WASHINGTON IS ON A ROLL. The biggest and most intrusive federal government the country has ever seen is now regulating the largest of institutions on Wall Street and the smallest on Main Street. The politicians authorized $700 billion to “save” the economy and the Federal Reserve doubled its balance sheet to two trillion dollars in the name of easy money. Detroit’s automakers are a wholly owned subsidiary of federal bureaucrats and “the U.S. government, directly or indirectly, underwrites nine of every ten new residential mortgages...”1 If that weren’t enough, government-run healthcare is on the way.
The result? Our national debt is now approaching 100 percent of the gross domestic product; taxes and interest are set to rise once again; and the U.S. dollar is threatened with devaluation. Let’s be frank; a nation that rations healthcare and energy; taxes work, savings and enterprise; and bankrupts it citizens and controls their property does not have the moral authority to instruct them on much of anything. But as bad as all this is, just what is to keep the Feds from devouring even more of our liberty? The answer, as we have seen, appears to be: not much.
What would happen, however, if citizens chose not to be governed in such a way? More to the point, what would be the outcome should a state actually desire to peaceably leave the Union? Since the Civil War established central power over the several states, is secession even possible? Would the federal government allow it, or would it declare war on that state? I have come to believe it should not, and that the notion of the United States as a voluntary compact be restored.
Theoretically, there are other solutions to omnipotent government than the threat of secession. The most preferable of which would include some sort of constitutional epiphany that results in Washington reining itself in. That, however, seems unlikely. Two liberal members of the Supreme Court have retired during President Obama’s first term; there seems little doubt the successors will be as equally enamored with federal power. Especially so considering that the other branches of government, those who might rein in the Court, have now taken it upon themselves to address every perceived problem, no matter how small, from sea to shining sea.
To wit: Congress is now debating whether NCAA Division 1 football teams should conclude their season with a playoff or a bowl game.2 Politicians who see themselves fit to govern the Bowl Championship Series are probably the least likely body to protect the populace from the “supposed dangers of judiciary encroachment.”3
In fact, legislators have only sporadically used their constitutional power under Article III, Sections 1 and 2, to remove appellate jurisdiction from the federal courts.4 While conservative members have proposed protecting the Pledge of Allegiance as well as traditional marriage from appellate review, the danger here lies in giving Congress a green light to expand its own power. Besides, the Supreme Court could simply ignore any Congressional language aimed at curbing their power (just as it has done in recent cases involving the detention of unlawful enemy combatants).5
A more credible Congress could legitimately impeach wayward judges as a way to control judicial activism, but that too seems unlikely in an era of judicial supremacy. After his failure to remove Samuel Chase from the bench, Jefferson himself called impeachment a “farce” and “not even a scarecrow.”6 And this was long before the modern legislator’s appetite for abdicating responsibility by deliberately deferring the toughest political disputes to the courts through vaguely worded legislation.
The Americans with Disabilities Act is a perfect example. Businesses, under the law, are now forced to make a “reasonable accommodation,” whatever that is. Some interpretations are so absurd (some golfers get “court imposed” motorized carts on the PGA Tour, and patrons in wheelchairs at strip clubs have demanded accommodations for lap dances) that the Supreme Court took four cases in 2002 to clarify and define just what the statute meant. 7 Congress in effect created a new standing to sue without ever defining it. Given such legislative ambiguity, judges no longer feel the need to be “guided by the laws passed by Congress and the state legislatures,” but by their own policy preferences.8 This hardly squares with the Hamiltonian idea of a judiciary that would be “beyond comparison the weakest of the three department(s) of power.”9
Perhaps all that is needed is a modern-day Andrew Jackson willing to defy the Supreme Court (as well as veto extra-constitutional legislation). The combative seventh president once said of the chief justice of the United States, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”10 In those days, the Court wasn’t looked upon as really establishing the “law of the land, but merely the law of the case.”11 Regardless, executive restraint seems quaint now that presidents of both major parties are more than eager to expand what the federal government may do: former president George W. Bush on education spending, Medicare entitlements, and bailouts;12 President Obama on all of the above, plus a few trillion dollars more.
Other ideas for limiting federal power include judicial elections (which many states employ) instead of federal appointment or the requirement of a unanimous vote on questions of constitutionality. Graglia even suggests “a constitutional amendment simply abolishing judicial review.”13 That however fails to address legislative or executive ambition. The problem after all is not just the courts; it’s the entire federal apparatus.
