From the New Republic: The Founding Fathers’ Power Grab - A new book argues that the Constitution was designed to make the United States less democratic—and to enrich the framers.

It's not a new allegation.

The Book is titled: The Framer's Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution.

- Click here for the review.

In his impressive new book, The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, Bancroft Prize-winning legal historian Michael J. Klarman seeks to understand why the Framers produced such an undemocratic plan in the first place, and how they managed to get it approved over strong opposition in the state conventions. At the risk of oversimplifying—the book comes in at more than 800 pages—Klarman argues that the Constitution is undemocratic because it was designed to protect wealthy merchants and landowners from the redistributive tendencies of popular government. “The Constitution was,” he writes, “a conservative counterrevolution against what leading American statesmen regarded as the irresponsible economic measures enacted by a majority of state legislatures in the mid-1780s.” More specifically, “the Constitution was designed in part to block legislation for tax and debt relief.”

How was the Constitution adopted in spite of vigorous and cogent objections from its democracy-loving critics? Klarman argues that the Federalists essentially cheated and strong-armed their way to ratification. The book seems intended as a bracing antidote to the phenomenon that Klarman has elsewhere labeled “constitutional idolatry,” his term for “our misguided tendency to blindly worship the Constitution” and the men who wrote it.

The idea that the Constitution was really about money is not new, although it has lost favor in recent decades to “ideological” interpretations that focus on the Framers’ moral worldview and political goals. Klarman draws the core of his argument from Woody Holton’s 2007 Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, which was inspired in turn by one of the great history books of the 20th century, Charles A. Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913). Roughly stated, these books argue that during the period after the Revolutionary War most state constitutions were highly democratic, at least for the era. At the same time, the country was suffering a post-war financial crisis that was ruinous to artisans and small farmers. Not surprisingly, common people began to use their new political influence to create economic policies that were favorable to themselves (and disadvantageous to creditors and wealthy citizens), such as inflationary monetary policy and progressive taxation. The Constitution, according to the economic interpretation, was the 1 percent’s revenge, a countermeasure designed to undermine the democratic governments in the states, thereby returning power to wealthy elites and insulating them from popular opinion.

From the Atlantic: The Founding Fathers Weren’t Concerned With Inequality Economic disparity is a problem that has grown along with the nation.

As we discuss in class - it doesn't become an issue at all until the 14th Amendment, and even then it is very weakly defined and enforced.

- Click here for the syllabus.

The first Bill of Rights, of course, refers to the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which allowed for, among other things, freedom of the press, the right to bear arms, and the right to a trial by jury. Those rights, at the time, were top of mind among the country’s founders, who were concerned most with getting Great Britain out of their affairs. The founders didn’t concern themselves with what people in their young country would do if they got sick and couldn’t pay their rent. In fact, neither the Bill of Rights, nor the Declaration of Independence, nor the U.S. Constitution talk explicitly about the nation’s role in making sure its citizens have jobs or homes or earned enough to avoid being impoverished. The only line that even comes close appears in the preamble to the Constitution, where “We the People of the United States” pledge to “promote the general Welfare.” But at no point in the founding literature do the founding fathers identify what constitutes general welfare, or how nation should be upholding it.

Founding documents of other countries that were ratified much later, talk more about equality. The Indian Constitution, for example, was adopted in 1949, and includes an article that requires the state to “secure a social order for the promotion of welfare of the people,” which includes instructions to the state to try and eradicate income inequality.

It raises the question: If Americans today are so concerned with income inequality and the “American Dream,” and if FDR believed so strongly in equality of opportunity, why didn’t the founders talk about these concepts at all in the documents that created the nation? Is it really correct to say that America is built on a foundation of opportunity and economic freedom when that type of equality isn’t mentioned at all?

The answer seems to be that there was little economic inequality at that time - political equality was a different matter.

Regarding Franklin's quote

The previous post will call to mind Benjamin Franklin's famous quote. I stumbled on one person's explanation of the context of the quote. You might find it worth a quick read. It involves a power struggle during the colonial era.

- Click here for the article.

