 14, 1786, the commissioners issued a statement. The entire text is reproduced at the end of this post.* Stripping out the unessential wording, it is as follows:

“Your Commissioners. . . suggest . . . that . . . the States, by whom they have been respectively delegated, would themselves concur, and use their endeavours to procure the concurrence of the other States, in the appointment of Commissioners, to meet at Philadelphia . . . to take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions . . . to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union; and to report such an Act for that purpose to . . . Congress . . . as when agreed to, by them, and afterwards confirmed by the Legislatures of every State, will effectually provide for the same.”

(In Founding era political usage, the word constitution usually referred to the general political system rather than a particular document. Thus, the Declaration of Independence decried British actions “foreign to our Constitution.” Even today we refer to the British political system as the “British constitution.”)

In a nutshell, the Annapolis commissioners “suggested” to the five states that sent them that those states agree with and promote the idea of a gathering in Philadelphia that would

• consider the situation of the United States,
• “devise . . . provisions” to
• change the political system so as to
• render it adequate, and
• obtain the agreement of Congress and of every state legislature.

This clearly was not a call: The commissioners, having no power to call a convention, merely “suggested” that their own states take action. Their resolution was not directed at other states.  Moreover, none of the subsequent state resolutions adopted the Annapolis formula in its entirety.

New Jersey was represented in Annapolis. On November 24, 1786, her state legislature passed a resolution. It said that four named commissioners were

“appointed on the Part of this State. . .and they hereby are authorized and empowered to meet such Commissioners as have been or may be appointed by the other States in the Union at the City of Philadelphia, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania . . . for the Purpose of taking into Consideration the State of the Union as to Trade and other important Objects, and of devising such further Provisions as shall appear necessary to render the Constitution of the federal Government adequate to the Exigencies thereof.”

Interestingly, the actual credentials delivered to the commissioners bore the date of November 23, the day before the legislative resolution passed.

This resolution was an important step, but if you read it you can see it was not the call either. It was not an invitation, and it was not addressed to any other state.

Next: On December 1, 1786 (not on October 16 as some sources indicate) Virginia’s general assembly passed a law entitled “AN ACT for appointing Deputies from this Commonwealth to a Convention proposed to be held in the City of Philadelphia in May next for the purpose of revising the federal Constitution.” You can read the entire act here. These are the highlights:

• A preamble consisted of three “whereas clauses.” The first recited the suggestion of the Annapolis convention without mentioning the need for approval by Congress or by all states. The second recited that a political “Crisis” had arrived. The third implicitly urged all states to act, citing the need for citizens to unite in the same spirit in which they had joined together under the Articles of Confederation.
• The operative part of the Virginia statute authorized appointment of seven commissioners to join with those from other states “in devising and discussing all such Alterations and farther Provisions as may be necessary to render the Foederal Constitution adequate to the Exigencies of the Union and in reporting such an Act for that purpose to the United States in Congress as when agreed to by them and duly confirmed by the several States will effectually provide for the same.”
• At the end was this wording: “And the Governor is requested to transmit forthwith a Copy of this Act to the United States in Congress and to the Executives of each of the States in the Union.”

Next, on December 12, Virginia appointed her commissioners by legislative resolution.

It might be objected that the December 1, 1786 law was primarily an authorization for the appointment of commissioners rather than a call. But the direction to the governor that he transmit the law to the other states acted as a call. In fact, the Virginia legislature followed the same basic formula when calling the Annapolis Convention: It adopted a resolution that first appointed commissioners, then defined their powers, and then provided for dissemination of the resolution to other states:

“Resolved . . . That the said Commissioners shall immediately transmit to the several States copies of the preceding resolution with a circular letter requesting their concurrence therein, and proposing a time and place for the meeting aforesaid.”

After that, events unfolded quickly. Pennsylvania announced participation on December 30, North Carolina and New Hampshire in January, Delaware on February 3, and Georgia on February 10. By the time Congress acted on February, 21, 1787, seven states already had agreed to participate under terms granting the convention wide powers.

Thus, Virginia’s measure served as the call. It urged all states to act. It was sent to the other states. And other states quickly responded.

What of the later congressional resolution? It provided:

“Resolved that in the opinion of Congress it is expedient that on the second Monday in May next a Convention of delegates who shall have been appointed by the several States be held at Philadelphia for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States render the federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government 3 and the preservation of the Union.”

This was a compromise between a committee proposal that Congress “strongly recommend” a convention with broad powers and a New York proposal that Congress “recommend” a convention limited to proposing amendments to the Articles of Confederation.

Note that the congressional resolution was not a summons nor even a recommendation. It expressed only “the opinion of Congress”—language without any legal force.

Virginia, therefore, called the Constitutional Convention. The Commonwealth’s governor, Edmund Randolph, underscored this at the Constitutional Convention when he said, “the convention had originated from Virginia.” So also did Hugh Brackenridge, a distinguished Pennsylvania lawyer who later served on his state’s supreme court. In an October 27, 1787 article in the Pittsburgh Gazette, he wrote: “[T]he calling the late convention did not originate with Congress; it began with the state of Virginia which was followed by this state, without any hint of the necessity of this measure from Congress whatever; it was a proceeding altogether out of the confederation, and with which Congress had nothing to do.”

* The full statement by the Annapolis Convention was as follows: “Your Commissioners, with the most respectful deference, beg leave to suggest their unanimous conviction, that it may essentially tend to advance the interests of the union, if the States, by whom they have been respectively delegated, would themselves concur, and use their endeavours to procure the concurrence of the other States, in the appointment of Commissioners, to meet at Philadelphia on the second Monday in May next, to take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union; and to report such an Act for that purpose to the United States in Congress assembled, as when agreed to, by them, and afterwards confirmed by the Legislatures of every State, will effectually provide for the same.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This entry, first published on Oct. 7, 2016, was updated on April 14, 2023 and on September 28, 2025 – and is republished here with the permission of the author.

The post Who Called the Constitutional Convention? The Commonwealth of Virginia appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

That phrase isn’t hyperbole; it’s straight out of the Declaration of Independence.

Say “invasion,” and people picture foreign armies crossing a border. To the Founders, a far more dangerous invasion came from within. They used that same word for what happens when government violates your liberty and seizes power it was never given.

To them, that wasn’t a mere policy debate. It was the most dangerous “invasion” we face.

FORGED IN MISTRUST

In 1776, Virginia’s new Constitution and Declaration of Rights didn’t just establish independence; it listed British offenses. The most powerful charge was that the king had launched “invasions” against liberty itself.

“by dissolving legislative assemblies repeatedly and continually, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions of the rights of the people”

This charge was so essential that it was repeated in the Declaration of Independence.

“He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.”

St. George Tucker explained that the American Revolution gave birth to written constitutions designed to counteract government’s tendency to exercise arbitrary power and invade the rights of the people.

“The American revolution seems to have given birth to this new political phenomenon: in every state a written constitution was framed, and adopted by the people, both in their individual and sovereign capacity, and character.”

How does a constitution do that? By spelling out what government is authorized to do in the first place.

“by this means, also, government was reduced to its elements; its object was defined, its principles ascertained; its powers limited, and fixed; its structure organized; and the functions of every part of the machine so clearly designated, as to prevent any interference, so long as the limits of each were observed.”

Even though words on paper don’t stop government power, a written constitution  still acts like an air raid siren: alerting the people when their own government is invading their rights and powers.

“A written constitution has moreover the peculiar advantage of serving as a beacon to apprise the people when their rights and liberties are invaded, or in danger.”

INVASION IS TREASON

This language showed up everywhere. On the Federalist side, Noah Webster called it what it was: treason.

“If any man attempts to use force and compel his countrymen to receive his system, in preference to others, it is an unwarrantable act – a high misdemeanor – an invasion of liberty – perhaps it may be treason: tho it would be difficult to punish it in a course of legal justice, for there is no law by which it can be determined.”

Alexander Hamilton, a man who wanted to abolish the states, admitted they were the essential firewall against federal invasions.

“It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the State governments will, in all possible contingencies, afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.”

And on the Anti-Federalist side, Richard Henry Lee took a similar position: states must guard against every invasion of their reserved powers by the federal government.

“I take this reasoning to be unrefutable, a{nd} therefore it becomes the friends of liberty to guard {with} perfect vigilance every right that belongs to the Sta{tes} and to protest against every invasion of them”

WAR ON YOU

The Founders didn’t invent the idea of government as an invader, they inherited it from people like Algernon Sidney.

Nearly a century before the Revolution, Sidney was blunt: the ultimate crime is the invasion of a people’s right to self-government.

“Is not the invasion of it the most outrageous injury that can be done to all mankind, and most particularly to the nation that is enslaved by it?”

John Locke’s principle was clear: when government violates rights or exercises arbitrary power, it is waging war on the people themselves.

“Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience”

Benjamin Franklin confirmed this same brutal truth during the Philadelphia convention in 1787. Government is in a never-ending war with the people.

“As all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the Governing & Governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less”

HOW TO RESPOND

When government becomes the invader, the founders knew the response must match the threat. Even when speaking out meant risking everything, James Otis, Jr. said forget playing it safe.

“When our rights are invaded, it is high time to throw aside prudence”

Even Alexander Hamilton understood that constitutional violations aren’t mere policy disagreements – they’re usurpations of power that deserve a very specific response.

“But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the large society which are NOT PURSUANT to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such”

Samuel Adams made the ultimate point: nothing is worse than a government invasion of your rights, and there is no higher duty than to defend them against any and all attackers.

“The people hold the Invasion of their Rights & Liberties the most horrid rebellion and a Neglect to defend them against any Power whatsoever the highest Treason.”

The post The Most Dangerous “Invasion” We Face appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

The American police state under Donald Trump has mastered the art of delivering endless diversions, constant uproar, and wall-to-wall chaos designed to prevent us from focusing on any single issue for long.

This is how psyops work: keep the populace reactive, confused, fearful and pliant while power consolidates.

According to the Trump administration, “we the people” are now the enemy from within.

Over the course of just one week, we’ve been bombarded with headlines about government shutdowns, a presidential directive aimed at blacklisting dissent, threats by Trump to deploy the National Guard into states he considers political opponents, the politicization of the military, tariffs that inflict economic pain on American consumers, and the administration’s unabashed embrace of graft and grift.

In the midst of it all, Pete Hegseth, the newly styled Secretary of War, compelled a sudden gathering of the top military brass for a costly $6 million exercise that amounted to little more than chest-thumping, propaganda and grandstanding.

With Hegseth at the helm of the renamed Department of War, calling for a new “warrior ethos,” the Trump administration is celebrating aggression and blind obedience over peacekeeping, honor and constitutional duty.

Both the rebranding of the War Department and the warrior-ethos pep rally signaled a profound shift in how the Deep State—which has consolidated its powers under Trump—views the role of the military, our constitutional government, and the American people.

It is a shift we cannot afford to ignore.

The name change alone is significant.

After World War II, “War” was deliberately retired from the department’s name to emphasize restraint in the wake of global conflicts that cost humanity dearly in terms of lives, fortunes and peace. That nominal bulwark has now been discarded. And with it, the very idea that America’s military exists for defense rather than conquest.

Reviving the Department of War signals to the bureaucracy, the brass, and the public that aggression—not defense—is the organizing principle.

The Pentagon has been rechristened not as a fortress against foreign threats but as a machine for waging endless war here at home: Democratic cities will become military staging grounds; rules of engagement will be loosened to maximize “lethality”; and militarized police will be given a license to kill their fellow Americans.

This is not the language of defense. It is the language of aggression and occupation.

A standing army on domestic soil was precisely what the Founders feared. They lived under troops quartered in their towns. They knew what happens when government treats its own citizens as a hostile force.

Two centuries later, their fear has become our reality.

For years, federal and state agencies have blurred the line between soldiers and police. Armored vehicles on neighborhood streets. Combat training in American towns. Laws allowing indefinite detention of citizens without trial.

Methodically, a war culture has been transplanted from the battlefield abroad to the homeland.

With armored tanks on our streets, SWAT raids treated as routine, and citizens viewed as combatants rather than neighbors with rights, the results are predictable: abuse, eroded liberties, and the slow death of a constitutional republic.

This is the future we warned was coming: every city a potential conflict zone, every protest a pretext for deployment, every citizen a suspect.

Trump’s reckless call to use “dangerous cities” as military training grounds doesn’t just echo this dystopia—it completes the circle.

Under the banner of “war,” the government is giving itself license to treat the American people as the enemy.

And Trump, buoyed by the power of the presidency and his ability to use taxpayer dollars for his own grandiose plans—building ballrooms, hiring thugs with extravagant bonuses for arrests and roundups, erecting detention centers—is now attempting to bribe the military with over $1 trillion in spending in 2026 if only they will march to a dictator’s drum.

But this is precisely the scenario the Founders sought to guard against. They understood that “the means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”

Their warning is clear to everyone but the die-hard devotees of the American police state: a standing army puts the American people squarely in the crosshairs of a tyrannous regime.

A standing army—something that propelled the early colonists into revolution—strips the American people of any vestige of freedom. How can there be liberty when there are tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, Blackhawk helicopters and armed drones overhead?

It was for this reason the Founders vested control of the military in a civilian government, with a civilian commander-in-chief. They did not want a military regime ruled by force.

They opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution.

That basic civics lesson hasn’t sunk in with Trump, who seems to relish ruling with brute force and using the military to kill with impunity.

Just listen to him brag about bombing Venezuelan fishing boats and killing the occupants without any attempt at due process: he sounds like every power-hungry madman who aspires to become a dictator.

And then there’s Hegseth, who—despite professing devotion to Jesus, the prince of peace—has dismissed pacifism as “naive and dangerous,” insisting: “From this moment forward, the only mission… is warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win.”

But in declaring war as the mission, Hegseth and Trump reveal exactly how far they have strayed from the Constitution.

They are a lesson in how power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely—exactly the danger that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former general in World War II, warned against:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Eisenhower’s words were prophetic, because the rise of misplaced power did not begin with Trump. Trump and his administration didn’t create this quagmire from nothing—the present police state and its tools of terror have been in the works for a long time.

Back in 2008, the U.S. Army War College issued a report urging the military to be prepared to put down civil unrest within the country.

Summarizing the report, journalist Chris Hedges wrote, “The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a ‘violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,’ which could be provoked by ‘unforeseen economic collapse,’ ‘purposeful domestic resistance,’ ‘pervasive public health emergencies’ or ‘loss of functioning political and legal order.’ The ‘widespread civil violence,’ the document said, ‘would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.’”

In 2009, DHS reports labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists, calling on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance.

Fast forward to the present day, and you have NSPM-7, Trump’s new national security directive, which equates anyone with “anti-Christian” or “anti-capitalism” or “anti-American” views as domestic terrorists.

Add to this: “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command, which envisions using armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems.

What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as concern for the national security.

The chilling five-minute training video paints an ominous picture of the future bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.

At three-and-a-half minutes in, the narrator speaks of a need to “drain the swamps.”

That phrase should sound chillingly familiar.

Trump’s supporters know it as a rallying cry against corruption in Washington. But in the Pentagon’s scenario, “drain the swamps” means clearing urban centers of “noncombatants” and engaging adversaries in high-intensity conflict.

But here’s the catch: in the Pentagon’s lexicon, those “noncombatants” are not foreign armies at all. Who are they?

They are, according to the Pentagon, “adversaries.” They are “threats.” They are the “enemy.”

They are civilians. Protesters. The unemployed. The poor. Dissidents. In short: us.

Welcome to Battlefield America.

In the future imagined by the Pentagon, any walls and prisons that are built will be used to protect the societal elite—the haves—from the have-nots.

We are the have-nots. And once you see that division clearly, the rest falls into place.

Suddenly it all begins to make sense: the surveillance systems, the civil unrest drills, fusion centers, the databases of dissidents. The extremism reports, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military.

Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons across government agencies—and equipping them for war against their own citizens. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to build Big Brother into every device we own. Cars, phones, smart homes, loyalty cards, streaming services—they all track us.

All of this has taken place in broad daylight, funded with our dollars.

It’s astounding how convenient we’ve made it for the government to lock down the nation.

So, what exactly is the government preparing for?

By “government,” I don’t mean the two-party bureaucracy of Republicans and Democrats. I mean Government with a capital “G”: the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

This is the hidden face of power: corporatized, militarized, and contemptuous of freedom. And it is not waiting for some distant tomorrow.

The future is here.

By waging endless wars abroad, bringing the instruments of war home, turning police into soldiers, criminalizing dissent, and making peaceful revolution nearly impossible, the government has engineered an environment where domestic violence becomes inevitable.

Be warned: in the future envisioned by the military, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will be enemies of the state.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re already enemies of the state.

For years, the government has warned of domestic terrorism, erected surveillance, and trained law enforcement to equate anti-government views (that is, exercising your constitutional rights) with extremism. Now that groundwork has paid off.

What the government failed to explain—until Trump—was that the domestic terrorists would be of the government’s own choosing.

“We the people” have become enemy #1.

This article was originally published at The Rutherford Institute.

The post Battlefield America: The Federal War on the “Enemy Within” appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Thomas Jefferson warned about the dangers of unchecked power even in a system where the people get to choose their leaders.

But what if you were told that’s just what we ended up with? Because the system we live under today is virtually the same – in practice – as the British system the founders fought a long, bloody war to secede from.

And it all gets down to sovereignty – or final authority. To the founders, any government that gets to determine the extent of its own power is the very definition of tyranny.

America didn’t escape the British system. We rebuilt it.

POWER THAT ANSWERS TO NO ONE

To understand what the founders fought to escape and what we’ve rebuilt, start with the source. In 1764, Royal Governor Sir Francis Bernard described the British system: power that answered to no one and recognized no earthly limits.

“The King in Parliament has the sole right of legislation, and the supreme superintendency of the government; and, in this plentitude of power, is absolute, uncontrollable, and accountable to none; and therefore, in a political sense, can do no wrong.”

It was all based on sovereignty: supreme, absolute, and final power.

“The Kingdom of Great Britain is imperial; that is, sovereign, and not subordinate to or dependent upon any earthly power.”

Exercising this sovereign power, the British passed the Sugar Act in early 1764 to fund a standing army occupying the colonies after the Seven Years’ War.

Samuel Adams immediately saw what this meant: an attack on their most fundamental right, the power to govern themselves.

“For if our Trade may be taxed why not our Lands? Why not the Produce of our Lands & every thing we possess or make use of? This we apprehend annihilates our Charter Right to govern & tax ourselves.”

He then took the argument to its logical and brutal conclusion. A people taxed without even having representation are not free at all.

“If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal Representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves?”

James Otis saw the domino effect: this precedent would topple every other right.

“The very act of taxing, exercised over those who are not represented, appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most essential rights, as freemen; and if continued, seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right.”

“No taxation without representation?” That meant nothing to the British. As Bernard put it: We’re sovereign. You’re subjects. What we say goes.

“The Parliament of Great Britain, as well from its rights of Sovereignty as from occasional exigencies, has a right to make laws for, and impose taxes upon, its subjects in its external dominations, although they are not represented in such Parliament.”

The British ignored the warnings and doubled down. In 1765, they escalated with the Stamp Act. Patrick Henry’s Virginia Resolves drew a constitutional line in the sand.

“Resolved, Therefore that the General Assembly of this Colony have the only and sole exclusive Right and Power to lay Taxes and Impositions upon the Inhabitants of this Colony and that every Attempt to vest such Power in any Person or Persons whatsoever other than the General Assembly aforesaid has a manifest Tendency to destroy British as well as American Freedom.”

THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE

But the British didn’t agree. Even the notion of local self-government in the colonies was something they saw a gift they could revoke, not a right.

“A separate Legislation is not an absolute right of British subjects residing out of the seat of Empire; it may or may not be allowed, and has or has not been granted, according to the circumstances of the community.”

When the people nullified the Stamp Act with mass non-compliance and resistance, the British repealed it, but this was only a political move – they didn’t actually retreat. On the same day, they passed the Declaratory Act, claiming unlimited, centralized power “in all cases whatsoever.”

The Declaratory Act was the point of no return because it forced the question – who is in charge? The British said government. Americans, like George Mason, said the people.

“In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim – that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people. We should wear it as a breastplate, and buckle it on as our armour.”

To the colonists, the Declaratory Act wasn’t a real law. They called it the “pretended right.” Thomas Paine took that contempt a step further, calling it a claim of power so total it was an offense against God.

“Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but ‘to BIND us in all cases whatsoever,’ and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious, for so unlimited a power can belong only to GOD.”

James Madison identified this clash over sovereignty as the “fundamental principle of the revolution.” He first explained the American view – that legislatures in the colonies were equals to Parliament. The only difference was jurisdiction.

“The Legislative power was maintained to be as complete in each American Parliament, as in the British Parliament.”

The Revolution itself arose because the British refused to accept this view.

“A denial of these principles by Great-Britain, and the assertion of them by America, produced the revolution.”

SOVEREIGNTY LIES IN THE PEOPLE

So in the British model, sovereignty lies in government. That’s a government that decides its own limits. The American constitutional system rejected that idea completely. St. George Tucker explained the blueprint.

“In the United States of America the people have retained the sovereignty in their own hands: they have in each state distributed the government, or administrative authority of the state, into two distinct branches, internal, and external; the former of these, they have confided, with some few exceptions, to the state government; the latter to the federal government.”

John Jay boiled it down even further. The Constitution is just a list of instructions from the real bosses: the people.

“The Constitution only serves to point out that part of the people’s business, which they think proper by it to refer to the management of the persons therein designated.”

The people in government weren’t a new ruling class. They were, as Jay noted, just the hired help.

“those persons are to receive that business to manage, not for themselves and as their own, but as agents and overseers for the people to whom they are constantly responsible.”

Remember that language that Governor Bernard used to describe the British system? At the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, James Wilson showed how Americans flipped it upside down.

“the truth is, that the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable authority remains with the people.”

John Dickinson took this further: when you have a bad administration, the answer isn’t within the government at all. It’s found “before the supreme sovereignty of the people.”

“IT IS THEIR DUTY TO WATCH, AND THEIR RIGHT TO TAKE CARE, THAT THE CONSTITUTION BE PRESERVED; or in the Roman phrase on perilous occasions – TO PROVIDE, THAT THE REPUBLIC RECEIVE NO DAMAGE.”

In Virginia, George Nicholas laid out the process – courts could be a first line of defense. But the people themselves were still the final say.

“But, says he, who is to determine the extent of such powers? I say, the same power which in all well regulated communities determines the extent of Legislative powers – If they exceed these powers, the Judiciary will declare it void. If not, the people will have a right to declare it void.”

In North Carolina, Archibald Maclaine started with the core principle – the source of power.

“all power is in the people and immediately derived from them.”

Then he then he explained how a free people is supposed to deal with violations of their own constitution

“You cannot exceed the power prescribed by the Constitution. You are amendable to us for your conduct. This act is unconstitutional. We will disregard it, and punish you for the attempt.”

Even Alexander Hamilton, when discussing federal supremacy, prescribed the same treatment for constitutional violations.

“But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the large society which are NOT PURSUANT to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such.”

THE DEFINITION OF TYRANNY

How do you treat usurpations of power? George Nicholas gave the answer: a free people wouldn’t let them stand forever.

“What would be the consequence of passing such a law? It would be, Sir, that after the expiration of the two years, at the next election they would either choose such men as would alter the law, or they would resist the government.”

They would never let their own constitution be twisted into authorization for tyranny.

“An enlightened people will never suffer what was established for their security, to be perverted to an act of tyranny.”

As St. George Tucker explained, when government steals power never delegated to it, that’s the very definition of tyranny.

“if in a limited government the public functionaries exceed the limits which the constitution prescribes to their powers, every such act is an act of usurpation in the government, and, as such, treason against the sovereignty of the people, which is thus endeavored to be subverted, and transferred to the usurpers.”

A POPULATION ON ITS KNEES

In the British system, government was sovereign. Government had power in “all cases whatsoever.” And that meant government would do whatever it wanted until government changed its mind.

Compare that to the American system today – not how it’s supposed to be under the Constitution, but how it plays out in practice. The way that almost all Americans treat the constitution today is that government gets to determine if government is following the rules or not.