Some libertarians, on the other hand, seem willing to restrain the political branches, but not the courts (liberals apparently restrain nothing). Law professor Randy Barnett has proposed constitutional amendments to rein in legislative and executive power while maintaining judicial hegemony to uphold “any enumerated or unremunerated right, privilege or immunity” recognized by the Fourteenth Amendment.14 Epstein praises the Court for striking down a state law that had prohibited instruction in a foreign language to any student who had not completed the eighth grade.15 He chides Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes dissent, which said the Constitution simply doesn’t prevent this experiment of encouraging a common language. Though the law certainly appeared heavy-handed as it pertained to private schools, one is still left to wonder the fate of more reasoned requirements in the public sphere (such as English Only laws that a number of states have passed) in the sort of legal paradigm Epstein envisions.
State bureaucracies can no doubt be quite oppressive. But why would any self-respecting skeptic of big government be willing to trade the vagaries of state government for the omnipotence of national rule?16 At the very least, local citizens enjoy a distinct advantage by having political power limited by a much smaller geographic boundary. I suppose it’s somewhat intoxicating to imagine the federal courts as the one great arbiter of freedom. But the courts have proven themselves incapable of protecting some of our most basic liberties. Moreover, they seem quite willing to stand by while a federal Leviathan devours the rest.
Of course, were “enlightened statesmen” to appoint all the justices and run all the departments of government, none should fear for their freedoms.17 That has never been the case, so the only assurance to guard against imperfect rulers is the republican model. In other words, a process that checks runaway majority rule just as it does minority rule.
Freedom is best protected right at home. Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, in his nineteenth century classic Democracy in America, praised the virtue of the New England “township” as the cornerstone of “independence and power.”18 Jefferson’s “ward republics” were best able, de Tocqueville wrote, “to scatter power in order to interest more people in public affairs.”19 As author Charles Murray later said, “legitimate functions of government should be performed at the most local feasible level” as “it is much easier for the average person to move out of Detroit than it is for him to move out of Michigan, and infinitely easier than to move out of the United States.”20
It is in this context that Madison’s vision of a “partly national, partly federal” government is key-a vision that above all did not tell the states which programs to fund and which laws to pass.21 “The proposed government cannot be deemed a national one,” Madison opined, “since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several states a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.”22
In September of 1787, when leaving the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was reportedly asked by a local woman, “What kind of government have you given us, Dr. Franklin?” He answered, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”23 The best way to do so is by recognizing the limits of federal authority and deferring to the legislative or political branches of government in their respective jurisdictions. In fact, there’s a greater case for dividing government along vertical lines than horizontal.24 Only this character of our Constitution enables our republic to gently fall between the deficiencies of a monarchy on the one hand and unfettered democracy on the other.
About the only thing worse than a democratic majority without constitutional checks and balances is a government run by a minority without them. “The only way a republican government can function,” Jefferson declared, “and the only way a people’s voice can be expressed to effect a practicable control of government, is through a process in which decisions are made by the majority. This is not a perfect way of controlling government, but the alternatives-decisions made by a minority, one person-are even worse and are a source of great evil. To be just, majority decisions must be in the best interest of all the people, not just one faction,”25
A republic embraces majority rule, but only after thoughtful deliberation. The Electoral College, for example, provides for protection against large population centers by giving smaller states a substantial weighting in choosing the chief executive. The Senate accomplishes this through the idea of unlimited debate. When Vice-President Joe Biden demeaned the Senate filibuster, suggesting that “no democracy has survived needing a super majority,” he displayed a startling ignorance on the crucial differences between republicanism and democracy, not to mention the long history of the filibuster.26
What the founders envisioned was a collection of states able to unite on a few national goals, but only when there was broad consensus. That is, small states held disproportionate power to veto legislation not in their interest by having the same number of senators as large states.27 They were to remain masters of their own destiny in those areas of governance which lacked the support of a supermajority of citizens.
If that resulted in a minority-albeit a substantial one-holding up the wishes of a slim majority, so be it. National policy was not to be determined by a mere fifty-one percent-state sovereignty required much more. The American experiment has a wonderful bias against legislation by demanding a meeting of the minds before government can act.