The words appear originally in a 1755 letter that Franklin is presumed to have written on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the colonial governor during the French and Indian War. The letter was a salvo in a power struggle between the governor and the Assembly over funding for security on the frontier, one in which the Assembly wished to tax the lands of the Penn family, which ruled Pennsylvania from afar, to raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the Assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him. So to start matters, Franklin was writing not as a subject being asked to cede his liberty to government, but in his capacity as a legislator being asked to renounce his power to tax lands notionally under his jurisdiction. In other words, the “essential liberty” to which Franklin referred was thus not what we would think of today as civil liberties but, rather, the right of self-governance of a legislature in the interests of collective security.

What’s more the “purchase [of] a little temporary safety” of which Franklin complains was not the ceding of power to a government Leviathan in exchange for some promise of protection from external threat; for in Franklin’s letter, the word “purchase” does not appear to have been a metaphor. The governor was accusing the Assembly of stalling on appropriating money for frontier defense by insisting on including the Penn lands in its taxes–and thus triggering his intervention. And the Penn family later offered cash to fund defense of the frontier–as long as the Assembly would acknowledge that it lacked the power to tax the family’s lands. Franklin was thus complaining of the choice facing the legislature between being able to make funds available for frontier defense and maintaining its right of self-governance–and he was criticizing the governor for suggesting it should be willing to give up the latter to ensure the former.

In short, Franklin was not describing some tension between government power and individual liberty. He was describing, rather, effective self-government in the service of security as the very liberty it would be contemptible to trade. Notwithstanding the way the quotation has come down to us, Franklin saw the liberty and security interests of Pennsylvanians as aligned.

Washington's thoughts on political parties

This provides a good counterpoint to the previous posts. It's material 2305 students will run across in the section on political parties. The founders were concerned about the emergence of factors that might undermine the stability of the republic.

Washington thought the newly formed political parties were one of these factors. This concerns was a key part of his farewell address in 1796. It might be worth considering whether the results of the Pew survey make his point.

- Click here for the entire address.

Here are some outtakes:

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. . . .

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable 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, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and 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.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

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 and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds 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.

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 indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. 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 and 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.

Who was Cato anyway?

The Dish highlights a review of a new book on the Roman Senator Cato - who we discussed in the opening lectures in class. Cato was an opponent of Julius Caesar and promoted individual liberty, in addition to the need to maintain the Roman Republic as it had existed for centuries.

References to Cato played a role in the expansion of liberty in Britain, as well as the American Revolution. But the authors attempt to sort out the realities about Cato from the stories, which may been embelished so he could be used for political purposes during the revolution. This is an effort to figure out who the real Cato was and what actual role he played during this critical period of Roman history. I'll probably pick up a copy. Here's a chunk from the review: 

Ancient Rome was a republic: a mixed government combining popular assemblies, powerful magistrates who operated as virtual kings for their year in office, and an aristocratic senate. The Roman republic indirectly inspired America’s constitutional separation of powers. By Cato’s day, though, Rome’s government was out of joint, bitterly divided between populists and oligarchs. Cato emerged as a leader of the second faction. He championed a tiny senate elite’s traditional role of guiding the destiny of the empire and its tens of millions of inhabitants. Yet Cato also defended freedom of speech, constitutional procedure, civic duty and service, honest administration, and the enlightened pursuit of the public interest.

More than anyone else, Cato saw clearly the threat that Julius Caesar posed to the old order. A brilliant and ambitious populist, Caesar wanted to dominate Rome. Unfortunately, Cato made things worse. He turned Caesar into a bigger enemy of the senate than he already was, unintentionally making Caesar stronger. Finally, he drove Caesar into civil war by refusing any compromise. Caesar prevailed, and Cato took his own life rather than admit defeat. His death capped a career of standing up for the republic as he saw it. If there was something blind and wrongheaded about him, there was also something magnificent. 

"The Character of a Self-governing People"

All classes this week are opening with a look at why education - and an educated public - has always been considered necessary to the preservation of a republic. At least this was a major concern of the nation's founders.