This is most prominent with federal lawsuits. Most people believe that when the federal government does something they think is unconstitutional, the best recourse is to file a lawsuit.

But the federal courts are part of the federal government.

Asking part of the federal government to tell the federal government to stop doing what the federal government wasn’t supposed to do in the first place isn’t what a free people would do. That is, declare the act void. That’s a population on its knees, begging for scraps.

You can see this play out everywhere, from the Patriot Act to the NFA and everything in between.

When you add in the common view of the supremacy clause, that federal law is always supreme until the federal government decides otherwise, there’s not much difference with the British system under the Declaratory Act. Because their law was supreme “in all cases whatsoever.”

ELECTIVE DESPOTISM

The only real difference in practice comes down to a handful of elections every few years. But Thomas Paine warned that simply choosing who holds the whip doesn’t make you free.

“It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.”

This system of elected rulers with unlimited power is the exact nightmare Thomas Jefferson warned about, bringing us right back to where we started.

“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”

When those checks aren’t effective? Jefferson gave us the answer.

“where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.”

That, right there, is the difference between subjects of the British system and a real “land of the free.”

The post America Rebuilt the British System the Founders Fought to Escape appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Nearly five years before the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams demanded that the people resist arbitrary power, warning them that the alternative was to tamely submit, sit idly by, and hope for the best – a recipe for total tyranny.

For Adams, this wasn’t politics; it was a test of backbone and fortitude. It was the moral virtue of doing what’s right, even when facing down the most powerful government on Earth.

Today, that demand is completely ignored. But the principle behind it is timeless: a people that won’t defend their liberty is a people that won’t have it for long.

A DUTY TO BE FREE

One of Samuel Adams’s sharpest arguments appeared in the Boston Gazette, the unofficial newspaper of the Sons of Liberty. Writing as Candidus on October 14, 1771, he laid out the non-negotiable terms of freedom.

He began with a line from James Thompson’s poem, Liberty, a clear warning about a people losing their character.

“Ambition saw that stooping Rome so kneeling Rome could bear a master, nor had virtue to be free.”

For Adams, the lesson was simple: the people, and the people alone, are responsible for defending their own liberty. This is no mere political choice, but the fundamental duty of a virtuous people. He stated this conclusion without apology.

“I believe that no people ever yet groaned under the heavy yoke of slavery but when they deserved it. This may be called a severe censure upon by far the greatest part of the nations in the world who are involved in the misery of servitude. But however they may be thought by some to deserve commiseration, the censure is just.”

To Adams, freedom is not something people passively possess, but something they must actively defend.

“The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom and defended it as they ought.”

To Adams, the idea that millions could be dominated by a few was not a sign of the rulers’ strength, but of the people’s weakness. He used the Roman example of Brutus to prove it.

“Is it possible that millions could be enslaved by a few, which is a notorious fact, if all possessed the independent spirit of Brutus, who, to his immortal honor, expelled the proud tyrant of Rome and his royal and rebellious race?”

The math is simple: a tyrant’s power is impossible if the people possess the spirit to resist. Being free is ultimately a choice, even when the risk is great.

“If, therefore, a people will not be free… if they have not virtue enough to maintain their liberty against a presumptuous invader, they deserve no pity and are to be treated with contempt and ignominy.”

FORGING YOUR OWN CHAINS

Adams then turned to the story of Caesar to illustrate how a people can be seduced into forging their own chains.

“By beguiling arts, hypocrisy, and flattery, which are even more fatal than the sword, he obtained that supreme power which his ambitious soul had long thirsted for. The people were finally prevailed upon to consent to their own ruin.”

This “consent” was formalized when the people passed the Lex Regia, a law that transferred all legislative power from themselves to the emperor. The result was, as Adams explained, a blank check for power.

“the Will and pleasure of the Prince had the force of law”

According to Adams, this was not a conquest; it was a voluntary surrender. By giving up their power once, the people created a fatal precedent, exchanging a free constitution for permanent tyranny.

SILENCE AS CONSENT

Having established the Roman precedent for ruin, Adams turned to the immediate threat in America. His warning was a direct challenge to the colonists: a tyranny was at the door, and hoping for the best was not a strategy.

“It behooves us, however, to awake and advert to the danger we are in. The tragedy of American freedom, it is to be feared, is nearly completed. A tyranny seems to be at the very door. But what will this avail if we have not courage and resolution to prevent the completion of their system?”

Adams then identified the primary weapon used to pacify a population: the official assurance that there is no real danger.

“Our enemies would fain have us lie down on the bed of sloth and security, and persuade ourselves that there is no danger.”

He ridiculed this call for calm by pointing to the obvious evidence of a constitution already under attack.

“But is there no danger when the very foundations of our civil constitution tremble? When an attempt was first made to disturb the cornerstone of the fabric we were universally and justly alarmed. And can we be cool spectators when we see it already removed from its place?”

As proof, he pointed to their own governor, who had publicly admitted that he was bound to obey orders from London, regardless of the colony’s own laws or charter.

Adams detailed the absurdity of the situation: the colonists were being told to remain quiet while the money taken from them was being used to pay for their own oppression.

“And yet with unparalleled insolence we are told to be quiet when we see that very money which is torn from us by a lawless force made use of still further to oppress us, to feed and pamper a set of infamous wretches who swarm like the locusts of Egypt. Is it a time for us to sleep, when our free government is essentially changed, and a new one is forming upon a quite different system, a government without the least dependence upon the people, a government under the absolute control of a minister of state?”

Finally, he connected the Roman precedent directly to the American crisis, warning that the only difference was that the colonists had not yet formally consented to their own ruin. He argued that silence would be interpreted as that consent.

“What difference is there between the present state of this province, which in course will be the deplorable state of all America, and that of Rome under the law before mentioned? The only difference is this, that they gave their formal consent to the change, which we have not yet done. But let us be upon our guard against even a negative submission, for… if we are voluntarily silent, as the conspirators would have us to be, it will be considered as an approbation of the change.”

AN INHERITANCE TO DEFEND

The only alternative to silent consent was active resistance. For Adams, this was not merely a right to be exercised, but an indispensable duty with moral, historical, and generational obligations.

“If a minister shall usurp the supreme and absolute government of America and set up his instructions as laws in the colonies, and their governors shall be so weak or so wicked as, for the sake of keeping their places, to be made the instruments in putting them in execution – who will presume to say that the people have not a right, or that it is not their indispensable duty to God and their country, by all rational means in their power, to resist them?”

For Adams, this was not a debatable point.

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.”

He framed this duty not as a matter of personal choice, but of generational responsibility. Liberty was not their personal property to surrender.

“We have received them, the liberties of our country and our civil constitution, as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence.”

To fail in this duty was to earn permanent shame.

“It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”

Adams warned against the complacency that often follows victories, such as the repeal of the Stamp Act. He argued that past success was not a reason to rest, but to redouble their efforts.

“Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times more than ever calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance.”

To anchor this duty in ancient wisdom, Adams paraphrased the Stoic philosopher Seneca. For the Stoics, courage was not a suggestion but a core virtue. Submitting to an attack on liberty was a moral failure that invited only more of the same.

“Let us remember that if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.”

He left us with a final, sobering calculation: the fate of generations to come rests squarely on our shoulders.

“It is a very serious consideration which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers in the event.”

The post Resist Them: Samuel Adams and the Forgotten Duty of a Free People appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

The Great Seal’s front is on the right side of the bill. It includes the motto “E pluribus unum”—out of many, one. This motto derives from the line e pluribus unus, which appears in a Latin poem called Moretum (The Salad or Pesto). Although scholars now believe that Moretum was probably composed by another person, during the Eighteenth Century and for ages before, it also was attributed to Vergil.

Thus, in 1782, when the Confederation Congress adopted legends for the new country’s great seal, Congress turned to Vergil for all three.

Vergil’s Life and Works

Publius Vergilius Maro was born in 70 BCE near Mantua (Mantova), in northern Italy. This region was agricultural, and the poet’s love for farming and the countryside shines through in his verse.

Vergil was not physically robust, and by nature he was painfully shy. He never married or participated in political or military affairs. He became a celebrity only through his poetry.

Suetonius Tranquillus—the early-second-century producer of biographies on the first twelve Caesars—also wrote a short biography of Vergil. Suetonius tells us that Vergil composed poetry while still a teenager. Some of his early productions may be among those in the collection traditionally called the Appendix Vergiliana. This is the compilation which includes Moretum.

However, Vergil’s verified output appeared as three major publications: the Eclogues, the Georgics (Georgicon), and the Aeneid.

The Eclogues (also called the “Bucolics”) were published around 37 BCE. They made their author famous and attracted the patronage of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, the young man who later became Caesar Augustus. The Eclogues are ten pastoral poems averaging 83 lines each.

Vergil based the pastoral form on the work of the Greek author Theocritis. But the Eclogues were so popular that they became the template for pastoral poetry forever after.

The Georgics, likely published in or near 30 BCE, is a single long poem. It consists of four “books” (scrolls) totaling 2,188 lines. The predominant theme is a description and celebration of agriculture, the Italian countryside, and rural life.

Vergil next began the Aeneid. He never quite completed it to his satisfaction, although its rough edges are insignificant within the scope of the work. It was not published until after Vergil’s death in 19 BCE.

The Aeneid is an epic consisting of nearly 10,000 lines in twelve “books.” Its structure is modeled loosely on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, although in reverse order. As one who read it in English as a young man and in Latin years later after learning that language, I can testify that only the reader with Latin competency can grasp the Aeneid’s truly astounding power and beauty.

The epic tells the story of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who, during the Greek sack of Troy, escaped with his father and his son. They met other Trojan refugees, and together they undertook a much-interrupted voyage to Italy—to a western land promised to them by the gods, who predicted it would be the seat of a great empire. After initial struggles, the Trojan refugees merged with the native Latins, and together they formed the people who would one day found Rome.

Vergil’s Influence on the American Founders

Eighteenth-century schooling centered largely on the Greco-Roman classics. Boys (and some girls) with educational aspirations typically began studying Latin shortly after their eighth birthdays. Boys headed for college later undertook the study of Greek as well.

Schoolboys read works by a variety of Latin authors: Caesar, Cicero, Horace, Livy, Ovid, Sallust, Tacitus, and others. But among writers of prose, Cicero seems to have made the deepest mark, and among poets, Vergil.

Hence, in 1782, the Confederation Congress decided to base all three slogans in the Great Seal on lines by Vergil.

Leading Founders’ personal correspondence frequently contained adaptations of Vergilian lines, often unattributed. To cite only three examples:

• On September 5, 1783, John Adams wrote from Paris to Elbridge Gerry, urging the preservation of some papers because hæc olim meminisse juvabit (the memory of this will be pleasing [or helpful] in the future)—a line from the Aeneid.
• In a letter dated April 6, 1784 to John Witherspoon, John Jay responded to Witherspoon’s request that he narrate the events of a particularly difficult sea voyage with the exclamation, jubes renovare dolorem (you order me to relive the pain). This was a shortened version of Aeneas’ reply when asked to recount the fall of Troy.
• On November 12, 1788, Virginia Federalist Francis Corbin wrote to his ally James Madison about the Anti-Federalist group headed by Patrick Henry. Corbin referred to “Henry & his pack” as “Myrmidonum Dolopumve”—Aeneas’ characterization of the Greek armies attacking Troy.

The late Jasper Griffin, the famous Oxford classicist, wrote a short book on Vergil’s works that I recommend to all people educated or seeking to be such. Professor Griffin observed that the Eclogues, although consisting of ten freestanding poems, actually follow a tight organizational scheme. Perhaps among the others who noticed it was Gouverneur Morris. Morris seems to have followed similar principles in constructing the Constitution’s Preamble. (Like other leading Founders, Morris quoted Vergil from time to time.)

Vergil was a popular source for participants in the 1787-1790 debates over the ratification of the Constitution. For example, when opposing the Constitution at the Virginia ratifying convention, George Mason warned that if the document’s Ex Post Facto Clauses were interpreted to include civil as well as criminal laws, courts might dispossess people who had purchased and settled on vacant land: “Our peasants will be like those mentioned by Virgil [sic],” he said, “reduced to ruin and misery, driven from their farms, and obliged to leave their country.” Mason recited the relevant line from the first Eclogue: Nos patriam fugimus—et dulcia linquimus arva. (We flee from our homeland; we abandon our sweet country.).

Incidentally, the subsequent New York ratifying convention took Mason’s warning seriously. It announced that New York ratified only on the assumption that the Ex Post Facto Clauses were limited to criminal cases, and in 1798, the Supreme Court so ruled.

There are many other instances of participants in the constitutional debates citing, or borrowing from, Vergil’s works. Here are a few:

• A Maryland Antifederalist writing as “A Farmer” (probably John Francis Mercer) warned that the Constitution could bring heavy federal taxation. He employed a line from the third Eclogue about a greedy shepherd who milks his sheep twice every hour, thereby robbing baby lambs of nutrition.

• Another Antifederalist warned about the Constitution with a now-common metaphor from the Eclogues: “A snake lies in the grass.”

• Still another, borrowing from the Aeneid, quoted lines from the story of how the Trojans dragged the fateful wooden horse into their city:

                 “Instamus tamen immemores caecique furore

                  “et monstrum infelix sacrata sistimus arce.”

“Yet we push forward, unmindful, blinded by madness,

and erect the ill-omened monstrosity within our sacred citadel.”

• A Federalist writer borrowed from the Aeneid to highlight the sad state of the Union under the Articles of Confederation: Sunt lacrimae rerum— “There are tears for things.”

• Another resorted to the Aeneid to lament the hardship that state paper money loaded on responsible savers: Hic labor, hoc opus est—“This is the toil, this is the task.”

• Maryland’s Charles Carroll of Carrollton quoted lines from the Aeneid to predict that, just as the universal spirit animates the world, under the Constitution, the federal government would re-animate the union:

          “Spiritus intus alit: totamque infusa per artus

          “Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.”

The spirit nourishes, the limbs infused, the mind sways the mass and mixes with the great body.”

While the issue of ratification was still undecided, impatient Federalists could only state their case and endure. Several recited the Aeneid’s verse which is referred to in John Adams’ letter, quoted above: “Perhaps one day it will be pleasant (or helpful) to remember even this.”

As state after state ratified, pro-Constitution newspaper editors rejoiced with lines from the most famous eclogue, the fourth or “Messianic” one:

“Incipient magni procedere menses

“Redeunt Saturnia regna.”

“The great months [i.e., ages] will now go forth.

           “The Golden Age returns!”

Why Vergil?

Why did the founding generation feel such an affinity for Vergil? As an apologist for the Augustan regime, he was hardly a republican stalwart. On this subject, we are limited to informed speculation.

There was, first, Vergil’s commanding position within the educational canon. Moreover, some (including, famously, Thomas Jefferson, in whose correspondence the poet frequently appears) were attracted to the agrarian virtues celebrated in the Georgics—virtues that Vergil claimed were the basis for Rome’s great success. And some Founders likely could relate to Aeneas: a military hero rather than a ruffian like Achilles. He was reverent and dutiful (pius), a man sincerely committed to doing the right thing. He was a leading force in the foundation of a new nation. A George Washington sort of hero.

Then there was the plot of the Aeneid: Abuse from abroad forced the Trojans to flee, just as abuses by the British ministry induced the Founders to leave the British Empire. Aeneas survived the fire of Troy (read: the Revolution) to wander for years (the Confederation period) before establishing a new and great nation.

For these or other reasons, Vergil was a favorite of the founding generation: the source of poignant lessons, powerful language, and political inspiration.

This essay first appeared in the University of Texas website Civitas Outlook on May 2, 2025.

The post Vergil: Poet Laureate of the American Founding appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

George Washington knew what was coming. His Farewell Address, published on September 19, 1796 in the American Daily Advertiser, wasn’t just a retirement notice. It was a dire warning against things like skyrocketing debt and entangling foreign alliances.

But his sharpest, most prophetic warnings were about political parties and the constant fight for power they would unleash, a fight that could only end in total tyranny

A WARNING FOR THE AGES

Washington saw political parties as such a great threat because they were the most dangerous expression of a deeper poison: the mindset of putting party loyalty above all else.

“Let me now take a more comprehensive view, & warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party, generally.”

He argued this partisan instinct, while a universal human trait, gets supercharged in a republic where it grows to its most extreme and destructive form.

“This spirit, unfortunately, is inseperable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human Mind. It exists under different shapes in all Governments, more or less stifled, controuled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.”

This mentality inevitably turns politics into an endless cycle of weaponized power and revenge that creates a “frightful despotism.”

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention, which in different ages & countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”

This chaotic warfare between factions is just a temporary phase, a prelude to something far worse: a stable and permanent tyranny.

“But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”

Washington saw the endgame clearly: a population suffering from constant strife will see a dictator not as a threat, but as a welcome relief.

“The disorders & miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security & repose in the absolute power of an Individual: and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.”

THE DAILY DAMAGE

Washington saw two threats: immediate and long-term. Permanent despotism lay far ahead in the future. But the daily rot of partisanship was the immediate disease paving the road to get there.

“Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common & continual mischiefs of the spirit of Party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise People to discourage and restrain it.”

He laid out the specific consequences: a government that can’t function (don’t threaten us with a good time!), a public poisoned by paranoia, and mobs in the streets.

“It serves always to distract the Public Councils and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot & insurrection.”

Worse, he warned that these internal divisions act as an open invitation for foreign enemies to corrupt the entire system.

“It opens the door to foreign influence & corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country, are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

FUEL FOR THE FIRE

Washington conceded a critical point: under a king, political factions can act as a useful check on absolute power.

“There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the Administration of the Government and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true—and in Governments of a Monarchical cast Patriotism may look with endulgence, if not with favour, upon the spirit of party.”

But in a republic, he argued, that same spirit is not a check on power; it’s gasoline poured on a fire.

“But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate & assuage it. A fire not to be quenched; it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.”

He then connected the dots. The partisan firefight inevitably tempts the winners to ignore the Constitution and consolidate power.

“It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free Country should inspire caution, in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective Constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the Powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism.”

WEAPON AGAINST FREEDOM

Washington built his case for the Constitution’s design on a brutally honest assessment of human nature: people are addicted to power and gladly abuse it.

“A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.”

Because of this, he argued that guarding these boundaries is just as important as drawing them.

“The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power; by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, & constituting each the Guardian of the Public Weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient & modern; some of them in our country & under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them.”

Washington pointed to the amendment process as the legal way to change things. Don’t like how power is divided? Use the process. It’s also a reminder that the people are in charge, not the government.

“If in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates.”

But he warned that ignoring the rules to achieve a short-term goal – no matter how noble it seems – is the classic tool of tyrants: a weapon to destroy freedom.

“But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”

THE BRUTAL TRUTH

The largest government in the history of the world loves it when the people fight among themselves.

This creates a vicious feedback loop. The bigger the power in government, the more vicious the fight to control it. And the more vicious the fight, the more power people demand the government take to restore order.

It’s the exact cycle Washington warned would produce a “frightful” and “permanent despotism.”

The end result? “The ruins of public liberty.”

These are George Washington’s farewell warnings that almost everyone ignores today – and if we don’t heed them, the worst is yet to come.

The post The Partisan Road to Tyranny: George Washington’s Fatal Prediction appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

The parties with American dignitaries were finished, the hands of local leaders were shaken, the celebratory fireworks were shot, the last stragglers of the British army had set sail for England, and the city was left in the management of Governor Clinton’s civil government and under the protection of the small American army (about 500 men) as yet under the command of the already-heroic and terribly exhausted General George Washington.

Anxious to get some road behind him in the daylight, Washington awoke earlier than usual, and in turn woke his host and asked Fraunces to prepare the Long Room for a luncheon for the general and his officers to be held that day at noon.

Washington entered the Long Room at the stroke of 12:00 and found the room packed to capacity by a devoted and admiring corps of officers. Washington was dressed in his best uniform (blue with buff trim and bright brass buttons). He quickly surveyed the faces that in turn focused, each and every one, on the face of their commander and the man universally considered the liberator of a nation.

For his part, Washington recognized and rejoiced that all men in attendance were in word and deed officers and gentlemen, for they had all sacrificed to the furthest extent of their means and endured a roster of remarkable hardships together as brothers-in-arms. No exceptions, not even the general himself.

As always, the assembled veterans deferred to their commanding officer, waiting for his signal to begin eating the cold cuts and drinking the brandy wine set out dutifully by Fraunces. Washington, filled with fraternal affection for his fellow officers, motioned for the men to tuck in to the fare and fill their glasses.

As wine was poured into the last glass, Washington swallowed hard, inclined his head as if simultaneously suppressing tears, and focused his swirling thoughts. Then, with some effort to overcome the emotion, he raised his glass with his right hand, noticeably choked back tears, and offered the following heartfelt toast that was as dignified and inspiring as the speaker himself.

“With a heart filled with love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.”

The men tried clumsily to clink glasses, as they were overcome with melancholy at the thought of never seeing their retiring commander again.

Washington’s eyes welled with tears that testified to his genuine emotion, and he asked the congregated soldiers to “come and take me by the hand.” Obediently, one by one beginning with the portly and powerful hero of Ticonderoga, Henry Knox (he being the senior officer), the solemn soldiers approached Washington, clasped his hand, and kissed him on the cheek in an unashamed display of manly filial admiration.

The details of this touching tableau were described in a letter by one of the attendees, Lieutenant Colonel Tallmadge of the Second Continentals:

Such a scene of sorrow and weeping I had never before witnessed…. It was too affecting to be of long continuance — for tears of deep sensibility filled every eye — and the heart seemed so full, that it was wont to burst from its wonted abode. The simple thought that we were then about to part from the man who had conducted us through a long and bloody war, and under whose conduct the glory and independence of our country had been achieved, and that we should see his face no more in this world seemed to me utterly unsupportable.

After individually embracing and saluting each of his men, General George Washington turned to exit the Long Room and paused at the door to wave goodbye for the last time. Washington’s plan to leave early was vexed by the tearful and emotionally wrenching farewell gathering at Fraunces Tavern.

He would leave that scene, albeit reluctantly, and walk back to the home where he was staying to rest in anticipation of setting out for Philadelphia early the next morning. Time was slipping away, and he would suffer no delay in his appointed course, despite undoubtedly being spent by the poignant events of the day.

This article was originally published at The New American and is reposted here with permission from the author.

The post American Cincinnatus: A Victorious General Refuses a Crown appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

September 17, 1787 – the day the constitution was signed. We all know Benjamin Franklin’s famous line.

But he wasn’t warning us about the government. He wasn’t even warning about the constitution. He was warning us – about ourselves.

THE PREDICTION

Franklin took things even further with a really dire prediction of how things would end.

Picture this. It’s the final day of the Philadelphia convention, September 17, 1787. The constitution is completed. The wise old sage didn’t offer a 5-star review. Instead, he began with a tough concession and some honesty that few seem to have today. His speech, written and prepared in advance, was read by fellow Pennsylvania delegate, James Wilson.

“I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such”

Franklin’s objections, especially on issues like executive power, were no secret. For him, it wasn’t about achieving the impossible goal of perfection. So he was still optimistic, but only for the short run.

“And there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years,”

That phrase – “for a course of years” said it all. This would end in a total tyranny – no matter what they wrote on paper in 1787 or who they had in office in the early years of the Republic.

“and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”

So Franklin understood that every system eventually slides to tyranny – even if you can find good people to administer it for “course of years.”

PARCHMENT BARRIERS

Thomas Paine zeroed in on the modern take and ripped apart the idea that merely having the ability to vote for people in government is somehow a real defense against tyranny.

“It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers.” 

Paine understood that when power isn’t actively checked, that power would always grow – and merely choosing new people to wield that power would never stem the tide.

“Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.”

But it doesn’t just stop with the ballot box. James Madison applied the same harsh truth to the constitution itself, even while advocating for its ratification.

He understood – like so many others in the founding generation – that words on paper don’t enforce themselves. Never did. And never will:

“A mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments, is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands.”

John Dickinson – who was the lead author of the Articles of Confederation – hammered this same kind of point home. Even the best constitution can’t guarantee a good government (if there truly is such a thing).