State government used to employ the same checks and balances. But as law professor Stephen Presser lamented, “In the 1960s, the federal courts, guided by egalitarianism and emboldened by the triumph of Legal Realism, ordered that all state legislatures had to be redistricted solely on population, even though, for almost two centuries, many states had emulated the federal government’s model and had an upper house of the legislature based on traditional political subdivisions.”28
A republic, once again, is more than just a lack of kings and queens; it is governing philosophy that unites disparate interests by emphasizing local control “extended over a large region.”29 It is neither a monarchy nor a democracy, but as some have put it, a “filtered” majority refined with representation, and constrained by a constitutional separation of powers.30 These constitutional guidelines serve to make our popular consultations much more deliberative and assured, but they do not render them impossible. Those who see the Constitution as only an anti-majoritarian document forget that it too is amended by the majority, albeit a super majority. In fact, all organized societies are, by default, either self-governed or tyrannical. “The choice,” as Justice Jackson once reminded his colleagues, “is between liberty with order or anarchy without either,” and the danger lies in converting “the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact” by forgetting they were crafted to limit central power, not aggrandize it.31
This is not to trust the mob, far from it. A representative republic is best suited to protect the rights of the individual because the federal government is prohibited from unconstitutional interference with the states, as are the states from one another. In other words, people are free to choose the laws under which they live. Only self-government allows for the people to change the law with free and open elections. And if they don’t prefer the law in their state, they may leave. The most potent weapon that empowers self-government, while at the same time protecting the minority, is limited jurisdiction.
However, “If the courts are free to write the Constitution anew,” as Justice Scalia warned, “they will write it the way the majority wants; the appointment and confirmation process will see to that. This, of course, is the end of the Bill of Rights, whose meaning will be committed to the very body it was meant to protect against: the majority.”32
A division of governmental power is far better able to protect the rights of the individual-the greatest minority-than any federal authority could possibly hope to. The states themselves are bound by their own charters, legal precedent, and common law tradition.33 Detractors of reinvigorating the states predictably warn of a return to Jim Crow, but that should be enough to make even a straw man blush.
No one disputes the federal prohibition on racial classifications through a proper reading of equal protection and due process in the Fourteenth Amendment. In other words, the right “to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real personal property and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property.”34 Restated: the same privileges and immunities that are awarded to all fellow citizens. But that remains a far cry from the federal government we have in the twenty-first century.
Most Americans understand that is time to return power to the states and for the federal government to rediscover its boundaries. Unfortunately, there remains enough confusion about the history surrounding the events described in this book to serve as a semblance for even more intrusion by big government. There are, it is true, contradictory statements from the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment. Rep. Bingham for instance, at times suggested that Barron should be overruled and the Bill of Rights enforced upon the states.35
But he also said, “The care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Federal Constitution, is in the states and not in the federal government. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country.”36 These conflicting statements from Bingham or others were rarely countered because most legislators already understood the actual intent of the Amendment before they agreed to support it.37
Besides, “remarks of a particular proponent of the (Fourteenth) Amendment,” as Justice Felix Frankfurter once put it, “no matter how influential, are not to be deemed part of the Amendment. What was submitted for ratification was his proposal, not his speech.”38
Had it not been for the new state governments foisted upon the South under the Reconstruction Act of 1867, it’s difficult to say whether the Fourteenth Amendment would even have been ratified. A number of states were apprehensive, and not just Southern ones; Ohio and New Jersey at one point threatened to withdraw their consent.39 The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery had been ratified by the “old” legislatures in 1865, but it took “new governments...under the direction of Congress” to ratify the Fourteenth.40 Since the Thirteenth was never re-ratified by these approved legislatures, the result was such that one amendment or the other (depending on your preference) was passed by what Congress had considered an “unlawful” body.41
Regardless, it is now firmly embedded in the law. And in spite of everything written here (which means, in the author’s opinion: in spite of the Constitution) we are nonetheless left with a century of Supreme Court jurisprudence that future justices seem unlikely to overturn. The Court has stretched the commerce clause; read all sorts of “penumbras” into the Ninth Amendment; and of course, firmly established its judicial hegemony through a revisionist reading of the “due process” clause. The genuine republican division of power as envisioned by the framers of the Constitution (as well as the authors of the Civil War Amendments) seems lost in a sea of legal ledger main.