I know you have plenty to read already, but if you would like to dig further into this subject I recommend looking at the readings contained in the epilogue of The Founder's Constitution. It contain links to a variety of writing by the some of the founder's, much of it dwelling on the type of education that best increases the odds that enough people would have the education necessary - the civic virtue - to secure the republic.

Look through the introduction if you can. Here's a snippet:

Popular or republican government depended on virtue, but virtue understood in a special sense. Montesquieu took pains to make it clear that he was speaking of political virtue, the virtue not of the Christian but of "the political honest man," the man who loves the laws and is moved by that love. "Now, a government is like every thing else: to preserve it we must love it." Was such love possible in a world preoccupied with private wants and private pleasures, with manufactures, commerce, and luxury? Was such love possible in a world where people are all too well instructed in contradictory duties, where what we learn from our parents and teachers is "effaced" by what we learn from the world? Nowhere was "the whole power of education" more surely needed than in a republic, for nowhere did more depend on the presence of a public-spirited citizenry. Without such a citizenry--one able to preserve "the spirit of equality" without falling victim to the corruption of extreme democracy--no self-government was possible.
This whole paragraph is worth a discussion. It does suggest that getting you ready to be a participant in self-government should be a principle goal of the class. Look through the index for more.

Quote of the Day

Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind. - James Wilson.

This is drawn from a larger work - Of the Natural Rights of Individuals - which is a critique of some of the work of Edmund Burke. Wilson is argued by some to be even more important than James Madison to the eventual form of the Constitution. He would serve on the Supreme Court for almost a decade.

The quote goes beyond stating the a government is to secure the natural rights - which the Declaration of Independence - and says it should "enlarge" them as well.

Could be a good weekly written assignment: What does it mean to "enlarge the exercise of the natural rights?" Apply this to contemporary debates over the nature of natural rights.

- Click here for more from James Wilson.

Random founding quotes

I stumbled across this collection of quotes from the founders. Some touch on the importance of education so I'll add a few into my introductory slides, but I though you might get a kick out of reviewing them. Quotes are always taken out of context, so it's touch to say how they fit into whatever point was being made by them, but they're fun nevertheless.

David Frum doesn't care for the term "The Founders"

He points out, as we have also, that the nation was built up for 150 years prior to the actual revolution. What would become the nation had already been founded in many ways prior to 1776. Between 1776 and 1787, the American Republic was constructed. He also reminds us that the North American colonies were quite aristocratic, and that would continue until the revolution:

When called to church on a Sunday morning, the people of a southern colony would not enter all at once–or even family by family. The commonfolk of the parish would enter first. Then the wives and children of the major landowners. These squires assembled as a body, and entered together after all others had sat down.

True, the colonies lacked the extremes of wealth and poverty to be seen in the mother country. As Wood notes, the most opulent house in colonial America, William Byrd’s Westover, was 65 feet long. The Marquess of Rockingham had a house ten times the size; the Sackvilles’ palace of Knole had 365 rooms.

But if the hierarchy was truncated at top and bottom, it was finely elaborated in between. In New England, people carefully assessed who ranked as a mere husbandman, who counted as a yeoman, who should be addressed as “Mr.,” and who was entitled to the yet more respectful, “Your honor.”

African slaves occupied the very lowest rank in a vast system of unfreedom and dependency. Yet their condition differed only in degree from that of white indentured servants and apprentices. The servant or the apprentice might be held only for a term of years rather than for life. The apprentice might expect some kind of support and patronage after his term expired. While the indenture or apprenticeship lasted, however, white servants could be beaten just like a black slave; could be refused permission to marry; and could discover that their service had been sold to a new master.

The American revolution collapsed this elaborate hierarchical world into a new scheme that recognized only two statuses, slave and free.
He also challenges the idea that the founders were libertarian, as is often suggested by contemporary politicians. Individualism, as we understand it today, evolved over time:

What would today’s Tea Party make of this statement? “Private property is a creature of society, and is subject to the calls of that society whenever its necessities shall require it, down to the last farthing.” No, that’s not Karl Marx–that’s the Benjamin Franklin of the Constitutional period. (p. 219, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin.)