“A good constitution promotes, but not always produces a good administration.”

With that understanding, Dickinson asked the essential question – what do you do about it when it doesn’t?

“But, notwithstanding, it must be granted, that a bad administration may take place. What is then to be done?”

To answer Dickinson’s question, you first have to know who’s actually in charge. First Chief Justice John Jay made it clear that government is merely the AGENT of the people, and only exists to handle what they’ve delegated to it.

“The Constitution only serves to point out that part of the people’s business, which they think proper by it to refer to the management of the persons therein designated – those persons are to receive that business to manage, not for themselves and as their own, but as agents and overseers for the people to whom they are constantly responsible”

With that kind of understanding, there was no hesitation from Dickinson – the answer to bad government and bad politicians doesn’t come from within the government at all.

“The answer is instantly found … before the supreme sovereignty of the people.”

He understood what almost no one learns today. It’s up to the people themselves to protect and defend their own constitution, whether the government likes it, or not.

“IT IS THEIR DUTY TO WATCH, AND THEIR RIGHT TO TAKE CARE, THAT THE CONSTITUTION BE PRESERVED; or in the Roman phrase on perilous occasions—To PROVIDE, THAT THE REPUBLIC RECEIVE NO DAMAGE.” (CAPS in original)

In short, the Founders’ enforcement system for the Constitution wasn’t the document itself – it was the people.

DUTY

Franklin, Dickinson and the others didn’t invent these views. They were the default setting for the American Revolution. Like here, from James Otis Jr in 1767:

“It is our duty in the best of times to watch over our constitution with a jealous eye.”

The key word there is duty. It’s not just a good idea for the people to watch over their own constitution – even in the best of times. Samuel Adams built on this moral duty in 1771.

“The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.”

Adams understood that freedom depended on the virtue of the people. And if they refused to get the job done? Well, they’re pathetic.

“If therefore a people will not be free; if they have not virtue enough to maintain their liberty against a presumptuous invader, they deserve no pity, and are to be treated with contempt and ignominy.”

Going back centuries, even Machiavelli understood that tyranny doesn’t really depend on the tyrant. It depends on the people themselves.

“It must be assumed as a well-demonstrated truth, that a corrupt people that lives under the government of a prince can never become free, even though the prince and his whole line should be extinguished”

Paine understood the flip side of that equation. Tyrants aren’t powerful because they’re inherently strong. They gain power when the people are weak.

“The strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it”

Thomas Jefferson understood the real threat. Any people without the moral strength and fortitude to stand up to government – that’s a degeneracy which acts like a hidden rot eating away from the inside out until the entire system breaks down.

“It is the manners and spirit of the people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.”

IT WASN’T KEPT

This focus on duty and the “manners and spirit of the people” brings us back full circle to Franklin’s ultimate warning.

He knew the bottom line. Five months to the day before his “constitution day” speech in 1787, Franklin explained that freedom isn’t a gift from politicians or a guarantee on paper – it’s a status that has to be earned in order to be kept.

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters”

This leads us, of course, to the famous story.

The ink was barely dry on the constitution when the highly influential salonnière Elizabeth William Powel asked Franklin the big question: What did you give us?

This was recorded in the diary of James McHenry on September 18, 1787.

“A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it”

Here’s the truth, and it should be obvious.

The Republic was not kept.

But it’s not because the constitution “failed” in some way – because words on paper don’t enforce themselves. Never did. Never will.

What has happened in the years since is the true diagnosis.

When the people trust their constitutional education to government – when the people surrender constitutional enforcement to government – it should be no surprise that we ended up living under the largest government in history.

Benjamin Franklin wasn’t just issuing a warning. He was prophetic.

But there is a path forward – “We the People” need to learn how to protect and defend our own constitution and our own liberty – whether the government likes it, or not.

The post The Republic was not Kept: Benjamin Franklin’s Constitution Day Prediction appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

With that one sentence, future Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth identified the single most important and least understood feature of the Constitution. It wasn’t just a stronger version of the Articles of Confederation. It was a completely different system.

The principle driving this radical shift was simple: government would be based on “We the People,” not “We the States.” The Constitution was intentionally designed to bypass the states. And that truth is almost never taught today.

THE REQUISITION SYSTEM

To understand how radical this Constitutional change was, you must first understand the system it was designed to replace. In Chisholm v. Georgia, James Wilson identified the central operating principle of the Articles.

“The articles of confederation, it is well known, did not operate upon individual citizens; but operated only upon states.”

In the weeks leading up to the Philadelphia Convention, James Madison cataloged what he saw as the fatal flaws of that system in his Vices of the Political System of the United States. Madison’s primary charge was aimed at the “requisition” system: for any significant action, Congress could only request compliance from the states; it could not compel it.

“This evil has been so fully experienced both during the war and since the peace, results so naturally from the number and independent authority of the States and has been so uniformly examplified in every similar Confederacy, that it may be considered as not less radically and permanently inherent in, than it is fatal to the object of, the present System.”

Article VIII of the Articles of Confederation created the tax requisition system.

“All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defence or general welfare, and allowed by the united states in congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several states …

…The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several states within the time agreed upon by the united states in congress assembled.”

The practical result was clear to all: asking for tax money is not the same as collecting it. George Mason outlined some of the practical reasons why refusal happened.

“Requisitions have been often refused, sometimes from an impossibility of complying with them; often from that great variety of circumstances which retards the collection of moneys; and perhaps sometimes from a wilful design of procrastinating.”

Rufus King of Massachusetts voiced the widely-held Federalist frustration that the system allowed some states to carry the financial burden for those that did not pay.

“Massachusetts has paid while other states have been delinquent.”

Alexander Hamilton reserved his deepest contempt for the requisition system. His verdict? The entire system was rotten to the core and had to be destroyed.

“requisitions have been the cause of a principal part of our calamities; that the system is defective and rotten, and ought forever to be banished from our government.”

Patrick Henry saw the requisition system as a feature, not a flaw. On it, he said, “depends our political prosperity,” because if congress asked for too much, the states held the power to keep them in check.

THE BREAKING PPOINT

Frustrated with tax requisitions, nationalists sought the power to impose their own tax: a federal tariff. Two hurdles stood in their way: the Articles denied Congress the power to tax, and any change required unanimous consent from all thirteen states.

The 1783 tariff proposal therefore ignited a debate that went far beyond taxation. Another issue under debate was a nationalist goal to create federal tax collectors that would operate independently of the states.

“Mr. Wilson considered this mode of collection essential to the idea of a general revenue, since without it the proceeds would depend entirely on the punctuality, energy, and unanimity of the states. Mr. Hamilton was strenuously of the same opinion.”

Hamilton saw the tariff as a vehicle for a fundamental expansion of federal power. His additional reason for creating federal tax collectors revealed the political machinery he intended to build.

“it was expedient to introduce the influence of officers deriving their emoluments from & consequently interested in supporting the power of, Congress”

Hamilton had just exposed the political logic of the plan. As Madison noted at the time, the obvious goal was to create a payroll of officials loyal to their federal paymaster, not to the states.

“This remark was imprudent & injurious to the cause wch. it was meant to serve. This influence was the very source of jealousy which rendered the States averse to a revenue under the collection as well as appropriation of Congress.”

The admission was a tactical blunder. Hamilton had just handed his opponents a perfect “I told you so” moment – concrete proof of their suspicions.

“All the members of Congress who concurred in any degree with the States in this jealousy smiled at the disclosure. Mr. Bland & still more Mr. L. who were of this number took notice in private conversation that Mr. Hamilton had let out the secret.”

The 1783 Revenue Plan, authorizing a 5% federal tariff, passed Congress but was sent to the states for the required unanimous consent.

Lacking unanimous support, the plan died.

In 1784, Congress made another attempt, asking the states for a 15-year grant of power to regulate foreign commerce. Like the tariff, this amendment also failed to gain unanimous state support.

THE NATIONALIST DIAGNOSIS

For Madison, the lesson was obvious: the great problem of the Articles was that it lacked the power of coercion. In 1787, he listed this as another core vice of the system.

“want of sanction to the laws, and of coercion in the Government of the Confederacy…

…Under the form of such a Constitution, it is in fact nothing more than a treaty of amity of commerce and of alliance, between so many independent and Sovereign States.”

Madison illustrated his point with an analogy: what if a state could only recommend that its counties obey the law?

“If the laws of the States, were merely recommendatory to their citizens, or if they were to be rejudged by County authorities, what security, what probability would exist, that they would be carried into execution? Is the security or probability greater in favor of the acts of Congs. which depending for their execution on the will of the state legislatures, wch. are tho’ nominally authoritative, in fact recommendatory only.”

The problem extended beyond money. The requisition system for troops was also met with state resistance. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, Elbridge Gerry gave a prominent example of the breakdown.

“the States of Connecticut N York N Jersey and Pennsylvania were called on by Recommendation to raise 700 Men for the Service mentioned to serve one Year. The first and last will probably comply with the Recommendation.”

Gerry’s letter reported that New Jersey was raising no troops at all, while New York’s governor had gone to negotiate a separate treaty, rendering the congressional plan useless in practice.

For nationalists like Charles Pinckney, this state defiance required an unequivocal solution: transfer primary control over the militia from the states to the general government.

“To place therefore a necessary and Constitutional power of defence and coercion in the hands of the Federal authority, and to render our Militia uniform and national, I am decidedly in opinion they should have the exclusive right of establishing regulations for their Government and Discipline, which the States should be bound to comply with, as well as with their Requisitions for any number of Militia, whose march into another State, the Public safety or benefit should require.”

William Davie of North Carolina argued that these failures all stemmed from a single design flaw: the government acted on states, not on people. He claimed the only logical endpoint for such a system was enforcement by military force.

“Another radical vice in the old system, which was necessary to be corrected, and which will be understood without a long deduction of reasoning, was, that it legislated on states, instead of individuals; and that its powers could not be executed but by fire or by the sword – by military force, and not by the intervention of the civil magistrate.”

The Federalist diagnosis was stark: the choice under the Articles was either begging for compliance or compelling it with blood. With the Constitution, they argued for a radical alternative.

“These considerations determined the Convention to depart from that solecism in politics – the principle of legislation for states in their political capacities.”

FEDERALIST VS ANTI-FEDERALIST

James Madison arrived at the Philadelphia Convention with a clear objective: to replace the existing “federal” system that acted on states with a “national” government that would act directly on individuals.

This switch from federal to national power was no secret. The framers put it on the front page in the first three words.

“The introduction to this Constitution is in these words: “We, the people,” &c. The language of the Confederation is, “We, the states,” &c. The latter is a mere federal government of states.”

James Wilson explained what he saw as the central problem with the Articles: it could only make requests of states, not enforce them.

“Those, therefore, that assemble under it, have no power to make laws to apply to the individuals of the states confederated; and the attempts to make laws for collective societies necessarily leave a discretion to comply with them or not.”

beginning with “we, the undersigned Delegates of the States,” and declaring a “firm league of friendship” among the states.

The language of the Articles of Confederation confirms this view, beginning  with “we, the undersigned Delegates of the States.” Article III declares that “The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defence, the security of their Liberties, and their mutual and general welfare.”

Patrick Henry smelled a rat. To him, those first three words proved the whole point was to create a consolidated government.

“Who authorized them to speak the language of, We, the people, instead of, We, the states? States are the characteristics and the soul of a confederation. If the states be not the agents of this compact, it must be one great, consolidated, national government, of the people of all the states.”

On the federalist side, William Samuel Johnson celebrated the shift, and argued that the only alternative to their plan was trying to rule the states by military force.

“The Convention saw this imperfection in attempting to legislate for states in their political capacity; that the coercion of law can be exercised by nothing but a military force. They have therefore gone upon entirely new ground.”

This “new ground” was a proposal to abandon a system that would end in military threats against states – in favor of legal action against individuals.

“The force which is to be employed is the energy of law; and this force is to operate only upon individuals who fail in their duty to their country. This is the peculiar glory of the Constitution, that it depends upon the mild and equal energy of the magistracy for the execution of the laws”

In Federalist 15, Hamilton stated his view in the starkest terms: the system’s “great and radical vice” was the principle of making laws for governments.

“The great and radical vice in the construction of the existing Confederation is in the principle of LEGISLATION for STATES or GOVERNMENTS, in their CORPORATE or COLLECTIVE CAPACITIES, and as contradistinguished from the INDIVIDUALS of which they consist.”

Madison’s response to Henry and other Anti-Federalists was as simple as it was direct: a government that has to beg 13 separate powers for its own survival is no government at all.

“A government which relies on thirteen independent sovereignties, for the means of its existence, is a solecism in theory, and a mere nullity in practice.”

Henry fired back that the Federalists were not merely fixing a weak government, they were building an empire.

“If we admit this consolidated government, it will be because we like a great, splendid one. Some way or other we must be a great and mighty empire; we must have an army, and a navy, and a number of things.”

Invoking the American Revolution, Henry reminded the people of a different goal.

“When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different; liberty, sir, was then the primary object.”

THE BYPASS

In Federalist 16, Alexander Hamilton sharpened the entire Federalist position into a thinly veiled threat: the real choice being presented was not between liberty and empire, but between the Constitution and a military despotism.

“It seems to require no pains to prove that the States ought not to prefer a national Constitution which could only be kept in motion by the instrumentality of a large army continually on foot to execute the ordinary requisitions or decrees of the government. And yet this is the plain alternative involved by those who wish to deny it the power of extending its operations to individuals. Such a scheme, if practicable at all, would instantly degenerate into a military despotism”

Hamilton’s position was clear: a system that required state cooperation gave every state a veto.

“If the interposition of the State legislatures be necessary to give effect to a measure of the Union, they have only NOT TO ACT, or to ACT EVASIVELY, and the measure is defeated.”

Charles Pinckney put a finer point on it: states would not just fail to act, they would actively work to defeat federal law.

“No act of the Federal Government in pursuance of its constitutional powers ought by any means to be within the control of the State Legislatures; if it is, experience warrants me in asserting, they will assuredly interfere and defeat its operation.”

Oliver Ellsworth boiled the entire Federalist argument down to one principle: you can take a person to court, but you can only take a state to war.

“I am for coercion by law – that coercion which acts only upon delinquent individuals. This Constitution does not attempt to coerce sovereign bodies, states, in their political capacity. No coercion is applicable to such bodies, but that of an armed force.”

The takeaway is the bedrock principle of the Constitutional system: states are not agents of the federal government.

Therefore, the federal government holds no constitutional authority to force them to implement federal acts or regulatory programs. The entire Constitution was set up precisely to avoid relying on the states in the first place.

The post The Great Bypass: How the Constitution Was Built to Sideline the States appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

They always say it’s for something good… until it isn’t.

Nearly a quarter-century after 9/11, we are still living with the consequences of fear-driven government power grabs. What began as “temporary” measures for our security have hardened into a permanent architecture of control.

The bipartisan police-state architecture that began with 9/11 has been passed from president to president and party to party, each recycling the same justifications—safety, security, patriotism—to expand its powers at the expense of the citizenry.

So they locked down the country “for our safety.”
They expanded surveillance “for our security.”
They rounded up anyone who challenged the narrative “for the common good.”
They erased names, ideas, and histories “to prevent offense.”
They forced schools to teach only what was politically correct “for the children.”
They censored speech “for our protection.”
They targeted dissenters “to preserve peace.”
They militarized the streets and called it “law and order.”

These very abuses—once denounced when carried out by the Left—are now cheered, defended, and excused when carried out by the Right.

People who once spoke passionately about truth, freedom, and faith have now fallen silent in the face of injustice, or worse, convinced themselves that nothing is wrong. The very voices that should be warning against tyranny are instead excusing it or looking away.

This is the danger of double standards in politics: every tyranny is rationalized in the moment by its chorus of defenders.

But history teaches that what goes around comes around. If you justify it now, you’ll have no defense when the tables turn.

And yet, time and again, the lies we tell ourselves make it possible. The cult of personality. The blind loyalty to party. The belief that “our side” can’t be the villain.

It never ceases to amaze how far people will go to excuse the actions of their favorite tyrant, even when those actions are the very things they once swore to oppose.

The pattern of justifying tyranny is as old as power itself. Every abuse comes wrapped in the same excuse: we had to do it.

After 9/11, Americans were told the Patriot Act and mass surveillance were “necessary to prevent terrorism.” The result was a sprawling security state that tracks every phone call, every online search, every purchase. The justification was security. The cost was freedom.

Under Obama, drone warfare and the prosecution of whistleblowers were defended as “keeping America safe.” The president even claimed the power to assassinate U.S. citizens abroad without trial. The result was an unaccountable government acting as judge, jury and executioner. The justification was safety. The cost was due process.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns and mandates were imposed in the name of “public health,” laying the groundwork for a Nanny State empowered to micromanage every aspect of our lives—where we go, what we buy, who we see. The result was government claiming control over every aspect of daily life. The justification was saving lives. The cost was the right to govern our bodies.

Under Trump, the script is familiar.

National Guard deployments in American cities are justified as “restoring order.” Sweeping surveillance is framed as “protecting communities.” Crackdowns on dissent are defended as “stopping criminals.” Mental health round-ups of the homeless are justified as “helping the vulnerable.” Militarized patrols on city streets are justified as “cleaning up the streets.” Turning ICE into a roving army of lawless thugs is justified as “protecting citizenship.” Censorship and efforts to sanitize American history are now being lauded by the same voices that railed against “cancel culture.”

That same logic has taken a deadly turn abroad. At Trump’s direction, the U.S. carried out a series of preemptive military strikes this year—against Iran’s nuclear sites, against the Houthis in Yemen, and most recently against what the administration claimed was a drug-trafficking boat off the coast of Venezuela. The White House has justified these deadly attacks—carried out without congressional approval or constitutional authorization—as part of the president’s unilateral war-making authority.

This, too, is part of the bipartisan police-state architecture built after 9/11, when presidents claimed open-ended authority to wage preemptive war without meaningful congressional oversight.

What began with Afghanistan and Iraq has metastasized into a global battlefield where any president can launch attacks—on Iran, on Yemen, on Venezuela—without accountability.

As always, the justification is order, safety, and patriotism. The cost is truth, justice and freedom.

Every time Trump expands his powers, the chorus is the same: It wouldn’t be necessary if Democrats had done their job. If you don’t break the law, you have nothing to fear. If you’re not doing anything wrong, why worry?

These are the oldest excuses for tyranny—and they never change. Only the partisanship does.

What makes Trump and those who came before him especially dangerous is not merely their willingness to wield power but the eagerness of their enablers to excuse and defend it at every turn.

History shows that bullies and strongmen can only rise when mobs rally to their side. A tyrant’s greatest weapon is not his fist, but the crowd that cheers him on, intimidates his critics, and convinces itself that might makes right.

The machinery of authoritarianism always needs a chorus of defenders, and today that chorus is louder, more organized, and more dismissive of constitutional limits than ever before.

We have been building to this moment for a long time. Even so, why do people accept tyranny so easily?

First, the cult of personality. When people invest blind faith in a leader, they will excuse anything he does. If he says surveillance is necessary, they believe it. If he says dissenters are enemies, they cheer their punishment. It is the psychology of the mob, cloaked in the loyalty of the true believer.

Second, fear as a political weapon. Every despot knows that frightened people will tolerate almost anything. Fear of terrorism. Fear of crime. Fear of disease. Fear of immigrants. Fear of collapse. Fear makes people beg for the chains that bind them.

Third, the “our side” fallacy. People imagine tyranny is only tyranny when the other side does it. When their side does it, they call it leadership. They call it patriotism. They call it protection. But the abuse doesn’t change when the party label does. Wrong is wrong.

Every new regime that seizes power promises it will use extraordinary authority only for good. And every regime—without exception—uses it to entrench itself at the expense of liberty.

Every generation tells itself the same lies to excuse the same abuses.

Consider the whiplash of partisan double standards:

• Conservatives who blasted the Obama administration for NSA spying now cheer Trump’s Palantir partnership and AI-driven surveillance that tracks Americans’ digital footprints.
• Democrats who embraced Biden’s use of emergency orders to advance their agenda have been quick to denounce Trump for ruling by executive order.
• Those who bristled at COVID mandates under Democrats now applaud Trump’s use of government force to impose his own version of “public safety.”
• Both sides flip-flop on free speech. Conservatives denounced censorship on college campuses but defend banning “dangerous” books and surveilling dissidents, while liberals oppose Trump’s attempt to whitewash history yet defend platforms censoring speech they deem “harmful” or “hateful.”

The double standard is breathtaking.

Tyranny doesn’t change depending on who carries it out. Yet partisans convince themselves it does. They say: It’s different this time. It’s necessary. It’s for us.

In truth, the only difference is who holds the whip.

The Constitution was designed to restrain exactly this impulse. It does not say: “These rights apply only when the other party is in power.” It does not say: “The executive may rule by decree if he is popular.”

James Madison warned that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” But men are not angels. That is why the Constitution separates powers, guarantees due process, and protects speech and assembly—especially in times of crisis.

Every time one party tramples these limits, the other eventually inherits those same powers and uses them in turn. The Patriot Act, passed under Bush, was wielded aggressively under Obama, Trump, and Biden. The executive orders one president signs become the precedents for the next.

“What you excuse today,” history warns us, “will be used against you tomorrow.”

The descent into tyranny always begins with justifications.

The Roman Republic collapsed into empire because senators claimed Caesar needed extraordinary powers to restore order. The republic never recovered.

In 1930s Germany, emergency decrees were defended as temporary measures to stabilize society. They became the permanent architecture of dictatorship.

In post-9/11 America, warrantless surveillance and secret courts were sold as temporary protections. Nearly a quarter-century later, they remain fixtures of government power.

Tyranny is never announced as tyranny. It is always justified as safety, morality, and order. It is always explained away as temporary. And it is always defended by people who believe they are on the winning side.

And so here we are.

A president issues executive orders that erode the Bill of Rights. His supporters applaud. Another president expands surveillance or censorship. His supporters applaud.

Both sides denounce the abuses of their opponents yet sanction the same abuses when carried out by their own.

This is how liberty dies—not with a sudden coup, but with partisan politics valued more than principled freedom.

The police state thrives on this selective outrage. It does not matter which party is in power. The machinery of control grows. The Constitution withers. And the people are left squabbling over whose tyrant is better.

There is only one antidote: principle.

You cannot defend freedom by defending tyranny when your side is in power. You cannot preserve liberty by cheering for its destruction. You cannot expect constitutional limits to shield you tomorrow if you discard them today.

The warnings span centuries. The Founders foresaw the danger: James Madison cautioned against the “gradual and silent encroachments” of government. Thomas Jefferson warned that the natural tendency of power is to grow.

Justice Louis Brandeis later confirmed it from the vantage point of the modern state: “the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

Those warnings went unheeded after 9/11, and we have been paying the price ever since. The bipartisan police-state architecture built in those years has only grown stronger, repurposed by each new administration.

Unless we find the courage to dismantle it, today’s justifications will become tomorrow’s permanent chains.

The lesson is clear: if you want liberty, you must defend it consistently—even when it restrains your own party, your own leader, your own side. Especially then.

What you excuse today will be used against you tomorrow.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it does not matter whether the abuse comes draped in red or blue. It does not matter whether it is cheered by the Right or justified by the Left.

Tyranny, once excused, becomes entrenched.

This article was originally published at The Rutherford Institute.

The post How Tyranny Becomes Entrenched: 9/11 and the Police State’s Endless Power Grabs appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Today in history – September 9, 1774 – from the Suffolk Resolves, drafted by Revolutionary war hero Joseph Warren.

In a series of statements supporting natural rights and a duty to resist violations of the Constitution and the provincial charter, Warren and his colleagues provided a blueprint for responding to the most powerful empire on Earth.