We are left with is two competing visions of the republic. The one a federal compact envisioned by the Founding Fathers of a United States, and the other, transformed through war and judicial pretense into a would-be United State. I believe it is time to consider a new amendment to the Constitution: one that reclaims the origins of the republic and the Tenth Amendment by limiting all branches of the federal monolith. So I suggest a Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution with the following proposed language:
Except where expressly stated, nothing in this Constitution or its Amendments shall grant to the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the federal government jurisdiction over the several states.
This prohibition of federal interference extends to but is not limited to all matters in the nature and substance of state legislation, providing such law affords its protection equally to all citizens and whose implementation is consistent with common law procedures of “due process.”
The general welfare clause in the preamble and in Article 1, Section 8, of this Constitution shall not be construed to grant the federal branches of government any extended powers not previously or subsequently and specifically enumerated in this Constitution.
This Amendment also defines commerce among the states as only those economic transactions conducted between two or more states, and not those transactions conducted by parties or entities residing in the same state regardless of their impact upon commerce among the states. Furthermore, regulating commerce among the states may be used only to ensure the free flow of commercial transactions voluntarily established among the several states; it does not include the requirement or the elimination of economic transactions without further Amendments to this Constitution.
It is also hereby established that any state whose inhabitants desire through legal means and in accordance with state law to leave this union of the several states shall not be forcibly refrained from doing so by the federal government of these United States.
Uncomfortable as it may seem to some, this is not a radical idea.42 The states, under Article VII, voluntarily ratified a Constitution of checks and balances in order to preserve their independence. Jefferson’s “wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another” was to “leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement.”43 And notwithstanding Lincoln’s noble wish of the “last best hope of earth,” the American idea was always more than a blind allegiance to the nation-state.44 It was a patriotism and belief of the ideals behind it, including the notion of the voluntary compact.
Limiting monopoly government returns the law to its rightful place. Enlightenment philosopher John Locke put forth the fundamental principle that “the end of law is not to abolish or restrain but to preserve and enlarge freedom; for in all states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence of others...”45 He had also reasoned that no one born in “perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of nature…” would voluntarily give up his or her liberty for anything but self-government.46 Hence, Jefferson’s dictum that governments derive “their just powers from the Consent of the Governed...”47
No one argues for an unwise rush to secede. But there are no assurances that our governing class will ever abide by the limits of the Constitution. There must be an ultimate safety valve. If the voluntary compact were reestablished, merely the threat of secession would curb the appetites of federal power. According to DiLorenzo, had secession been an option before the Civil War, the “same reasons that led the colonists to form a Union in the first place would likely have become more appealing to both sections, and the Union would probably have been reunited.”48
On the other hand, we know what happens to our blood and treasure when peaceful dissolution is forbidden. The British Constitution did not allow the colonies the option breaking free and the Civil War mindset categorized secession as rebellion.49 The result was years of carnage, killing, and anarchy. President John F. Kennedy recalled in 1962 that “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”50
The truth is: there is little hope for a meaningful return to federalism as long as those who shape our political institutions are willing to use the power-military and otherwise-of the federal government as the ultimate deterrent.
Bastiat reminds us that “law is force, and that, consequently, the proper functions of law cannot lawfully extend beyond the proper function of force.”51 The legitimate task of government, therefore, is to prevent the illegitimate use of force (or fraud) by others. The state oversteps its bounds by using its monopoly on force to oppress, and that’s why we limit its powers.52 The paradox restated then “is to prevent people from doing through government that which they would do in the absence of government. The very purpose of constraints on government is the same as the purpose of government.”53
It is here where the wisdom of original American thinking is most evident. By breaking up government, you limit its abuses, reclaim the balance of power, and entrust the people. Lord Acton, it seems, was right.54 Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Is that not what the West proclaimed when Eastern Europe was struggling to break the yoke of Soviet bondage? How many times have we sided with those freedom fighters whose quest was liberation from centralized power? Hasn’t that been America’s message to the world for years? That no government is independent of the people.