1. Declared the Coercive Acts unconstitutional “gross infractions.”
2. Held that “no obedience is due” to those acts, and they “may be rejected as the attempt of a wicked administration to enslave America.”
3. Called for people to disregard the courts, because they were considered to be under undue influence and were acting as “unconstitutional officers.”
4. Urged Sheriffs to stop enforcing the British acts – and called on the people to “support, and bear harmless” all sheriffs and other official who “refuse to carry into execution the orders of said courts”
5. Urged people to resolve disputes amicably. And in cases where no resolution was found – to submit to free-market alternatives such as arbitration.
6. Recommended tax resistance – until the government was returned to a constitutional foundation.
7. Called for a replacement of all militia officers to ensure they were loyal to liberty and the people, rather than the empire.
8. Recommended that the people train more regularly and build up the local militia.
9. Demanded resignations of government agents and called for a boycott of British goods.

It was a comprehensive rejection of British power – and a practical blueprint for advancing liberty.

The Road to September 9, 1774

For months, Massachusetts had been the center of a growing constitutional crisis. In retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passed a series of punitive laws in early 1774, known as the “Coercive Acts” – what many today refer to as the “Intolerable Acts.” These included:

• The Boston Port Act, shutting down Boston Harbor.
• The Massachusetts Government Act, stripping nearly all authority from the colonial legislature.
• The Administration of Justice Act, stripping authority from local courts and authorizing trials to be held in Great Britain instead of Massachusetts.
• The Quartering Act, allowing British troops to take over private buildings.

These measures directly attacked colonial self-government. To resist, patriots relied on the committees of correspondence – first established by Samuel Adams in 1772 – to coordinate action across Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, General Thomas Gage, commander of British forces, believed the way to keep peace was to disarm the colonists. On September 1, his troops seized gunpowder from a Charlestown storehouse. Rumors of war spread instantly, and as many as 20,000 militiamen mobilized. Although no blood was shed, the incident proved that the people were ready – and that further action was necessary.

The Suffolk County Convention was initially scheduled for August 18 but postponed until early September to ensure broader participation. When delegates convened on September 6, Joseph Warren – already known as an influential patriot writer and ally of Samuel Adams – introduced his draft of the Resolves.

Three days later, they were approved unanimously.

From Suffolk to Philadelphia

In one of his lesser-known – but incredibly important – rides, Paul Revere took the passed Suffolk Resolves to Philadelphia, where the First Continental Congress was meeting.

At that point, there was a strong split between the radicals and moderates, but after Revere’s news of the revolution already underway in Massachusetts, the scales were tilted and even moderates like Joseph Galloway were moved in favor.

The next day, September 17, in its first official act, the Congress unanimously endorsed the Suffolk Resolves, word for word.

John Adams recorded in his diary, “This was one of the happiest days of my life. This day convinced me that America will support Massachusetts or perish with her.”

Silas Deane of Connecticut told his wife the Resolves were “applauded to the skies by the Inhabitants of this City.”

In the weeks that followed, other Massachusetts counties adopted similar resolutions, reinforcing this message of noncompliance and resistance. What began as a declaration from one county quickly became the united position of all the colonies.

The Lesson

The Suffolk Resolves were more than words. They declared that unconstitutional acts deserved no obedience, and they provided a real-world strategy of resistance – from noncompliance and tax resistance to boycotts, arbitration, militia readiness, and more.

While the Resolves were local in nature – just one county at first – they had a huge influence.

The reason the Suffolk Resolves are so noteworthy is because they basically declared, at least in Massachusetts, that the war for independence had begun.

With the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress and the Continental Association which were both passed the following month, the people of Suffolk County knew they weren’t alone.

From non-compliance and tax resistance, to sheriffs refusing to enforce, ignoring the courts, and so much more – we have so much to learn today about how a free people claim their rights rather than waiting for government to do the right thing.

The post No Obedience is Due: The Suffolk Resolves of 1774 appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

When I heard President Ronald Reagan utter the words above, my heart leapt with joy. I couldn’t imagine a modern-day president recognizing the sovereignty of the states and understanding their role in the creation of the American republic. If I had been the scrivener of that address, I’d have added “and the powers that the states gave away to the feds they can take back!”

Oh, how the presidential attitude has changed.

Last month, President Donald Trump purported to order the states to reform their policies on bail so as to incorporate a variant of pre-conviction incarceration. He also ordered them to prosecute people for burning their own flags. His own observations have apparently caused him to conclude that bad people — including flag burners — should be picked up off the streets, incarcerated and kept there until trial. In another breath, he referred to the states as “agents” of the federal government.

Trump has been on a campaign to use federal force to enhance public safety. He may be right that many Americans would like to see him do this, but where is his constitutional authority to do so? In a word: NOWHERE.

Here is the back story.

The drafters of the Constitution wove into its fabric the concept of subsidiarity. This means that problems for government to solve should be addressed by the government closest to the problem and the people affected by it. As well, government should employ the least assets needed, not the most available.

This is reflected in the Constitution by the reservation of powers to the states. When the first 13 states formed the federal government and when the succeeding 37 joined — some voluntarily and some literally with guns aimed at the heads of state officials — they did so embracing subsidiarity. Among the powers they knew they were not giving away to the federal government was the police power.

James Madison, the chief draftsman of the Constitution and the author of the Bill of Rights, insisted that the 10th Amendment declare that the powers not given away to the federal government are retained by the people and the states. Foremost among them is the police power — the power to regulate and enforce laws for the health, safety, welfare and morality of all persons in the states.

The federal government is one of limited powers. The Congress — unlike the British Parliament and American state legislatures — is not a general legislature. It cannot right any wrong or tax any event or insinuate the feds into any relationship or regulate any behavior it chooses. Congress may only legislate in the 16 discrete areas of governance articulated in Article I of the Constitution. And the president may only enforce the laws that Congress has enacted.

Trump is probably correct that most major American cities are poorly managed, over taxed, unsafe and often unpleasant. But these problems are for the people in those cities and the legislatures of those states.

Madison made it clear, just because a problem is national in its scope does not make it federal in its nature. A national problem is one common to vast areas across America. A federal problem is one the governance of which is articulated and delegated to Congress in the Constitution.

If national problems can be transubstantiated into federal problems just because they are ubiquitous, then the Constitution is meaningless.

This system was crafted to prevent the accumulation of power in Washington. It was also crafted, a la Reagan, so you can vote with your feet. If you don’t like the taxes and regulations in Massachusetts, you can move to New Hampshire.

Can the states criminalize burning your own flag, as Trump has demanded? They can ban dangerous fires, but only because of the smoke and flames not because of the ideas represented by the fuel. Justice Antonin Scalia — whom Trump has praised as his favorite Supreme Court justice and who voted with the majority in both Supreme Court cases invalidating flag burning statutes — opined that the flag stands for the idea that it may legally and constitutionally be destroyed; no matter who is offended thereby.

Now, back to bail.

In my career as a trial judge in New Jersey, I set bail for a few thousand persons. At that time, judges had the discretion and obligation to address the presumption of innocence, the seriousness of the alleged crime, the nature of the evidence against the accused, and the history and community ties of the accused, and then make an informed judgment about bail. Bail is not a privilege; it is a right guaranteed by the Eighth Amendment.

Today, a few state legislatures have removed judicial discretion in setting bail. State-mandated cashless bail — effectively pre-trial freedom with no posted bail — is demonstrably ruinous of justice and public safety, but it is a state issue and a national problem, not a federal one.

When the feds offer funds to the states, there are always strings attached. But those strings, the Supreme Court has ruled, must be related to the purpose of the funds and attached when the funds are offered; they cannot be added unilaterally afterward. Can the president hold back funds from a state because he dislikes its bail laws — funds promised and premised on strings not mentioning bail? In a word: NO.

Channeling Justice George Sutherland: If the provisions of the Constitution are not upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned.

The post The States and the Presidency appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

With those words, Thomas Paine went after what he saw as one of the greatest scams in history: governments claiming that paper is money. 

Through a series of devastating critiques, Paine delivered one of the most brutal takedowns of paper money ever written, systematically exposing every aspect of this fundamental fraud.

PROPERTIES OF MONEY

Paine started with a simple truth that cuts through centuries of propaganda.

“Gold and silver are the emissions of nature: paper is the emission of art.”

He then explained the key properties of money. First, real money’s value must come from a source outside of human control, making it stable and trustworthy.

“The value of gold and silver is ascertained by the quantity which nature has made in the earth. We cannot make that quantity more or less than it is, and therefore the value being dependent upon the quantity, depends not on man.

Man has no share in making gold or silver; all that his labours and ingenuity can accomplish is, to collect it from the mine, refine it for use and give it an impression, or stamp it into coin.”

Next, its value must be intrinsic. Even a government stamp on a coin doesn’t create value – only convenience.

“Its being stamped into coin adds considerably to its convenience but nothing to its value. It has then no more value than it had before. Its value is not in the impression but in itself. Take away the impression and still the same value remains.”

Finally, money has to be lasting and durable:

“Alter it as you will, or expose it to any misfortune that can happen, still the value is not diminished. It has a capacity to resist the accidents that destroy other things.”

WHY PAPER FAILS

Paine couldn’t be more clear. All those properties are required for something to be money.

“Nothing which has not all those properties, can be fit for the purpose of money.”

Paper has none of those qualities, which is why it fails as money.

“PAPER, considered as a material whereof to make money, has none of the requisite qualities in it. It is too plentiful, and too easily come at. It can be had anywhere, and for a trifle.”

Because of this foundation, Paine held that it was pure fantasy to call paper money, or use it as such.

“The alchemist may cease his labours, and the hunter after the philosopher’s stone go to rest, if paper can be metamorphosed into gold and silver, or made to answer the same purpose in all cases.”

THE EVILS OF PAPER MONEY

Paine also described some of the litany of evils that arise in a paper money system. First, it’s just an illusion – it looks real but has no substance. In reality, it’s a scam.

“BUT when an Assembly undertake to issue paper as money, the whole system of safety and certainty is overturned, and property set afloat. It is like putting an apparition in the place of a man; it vanishes with looking at it, and nothing remains but the air.”

Second, it turns everyone into speculators and gamblers.

“It turns the whole country into stock-jobbers. The precariousness of its value and the uncertainty of its fate continually operate, night and day, to produce this destructive effect.”

Lacking real value, paper becomes a tool for faction and manipulation – eating away at the morals of the people.

“Having no real value in itself it depends for support upon accident, caprice and party, and as it is the interest of some to depreciate and of others to raise its value, there is a continual invention going on that destroys the morals of the country.”

That same uncertainty breeds constant deceit, tearing apart justice and destroying the fabric of the society itself.

“Its uncertain and fluctuating value is continually awakening or creating new schemes of deceit. Every principle of justice is put to the rack, and the bond of society dissolved: The suppression, therefore, of paper money might very properly have been put into the Act for preventing vice and immorality.”

And it just keeps getting worse.

One of the most immoral things that happens in this kind of situation is there always ends up being powerful people demanding more and more money printing. It’s the scammers playbook they still use today.

“There are a set of men who go about making purchases upon credit, and buying estates they have not wherewithal to pay for; and having done this, their next step is to fill the news-papers with paragraphs of the scarcity of money and the necessity of a paper-emission, then to have a legal tender under the pretense of supporting its credit, and when out, to depreciate it as fast as they can, get a deal of it for a little price, and cheat their creditors; and this is the concise history of Paper-money schemes.”

For the rest of us, though, the whole system is smoke and mirrors. 

“Paper-money is like dram-drinking, it relieves for a moment by deceitful sensation, but gradually diminishes the natural heat, and leaves the body worse than it found it.”

And in the end, it’s all just a big bubble.

“It is a bubble and the attempt vanity.”

THE BUBBLE ECONOMY

What happens in a paper money bubble? Paine and the rest of the founding generation called it depreciation – what most people call inflation today. The more money they print, the less purchasing power it has, which is represented by an increase in prices for products and services.

“This gives the appearance of things being dear when they are not so in fact, for in the same proportion that any kind of money falls in value articles rise in price.”

Paine explained how that played out during the War for Independence, which also birthed the phrase, “not worth a Continental” due to the Continental dollars that quickly lost their value.

“The paper money, though issued from Congress under the name of dollars, did not come from that body always at that value. Those which were issued the first year, were equal to gold and silver. The second year less, the third still less, and so on, for nearly the space of five years.”

The situation got pretty dire for many Americans. Paine described an example of how he experienced it first-hand.

“Paper money in America fell so much in value from this excessive quantity of it, that in the year 1781 I gave three hundred Paper dollars for one pair of worsted stockings. What I write you upon the subject is experience, and not merely opinion.”

To make matters worse, paper money depreciation doesn’t just cause price inflation, it also creates an endless cycle – a negative feedback loop that drives out real money – what’s known as Gresham’s Law today.

“The natural effect of encreasing and continuing to increase paper currencies is that of banishing the real money. The shadow takes place of the substance till the country is left with only shadows in its hands.”

In other words, it’s all just smoke and mirrors. Eventually, it leads to bankruptcy:

“Every new emission, until the delusion bursts, will appear to the nation an increase of wealth. Every merchant’s coffers will appear a treasury, and he will swell with paper riches till he becomes a bankrupt.”

THE FINAL VERDICT

Here’s the twist. Paine wasn’t against paper itself. In fact, he argued that it could be quite useful, when done properly.

“The only proper use for paper, in the room of money, is to write promissory notes and obligations of payment in specie upon. A piece of paper, thus written and signed, is worth the sum it is given for. The value, therefore, of such a note, is not in the note itself, for that is but paper and promise, but in the man who is obliged to redeem it with gold or silver.”

Paine’s greatest issue was that paper money only survives with the threat of government violence – through tender laws.

“IF any thing had, or could have, a value equal to gold and silver, it would require no tender-law; and if it had not that value it ought not to have such a law; and, therefore, all tender laws are tyrannical and unjust, and calculated to support fraud and oppression.”

In his view, people who support such laws are criminals, or maybe they’re delusional because they appear to believe “a nation cannot be exhausted while there is paper and ink enough to print paper money.”

In a republic – or in any free society, however – government should never have that power. It’s total tyranny.

“AS to the assumed authority of any Assembly in making paper money, or paper of any kind, a legal tender, or in other language, a compulsive payment, it is a most presumptuous attempt at arbitrary power. There can be no such power in a Republican government: The people have no freedom, and property no security where this practice can be acted.”

This flips the entire reason to have a government in the first place.

“Tender-laws, of any kind, operate to destroy morality, and to dissolve, by the pretence of law, what ought to be the principle of law to support, reciprocal justice between man and man”

For Paine – politicians who violate this foundational principle by pursuing paper as money anyway – deserve the ultimate punishment.

“And the punishment of a member who should move for such a law ought to be DEATH.”

Thomas Paine’s final verdict?

No matter the excuse, no matter the scheme, no matter the reason given: paper money always ends the same way.

“The evils of paper-money have no end.”

The post Thomas Paine’s Forgotten Paper Money Takedown appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, his administration has begun giving things new names. On his first day back in office, Trump signed executive order 14172, titled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.” The first thing it did was change the name of Mount Denali in Alaska — the highest mountain in North America — back to Mount McKinley. Trump has a special fondness for President McKinley: “Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed rapid economic growth and prosperity, including an expansion of territorial gains for the Nation. President McKinley championed tariffs to protect U.S. manufacturing, boost domestic production, and drive U.S. industrialization and global reach to new heights.”

Trump’s executive order also changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And not only that, Trump later announced that February 9 would be celebrated annually with “appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities” as “Gulf of America Day.” Trump’s secretary of defense — Pete Hegseth — signed a memorandum changing the name of Fort Liberty in North Carolina back to Fort Bragg. The name was changed in 2022 by then-secretary of defense Lloyd Austin because it was named after a Confederate general. The satirical website The Babylon Bee joked that Trump would rename USB ports to USA ports and would require New Mexico to call itself West Texas. These things are, unfortunately, not farfetched. Most recently, Trump expressed a desire to rename the Persian Gulf the Arabian Gulf.

The U.S. government is constantly reorganizing and renaming its agencies. Under the new Constitution adopted in 1789, the federal government began with just three departments — State, Treasury, and War — and the office of Attorney General (there was no Justice Department until 1870). The Departments of the Navy and the Post Office were instituted a few years later. The Department of Labor was originally a bureau under the Department of the Interior. It became an independent agency in 1888, was incorporated into the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903, and became the Department of Labor in 1913.

Other federal departments have also had very significant name changes. The Department of Defense was formed in 1945 by combining the War Department and the Navy Department and adding the Air Force, formerly the Army Air Forces. This is probably the most misnamed department in the federal government. A more appropriate name for the Department of Defense would be the Department of Offense since it does everything but actually defend the country. In 1979, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) split into the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education, completely dropping the pejorative term welfare.

Welfare

Welfare is the common term for government relief and assistance programs for low-income Americans, although the word itself has largely been displaced from government documents. The two terms generally in vogue now are income security and entitlement programs. These are programs that provide benefits to any American citizen who qualifies. The programs are open-ended. Instead of spending levels being set every year by congressional appropriation bills, the federal government must spend as much money as necessary to provide benefits to everyone who qualifies for them.

There are in the United States about 80 means-tested welfare programs that limit benefits or payments on the basis of the beneficiary’s income or assets. The most well-known of these programs are Medicaid; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP [formerly known as food stamps]); Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF); the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP); Section 8 housing vouchers; Pell grants; farm subsidies; subsidized student loans; Head Start; Healthy Start; Supplemental Security Income (SSI); school breakfast and lunch programs; and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

The most egregious of these programs are the TANF and the SSI programs because they provide cash payments to low-income families with children, people with disabilities, and older adults.

And then there are the welfare programs that few Americans have ever heard of unless they or their family receive benefits from them. The Special Milk Program (SMP) provides milk to children in schools and childcare institutions who do not participate in other federal meal service programs by reimbursing schools for the milk they serve. The Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) supplements the diets of low-income individuals over 60 with nutritious USDA Foods by distributing food and funds to participating states to operate the program. The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) provides reimbursements for nutritious meals and snacks to eligible children and adults enrolled at participating child care centers, day care homes, and adult day care centers. The Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP) provides vouchers for fresh fruits and vegetables to low-income seniors for use at eligible farmers markets, roadside stands, and community farms. And these aren’t even all of the food-related programs. Then there is the Title X Family Planning Program. It encourages adults not to have children to take care of them in their old age by awarding grants to nonprofit health and community-based clinics to provide FDA-approved contraceptive products and family planning services.

The total cost at all levels of government for all of the means-tested welfare programs is more than $1 trillion annually. Some welfare programs don’t have means tests and are therefore usually not viewed as welfare programs, although they certainly are. When these are included, as stated by the late economist Walter Williams, “Two-thirds to three-quarters of the federal budget can be described as Congress taking the rightful earnings of one American to give to another American — using one American to serve another.” President Trump wants to call things by what he considers to be their proper names. But absent from any of his renaming sprees are any references to non-means-tested welfare programs like unemployment compensation, Social Security, Medicare, and refundable tax credits. These programs are just as much welfare programs as any of the means-tested welfare programs and should be called as such, for welfare by any other name is still welfare.

Thy name is welfare

Unemployment compensation, thy name is welfare. The federal government imposed an unemployment program on the states by means of the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Federal Unemployment Tax Act of 1939 (FUTA). The Department of Labor oversees the program and sets broad guidelines for coverage and eligibility, but the program is administered and mostly funded by the states. The program is compulsory for all employers if they paid wages of $1,500 or more to employees in any calendar quarter or had one or more employees for at least some part of a day in 20 or more weeks during the calendar year.

Unlike payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, which are borne equally by employers and employees, unemployment taxes are paid solely by employers (except in a few states that also levy unemployment taxes on employees). A federal unemployment tax of 6 percent is imposed on employers on the first $7,000 of taxable wages paid to each employee during a calendar year. Each state likewise assesses employers an unemployment tax, less a credit against their federal tax liability as high as 5.4 percent for payment of state unemployment taxes. However, in many states, the rate is higher than 5.4 percent, and the taxable wage base is higher than $7,000.

Employees not “terminated for cause” are eligible for unemployment benefits for as long as 26 weeks as long as various eligibility requirements are met — like being ready, willing, and able to work. The amount of compensation received by an unemployed worker has no relation to the amount of tax paid by his employer. An unemployed worker’s assets and net worth are irrelevant in determining his eligibility for benefits, which range from a low of under $300 a week in seven states to a high of over $800 a week in Massachusetts and Washington.

Unemployment compensation is welfare because the government pays people for not working. It results in a perverse disincentive to not work and simply collect benefits until they run out. The Constitution nowhere authorizes the federal government to have an unemployment compensation program or mandate that the states have one. There is nothing wrong with private unemployment insurance that pays out benefits if one loses a job, but how much the insurance costs, how much the benefits are, how long the benefits are paid, and what the eligibility requirements are is a matter between the insurance company and the policyholder and not the concern of government.

Social Security, thy name is welfare. Social Security is the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program that provides monthly benefits for retirement, disability, survivorship, and death to about 68 million Americans, including survivors and dependents. One must pay Social Security taxes for a minimum of 40 quarters (10 years) to be eligible for benefits.

Social Security is funded by a 12.4 percent payroll tax (split equally between employers and employees) on the first $176,100 of employee income. Self-employed persons pay the full 12.4 percent tax but receive both a reduction in their net earnings from self-employment and a tax deduction equal to 50 percent of the amount of the Social Security tax they paid.

The vast majority of Americans believe that retirees are entitled to Social Security benefits because they “paid into the system” their entire working lives. But from the very beginning, there has been no connection between the taxes one pays into the Social Security system and the benefits that one receives from Social Security. Benefits are based on one’s Primary Insurance Amount (PIA): the average of a worker’s 35 highest years of earnings (up to a particular year’s wage base), adjusted for inflation. This is an arbitrary formula, loosely based on one earnings, that Congress can change at any time. Congress can also reduce benefits at any time regardless of how much a retiree has paid into the program, increase the tax rate without raising benefits, raise the retirement age, and raise or eliminate the contribution and benefit base. And the Supreme Court has even ruled that there is no contractual right to receive benefits. The conclusion is inescapable: Social Security is an intergenerational, income-transfer, wealth-redistribution welfare program that takes money from those who work and gives it to those who don’t.

Medicare, thy name is welfare. Medicare is a government health-insurance program for people age 65 or older, people under age 65 with certain disabilities, people of all ages with end-stage renal disease (permanent kidney failure requiring dialysis or a kidney transplant), and people with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). About 25 percent of the adult population is enrolled in Medicare. Enrollment is open to all U.S. citizens or those who have been permanent legal residents for five continuous years and who have paid Medicare taxes for a minimum of 40 quarters (10 years).

Medicare is funded by a 2.9 percent payroll tax (split equally between employers and employees) on every dollar of employee income. Employees (but not employers) pay an additional 0.9 percent Medicare tax on wages over $200,000 ($250,000 for joint filers). Self-employed persons pay the full 2.9 percent Medicare tax but receive a tax deduction equal to 50 percent of the amount of payroll taxes they paid. They are also subject to the additional 0.9 percent Medicare tax, if applicable.

Like Social Security, the vast majority of Americans believe that retirees are entitled to Medicare benefits because they “paid into the system” their entire working lives. But again, there is no connection between the taxes one pays into the Medicare program and the benefits that one receives from Medicare. Congress can at any time raise the Medicare eligibility age, eliminate coverage for certain procedures, increase deductibles and/or copayments, reduce the amount of benefits, raise the Medicare tax rate, increase Medicare Part B and/or Part D premiums, institute a means-test or asset test for eligibility, or institute a yearly or lifetime limit on benefits. This means that Medicare is ultimately an income transfer program just like TANF and SSI.

Refundable tax credits, thy name is welfare. Tax deductions, exemptions, and exclusions reduce one’s taxable income and therefore the amount of taxes owed to the federal government. Tax credits reduce the amount of tax that one owes. The greater the number, and the greater the amount, of tax deductions and credits that one qualifies for means the less one will pay in taxes. Tax deductions and credits are not loopholes that need to be closed or subsidies that the government provides unless one believes that the government is entitled to 100 percent of one’s income and that allowing people to keep more of it constitutes a loophole or subsidy.

Tax deductions and credits are always a good thing because they allow Americans to keep more of their money out of the hands of Uncle Sam. They don’t cost the government money. Refundable tax credits, on the other hand, don’t just allow Americans to hang on to more of their money, they allow some Americans to receive extra money taken from other Americans. A refundable tax credit is treated as a payment to the government from the taxpayer like federal income tax withheld. If the tax credit “payment” is more than the tax owed after the regular tax credits are applied, then the taxpayer receives a refund of money he never actually paid in.

There are three major refundable tax credits: the American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC), the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

The AOTC is a credit for qualified education expenses paid by or for an eligible student for the first four years of higher education. The AOTC is 100 percent of the first $2,000 plus 25 percent of the next $2,000 in qualified tuition and related educational expenses. The maximum credit is therefore $2,500. No credit can be taken if the taxpayer’s modified adjusted gross (MAGI) income exceeds $90,000 ($180,000 for joint filers). Forty percent (up to $1,000 per student) of the AOTC is refundable.

The Child Tax Credit (CTC) is a partially refundable tax credit. It provides households with up to $2,000 per qualifying child. However, the maximum refundable amount is $1,700. This is the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC). No credit can be taken if one’s adjusted gross income (AGI) is over $200,000 ($400,000 for joint filers).

The EITC is a fully refundable tax credit for low-to-moderate working individuals and couples, particularly those with children. In fact, the actual amount of EITC credit depends on a recipient’s income and number of children. The lower the income and the greater the number of children, the higher the credit. For tax year 2024, the maximum amount of the EITC is $7,830 with three or more qualifying children, $6,960 with two qualifying children, $4,213 with one qualifying child, and $632 with no qualifying children. And according to the IRS:

Any refund you receive because of the EIC can’t be counted as income when determining whether you or anyone else is eligible for benefits or assistance, or how much you or anyone else can receive, under any federal program or under any state or local program financed in whole or in part with federal funds.

Refundable tax credits are the ultimate form of welfare because they are payments made in cash like the TANF or SSI programs instead of payments made to a third party, like Medicaid, or deposited on an Electronic Benefit Card (EBC), as with SNAP benefits.

Conclusion

Federal spending on welfare — whether it be Social Security, health care (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP), or income security (food stamps, SSI, TANF, housing assistance, school breakfast and lunch programs, refundable tax credits) — dwarfs all other federal spending. Yet, the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to have welfare programs (whatever name they are called by) or give the states block grants to operate welfare programs. It is also not the proper role of government to “help” people, maintain a “safety net,” offer job training, assist the disabled, fight poverty, rectify income inequality, subsidize the wages of low-income workers, provide a universal basic income, dispense welfare, transfer income, or offer insurance. And it is never right for government at any level to take money from anyone — even if he can “afford” it — and transfer it to anyone else — no matter how badly he “needs” it.

No one is entitled to receive government welfare benefits no matter what his health or financial situation is. Charity should always be private and voluntary. Welfare in all of its forms should be eliminated — not reformed, not made more efficient, and not made less costly. Just don’t look for Trump and the Republicans to do it. Trump has even repeatedly said that Republicans should not vote to cut “a single penny” from Social Security or Medicare — the two most costly federal programs.

This article was originally published in the August 2025 issue of Future of Freedom

The post Welfare by Any Other Name Is Still Welfare appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

To you, that question probably sounds naive because the answer feels obvious. But in 1792, Thomas Jefferson saw it as the moment of truth.

Alexander Hamilton had just laid out his vision for the “general welfare” clause. His answer was simple. “The power… is …indefinite.”

To Jefferson and his allies, this was a scam. A complete betrayal of the constitutional system that was adopted.

The clash over the meaning of these two words – general Welfare – set the stage for what became the largest government in history.

HAMILTON: WITHOUT LIMITS

To begin this story, we first need to go back to December 5, 1791.

Alexander Hamilton just published his now-famous Report on the Subject of Manufactures. His goal was to stretch the “general Welfare” clause so far that it would authorize virtually unlimited power.

“the power to raise money is plenary, and indefinite; and the objects to which it may be appropriated are no less comprehensive, than the payment of the public debts and the providing for the common defence and ‘general Welfare.’”

Hamilton admitted to only three exceptions. Taxes must be uniform across the Union. Direct taxes must be apportioned by census. And no export taxes from any state. Beyond that? Nothing.

“The phrase is as comprehensive as any that could have been used; because it was not fit that the constitutional authority of the Union, to appropriate its revenues shou’d have been restricted within narrower limits than the ‘General Welfare.’”

Hamilton pushed the point even further, insisting that “general welfare” was so broad is couldn’t be defined.

“…and because this necessarily embraces a vast variety of particulars, which are susceptible neither of specification nor of definition.”

That takes us directly to the text of the Constitution, and Article I, Section 8, Clause 1:

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”

FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE ARTICLES

To understand the full context of this debate, we need to go back to July 1775, at the height of the American Revolution.

A year before the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin submitted his proposed plan for Articles of Confederation to the Continental Congress. It never came to a formal vote, but Franklin circulated copies among delegates to spark discussion on how to structure a union – something he had been pushing since his Albany Plan of 1754.

One of those copies survives today with Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten notes in the margins. On the last page, Jefferson zeroed in on a phrase that would haunt debates for decades.

“qu. what ‘their mutual and general welfare’ means. There should be no vague terms in an instrument of this kind. It’s objects should be precisely and determinately fixed.”

Jefferson’s concern was simple but profound. A constitutional charter could not leave room for elastic words that politicians might twist to justify limitless power.

When the Articles of Confederation were finally adopted a few years later, the phrase “general welfare” appeared twice – including this provision in Article VIII:

“All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defence or general welfare, and allowed by the united states in congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several states.”

MADISON: ENUMERATION QUALIFIES

Even there, the phrase served only as a heading to specific, limited purposes – not as an open-ended grant of power. That was exactly how James Madison understood it. When Hamilton tried to turn general welfare into a blank check, Madison called it a distortion that flipped the Constitution on its head.

“With respect to the words “General welfare” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense, would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character, which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its Creators.”

Madison – who co-authored the Federalist Papers with Hamilton and John Jay – had already confronted this line of attack during the ratification debates. Some opponents of the Constitution argued that the “general welfare” wording amounted to an unlimited grant of power:

“It has been urged and echoed, that the power ‘to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,’ amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare.”

He mocked the claim as so absurd that it only proved how low his critics had to stoop to find fault with the plan.

“No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.”

Madison stressed that the clause wasn’t a separate delegation of power at all. To drive the point home, he even pointed to the punctuation – noting that the list of enumerated powers followed immediately in the same sentence.

“But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon?”

He pressed the obvious question: why enumerate powers at all if the first phrase already gave everything?

“For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power?”

And he explained the widely-accepted logic of using broad language, then narrowing it with detail.

“Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.”

HAMILTON: SUBSIDIES AS THE VEHICLE

That brings us back to Hamilton in 1791. He was proposing this broad view of general welfare as a justification for federal bounties. Today we’d call them subsidies or corporate welfare.

In short, Hamilton wanted to tax imports so he could funnel the money through government to favored industries like coal, wool, glass, and cotton.

“The true way to conciliate these two interests, is to lay a duty on foreign manufactures of the material, the growth of which is desired to be encouraged, and to apply the produce of that duty by way of bounty, either upon the production of the material itself or upon its manufacture at home or upon both.”

He knew opponents would object that no power was enumerated for government cash handouts to any industry. So Hamilton invented a new constitutional foundation: Congress would decide how much power Congress would have.

“It is therefore of necessity left to the discretion of the National Legislature, to pronounce, upon the objects, which concern the general Welfare, and for which under that description, an appropriation of money is requisite and proper.”

MADISON AND JEFFERSON: LIMITED MEANS LIMITED

Just over a month later, Madison fired back. Accept Hamilton’s view, and the entire point of a Constitution with delegated powers was finished.

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.”

Madison drove the point home by tying it back to the Articles of Confederation. The phrase “general welfare” had been carried over into the Constitution for a reason: everyone already understood it as nothing more than a reference to expenses tied to the specified powers.

It was intentionally chosen because it was less likely than any other wording to be twisted. And yet now, Madison warned, Hamilton was doing exactly that – turning the phrase into the very kind of blank check Madison himself had ridiculed Anti-Federalists for claiming during ratification.

“It is to be remarked that the phrase out of which this doctrine is elaborated, is copied from the old articles of Confederation, where it was always understood as nothing more than a general caption to the specified powers, and it is a fact that it was preferred in the new instrument for that very reason as less liable than any other to misconstruction.”

When President Washington asked his for opinions on Hamilton’s plan, Jefferson came down hard. He pointed out that whenever government takes it upon itself to pick winners and losers, it seizes money from some and hands it to the chosen few. And abuse isn’t just likely, it’s almost guaranteed.

“Bounties have in some instances been a successful instrument for the introdn. of new and useful manufactures. But the use of them has been found almost inseparable from abuse.”

And that, Jefferson noted, is exactly why the Constitution never delegated such a power to the federal government.

“The power of dispensing them has not been delegated by the Constn. to the Genl. govmt. It remains with the state govmts. whose local information renders them competent judges of the particular arts and manufactures for which circumstances have matured them.”

In short? Hamilton’s plan was 100% unconstitutional.

THE FIRST TEST: COD FISHERIES

Meanwhile in Congress, the first real test came. A bill to “encourage” cod fisheries was seen by opponents as a federal subsidy in practice – and Madison ripped into it on the House floor.

“If Congress can apply money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may establish teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of the public treasury;”

And that was only the beginning. Madison warned it could pull in nearly everything — education, welfare, even local roads – all under the banner of “general welfare.”

“they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post roads;”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But to Madison, these were extreme hypotheticals – the furthest stretch of abuse he could imagine. To us, they’re the daily reality of federal power.

The result, he warned, would be federal control and federal funding of everything.

“in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation, down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare.”

THEY WEREN’T ALONE

William Branch Giles also flatly rejected any federal bounty power as totally unconstitutional.

“in no part of the Constitution could he, in express terms, find a power given to Congress to grant bounties on occupations: the power is neither directly granted, nor (by any reasonable construction that he could give) annexed to any other specified in the Constitution.”

Giles was a staunch Anti-Federalist, so his opponents could easily brush him off. But not Hugh Williamson of North Carolina. He was a Framer at the Philadelphia Convention and a strong Federalist supporter of the Constitution during the ratification debates.

His warning was brutal: it wouldn’t stop with fishermen getting subsidies. In fact, it would never stop.

“Establish the doctrine of bounties; set aside that part of the Constitution which requires equal taxes, and demands similar distributions; destroy this barrier – and it is not a few fishermen that will enter, claiming ten or twelve thousand dollars but all manner of persons; people of every trade and occupation may enter in at the breach, until they have eaten up the bread of our children.”

What he called the road to ruin is the reality we live under: every industry demanding its share of federal spoils.

JEFFERSON: THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

By the end of February 1792, Jefferson finally had his meeting with President Washington. In his memoranda of that conversation, he wrote that Hamilton’s proposal had brought matters to a head.

“They had now brought forward a proposition, far beyond every one ever yet advanced, and to which the eyes of many were turned, as the decision which was to let us know whether we live under a limited or an unlimited government.”

For Jefferson, Hamilton’s plan wasn’t really about aiding manufacturers at all. It was a deliberate pretext.

“He asked me to what proposition I alluded?—I answered to that in the Report on manufactures which, under colour of giving bounties for the encouragement of particular manufactures,” 

The cover story was bounties for manufacturing. The reality was a doctrine of limitless power.

“…meant to establish the doctrine that the power given by the Constitution to collect taxes to provide for the general welfare of the U.S. permitted Congress to take every thing under their management which they should deem for the public welfare, and which is susceptible of the application of money”

THE ANTI-FEDERALIST WARNING

Jefferson nailed it in 1775 when he called general welfare a dangerously vague term. During the ratification debates of 1787-88, Anti-Federalists like Brutus gave the same warning.

“I would ask those, who reason thus, to define what ideas are included under the terms, to provide for the common defence and general welfare? Are these terms definite, and will they be understood in the same manner, and to apply to the same cases by every one?”

In his 6th essay, he predicted general welfare would be twisted exactly how Hamilton did it just a few years later.

“No one will pretend they will. It will then be matter of opinion, what tends to the general welfare; and the Congress will be the only judges in the matter.”

An indefinite and vague term like general welfare? Brutus knew – every faction could twist it to support whatever they want.

“To provide for the general welfare, is an abstract proposition, which mankind differ in the explanation of, as much as they do on any political or moral proposition that can be proposed; the most opposite measures may be pursued by different parties…”

And Brutus warned that the vagueness was the real danger – you could never know if people were honestly misreading it as a limit on power, or deliberately twisting it to grab more.

“…and both may profess, that they have in view the general welfare; and both sides may be honest in their professions, or both may have sinister views.”

In his view, calling that a limit on power was laughable. He predicted it would end with no limits at all.

“It is as absurd to say, that the power of Congress is limited by these general expressions, “to provide for the common safety, and general welfare,” as it would be to say, that it would be limited, had the constitution said they should have power to lay taxes, &c. at will and pleasure.”

The post How Two Vague Words Were Used to Gut the Entire Constitution appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

And politicians? They’re the “professors of that science.”

Richard Henry Lee wasn’t talking about a few bad apples. He was warning about the nature of the system itself.

It has been the same playbook throughout history. The founders knew it. The great thinkers they studied knew it. They left us warnings about exactly what to watch for.

The pattern reveals itself through three specific methods that have toppled republics and established tyranny for thousands of years – a system built on fraud, fear, bribery, and corruption.

FRAUD: THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF POLITICS

Politicians rarely conquer by force at the start. They win power by pretending. Pretending to defend liberty. Pretending to uphold law. Pretending to serve the people. But behind the curtain, their purpose is control.

John Dickinson described how this deception worked.

“All artful rulers, who strive to extend their power beyond its just limits, endeavor to give to their attempts as much semblance of legality as possible.”

Dickinson wasn’t spotting something new. He was exposing a tactic used by tyrants for centuries. Take it from the Roman historian Tacitus – writing about Augustus, the man who murdered the Roman Republic.

“Augustus paid great court to the people: the very Name that covered his Usurpation was a compliment to them: he affected to call it the Power of the Tribuneship, an Office first created purely for their protection, and as the strongest effort and barrier of popular Liberty.”

Augustus claimed power in the name of liberty, but used it to end liberty itself.

“It was for their sake and security, he pretended to assume this power, though by it he acted as absolutely as if he had called it the Dictatorial power; such energy there is in words! The Office itself was erected as a bulwark against Tyranny; and by the name of it Tyranny is now supported. In the same manner he used and perverted the Consulship; another Magistracy peculiar to the Commonwealth, but by him abused to the ends of his Monarchy.”

Machiavelli later turned this observation into advice for rulers. He explained that virtue was irrelevant so long as one could imitate it.

“It is not necessary, however, for a prince to possess all the above-mentioned qualities; but it is essential that he should at least seem to have them. I will even venture to say, that to have and to practise them constantly is pernicious, but to seem to have them is useful. For instance, a prince should seem to be merciful, faithful, humane, religious, and upright, and should even be so in reality.”

Appearance alone was not enough. The ruler had to master the art of hypocrisy.

“It is necessary that a prince should know how to color this nature well, and how to be a great hypocrite and dissembler.”

In the early 18th Century, John Trenchard, writing in Cato’s Letters #17 warned that tyrants don’t come with chains on full display.

“Few men have been desperate enough to attack openly, and barefaced, the liberties of a free people. Such avowed conspirators can rarely succeed: The attempt would destroy itself. Even when the enterprise is begun and visible, the end must be hid, or denied.”

Instead they come waving flags and preaching freedom.

“It is the business and policy of traitors, so to disguise their treason with plausible names, and so to recommend it with popular and bewitching colours, that they themselves shall be adored, while their work is detested, and yet carried on by those that detest it.”

FEAR: THE TOOL OF SUBMISSION

Fraud is the entry point. Fear is what keeps people in chains.

For example, James Madison warned that fear of foreign danger – whether real or fake – is always the excuse to rip liberty apart at home.

“Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions agst. danger real or pretended from abroad.”

As Trenchard noted, they use war to keep the people panicked, distracted, and overwhelmed.

“They will engage their country in ridiculous, expensive, fantastical wars, to keep the minds of men in continual hurry and agitation, and under constant fears and alarms; and, by such means, deprive them both of leisure and inclination to look into publick miscarriages.”

Because a frightened people won’t fight back, they’ll often just cling to their chains.

“Men, on the contrary, will, instead of such inspection, be disposed to fall into all measures offered, seemingly, for their defence, and will agree to every wild demand made by those who are betraying them.”

And once the people have been panicked into submission, Jean Louis De Lolme explained how the real game begins. Take the emergency, turn it into legislation. Then turn the legislation into a permanent weapon of control.

“Those laws which were intended to be equal for all, are soon warped to the private convenience of those who have been made the administrators of them: instituted at first for the protection of all, they soon are made only to defend the usurpations of a few.”

BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION: THE CHAINS OF COMFORT

Fraud sells the lie. Fear sells the emergency. That’s when politicians bring out their next weapon: Bribery.

Over the centuries, there have been different names for it. Bread and circuses, social safety nets, stimulus checks, and the like. Anything to make the people comfortable enough to accept their chains.

Tacitus described how Augustus perfected this strategy.

“He likewise won the hearts of the people by filling their bellies, by cheapness of provisions, and plentiful markets. This has infinite effect. If people have plenty at home, they will not be apt to discover many errors or much iniquity in the public, which will always be at quiet when particulars are so.”

Augustus also fed their minds with distractions like entertainment and endless spectacles.

“He frequently entertained them with Shews and Spectacles; a notable means to produce or continue good humour in the populace, to beget kind wishes and zeal for the author of so much joy, and to make them forget Usurpation, Slavery, and every public evil.”

The tactic worked like magic. The people lost all virtue and ambition and ended up conquered, no army was even needed.

“These were indeed used for the ends of corruption and servitude; they rendred the people idle, venal, vicious, insensible of private virtue, insensible of public glory or disgrace; but the things were liked, and the ends not seen, or not minded, so that they had their thorough effect; and the Roman people, they who were wont to direct mighty wars, to raise and depose great Kings, to bestow or take away Empires, they who ruled the world, or directed its rule, were so sunk and debauched, that if they had but bread and shews, their ambition went no higher.”

It wasn’t just Augustus. Thomas Gordon, quoting Sallust, traced this corruption to earlier times. Even in the Roman Republic, politicians bought support with grain. But it was little more than fake generosity to grab power, almost like a precursor to welfare programs of today.

“Spurius Melius, by bestowing on the Roman People great Quantities of Corn, in a Time of great Scarcity, was far enough from confessing to them, that he was thus purchasing Dominion over them; though this was manifestly his Drift; and he therefore became their Benefactor, that he might be their Tyrant.”

Montesquieu explained how bribery rots a republic from the inside, corrupting both rulers and people, who eventually demand more and more from the “public treasure.”

“The corruption will increase among the corrupters, and likewise among those who are already corrupted. The people will divide the public money among themselves, and, having added the administration of affairs to their indolence, will be for blending their poverty with the amusements of luxury. But, with their indolence and luxury, nothing but the public treasure will be able to satisfy their demands.”

And once corruption reaches this stage, even votes are for sale.

“We must not be surprized to see their suffrages given for money. It is impossible to make great largesses to the people without great extortion.”

Algernon Sidney warned that it’s also about corrupting the people so deeply that they lose the will to resist at all.

“he that would introduce an ill magistrate; make one evil who was good, or preserve him in the exercise of injustice when he is corrupted, must always open the way for him by vitiating the people, corrupting their manners, destroying the validity of oaths and contracts, teaching such evasions, equivocations and frauds, as are inconsistent with the thoughts that become men of virtue and courage; and overthrowing the confidence they ought to have in each other, make it impossible for them to unite among themselves.”

Benjamin Franklin cut right to the heart of it: The entire system is an endless cycle of power and plunder.

“The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partizans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure.”

RESTORING LOST PRINCIPLES

Fraud, fear, and bribery are not accidents. But this isn’t just about diagnosing the disease. As St. George Tucker put it, the cure is grounded in a return to first principles.

“To detect the cheat requires a thorough acquaintance with the principles of its original construction, and the purposes to which it was intended to be applied.”

As Montesquieu made clear, the fix is more than just finding new people to wield power, that’s just rearranging the deck chairs.

“When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils, but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles: every other correction is either useless or a new evil.”

That’s why Richard Henry Lee’s warning is so crucial.

Politics might feel broken. But it’s not. It’s working exactly as fraud demands.

“Trust the science,” they said.

Not here.

The post The Ancient Playbook: Politics as the Science of Fraud appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

George Mason cut to the heart of it: the militia was not a government creation, but the people themselves.

That simple truth has been twisted, ignored, or totally forgotten.

Say the word “militia” today and most people look at you like you’re a fringe nutcase. But the founding generation saw it differently. They viewed a well-armed and well-trained people as the backbone of liberty, the essential security of a free republic.

The Constitution’s militia clauses were supposed to secure that principle. The Anti-Federalists warned they would do the opposite – and time has proven them right.

CITIZEN MILITIA VS. STANDING ARMY

This story really begins with a principle most Americans have forgotten, and most were never even taught: the choice between a citizen militia and a permanent professional standing army.

Henry Knox, Washington’s Secretary of War, reinforced this: in a free society, the ultimate safeguard had to be an armed people, themselves.

“An energetic national militia is to be regarded as the Capital security of a free republic; and not a standing army, forming a distinct class in the community.”

That view was widespread because almost the entire founding generation viewed standing armies, especially large permanent ones, as one of the greatest dangers to liberty. A perfect example of this view came from the great revolutionary war hero Joseph Warren.

“It is further certain, from a consideration of the nature of mankind, as well as from constant experience, that standing armies always endanger the liberty of the subject.”

The same warning carried forward to the ratification debates over the Constitution. “A Democratic Federalist,” possibly Samuel Bryan, pointed to the long record of history. From every angle, the conclusion was the same: a standing army was the single greatest danger.

“The experience of past ages, and the result of the enquiries of the best and most celebrated patriots have taught us to dread a standing army above all earthly evils.”

And Tench Coxe drove the distinction home. A militia of the people worked for the people, defending their own freedom. A professional army was nothing but the tool of those in power. And people in power always find ways to use that power for the worst.

“There is a wide difference between the troops of such a commonwealth as ours, founded on equal and unalterable principles, and those of a regal government, where ambition and oppression are the profession of the king. In the first case, a military officer is the occasional servant of the people, employed for their defence; in the second, he is the ever ready instrument to execute the schemes of conquest or oppression, with which the mind of his royal master may be disturbed.”

MILITIA IN THE CONSTITUTION

James Madison tied the whole question of liberty to the militia itself. What others had warned about in theory, he pressed as a principle to be written into the Constitution itself.

“As the greatest danger to liberty is from large standing armies, it is best to prevent them, by an effectual provision for a good Militia.”

Tench Coxe tied those principles together into one clear doctrine. The militia was the people themselves, and he affirmed Madison’s view that they made a standing army unnecessary.

“The militia, who are in fact the effective part of the people at large, will render many troops quite unnecessary.”

He explained why. An armed population, by sheer numbers, could act as a check on regular troops, because the geographic situation of the country meant there would seldom be many of them in the first place.

“They will form a powerful check upon the regular troops, and will generally be sufficient to overawe them – for our detached situation will seldom give occasion to raise an army, though a few scattered companies may often be necessary.”

The framers sought to write these principles into the Constitution, where the word “militia” is included six times.

Article II, Section 2 made the president commander in chief not only of the army and navy, but also of the militia of the several states when called into the actual service of the United States.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 15 explained when that could happen. Congress could provide for calling forth the militia only in three situations: “to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” Clause 16 delegated to Congress the power to “provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States.”

That last power would become the heart of the coming debate.

The Bill of Rights added two more mentions of the word militia. The Fifth Amendment exempted cases “arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger.”

The Second Amendment put the principle beyond dispute, tying the people’s right to arms directly to the survival of a free state.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

THE BIG DEBATE

During the ratification debates, there was strong opposition to giving Congress power to organize, arm, and discipline the militia. As Federal Farmer wrote, the starting point was clear: liberty required the great mass of the people themselves to remain armed.

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them”

Patrick Henry pressed the point even harder. Liberty could not be secured by a portion of the people.