Though it now appears unlikely you would find two-thirds of both Houses of Congress in support of relinquishing their own power by voting to amend the Constitution (according to Article V), the same number of state legislatures could. Given the number of states that have taken some action against Obamacare, a call for a constitutional convention is not beyond the realm of possibility. Indeed, just such a petition has passed the Florida senate and if approved by the house, it would represent “the twentieth state with an active call to do so.”55
Of course, any amendment brought forth would still have to be ratified by “legislatures of three-fourths of the several states...”56 But this nation is hopelessly divided on the most vexing issues of the day precisely because we ask the federal government to do too much-often against the will of our neighbors. If the nation were to coalesce around just a few tasks assigned to federal officials, we would heal many of our national wounds by letting people choose the law under which they live in their own state. That is the recipe for domestic tranquility.
In the final analysis, the American experiment is all about the principle of consent. Put another way: associations formed amongst a free people are to be voluntary. Hence, the right of secession is distinctly American. The belief that, should all else fail, the people retain the right to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of Earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them...”57
Bob Davis, Deborah Soloman, and Jon Hilsenrath, “After the Bailouts, Washington’s the Boss,” The Wall Street Journal, 28 December 2009, A1.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4727426.(Accessed February 2010)
Hamilton, “Federalist 81,” The Federalist Papers, 442.
Section III reads in part that “The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Section 2 allows the Supreme Court to have appellate jurisdiction, but “with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.” See United States Constitution, Article III, Section 1 & 2, Philadelphia, 1787.
Hamden v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006). In Hamden, the Court held that military tribunals set up by the Bush administration were unconstitutional despite the clear intent of Congress and the administration in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which stated that “no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear...a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf” of an illegal enemy alien held in Cuba.
Graglia, Constitutional Law, 7.
See Barnes v. Gorman; Chevron v. Echazabal; US Airways v. Barnett; Toyota v. Williams.
Brill, The Court TV Cradle, 413.
Hamilton, “Federalist 78,” The Federalist Papers, 421.
Jon Meacham, American Lion, Andrew Jackson in the White House (New York: Random House, 2008) 204. The quote, attributed to Horace Greeley, is reflective of Jackson’s rhetorical flourish, but in the end nothing much came of it, as the parties, in this case the state of Georgia and the Supreme Court, eventually found a solution. Jackson was also not shy about wielding federal force when he thought states were threatening the Union.
Manion, Cancer in the Constitution, 3.
Veronique de Rugy, “Bush’s Regulatory Kiss-Off,” Reason, January 2009, 25. de Rugy notes that the largest annual percentage increase in the total regulatory budget over the last fifty years occurred in during the George W. Bush administration. Bush defenders suggest it was primarily due to the war on terror, with new departments as the Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration.
Graglia, Constitutional Law, 51, 52.
Randy E. Barnett, “The Case for a Federalism Amendment,” The Wall Street Journal, 23 April 2009 (Accessed May 2010)
Epstein, How Progressives, 103, 104. See Meyer v. Nebraska (1923).
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee actually proposed a federal smoking ban during the 2008 presidential primaries. Regardless of your view on tobacco, this is dangerous precedent.
See James Madison, “Federalist 10,”The Federalist Papers, 48.
Paul Anthony Rahe, Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) 199, 200.
Ibid.
Charles Murray, What It Means To Be A Libertarian, (New York: Broadway Books, 1997) 42, 43. The only constitutional difference is that federalism as the founders envisioned was a collection of states, not municipalities.
Madison, “Federalist 39,” The Federalist Papers, 207.
Ibid.
Papers of Dr. James McHenry on the Federal Convention of 1787, in Charles C. Tansill, comp. Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States (Washington: U.S. Printing Office, 1927) 952.
The notion of coequal branches of government, taught in everyday civics, is actually a departure from the Founding Fathers who believed in legislative superiority, especially the House of Representatives, as Madison put it in “Federalist 58,” The Federalist Papers.
Thomas Jefferson, (Charlottesville (VA): University of Virginia Library, Electronic Text Center; 1995; c1999 http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/index.html. (Accessed May 2002)
Peter Roff, “Joe Biden’s Filibuster Hypocrisy,” U.S. News & World Report, 19 January 2010.
The passage of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, requiring the direct election of U.S. senators, instead of appointment by state legislature, severely weakened that body’s ability to preserve the interest of the several states and counter the passions of the majority as represented in the House of Representatives.
Stephen B. Presser, “Sisyphus and States’ Rights,” Chronicles, April 1999, 13. Presser is talking about the “one man, one vote” rule of Baker v. Carr that so many liberals laud, even though it actually weakens minority rights by making the upper house reflect the majoritarian passions of the lower.
Madison, “Federalist 14,” 69.
Benno Schmidt, et al, “James Madison” The notion of a “filtered” democracy has been attributed to Ellis, though it’s hard to imagine such a generic description hasn’t been used elsewhere to characterize the nuances of a Madisonian republic.
Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949).
Antonin Scalia, “Vigilante Justice,” National Review, 10 February 1997, 35.
Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46 (1947). In Adamson v. California, while surprising for the day, the high court refused to apply the Fifth Amendment in its entirety to a state trial, leaving the decision to the states and common law.
Berger, The Fourteenth Amendment, 24, 25. Such was the language of the Civil Rights Act of 1870 enacted after the Fourteenth Amendment. There are also specific constitutional provisions prohibiting the states from “impairing the obligation of contracts,” and the Constitution reserves bankruptcy law for the federal government so as to avoid providing unwarranted relief to debtors. See Article 1, Section 10 of U.S. Constitution [1787].
Amar and Adams, The Bill, 207, 208, 212, 213.
Berger, The Fourteenth Amendment, 30.
Ibid, 25, 26, 28, 29. While Bingham spoke eloquently about protecting via national law “the privileges and immunities of all the citizens” from “unconstitutional acts by the states,” he was, according to Berger, more than just inconsistent. He at one point condemned federal oppression of the states and the next talked about advancing the protections of the Bill of Rights-all in the same speech. In fact, his muddled thinking on the matter prompted Stevens, another member of the committee hearing the civil rights bill, to say of Bingham, “In all this contest about reconstruction, I do not propose either to take his counsel, recognize his authority, or believe a word he says.” Shankman and Pilon, “Reviving the Privileges,” 20, 21.
Manion, Cancer in the Constitution, 24, 25. Frankfurter’s concurring opinion in Adamson.
Ibid., 8.
Ibid., 8, 9. Quoting the Supreme Court’s analysis in Coleman v. Miller in1939.
Ibid., 8, 9, 10.
Commentary, Crusade Magazine, November/December 2009. The religious principle of “subsidiarity” is nothing new, stemming “from the fact that man is not only a social being but also a rational, essentially free and responsible being. Thus he is guaranteed the right to resolve his problems either by himself, through his family, or other intermediate social bodies without being obliged to wait for solutions from public authority”
Rozwenc, The Making, 278.
America as the “last best hope of earth” is from Lincoln’s Annual Message to Congress, 1 December 1862.
John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, 1690, edited by Thomas Peardon, (Macmillan, 1952) 32.
Ibid. Natural law suggests a code discoverable by human reason that society must observe for civilization to flourish. Modern-day philosophers such as Ayn Rand have further developed their own rational case for liberty.
See the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, 1776.
DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, 272.
Jaffa, A New Birth, 191. Jaffa, a Lincoln biographer, notes that the British Constitution “did not admit a right of secession” as did the Articles of Confederation. Jaffa, however, supports the idea that the American Constitution treats attempts to leave the Union as “rebellion” because there “could hardly be a justification for secession under the Constitution.”
JFK at White House speech, 1962. http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24966.html. (Accessed April 2010)
Bastiat, The Law, 28.
Otto Scott, “Back to the Future,” International Money & Politics, Nov/Dec. 1993, 12. Some have even pondered taking government out of the picture completely, suggesting no such thing as a “public good,” but only private rights. In this scenario, existing before positive law, those who refused to abide by the decisions of voluntary tribunals would be “banished from the tribe.” “Outlawry” became a system where a perpetrator’s person and property were “outside the protection of the law” and victims could take their own recourse without recrimination. Hence, the term “outlaw.”
Dwight R. Lee and Richard B. McKenzie, Regulating Government (Lexington: Lexington Books Inc., 1987) 8.
DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, 267. Acton had actually favored the right of secession and wrote a letter to that effect to General Robert E. Lee once the South was vanquished. “I saw in states’ rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope...as the redemption of Democracy,” wrote the famed English historian.
James M. Lemunyon, “A Constitutional Convention Can Rein In Washington,” The Wall Street Journal, 31 March 2010.
See Article V, United States Constitution, Philadelphia, 1787.
See Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, 1776.