“The great object is, that every man be armed”

That demand ran headlong into Alexander Hamilton’s approach. He began by acknowledging the opposition’s concern that federal power over the militia could be used to form a select corps, loyal to government instead of the people.

“By a curious refinement upon the spirit of republican jealousy, we are even taught to apprehend danger from the militia itself, in the hands of the federal government. It is observed that select corps may be formed, composed of the young and ardent, who may be rendered subservient to the views of arbitrary power.”

Hamilton then made his own claim. A general militia, he said, was not the safeguard of liberty but an impractical and dangerous burden.

“The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution.”

In one stroke he dismissed the idea that ordinary citizens should give their time and effort to arms and training, calling such effort a nuisance to be avoided.

“To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss.”

THE SELECT MILITIA

The Anti-Federalists repeatedly warned that any plan allowing a “select corps,” or what they called a “select militia,” could be extremely dangerous. In Pennsylvania, John Smilie warned that this would, in practice, be a standing army.

“Congress may give us a select militia which will, in fact, be a standing army”

And if men hostile to liberty gained power, they would have every reason to cripple the one institution that could resist them. That meant abolishing the general militia altogether.

“Or – Congress, afraid of a general militia, may say there shall be no militia at all.”

Either way, the stage would be set for the ultimate danger.

“When a select militia is formed; the people in general may be disarmed.”

George Mason explained how easily this could happen. Congress would not need to seize weapons outright. It could let the militia wither through neglect.

“The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practised in other parts of the world before. That is, by rendering them useless, by disarming them. Under various pretences, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia, and the State Governments cannot do it, for Congress has an exclusive right to arm them”

But Mason saw something even more sinister -what if this wasn’t accidental neglect, but the whole point?

“Should the national Government wish to render the militia useless, they may neglect them, and let them perish, in order to have a pretence of establishing standing army”

Even Hamilton conceded that the scope of power was wide open. No one could predict what Congress might choose to do.

“What plan for the regulation of the militia may be pursued by the national government, is impossible to be foreseen”

Mason brought the issue back to first principles. In 1788, there was no ambiguity –  the militia still meant the people themselves – all of them.

“I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”

Mason drove it home with a warning that would prove to be prophetic. To grant Congress control over organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia was to guarantee a select militia – and with it, every danger the Anti-Federalists had warned against.

“But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day. If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor; but may be confined to the lower and middle classes of the people, granting exclusion to the higher classes of the people. If we should ever see that day, the most ignominious punishments and heavy fines may be expected.”

THE PUSH FOR AMENDMENTS

This fear of Congress neglecting the militia, or even disarming the people and leaving only a select corps, was a driving force behind the push for amendments.

At Virginia’s ratifying convention, they proposed one in unmistakable terms:

“That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State.”

New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island all ratified with nearly the same recommended amendment.

Years later, Thomas Jefferson recalled just how urgent the issue had been. From Europe, he pressed James Madison for amendments to guarantee that the Constitution itself would help prevent that great threat to liberty – a standing army – by securing the militia.

“I wrote strongly to mr Madison urging the want of provision for the freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, habeas corpus, the substitution of militia for a standing army, and an express reservation to the states of all rights not specifically granted to the union.”

THE WARNING CAME TRUE

Remember George Mason’s warning about Congress turning the militia into a narrow class, while exempting those with the greatest means? A century later, that prediction became law.

The Militia Act of 1903, what most people today call the Dick Act, narrowed the definition of the militia from “the whole people” to a specific segment of the people.

“The militia shall consist of every able-bodied male citizen of the respective States, Territories, and the District of Columbia, and every able-bodied male of foreign birth who has declared his intention to become a citizen, who is more than eighteen and less than forty-five years of age”

From there the Act went even further, creating the very “select militia” Mason and the Anti-Federalists had warned would destroy liberty.

“And shall be divided into two classes, the organized militia, to be known as the National Guard of the State, Territory, or District of Columbia … and the remainder to be known as the Reserve Militia.”

And then, of course – to ensure it’s just like the standing army we were warned about, Congress ensured that politicians were completely exempt.

“That the Vice-President of the United States, the officers, judicial and executive, of the Government of the United States, the members and officers of each House of Congress … shall be exempted from militia duty, without regard to age”

THE ONE-TWO PUNCH

The militia was, and always will be, the people themselves.

But just as the Anti-Federalists warned, once Congress was given the power to organize, arm, and discipline only part of the militia, the results were inevitable.

Today we live with the one-two punch they predicted:

1. A select militia – the National Guard – is treated as nothing more than an arm of the permanent standing army.
2. Tens of millions of Americans are not armed today.

The post The Militia the Founders Envisioned, and What Remains Today appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

But government has never been a big fan of that view. The ruling class prefers a population that thinks liberty is a privilege to be granted and withdrawn. Far too many people today play along – talking about their rights like they’re favors written into law.

“My First Amendment free speech rights.”
“My Second Amendment rights.”

Some go even further, insisting all their rights come from a particular amendment, like the ninth, as if without those words on paper, they’d have no rights at all – a view the founding generation would have seen as absurd – or dangerous – or both.

PAINE’S ANSWER

Thomas Paine rejected the rights come from a document view outright.

“It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights.”

Paine saw the trap. Treat rights as gifts of a charter, and they could be redefined, limited, or revoked whenever those in power decided it was “necessary.” That would turn rights into government-granted privileges.

Instead, he described rights as something that exist by nature, belonging to every person without exception.

“Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants.”

AMERICA’S DNA

That truth was already woven into America’s political DNA long before independence was won. So Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress could declare what they saw as obvious to any free people.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This principle in the Declaration wasn’t something new. Jefferson later explained the document wasn’t meant to break new ground.

“Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject.”

Instead, its purpose was to capture and state what Americans already knew to be true.

“It was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.”

He went on to describe the Declaration as a product of ideas that were already widely shared – ideas drawn from conversations, letters, essays, and the great works of political philosophers that shaped the thinking of his generation.

“All it’s authority rests then on the harmonising sentiments of the day, whether expressed, in conversns in letters, printed essays or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney Etc.”

THE COLONIAL VOICE

Natural rights were at the heart of those harmonizing sentiments. They formed the foundation of the American Revolution itself. Samuel Adams made the case in 1772.

“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.”

Adams grounded this in the oldest rule there is.

“These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.”

James Otis Jr. cut right to the point. Like Paine, he understood that natural rights weren’t just for the few. They were inherent in everyone.

“The Colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white or black.”

Otis also took natural rights to its logical conclusion, a step much further than many in the 1760s.

“Are not women born as free as men? Would it not be infamous to assert that the ladies are all slaves by nature?”

ANCIENT ROOTS

The founders didn’t invent natural rights. They inherited them, going back centuries.

Jefferson mentioned Cicero for good reason. Two thousand years earlier, the Roman statesman had laid out the same principles.

“Man is born for justice, and law and equity are not a mere establishment of opinion, but an institution of nature.”

Cicero didn’t invent these ideas either. They can be traced even further back to the ancient Greeks. Jefferson also cited Aristotle, who wrote, “That is natural which has the same validity everywhere, and does not depend on our accepting or rejecting it.”

THE BRIDGE FORWARD

Jefferson also drew from Algernon Sidney, a man who put his life on the line for the same principle. Sidney wrote “Discourses Concerning Government” in the 17th century. He was executed for it before it was even published. He reinforced the same truth echoed by Aristotle and Cicero.

“The Liberties of Nations are from God and Nature, not from Kings.”

John Locke carried the principle of natural rights forward, making clear that they do not vanish – ever. The law of nature applies to every person, including those who write the laws.

“The obligations of the law of nature cease not in society, but only in many cases are drawn closer, and have by human laws known penalties annexed to them, to inforce their observation. Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others.”

PUTTING PRINCIPLE INTO PRACTICE

This was the bedrock principle the Founders used to justify their secession from Great Britain. But they didn’t leave natural rights to theory. They constitutionalized them.

George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights spelled out those rights as beyond the reach of any government.

“That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

Months later, the Pennsylvania constitution adopted language nearly identical to Virginia’s. In July 1777, Vermont did the same. But they went a step further and put those words into action. They became the first in the United States to partially ban slavery.

“Therefore, no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one Years, nor female, in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years.”

That same natural rights foundation influenced the debates over the Constitution. Luther Martin of Maryland, a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention who would later become a leading Anti-Federalist, emphasized that this was the basis of everything else.

“The first principle of government is founded on the natural rights of individuals, and in perfect equality.”

Theophilus Parsons, speaking in the Massachusetts ratifying convention, made clear that the Constitution granted no power to violate natural rights.

“No power was given to Congress to infringe on any one of the natural rights of the people by this Constitution; and, should they attempt it without constitutional authority, the act would be a nullity.”

UNCOMPROMISING

Virginia’s ratification of the Constitution reaffirmed the very language from its 1776 Declaration of Rights. Some rights are untouchable.

“That there are certain natural rights of which men, when they form a social compact cannot deprive or divest their posterity, among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

North Carolina used the same language in its ratification, making clear that these natural rights were not open to government interference.

Two years before independence, Thomas Jefferson captured the principle in a single, uncompromising line.

“A free people claim their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate”

It’s not liberty if it comes with a government permission slip.

The post Not a Gift from Government: Our Natural Rights Foundation appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Most people don’t know what it says or means. Others just ignore it. Those who don’t, usually get it completely wrong.

The Ninth isn’t a grant of additional federal power. It’s a partner to the Tenth Amendment and a firewall for federalism.

It wasn’t an afterthought. It was the final lock on constructive federal power.

THE FEDERALIST TRAP

The 9th Amendment emerged from a fight. Federalists warned that a Bill of Rights was a trap – it would expand government power, not limit it.

James Madison wrote the 9th. Unlike other Federalists, he wasn’t rigid on this point. A bill of rights could work, he believed, if properly designed to avoid implying powers not intended to be granted.

Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson that he had “always been in favor of a bill of rights; provided it be so framed as not to imply powers not meant to be included in the enumeration.”

But other Federalists kept warning that listing rights would destroy liberty, not protect it. Their fear was simple: any list becomes a tool for expanding government power.

The logic was simple: if you list some rights as protected, you’re implying government can violate any rights not on the list. James Iredell explained this danger at the North Carolina Ratifying Convention:

“It would be not only useless but dangerous to enumerate a number of rights which are not intended to be given up; because it would be implying in the strongest manner, that every right not included in the exception might be impaired by the government without usurpation, and it would be impossible to enumerate every one.”

Alexander Hamilton put it best: Why declare restrictions on powers never granted in the first place?

“For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?”

THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS PUSH BACK

The Anti-Federalists weren’t buying it.

They saw two threats: Congress claiming powers it wasn’t given, and Congress twisting its enumerated powers through creative interpretation.

The Anti-Federalists demanded everything be written down explicitly. They knew human nature – when in doubt, those in power expand their power.

Federal Farmer shot back at James Wilson’s claim that a bill of rights would be dangerous:

“The general presumption being, that men who govern, will, in doubtful cases, construe laws and constitutions most favourably for encreasing their own powers; all wise and prudent people, in forming constitutions, have drawn the line, and carefully described the powers parted with and the powers reserved.”

The Anti-Federalists kept insisting – no written guarantees, no protection.

George Mason summed up this position at the Virginia Ratifying Convention: “We wish only our rights to be secured. We must have such amendments as will secure the liberties and happiness of the people, on a plain simple construction, not on a doubtful ground.”

Even Hamilton admitted courts couldn’t have free rein:

“To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them.”

THE STATES DEMAND CLEAR LIMITS

Here’s what Hamilton admitted was needed but the Constitution didn’t have: “strict rules” of construction. Not one.

Massachusetts fired the first shot. New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, and others followed – each ratifying the Constitution with a list of demanded amendments.

New York’s demand was blunt: federal power stops at what’s expressly delegated.

“That every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the departments of the Government thereof, remains to the People of the several States, or to their respective State Governments to whom they may have granted the same”

That first part? A precursor to the 10th Amendment. But here’s what matters for the 9th – this second part captures exactly what Madison would later write:

“And that those Clauses in the said Constitution, which declare, that Congress shall not have or exercise certain Powers, do not imply that Congress is entitled to any Powers not given by the said Constitution; but such Clauses are to be construed either as exceptions to certain specified Powers, or as inserted merely for greater Caution.”

North Carolina echoed the same principle – everything not delegated stays with the states:

“THAT each state in the union shall, respectively, retain every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by this constitution delegated to the Congress of the United States, or to the departments of the Federal Government.”

North Carolina went further – no constructive interpretation that extends federal power:

“That those clauses which declare that Congress shall not exercise certain powers, be not interpreted in any manner whatsoever to extend the powers of Congress; but that they be construed either as making exceptions to the specified powers where this shall be the case, or otherwise, as inserted merely for greater caution.”

Virginia started with natural rights, but kept the list deliberately open-ended:

“That there be a Declaration or Bill of Rights asserting and securing from encroachment the essential and unalienable Rights of the People in some such manner as the following; First, That there are certain natural rights of which men, when they form a social compact cannot deprive or divest their posterity, among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

See it? “Among which.” Not “these are” or “limited to.” Virginia knew what they were doing – keeping that door open. Then they slammed their own anti-construction rule on the table:

“That those clauses which declare that Congress shall not exercise certain powers be not interpreted in any manner whatsoever to extend the powers of Congress.”

These states shared the same two-part demand: First, spell out that federal power is limited to what’s explicitly granted. Everything else stays with the states. Second, make sure that listing rights doesn’t become an excuse to expand federal power

MADISON’S FIX

James Madison got the message loud and clear.

On June 8, 1789, he stood before the first Congress and laid out the Federalist objection:

“It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration, and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the general government, and were consequently insecure.”

Then came the admission. Madison called this the most plausible argument he’d heard against a bill of rights. But he already had a fix.

“This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard urged against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the 4th resolution.”

Madison’s draft for what became the Ninth Amendment took the North Carolina and Virginia language and ran with it. It created a rule of construction to prevent constructive enlargement of federal power at the expense of rights.

“The exceptions here or elsewhere in the constitution, made in favor of particular rights, shall not be so construed as to diminish the just importance of other rights retained by the people; or as to enlarge the powers delegated by the constitution; but either as actual limitations of such powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution.”

The House cut the second half. Why? Madison told Washington they thought it was redundant.

“If a line can be drawn between the powers granted and the rights retained, it would seem to be the same thing, whether the latter be secured, by declaring that they shall not be abridged, or that the former shall not be extended. If no line can be drawn, a declaration in either form would amount to nothing.”

The final version – the 9th Amendment we have today – seemed clear enough:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

RANDOLPH RESISTS

Problem solved? Not even close.

The streamlined language nearly killed the entire Bill of Rights.

The streamlined language nearly killed the entire Bill of Rights. In Virginia, Edmund Randolph saw the danger immediately. The new language was too vague. Congress could drive a truck through it. Hardin Burnley explained Randolph’s concern in a letter to Madison – the new language would not operate “as a provision against extending the powers of Congress by their own authority”

Virginia slammed on the brakes. The House postponed debate on the 9th and 10th amendments – and with them, the entire Bill of Rights. Burnley warned Madison that rejecting those two amendments would likely “bring the whole into hazzard again.”

Only Virginia objected to the text of the Ninth Amendment. That made it worse, because their concerns delayed ratification for two full years.

THE SLAM DUNK: MADISON’S BANK SPEECH

Early 1791. Hamilton wants a national bank. Virginia still hasn’t ratified the Bill of Rights. Madison sees his opening.

On February 2, he started a speech on the House floor with first principles: “An interpretation that destroys the very characteristic of the government cannot be just.”

Then Madison played his ace. Remember how we sold the Constitution without a bill of rights? We promised strict construction:

“The defence against the charge founded on the want of a bill of rights presupposed, that the powers not given were retained and that those given were not to be extended by remote implications. On any other supposition, the power of Congress to abridge the freedom of the press, or the rights of conscience, etc. could not have been disproved.”

In case anyone didn’t believe him, Madison pulled out the receipts. He read supporting passages from the Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina convention debates.

Then Madison connected the dots. Those amendments Virginia was stalling on? They locked in this exact principle: “The former, as guarding against a latitude of interpretation-the latter, as excluding every source of power not within the constitution itself.”

Madison had just shown that the 9th and 10th Amendments were their insurance policy – twin barriers against federal power grabs.

It worked. December 15, 1791: Virginia ratified.

THE FIREWALL

The 9th Amendment wasn’t a tool to expand federal power. It was a rule of construction meant to limit federal power – a partner to the 10th Amendment and a barrier against federal interference with both individual rights and the right to local self-government.

St. George Tucker got it. First, the 10th Amendment. It was designed “to guard against encroachments on the powers of the several states, in their politic character, and of the people, both in their individual and sovereign capacity.”

Next, the 9th, a rule “to guard the people against constructive usurpations and encroachments on their rights.”

Put them together, and Tucker says you get one essential, foundational rule for the entire constitution:

“The sum of all which appears to be, that the powers delegated to the federal government, are, in all cases, to receive the most strict construction that the instrument will bear, where the rights of a state or of the people, either collectively, or individually, may be drawn in question.”

John Taylor of Caroline saw the same partnership (referring to the 9th and 10th by their original numbers):

“The eleventh amendment prohibits a construction by which the rights retained by the people shall be denied or disparaged; and the twelfth reserves to the states respectively or to the people the powers not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the states. The precision of these expressions is happily contrived to defeat a construction, by which the origin of the union, or the sovereignty of the states, could be rendered at all doubtful.”

The Ninth Amendment wasn’t an afterthought. It was the final lock on federal power. It doesn’t compete with the Tenth. It helps protect it. And vice versa.

Together, they enforce the core principle of the Constitution: Delegated powers only. Everything else stays close to home. Or with the individual.

The post The Ninth Amendment: Partner to the Tenth in Limiting Federal Power appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

The founders did it, but they knew there’s no silver bullet. The path to liberty isn’t flashy. It’s slow. Deliberate. Relentless.

In 1767, the “Penman of the American Revolution” found the key in ancient Rome. Four Latin words. One strategy to topple an empire. This is the story of “small things grow great by concord.”

DICKINSON’S GAMBIT

The year is 1767. The American colonies are on a knife’s edge.

Two years earlier, they had successfully nullified the Stamp Act through dedicated and coordinated resistance. When the British repealed the act, they didn’t retreat. They merely changed tactics.

On the very same day they repealed the Stamp Act, they passed the Declaratory Act, which claimed unlimited, centralized power over everything.

The act declared that Parliament “had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.”

Most people celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act. John Adams immediately grasped the ominous implications of the Declaratory Act. In his diary, he asked the question that would soon come to define the entire crisis: “I am solicitous to know whether they will lay a Tax, in Consequence of that Resolution, or what Kind of a Law they will make.”

At first, it was just a threat on paper. John Dickinson understood that it was planting the seeds for something bigger. The Declaratory Act “was only planting a barren tree, that cast a shade indeed over the colonies, but yielded no fruit.”

The answer to Adams’ question arrived with the Townshend Acts of 1767.

In response, Dickinson wrote a series of essays called Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. These became the most widely read documents on American liberty until publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense – some of the most influential writing of the entire Revolution.

Dickinson saw what most people missed. Parliament’s true objective was not taxation but submission.

“No man, who considers the conduct of the parliament since the repeal of the Stamp-Act, and the disposition of many people at home, can doubt, that the chief object of attention there, is, to use Mr. Greenville’s expression, ‘providing that the dependence and obedience of the colonies be asserted and maintained.'”

THE PRECEDENT TRAP

For Dickinson, the great danger of the Townshend Acts wasn’t the size of the new taxes – they were actually quite small.

And that, he warned, was the whole point. It was a trap, designed to be overlooked.

“Some persons may think this act of no consequence, because the duties are so small. A fatal error. That is the very circumstance most alarming to me.”

Why? Because it would establish a precedent for more of the same in the future.

“For I am convinced, that the authors of this law would never have obtained an act to raise so trifling a sum as it must do, had they not intended by it to establish a precedent for future use. To console ourselves with the smallness of the duties, is to walk deliberately into the snare that is set for us, praising the neatness of the workmanship.”

The logic hit like a hammer.

If Parliament had the right to take even one penny without colonial consent, there would be no end.

“In short, if they have a right to levy a tax of one penny upon us, they have a right to levy a million upon us: For where does their right stop? At any given number of Pence, Shillings or Pounds? To attempt to limit their right, after granting it to exist at all, is as contrary to reason – as granting it to exist at all, is contrary to justice.”

The Townshend Acts were more than just taxes. There was also the New York Restraining Act. It suspended that colony’s assembly for not complying with the Quartering Act. Dickinson saw this for what it was – a targeted punishment and a first move in a divide-and-conquer strategy.

Attack one, and another will come soon after.

“But whoever seriously considers the matter, must perceive that a dreadful stroke is aimed at the liberty of these colonies. I say, of these colonies; for the cause of one is the cause of all. If the parliament may lawfully deprive New-York of any of her rights, it may deprive any, or all the other colonies of their rights; and nothing can possibly so much encourage such attempts, as a mutual inattention to the interests of each other.”

Dickinson identified a classic military strategy being deployed against them.

“To divide, and thus to destroy, is the first political maxim in attacking those, who are powerful by their union.”

THE ANCIENT FORMULA

And that’s when Dickinson delivered the insight that would change everything.

Since the British were using small moves to establish big precedents, the colonists needed to do the same to stop them.

He closed the first of his Letters with four Latin words that would become the strategic foundation of the American revolution:

“Concordia res parvae crescunt”
– small things grow great by concord.

But Dickinson didn’t invent this formula. He inherited it. And to understand what he was channeling, we have to go back to the source: Ancient Rome.

It’s 41 BC, and Sallust is writing an autopsy on the Roman republic, dying before his very eyes. The decay, he noted, really started with the defeat of Rome’s great rival, Carthage.

“But when our country had grown great through toil and the practice of justice, when great kings had been vanquished in war, savage tribes and mighty peoples subdued by force of arms, when Carthage, the rival of Rome’s sway, had perished root and branch, and all seas and lands were open”

With no major foreign enemy to fear, the rot turned inward. The very things they fought for – peace, security, and wealth – became a curse.

“Then Fortune began to grow cruel and to bring confusion into all our affairs. Those who had found it easy to bear hardship and dangers, anxiety and adversity, found leisure and wealth, desirable under other circumstances, a burden and a curse.”

Two specific diseases took hold and became the root of Rome’s downfall.

“Hence the lust for power first, then for money, grew upon them; these were, I may say, the root of all evils.”

The corruption spread gradually, then completely.

“At first these vices grew slowly, from time to time they were punished; finally, when the disease had spread like a deadly plague, the state was changed and a government second to none in equity and excellence became cruel and intolerable.”

For Sallust, this was no mere observation. It was evidence of a fundamental political law with the certainty of a mathematical formula. This birthed the famous maxim that Dickinson signed off with in the first of his Letters.

“Concordia parvae res crescunt, discordia maximae dilabuntur”
– Harmony makes small things great, while discord undermines even the mightiest empires.

THE AMERICAN STRATEGY

The old revolutionaries understood exactly what Sallust meant – the path to liberty was a long and difficult road.

The danger was complacency after early victories. As Samuel Adams put it: “Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance.”

Possibly no one articulated the strategy better than Thomas Jefferson. Liberty must be won gradually through persistent effort.

“The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, that we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time, and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.”

As John Dickinson closed the twelfth and last of his Letters, he didn’t end with a legal argument or a historical lesson. He ended with a direct and personal challenge to his countrymen.

“For my part, I am resolved to contend for the liberty delivered down to me by my ancestors; but whether I shall do it effectually or not, depends on you, my countrymen.”

The “Penman of the Revolution” was right.  Small things DID indeed grow great by concord in the years to follow – and it’s a message that rings through history.

That’s exactly why we adopted Dickinson’s four Latin words as our motto. “Concordia res parvae crescunt” appears on every membership card we send out – because the strategy that won American independence is the same strategy that will restore the constitution and liberty today.

I hope you’ll join us!

The post Forgotten Foundation: The Story of Small Things Grow Great by Concord appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Today, we would be wise to recall that cautionary tale as we survey the ever-expanding powers of the American presidency — powers accumulated not through violent conquest, but through executive orders signed quietly from behind the Resolute Desk.

President Donald Trump, like his recent predecessors, has wielded executive orders with alarming frequency. In his first term, Trump signed 220 of them; and in his second, he surpassed 140 in the first 100 days alone. That figure is more than any president in a similar time frame, and includes sweeping edicts affecting everything from immigration to climate change to the dubious digital menace known as TikTok.

Let’s be clear: Executive orders are not novel. Of 47 presidential administrations, all but one have issued them. The total number of such orders — officially counted and unnumbered alike — hovers somewhere near 50,000. But it is not the mere quantity of such orders that threatens our Republic; it is their quality, scope, and constitutional legitimacy. It is the spirit behind them — one that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to that fateful Roman ambition: the desire to rule rather than to serve.

Executive Orders: A Tool Turned Weapon

In its original form, the executive order was an innocuous administrative memo, a directive to executive officers on how to carry out a law passed by Congress. George Washington, for example, used such orders to request department reports. Nothing alarming there.

But what was once a servant of the law has become its master. Abraham Lincoln, under the pretext of war, suspended habeas corpus — twice — without congressional approval, and issued the Emancipation Proclamation by fiat. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive orders were even more audacious, authorizing the confiscation of gold, the creation of massive federal programs, and the internment of Japanese Americans — all with the stroke of a pen.

The list of excesses has only grown. Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls. Bill Clinton rewrote labor policy via executive order. Barack Obama famously said, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” as he pledged to bypass Congress entirely. Trump, for his part, relied on executive orders to extend unemployment benefits, halt evictions, suspend student loan payments, and more — all without legislative sanction.

The ink has long dried on our constitutional parchment declaring that “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress.” But that ink is now routinely ignored, replaced by the signature of a single man.

Delegation: Congress’s Abdication

How did we get here? We arrived not through seizure, but surrender. Congress, corrupted by cowardice and seduced by convenience, has repeatedly delegated its legislative responsibilities to the executive branch, granting presidents “discretion” to act under vague statutory language. This is the legislative version of crossing the Rubicon.

The Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887 marked the beginning of this decline, and since then Congress has erected a bureaucratic Leviathan of more than 440 agencies — many with rulemaking powers that carry the force of law. This is not administration; it is legislation in disguise.

The nondelegation doctrine — so essential to the Constitution’s separation of powers — has all but disappeared from judicial enforcement. Since 1935, the Supreme Court has failed to strike down a single law under this principle. But that does not mean the principle is dead. On the contrary, it is more essential than ever if we are to rescue our Republic from a presidency swollen with power.

In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), the Court made plain that a president’s authority to issue orders must derive from either the Constitution or an act of Congress. And in L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935), the Court struck down FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Act for unlawfully transferring legislative power to the president. Yet, despite these clear precedents, the imperial presidency continues to metastasize.

From Republic to Empire

History does not simply repeat — it instructs. The Roman Republic fell not because its constitution was flawed, but because its citizens and leaders ceased to revere it. Emergencies became excuses, strongmen became saviors, and constitutional boundaries became inconveniences. Pompey was granted extraordinary powers “for the good of the republic.” Caesar promised he would relinquish his authority — later.

The American Republic stands at a similar precipice. Executive orders, once tools of execution, have become instruments of legislation. Presidents now routinely govern through decree, and we the people have grown disturbingly comfortable with it — especially when it is our man holding the scepter.

This is not merely a constitutional concern. It is a moral and political one. The very idea of liberty — of a government limited by law — demands a strict separation of powers. When that line is blurred, when presidents legislate and Congress abdicates, we are no longer a republic. We are something far more dangerous: a nation ruled by the will of one, not the rule of law.

The Path Forward: Reclaiming the Constitution

The path to restoring constitutional government is neither short nor easy, but it begins with reaffirming that the president is not a lawgiver. That honor and burden belong to Congress alone, as Article I, Section 1 declares.

Reviving the nondelegation doctrine is essential. Congress must stop transferring its legislative powers to executive agencies. It must repeal laws that grant vague discretionary authority. It must do its job — no matter how politically inconvenient that might be.

The courts must likewise awaken from their slumber and strike down executive overreach not with nuance, but with thunderous clarity. And the people — those for whom this government was instituted — must hold their leaders accountable, not just when their political foes offend the Constitution, but when their allies do.

Lastly, presidents themselves must recover the humility that once characterized men such as Washington and Coolidge, who knew that restraint was the mark of a statesman. True greatness is not measured by how many edicts a president signs, but by how faithfully he obeys the constitutional limits placed upon him.

Liberty Demands It

The Constitution is not a suggestion. It is a solemn compact — between states and between generations. Its separation of powers is not a formality but a fortress, a bulwark against tyranny — whether imposed by a king or a cult of personality.

The Roman Republic died not with a bang, but with applause. Let us not be so foolish as to repeat their error.

Liberty demands better.

This article was originally published at The New American and is reposted here with permission from the author.

The post The Pen, the Phone, and the Presidency: A Roman Warning Against the Rise of the American Caesar appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Taylor saw these for what they really were: not mere policy disagreements, but a war on the Constitution itself.

His pamphlet, “An Enquiry into the Principles and Tendency of Certain Public Measures,” was no mere political tract. It was a systematic demolition of Hamilton’s entire program.

Taylor called Hamilton’s constitutional interpretations “constructive treasons” – a phrase that captured the essence of how government power expands through legal sleight of hand.

FOUNDATION UNDER ATTACK

By Washington’s second term, Americans sensed something was wrong. The whispers were getting louder – about monarchy, about corruption, about a Constitution being systematically destroyed. Taylor didn’t dismiss these concerns as partisan hysteria. He knew they deserved investigation.

“It is often asserted that the administration is driving at monarchy – that the legislature is corrupt – and that the constitution has been more deliberately broken, than it was formed. These assertions are alarming. They deserve investigation.”

Taylor understood the stakes when he decided to act. Sending his pamphlet directly to President Washington meant attacking measures the President himself had signed into law. But he chose truth over political convenience.

“In the spirit of truth, and not of adulation, does the following performance solicit your attention. Nor is its hope of acquiring some share of your countenance diminished, by the circumstance of your not having in an official character withheld your signature, from several of the measures investigated.”

Here was Taylor’s insight: the problem wasn’t just bad policies. Even sound constitutional structures could be corrupted from within. Good government could rot just as easily as bad government could flourish.

“As a bad form of government, may by means of a good administration, produce national happiness, so a good form of government, may be abused into an engine of fraud and corruption.”

The mechanism of this corruption was insidious. Dangerous precedents would quietly become accepted rules over time.

“Mischievous precedents, or innovations upon the constitution, are matured by time into municipal regulations, or fundamental rules.”

Taylor explained how this constitutional rot spreads using a farmer’s analogy. Political laziness works exactly like agricultural laziness – ignore the problem and weeds take over the field.

“The wheat can only be separated from the chaff by sifting. Laziness in politics is like laziness in agriculture. It will expose the soil to noxious weeds. The wholesome plants will shrink from a state of indiscriminate amnesty, and disdaining a dishonorable society, will leave the field in the possession of tares and thistles.”

THE FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES

Taylor didn’t attack Hamilton’s system with vague complaints. He established clear constitutional principles to test every piece of the program. These weren’t academic theories – they were the measuring sticks of legitimate government.

His first principle cut to the heart of American government itself: All power flows from the people.

“That the constitution contemplates a republican form of government, flowing from and depending on the people; and that a mode of administration, destructive of such dependence, and introductory of monarchical ingredients, innovates upon and subverts the constitution.”

The second principle drew a bright line around congressional taxing power: general welfare did not include taxes for the benefit of individuals or private gain.

“That Congress can impose taxes for the common defence and general welfare, of the United States, but not for the benefit of individuals or their own private emolument.”

This wasn’t some minor technical point – it was the difference between legitimate government and legalized plunder.

Taylor’s third principle reminded readers that government serves as merely an agent of the people of the several states. The moment it exceeds constitutional limits, “government is converted into an usurpation.”

THE BANK SCHEME

Having established his constitutional standards, Taylor put Hamilton’s system to the test. He didn’t need to look far for evidence. The national bank scheme revealed everything – a system designed to benefit a powerful few at everyone else’s expense.

Established in 1791, the bank’s funding mechanism exposed its true purpose. Instead of requiring actual money deposits, the law allowed stockholders to purchase three-fourths of their bank stock using government securities that carried six percent interest. Those who had bought up government debt at pennies on the dollar during the 1780s could now exchange it at full face value for bank stock.

Taylor called it what it was – a wealth transfer scheme disguised as economic policy under the law. The result: wealth flowed upward, legally.

“A portion of the rich class of citizens, are the proprietors of the device, whilst labour supports it. An annuity to a great amount, is suddenly conjured up by law, which is received exclusively by the rich, that is the aristocracy. Will it not make them richer?”

But the corruption went deeper than just enriching speculators.

The bank created conflicts of interest that struck at the heart of constitutional government. When members of Congress became stockholders or bank directors, they developed self-dealing interests that operated on the legislature. The bank corrupted Congress itself.

“If a number of the members of Congress are stock-holders, or bank directors, then an illegitimate interest is operating on the national legislature – then the bank hath seduced away from their natural and constitutional allegiance, the representatives of the state.”

The corruption didn’t stop with domestic conflicts of interest. The bank opened the door to foreign influence. When foreigners bought bank stock, they gained direct influence over American government. Taylor saw the danger immediately – foreign enemies buying what they couldn’t conquer.

“And then, even foreigners – our late most malignant and inveterate enemy – have obtained an influence on our national councils, so far as they have obtained bank stock. The English who could not conquer us, may buy us.”

THE PAPER MONEY DECEPTION

Taylor wasn’t fooled by fancy language about banking. He knew that Hamilton was building a system to manufacture money out of thin air.

Here’s how it worked: The national bank issued paper notes which were the only notes the federal government accepted for tax payments. When people paid taxes with these notes, the money flowed right back to the bank itself. It was a closed loop that gave the new banking institution enormous power over the nation’s monetary system, and created the closest thing to a de-facto national paper currency.

Hamilton didn’t hide what he was doing. In theory, all those notes were redeemable in specie. But Hamilton openly acknowledged the bank would issue more paper than it held in gold and silver, basically an early system of fractional reserve banking. He justified this by pointing to other banks that had done the same.

“It is a well established fact, that Banks in good credit can circulate a far greater sum than the actual quantum of their capital in Gold & Silver.”

The numbers prove the point. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the First Bank maintained a loan-to-specie ratio of about 5:1 throughout its twenty-year existence. For every dollar of real money the bank held, it created five dollars in paper

John Taylor saw this fraud coming from a mile away. He’d lived through the Continental currency disaster during the Revolution. Ever wonder where the phrase “not worth a continental” comes from? That’s right – massive inflation caused by paper money printing during the War for Independence.

Taylor had watched that economic catastrophe unfold, and now Hamilton was setting up the same disastrous system.

“The nation, but just emerged from the unforeseen misfortunes of paper money, are suddenly overwhelmed by the ruin of a paper policy.”

The economic damage from the Revolution’s paper money, Taylor argued, rivaled the carnage of the battlefield.

“The calamities of the last war, resulting from the banishment of specie by a paper medium, were probably equivalent to those produced by the sword. The banking contrivances are rapidly reducing us again, to the same ruinous and miserable situation.”

But this wasn’t just bad policy – Taylor also held that it was blatantly unconstitutional.

“In not giving the power of establishing a paper currency to the one, and in taking it expresly from the other, the constitution designed to secure the society against the frauds and vices of paper tricks. That circulating paper medium of every kind was intended to be inhibited, is obvious from the distinction, between such a medium, and making any thing a tender.”

Taylor took the position that the Constitution slammed the door on paper money schemes. Hamilton just kicked it down.

THE DEBT AS A TOOL OF CONTROL

Taylor’s next target was the debt itself. He called out the dangerous philosophy driving Hamilton’s economic system.

“A minister intoxicated with influence, will exclaim, ‘Public debt is a public blessing,’ for taxes are an incitement to industry.”

That wasn’t just Taylor’s hypothetical. Years earlier, Hamilton had famously written exactly that to Robert Morris.

“A national debt if it is not excessive will be to us a national blessing; it will be powerfull cement of our union. It will also create a necessity for keeping up taxation to a degree which without being oppressive, will be a spur to industry.”

Hamilton’s program was built to keep the United States in debt – permanently. Taylor challenged the constitutional basis for this entire scheme.

“Where does the constitution contemplate an influential character in the person of a Secretary of the Treasury, entitling him to prescribe to Congress political dogmas? Or whence arises the right of the federal government, to apply stimulants to industry?”

Thomas Jefferson saw exactly what Hamilton was doing as well. In a letter to President Washington, he called out Hamilton’s addiction to debt as a tool of power and control.

“This exactly marks the difference between Colo. Hamilton’s views and mine, that I would wish the debt paid tomorrow; he wishes it never to be paid, but always to be a thing wherewith to corrupt and manage the legislature.”

Taylor also understood the mechanics of how this debt-based control actually worked.

“It was and is the fashion of thinking, that a public debt unequally held, gives permanency and weight to government. That is, to use plain terms, it will enable government to controul the will of the people, by counterbalancing it with the weight of wealth.”

At this point, pretty much everyone knew Hamilton had wanted to eliminate the states and create a single, national government. His plan for federal assumption of state war debts was seen by Taylor as a tool designed to centralize power by destroying state independence.

“To dissolve all money relationship, between individuals, and the separate states, would on the one hand diminish the state power, and tend to consolidation, and on the other create an undue influence, by which the consolidated power might be managed.”

He could see exactly where this would lead. One state debts were assumed, federal taxation would follow.

“A recurrence to direct taxation by Congress, will swallow up the little sovereignty, now left to the once sovereign individual States; and every accumulation of the debts of the union, is an impulse towards that end.”

Taylor saw the bank as the key mechanism to implement Hamilton’s scheme, and explained it as a 3-step strategy.

“The funding system was intended to effect, what the bank was contrived to accelerate. 

Accumulation of great wealth in a few hands. 

A political moneyed engine 

A suppression of the republican state assemblies, by depriving them of the political importance, resulting from the imposition and dispensation of taxes.”

This wasn’t accidental policy drift – it was a coordinated assault on the Constitution.

THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION

Taylor saw Hamilton’s program for what it really was – a full-blown revolution against the Constitution and the people. It aimed to “radically to destroy the constitution, and to erect upon its ruins an usurpation, not sanctioned by the national will, or acknowledging the fundamental principle; that the people are the only legitimate fountain of civil government.”

How did Hamilton’s supporters justify this constitutional coup? They fell back on “constructive” powers – the idea that the Constitution secretly implied powers it never actually delegated.

These defenders of the bank, Taylor noted, were “reduced to the narrow ground of asserting, that a power is tacitly implied, conflicting and subverting the most fundamental principles, earnestly and loudly expressed.”

Think about that for a moment. They were claiming the Constitution contained hidden meanings that directly contradicted its explicit text.

Taylor had a name for the people pushing these phantom powers. They weren’t just wrong – they were criminals: “Constructive powers, are like constructive treasons.”

Legalized treason.

SOLUTIONS

Taylor didn’t just tear down Hamilton’s system and walk away. He understood that the Constitution required active defense by the people and the states themselves.

“Therefore if liberty is a national object, the nation itself must watch over the constitution, preserve it from violation, and supply its defects, or admit it to be the Lethe of the community, producing an intire forgetfulness of the rights of man.”

His solution came in three parts.

First – and this should be obvious – stop electing corrupt representatives to the House.

Second, the states needed to maintain control over the Senate. That power, however, was later stolen from us through the Seventeenth Amendment.

Third, and most important, the states themselves had to act as constitutional guardians.

“Through the organs of state legislatures,” he wrote, “the state legislatures have at least as good a right to judge of every infraction of the constitution, as Congress itself.”

Constructive powers. Constructive treasons. Here’s the bottom line: They end when the people and the states say no.

The post John Taylor’s Forgotten Assault on Hamilton’s Economic Scheme appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

For this reason, understanding the Founding-era legal doctrine of incidental authority is necessary for fully understanding the Constitution.

The Constitution as an Enumerated Power Document

Documents conveying enumerated powers were staples of Founding-era law practice. Lawyer-Founders such as Edmund Randolph, Alexander Hamilton, and John Dickinson drafted, construed, and litigated land stewardship agreements, factor agreements, deeds of trust, wills, powers of attorney, and other instruments of the kind.

Founders who had been in government service—that is, almost all of them—were familiar with public sector documents conveying enumerated powers: royal charters, statutes empowering agents, and instruments commissioning military officers and public officials.

The Constitution was influenced by those documents in many ways. For example, the legend “We the People” appeared in a type and position reminiscent of the king’s name in a royal charter. The mandate that the President “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” echoed a common phrase in commissions and instructions given to colonial governors. The drafting pattern followed in Articles I, II, and III is similar to one of two dominant patterns followed by other enumerated power documents.

Some participants in the constitutional debates of 1787-1790 were explicit about the connections. For example, at the North Carolina ratifying convention, James Iredell (a future Supreme Court justice) referred to the Constitution as a “great power of attorney,” and, based on that characterization, drew lessons about the limited scope of the Constitution’s enumerated powers.

Similarly, Noah Webster, writing as “Giles Hickory in a March 1, 1788 public letter, used the same “power of attorney” characterization to draw appropriate lessons. The notes of William Cushing, a prominent delegate to the Massachusetts ratifying convention reveal him as thinking along the same lines. Professors Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman explored these connections in their 2017 book, A Great Power of Attorney: Understanding the Fiduciary Constitution.

The Doctrine of Incidental Authority

Founding-era lawyers construed most documents by seeking what they called the “intent of the makers.” Thus, the makers’ intent defined the scope of an enumerated power. When direct evidence of intent was unavailable or conflicting, the doctrine of incidental authority provided a way to infer it.

The doctrine of incidental authority held that if an instrument conveying enumerated powers did not mention a power explicitly, it still could be included in the conveyance if it was “incidental” to an express (“principal”) power.

Two rules helped determine if a power was incidental to a principal, and therefore within the presumed intent of the makers. The first rule was (to employ the terminology from Giles Jacob’s legal dictionary), that a principal was always “more worthy” (more valuable or significant) than an incident. A tail might be incidental to a dog, but a dog was never incidental to a tail. Nor, in the typical case, was a dog incidental to another dog.

To illustrate: In England, it was common for landowners to hire estate managers called stewards. A document granting management authority to a steward enumerated the steward’s powers. Unless otherwise specified, the power to manage included incidental authority to grant short-term leases over portions of the land. But authority to sell the entire fee was never incidental. To be granted, authority to sell had to be explicit. It was simply too important to be assumed.

In McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)—Chief Justice John Marshall’s pioneering decision on the Constitution’s Necessary and Proper Clause—Marshall referred to the distinction between principal and incidental powers as one between “great powers” and “minor ingredients.” But he added that, “It can never be pretended that these vast powers draw after them others of inferior importance, merely because they are inferior.” This was because for a power to be incidental—and therefore within the presumed “intent of the makers”—one of two other conditions had to be satisfied:

• the putative incident had to be a customary way of carrying out a principal, or
• the putative incident had to be a reasonably necessary for exercise of the principal. Eighteenth century writers sometimes expressed this by saying that a power could not be incidental unless its absence caused “great prejudice” to the exercise of the principal. Mere convenience in the modern sense of the word (the definition was stricter when Marshall used it in McCulloch) was not sufficient.

Thus, a land steward had implied authority to lease, because leasing was a customary way of carrying out land management. If the owner gave the steward explicit authority to sell a mine or timber on a landlocked portion of the estate, then the steward had incidental authority to sell an easement of access, for access was necessary to the use.

Recall, however, that these were mere rules for deducing the intent of the makers; the makers were free to change them. But for the sake of prudence, they had better put it in writing!

If the drafters did not wish the default rule to apply—if they wanted to return to the earlier time when delegated authority was strictly construed (Potestas stricte interpretatur)—they inserted a rule of construction to that effect. Thus, to countermand the doctrine of incidental authority the Articles of Confederation specified that the states retained every power not “expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”

If the drafters wished to stick to the default rule, no insertion was necessary. But from an abundance of caution, many drafters added at the end of an enumeration a catch-all phrase granting authority “necessary” or “needful” for carrying out the previously listed grants. In such clauses, “necessary” and “needful” were terms of art meaning “incidental.” Such a clause was merely a recital—a guideline for interpretation—and not an additional grant.

The Constitution’s framers relied on the default rule except in one case. Partly to drive home the fact that the scope of the new Federal Congress would be broader than that of the Confederation Congress, they added Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 at the end of the principal list of Congress’s powers: “The Congress shall have Power . . . To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

We should distinguish incidental powers provisions like this “Necessary and Proper Clause” from provisions that, while superficially similar, actually did convey powers. There were a number of different kinds, and several appear in the Constitution. For example, the Enclave Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 17) grants Congress power to acquire four named kinds of installations and then follows with the additional power to acquire “other needful Buildings.” Some provisions granted the recipient very wide discretion—the two in the Constitution are Article II, Section 3 and Article V—while others granted authority but very little discretion (as in Article I, Section 10, Clause 2).

The historical records show that leading Founders were aware of the doctrine of incidental authority. That awareness was displayed in how the Constitution’s advocates explained the Necessary and Proper Clause. It also appeared in the debate in the First Federal Congress over removal of executive officers and the debate over the constitutionality of a national bank. And as suggested earlier, the unexpurgated opinions of Chief Justice Marshall (as opposed to the versions in some law school text books) show that he was conversant with the doctrine as well.

However, the doctrine has been less understood during the modern era. One result has been an over-estimate of congressional power. Another had been confusion about the President’s authority as outlined in Article II.

Modern Confusion

The Founders’ understanding of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause is that it granted Congress authority to govern mercantile trade and a few related activities. During the New Deal era, however, the Supreme Court decided four cases that expanded greatly the congressional commerce power. Three of the four implicitly relied on the Necessary and Proper Clause rather than the core Commerce Clause for their conclusions. (The one that did not was United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters (1944).)

The decision in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. (1937), while not mentioning the Necessary and Proper Clause, used an “appropriate legislation” standard derived remotely from McCulloch. It extended Congress’s commerce power to regulating labor relations in a large interstate manufacturing company. United States v. Darby (1941) also failed to mention the Necessary and Proper Clause by name, but explicitly relied on McCulloch to extend the Jones & Laughlin holding to a much smaller manufacturing company. Wickard v. Filburn (1942)—while resting more explicitly on the Necessary and Proper Clause—expanded congressional power to agriculture.

The results of these cases contradict explicit representations about federal power made by the Constitution’s advocates during the ratification debates. But another flaw in the decisions is that regulation of manufacturing and agriculture, while interdependent with goverance of mercantile trade, is far too significant to be a mere incident to mercantile regulation. All three decisions thereby overlooked the first prerequisite of incidental authority: The incident must be less “worthy” than the principal. In later years, the court has continued to compound the error by ratifying congressional reach into other activities. (See here and here.)

While the doctrine of incidental authority has been unduly expanded in discussions of Article I, has been forgotten in some discussions of Article II. One might assume from a cursory reading that Article II grants the President much less power over foreign affairs than he exercises. Disregard of the incidental authority doctrine has induced some to claim (I believe erroneously) that Congress is co-equal with the President in foreign affairs and has led others to conclude (I believe also erroneously) that presidential power derives from the so-called Executive Vesting Clause—that is, the clause that identifies the President as the holder of the executive power.

But when one takes the doctrine of incidental authority into account, the scope of the President’s supervision of foreign affairs becomes much clearer. For example, during the Founding era, the power to commission officers (Article II, Section 3)—including foreign service officers—carried with it the power to instruct them. An incident of the power to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” is authority over executive branch officials. The power to “receive Ambassadors” always included the right to refuse to receive them. And so forth.

Conclusion

Familiarity with eighteenth-century Anglo-American law facilitates understanding of the Constitution. The doctrine of incidental authority offers one example. However, subsequent history also demonstrates that ignorance of Founding-era law can lead to serious misinterpretation. The doctrine of incidental authority provides an example of that, too.

A version of this essay first appeared in the Civitas Outlook website of the University of Texas on July 8, 2025.

The post Incidental Powers in the Constitution appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Twelve colonies voted in favor. None opposed. New York abstained because its delegates had not yet received new instructions.

The political connection to Britain was over. The deed was done.

The resolution came from Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. He stood before the Second Continental Congress with direct instructions from his state: declare independence, pursue foreign alliances, and propose a plan of confederation.

That wasn’t political theater. That was constitutional authority, exercised in plain view.

John Adams seconded the motion on the spot. And as soon as it passed, he wrote home to Abigail:

“Yesterday the greatest Question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men.”

He wasn’t talking about July 4th. He was talking about the vote – July 2nd.

THE FUSE WAS ALREADY LIT

Lee wasn’t leading a rebellion. He was carrying out orders. By the time he introduced his resolution on June 7, independence was already underway.

North Carolina moved first. On April 12, 1776, its Fourth Provincial Congress adopted the Halifax Resolves – the first official act by any colony to authorize a vote for independence. Their delegates weren’t told to negotiate. They were told to vote yes.

Just days later, John Penn wrote from Halifax to John Adams:

“We are endeavouring to form a Constitution as it is thought necessary to exert all the powers of Government, you may expect it will be a popular one.”

Then came Congress. On May 10, it passed a resolution drafted by John Adams and backed by Lee. It told colonies where royal government had collapsed to set up new governments under their own authority – a de facto declaration of independence in all but name.

Adams called it “the most important Resolution, that ever was taken in America.”

Congress adopted a formal preamble to the May 10 resolution, and Adams was the driving pen behind it. The message wasn’t subtle: British authority was finished, and power now flowed from the people.

“The exercise of every kind of authority under the said crown should be totally suppressed, and all the powers of government exerted, under the authority of the people of the colonies, for the preservation of internal peace, virtue, and good order, as well as for the defence of their lives, liberties, and properties, against the hostile invasions and cruel depredations of their enemies.”

Virginia didn’t wait. On May 15, its revolutionary convention told its delegates to move for independence, back foreign alliances, and help organize a confederation.

That same resolution also called for the creation of a Declaration of Rights and a new constitution for Virginia – “such a plan of government as will be most likely to maintain peace and order in this colony, and secure substantial and equal liberty to the people.”

No slogans. No spectacle. Just orders – issued and implemented.

They marked the moment by pulling down the British flag in Williamsburg and raising the Continental banner. Troops fired artillery salutes.

Lee described it in a letter to Adams: “The British flag on the Capitol was immediately Struck and the Continental hoisted in its room. The troops were drawn out and we had a discharge of Artillery and small arms.”

Independence wasn’t theory. It was policy.

THE LEE RESOLUTION

On June 7, with orders in hand from Virginia, Richard Henry Lee stood and introduced the motion:

“Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States…”

This wasn’t symbolism. It was secession. And it was spelled out in black and white.

“That they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

But they didn’t stop with secession. They planned for survival. That meant securing allies and building a union strong enough to stand.

“That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.”

“That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.”

John Adams seconded it on the spot. But Congress, hoping for broader support, held off the vote until the next morning.

NOT IF, BUT WHEN

The vote didn’t come immediately. But it wasn’t hesitation. It was strategy.

South Carolina’s Edward Rutledge described it clearly in a letter to John Jay:

“They saw no Wisdom in a Declaration of Independence… giving our Enemy Notice of our Intentions before we had taken any Steps, to execute them.”

Jefferson backed that up. Those holding back the vote, he wrote, “were friends to the measures themselves… yet they were against adopting them at this time.”

So Congress pressed pause – but didn’t sit still.

On June 11, they formed a committee to prepare a Declaration in case the vote passed: Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston.

The next day, they formed two more. One to draft foreign treaties. Another to begin the Articles of Confederation.

They delayed the vote, not the outcome. The work of an independent union was already underway.

THE DAY IT HAPPENED

Congress took it up again on July 1. Nine colonies backed Lee. Pennsylvania and South Carolina still said no. Delaware was deadlocked. New York stayed on the sidelines.

They held off. But not for long.

On July 2, the deadlock broke.

Caesar Rodney rode overnight to cast Delaware’s deciding vote. Pennsylvania shifted. South Carolina flipped. One man, eighty miles, and the future of independence turned on his arrival.

By day’s end, twelve colonies voted for secession. None against. New York abstained – not from disagreement, but because their delegates still lacked new instructions authorizing a yes vote.

Jefferson later recalled that South Carolina flipped, a third delegate arrived from Delaware, and Pennsylvania’s lineup changed, “so that the whole 12 colonies, who were authorized to vote at all, gave their voices for it.”

That was it. The colonies were now free and independent states.

John Adams understood the weight of what had just happened. The very next day, he predicted how future generations would remember it:

“The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival.”

And what he predicted next? It’s exactly what we’ve done for nearly 250 years.

“It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more”

He may have been two days off in the prediction. But he saw the moment for what it was – a moment that changed everything, forever.

THE VOTE THAT MADE IT REAL

The Lee Resolution wasn’t a message. It was a move. The colonies didn’t issue demands or stage a protest. They took action. They voted to secede.

No speeches changed the outcome. No pamphlet sealed the deal. What made the colonies independent was a recorded vote, taken in Congress, under the authority of the people.

They authorized a confederation. They called for foreign alliances. They didn’t wait for permission. They didn’t ask the king to let them go.

They just left.

That’s what made it real. July 2nd, 1776.

The day they broke away – and never looked back.

The post Totally Dissolved: The Forgotten Vote for Independence appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Thomas Jefferson nailed it. And here’s the deal – mass, widespread ignorance about our Constitution is no accident. It’s by design.

Why? Because educated people are harder to dominate and control. They ask inconvenient questions. They know the difference between a servant and a master.

And when government violates the rules given to it? An educated and free people slap it right back to where it belongs.

Fast.

Let’s examine five constitutional truths that government-run schools almost never teach – because if they did, we wouldn’t be living under the largest government in history.

TRUTH #1: WHY WE EVEN HAVE A WRITTEN CONSTITUTION

Written constitutions were birthed in the American Revolution, where the old revolutionaries toiled under the arbitrary power of the unwritten British constitution.

St. George Tucker, one of America’s first constitutional scholars, explained it perfectly.

“The American revolution seems to have given birth to this new political phenomenon: in every state a written constitution was framed, and adopted by the people, both in their individual and sovereign capacity, and character.”

Edmund Randolph, our first Attorney General, understood – if government doesn’t have clear rules, government will just make things up as it goes.

“Governments, having no written Constitution, may perhaps claim a latitude of power, not always easy to be determined.”

The old revolutionaries learned it firsthand, and Tucker drove the point home – without written limits on power, eventually you end up with no limits at all.

“The advantages of a written constitution, considered as the original contract of society must immediately strike every reflecting mind; power, when undefined, soon becomes unlimited.”

Through a written constitution, Tucker explained, the framers also made sure everyone understood who works for whom.

“By this means, the just distinction between the sovereignty, and the government, was rendered familiar to every intelligent mind; the former was found to reside in the people, and to be unalienable from them; the latter in their servants and agents.”

Think about it this way: If you rent out a room in your house, you write down the rules for tenants, such as no smoking, no parties after 10pm, no pets, and the like. Why? Because if you don’t put it in writing, your tenant will decide for himself what’s acceptable.

Giving that kind of discretion to government isn’t just a bad idea. It’s dangerous.

TRUTH #2: VOID

Tucker also explained what might be the most important reason for having a written constitution:

“A written constitution has moreover the peculiar advantage of serving as a beacon to apprise the people when their rights and liberties are invaded, or in danger.”

When those rules are broken? Their actions are illegal. Or as the founders put it – VOID. Like James Otis Jr. declared at the start of the American Revolution, “An Act against the constitution is void.”

But here’s the real danger.

Thomas Jefferson understood that letting them get away with breaking the rules once means they’ll keep doing it – until there are no rules at all.

“To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”

Let that sink in. One violation leads to another, until a constitution exists on paper, but not in practice.

TRUTH #3: PARCHMENT BARRIERS DON’T ENFORCE THEMSELVES

Here’s the thing about written rules – all history proves that people with power will ignore them when they can get away with it. And in the rare case that a person gets in power who never tries to cross that line, that person won’t hold that power forever.

As John Dickinson pointed out, even the best constitution suffers from this truth.

“A good constitution promotes, but not always produces a good administration.”

Even James Madison made clear that words on paper don’t enforce themselves. Never did. Never will.

“Mere declarations in the written constitution, are not sufficient to restrain the several departments within their legal limits.”

For you parents, imagine putting a note on your kid’s door that says “Clean your room every Saturday” and then expecting the note to enforce itself.

That’s what we’re doing with the Constitution.

And the results couldn’t be worse.

TRUTH #4: THE PEOPLE ARE THE ULTIMATE AUTHORITY

Documents can’t enforce themselves. But as Thomas Jefferson explained, you sure can’t trust government to limit its own power either.

“The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.”

James Wilson explained the real chain of command.

“As our constitutions are superior to our legislatures; so the people are superior to our constitutions.”

John Jay gave us the bottom line – government is just a mere agent of the people. The Constitution? It’s their employee handbook.

“The Constitution only serves to point out that part of the people’s business, which they think proper by it to refer to the management of the persons therein designated.”

Put simply – the Constitution is a set of rules for those agents that the people and the states have hired to conduct the business they decided they wanted to be conducted.

Think of how stupid it would be to hire a babysitter for your kids, give them a list of rules, and when they break every single one ask the babysitter to decide if they did anything wrong.

TRUTH #5: THE REAL ENFORCEMENT MECHANISM

That’s why, as John Dickinson explained (in ALL CAPS) – it’s ultimately up to the people themselves to protect and defend their own Constitution, whether the government likes it, or not.

“IT IS THEIR DUTY TO WATCH, AND THEIR RIGHT TO TAKE CARE, THAT THE CONSTITUTION BE PRESERVED; Or in the Roman phrase on perilous occasions – TO PROVIDE, THAT THE REPUBLIC RECEIVE NO DAMAGE.”

Luther Martin tied it all back to the Revolution.

“By the principles of the American revolution, arbitrary power may and ought to be resisted.”

At the height of that revolution, a young, fiery Alexander Hamilton put it in terms any tyrant could understand.

“All we aim at, is to convince your high and mighty masters, the ministry, that we are not such asses as to let them ride us as they please.” 

He understood the price, and the goal.

“We are determined to shew them, that we know the value of freedom; nor shall their rapacity extort, that inestimable jewel from us, without a manly and virtuous struggle.”

Thomas Jefferson came in with the knockout punch. He explained the difference between free people and subjects.

“A free people claim their rights, as derived from the law of nature, and not as a gift of their chief magistrate.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

So here’s our choice: A real “land of the free” or a population on its knees begging for permission from the largest government in history.

These five truths reveal why constitutional education has been intentionally and systematically neglected.

An informed people who understand these principles would never tolerate the massive expansion of government power we’ve witnessed. They’d know that unconstitutional acts are void, that they – not government – are the ultimate authority, and that it’s their duty to enforce constitutional limits.

The founders gave us a written Constitution precisely so we’d know when government overstepped its bounds. They understood that power without limits is tyranny. Most importantly, they knew that only an educated, vigilant people could preserve freedom.

The question is: Will we be that people?

The post Five Constitutional Truths They Don’t Want You to Know appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

In 2025 alone, the U.S. has launched airstrikes in Yemen (Operation Rough Rider), bombed Houthi-controlled ports and radar installations (killing scores of civilians), deployed greater numbers of troops and multiple aircraft carriers to the Middle East, and edged closer to direct war with Iran in support of Israel’s escalating conflict.

Each of these “new” fronts has been sold to the public as national defense. In truth, they are the latest outposts in a decades-long campaign of empire maintenance—one that lines the pockets of defense contractors while schools crumble, bridges collapse, and veterans sleep on the streets at home.

This isn’t about national defense. This is empire maintenance.

It’s about preserving a military-industrial complex that profits from endless war, global policing, and foreign occupations—while the nation’s infrastructure rots and its people are neglected.

The United States has spent much of the past half-century policing the globe, occupying other countries, and waging endless wars.

What most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with propping up a military-industrial complex that has its sights set on world domination.

War has become a huge money-making venture, and the U.S. government, with its vast military empire, is one of its best buyers and sellers.

America’s role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict has already cost taxpayers more than $112 billion.

And now, the price of empire is rising again.

Clearly, it’s time for the U.S. government to stop policing the globe.

The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world.

American troops are stationed in Somalia, Iraq and Syria. In Germany, South Korea and Japan. In Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. In Niger, Chad and Mali. In Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.

Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”

Incredibly, America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.

America’s military empire spans nearly 800 bases in 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.”

This is how a military empire occupies the globe.

For 20 years, the U.S. war machine propped up Afghanistan to the tune of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost. When troops left Afghanistan, the military-industrial complex simply shifted theaters—turning Yemen, Iran, and the Red Sea into new frontlines.

Each new conflict is marketed as national defense. In reality, it’s business as usual for the Pentagon’s global footprint, with American soldiers used as pawns in the government’s endless quest to control global markets, prop up foreign regimes, and secure oil, data, and strategic ports—all while being told it’s for liberty.

This is how the military-industrial complex, aided and abetted by the likes of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and others, continues to get rich at taxpayer expense.

Yet while the rationale may keep changing for why American military forces are policing the globe, these wars abroad aren’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, are certainly not making America great again, and are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.

War spending is bankrupting America.

Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.

In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.

The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.

Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $10 trillion waging its endless wars, much of it borrowed, much of it wasted, all of it paid for in blood and taxpayer dollars.

Add Yemen and the Middle East escalations of 2025, and the final bill for future wars and military exercises waged around the globe will total in the tens of trillions.

Co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.

In fact, the U.S. government spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earns in a year.

Talk about fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford.

Even if we ended the government’s military meddling today and brought all of the troops home, it would take decades to pay down the price of these wars and get the government’s creditors off our backs.

As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors. Indeed, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”

Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.

A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:

$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.

The fact that such price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government.

Mind you, this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.

Americans have thus far allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a steady diet of pro-war propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone.

The bombing of Yemen’s Ras Isa port by U.S. forces—killing more than 80 civilians—is just the latest example of war crimes justified as national interest.

That needs to change.

The U.S. government is not making the world any safer. It’s making the world more dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. military drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 human beings. Every one of those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.

With the 2025 escalation, those numbers will only rise.

The U.S. government is not making America any safer. It’s exposing American citizens to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences of the U.S. government’s international activities. Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s use of its military to gain power over the global economy would result in devastating blowback.

The 9/11 attacks were blowback. The Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. The attempted Times Square bomber was blowback. The Fort Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback.

The U.S. military’s ongoing drone strikes will, I fear, spur yet more blowback against the American people.

The war hawks’ militarization of America—bringing home the spoils of war (the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.) and handing them over to local police, thereby turning America into a battlefield—is also blowback.

James Madison was right: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” As Madison explained, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

We are seeing this play out before our eyes.

The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.

The nation’s infrastructure is in shambles. Public schools are underfunded. Mental health care is collapsing. Basic needs like housing, transportation, and clean water go unmet. Meanwhile, government contractors drop bombs on third-world villages and call it strategy.

This isn’t just bad budgeting. It’s moral bankruptcy. A country that can’t care for its own people has no business policing the rest of the world.

Bridges collapse, water systems fail, students drown in debt, and veterans sleep on the streets—while the Pentagon builds runways in the desert and funds proxy wars no one can explain.

Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of overhauling.

We are funding our own collapse. The roads rot while military convoys roll. The power grid fails while the drones fly. Our national strength is being siphoned off to feed a war machine that produces nothing but death, debt, and dysfunction.

We don’t need another war. We need a resurrection of the republic.

It’s time to stop policing the world. Bring the troops home. Shut down the military bases. End the covert wars. Slash the Pentagon’s budget. The path to peace begins with a full retreat from empire.

At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:

The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.

This is the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us not to let endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that emerged following the war—one that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.

We failed to heed his warning.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, war is the enemy of freedom.

As long as America’s politicians continue to involve us in wars that bankrupt the nation, jeopardize our servicemen and women, increase the chances of terrorism and blowback domestically, and push the nation that much closer to eventual collapse, “we the people” will find ourselves in a perpetual state of tyranny.

In the end, it’s not just the empire that falls. It’s the republic it hollowed out along the way.

This article was originally published at The Rutherford Institute.

The post The Real National Emergency appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

When the news hit, many people, including many lawyers, were unaware that the Court of International Trade even existed. A one-time Justice Department lawyer, now a leading radio talk show host, admitted he’d never heard of the tribunal and then mistakenly suggested it was merely an administrative agency rather than a court created under Article III of the Constitution. But it is a real Article III court. Congress established it in 1980 as the successor to the U.S. Customs Court.

Its decision in the V.O.S Selections case is worth attention.

The Case

The President issued a series of executive orders levying and modifying ad valorem tariffs on foreign imports. His statutory authority was the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

Section 1702 of the IEEPA purports to delegate wide authority to the President. The language granting that authority is exceptionally convoluted. A stripped-down version is that the President may

“. . .  regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit . . . transfer . . . transportation, importation of, or dealing in . . . any property in which any foreign country or national thereof has any interest by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States . . .”

The significant phrase for our purposes is “regulate . . . importation.” Section 1701(b) provides that the President may use his authority

“only . . . to deal with an usual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared . . . and may not be exercised for any other purpose.”

As the court noted, the original statute permitted Congress to void a President’s proclamation of emergency by a simple resolution passed by both houses. Because a Supreme Court decision invalidated that procedure, however, Congress now may override such a presidential emergency proclamation only by passing a measure subject to presidential veto.

The Court of International Trade interpreted the statute somewhat narrowly to avoid a holding that it unconstitutionally delegated legislative power to the President. It ruled that one collection of tariffs violated the IEEPA because the tariffs in that category were unlimited rather than tied to any statutory criterion. Another group of tariffs were held to be void because they did not “deal with” the purported subject of the emergency declaration.

The Constitution

The legal theory underlying the U.S. Constitution is that it is an enumerated power document. Through the Constitution, the American people grant listed powers to specified persons and entities. Most of the grantees are federal officials and departments. The rest are state officials, state legislatures, conventions, and other assemblies outside the federal government—including, for example, the Electoral College. All of these officers and entities are agents of the American people or subsets of the American people.

The Constitution provides that “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States . . .” It does not grant legislative authority to the President or to anyone else.

The Constitution was drafted and adopted in the context of Founding-era law. Under that law (as under modern law) an agent could not further delegate his powers without the consent of the principal. The prevailing legal maxim was Delegata potestas non potest delegari: Delegated power cannot be delegated.

Thus, the Constitution prohibits the delegation of congressional powers to the executive. That said, it is also true that the delegation of a particular function is proper if the principal has consented to it. Whether the people have consented to congressional delegation of a function (rendering it, therefore, executive or administrative rather than legislative) depends on the wording of the Constitution, construed in light of surrounding history.

For example, the Constitution grants Congress power to “establish Post Offices and post Roads.” The concept of “establishing” a postal system was codified in a British parliamentary statute adopted in 1711. The precise phrase used in the Constitution was copied from a parliamentary statute adopted in 1767. Prior to Independence, the American postal network operated under the 1711 law, and the Continental and Confederation Congresses took over that network virtually unchanged. The history tells us whether, for example, setting postal rates is part of “establishing” (which can only be done by Congress) or merely an administrative function that can be delegated.

Modern Delegation Controversy

The Supreme Court recognizes the non-delegation principle, but has construed it very narrowly when considering delegations to the executive. In practice, the Court sustains a delegation if the delegating statute restrains executive discretion in any small way—as by specifying an “intelligible principle” for exercise of discretion.

The Supreme Court’s lax standards have provoked controversy, including controversy among the justices themselves. However, nearly all of the discussion has addressed the propriety or non-propriety of delegation in general. Very little has focused on the scope of delegation permitted by specific enumerated powers.

In reviewing economic regulations, the Supreme Court also pursues a “principle of avoidance”—if there is a reasonable way of construing a law that renders the law constitutional rather than unconstitutional, then the court will construe the law in the way that preserves it. Thus, in V.O.S. Selections, the Court of International Trade interpreted the IEEPA in a way that it said preserved its constitutionality.

I’m not sure the Court of International Trade succeeded.

Is the IEEPA Unconstitutional?

Among the Constitution’s “legislative Powers herein granted” to Congress is the power “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.”  Also granted is authority to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” The Constitution does not assign the executive any role over those subjects other than to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

In the Founders’ understanding, the term “duties” encompassed (but were not limited to) tariffs on imports. “Imposts” meant specifically tariffs on imports. Tariffs were of two kinds:

• Those designed principally to raise revenue. These were exercises of the taxation power.
• Those designed principally to restrict trade, and therefore usually set too high to generate significant revenue. These were regulations of commerce.

In V.O.S. Selections, the court treated the Trump tariffs as an effort to “regulate . . . importation”—that is, as regulations of foreign commerce. Given the purpose of the tariffs, this classification seems constitutionally accurate. However, the wording of the statute directly contradicts the Constitution: The statute gives the President power to “regulate importation” while the Constitution grants only Congress authority to “regulate Commerce.” Moreover, under current law, there is no way for Congress to countermand the President’s decision other than passing a new measure, which is subject to the veto of the President.

One might defend the IEEPA by showing that the Founders considered the delegation of vast swaths of power to administrative agencies as within the legitimate scope of “regulating commerce.” In Britain, Parliament did just that: It conceded wide discretion to an executive branch agency, the Board of Trade. But in this instance, the British precedent is not helpful because Parliament, unlike Congress, was a sovereign entity. The power it exercised was inherent and not delegated and therefore could be delegated freely to others. Moreover, the British unwritten constitution designated the Crown, not Parliament, as the “arbiter of commerce.” Parliament’s participation in commercial affairs arose out of royal acquiescence.

For instructive examples, we need to turn to early American legislatures, particularly those of the pre-Constitutional period. Although I may have missed something, I know of no early state legislature that considered “regulating commerce” to include turning over untrammeled tariff-setting power to the executive.

Of course, one possible response is that the IEEPA limits presidential control of imports to declared “emergencies.” The flaw in that response is that while the Constitution contains some emergency provisions—such as the Article I Suspension Clause (permitting suspension of habeas corpus) and the Article IV Guarantee Clause (permitting and mandating federal intervention in state affairs under restricted circumstances)—it features no “Executive Emergency Commerce Clause.”

Conclusion

The fundamental problem with the President’s tariff orders is not that he interpreted the IEEPA too expansively. The fundamental problem is that the relevant portions of the IEEPA may be themselves unconstitutional.

That issue may be addressed on appeal. If the IEEPA is ruled unconstitutional, then we will have witnessed a historical irony: opponents of President Trump, who probably favor the administrative state, will have dealt a blow against it.

A version of this essay first appeared on June 13, 2025 in the University of Texas’ Civitas Outlook.

The post Are President Trump’s Tariff Orders Constitutional? appeared first on Tenth Amendment Center.

Benjamin Franklin didn’t offer that as a theory. It was a sentence – and prophetic. He knew exactly what happens when a people trade virtue for vice: liberty dies, and tyranny takes its place. Not by accident. Not by force. 

But by choice.

And he wasn’t alone. The founders – and the political thinkers they studied – understood this brutal truth: no system of government can survive the corruption of its own people. Not a monarchy. Not a republic. Not even one bound by the most carefully written constitution in human history.

Once the rot sets in, the outcome is inevitable. The laws become meaningless. The safeguards fail. The tyrants rise. And the people, soft and submissive, cheer them on.

That’s the path we’re on now. Not because we’ve been conquered. Because we’ve decayed.

This isn’t a warning about what politicians are doing to us. It’s a reckoning for what we’ve allowed to happen in ourselves. The one form of corruption no constitution can ever fix is the corruption of the people.

VIRTUE OR TYRANNY

Franklin made that plain just before the Philadelphia Convention began. He wasn’t focused on structures or amendments. He focused on character – because he knew freedom isn’t granted, it’s earned. And not everyone earns it.