Nor was Franklin unique. Modern libertarianism was an utterly foreign mode of thought to the revolutionary generation.

Ironically, those members of the revolutionary generation who sound most libertarian to our modern ears (Thomas Jefferson for example) were the most mistrustful of commerce and enterprise. Those most sympathetic to commerce and enterprise (Alexander Hamilton) sound least libertarian.

Yet as commerce advanced–and as pre-modern forms of authority based on claims of public virtue were rejected–American politics evolved in directions more and more recognizable to us.

In 19th century America, equality would come to mean “not just that a man was as good as his neighbor and possessed equal rights, but that he was ‘weighed by his purse, not by his mind, and according to the preponderance of that, he rises or sinks in the scale of individual opinion.’ That was a kind of equality no revolutionary had anticipated.” (p. 243, Radicalism of the American Revolution.) The quoted words come from one of the correspondents of the painter and inventor, Samuel FB Morse.

The Balanced Budget Amendment

A Tea Party proposal to add a Balanced Budget Amendment (actually a particular version of one - others have been proposed previously) passed the House recently, but is unlikely to either pass the Senate or survive a certain presidential veto.

The bill was officially called the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011 (H.R. 2560), there are questions regarding the wisdom of such an amendment, but little analysis, as far as I can see, of whether states are in fact likely to ratify such an amendment. States are able to keep their budgets - gimmicks aside - because the federal government doesn't have to. What incentive do they have to ratify it?

A variety of links on the proposal (the bulk I stole from A Plain Blog about Politics):

- Obligatory Balance Budget Amendment Post.
- Bruce Bartlett: The Phony Balanced Budget Amendment Debate.
- IS A BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT A DANGEROUS GIMMICK?
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
- The Balanced Budget Amendment would make the Framers weep.
- The futility of Cut, Cap and Balance, cont’d.

Expect more background on this as we proceed.

Here's the proposed text:

`Section 1. Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year.

`Section 2. Total outlays shall not exceed 18 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States for the calendar year ending prior to the beginning of such fiscal year.

`Section 3. The Congress may provide for suspension of the limitations imposed by section 1 or 2 of this article for any fiscal year for which two-thirds of the whole number of each House shall provide, by a roll call vote, for a specific excess of outlays over receipts or over 18 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States for the calendar year ending prior to the beginning of such fiscal year.

`Section 4. Any bill to levy a new tax or increase the rate of any tax shall not become law unless approved by two-thirds of the whole number of each House of Congress by a roll call vote.

`Section 5. The limit on the debt of the United States held by the public shall not be increased, unless two-thirds of the whole number of each House of Congress shall provide for such an increase by a roll call vote.

`Section 6. Any Member of Congress shall have standing and a cause of action to seek judicial enforcement of this article, when authorized to do so by a petition signed by one-third of the Members of either House of Congress. No court of the United States or of any State shall order any increase in revenue to enforce this article.

`Section 7. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

`Section 8. Total receipts shall include all receipts of the United States except those derived from borrowing. Total outlays shall include all outlays of the United States except those for repayment of debt principal.

`Section 9. This article shall become effective beginning with the second fiscal year commencing after its ratification by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States.'.

Hamiltonian America

The Economist has a brief appreciative note about Alexander Hamilton, and points out his influence on America:

. . . America today almost certainly—as futile as this thought experiment admittedly is—conforms to Hamilton’s vision much more than to Jefferson’s.

America is a cosmopolitan, commercial and industrial place (as Hamilton envisioned), not an agrarian land of yeoman farmers untouched by the corrupting influence of banks and brokers (as Jefferson wanted). It has long since banned slavery, as Hamilton always thought it should, but as Jefferson and Madison, among other southerners, dared not contemplate.

Indeed, a list of Hamilton’s legacies—first Treasury secretary, founder of "Wall Street" and American central banking, founder of the Coast Guard, visionary of capitalism and governmental checks and balances—inevitably shortchanges his overall impact. In everything but title he really was America's first and most important prime minister.

"A tyrannical government is not a legitimate government"

This is an important and provocative post from David Kopel. I need to add this to my 2301 lecture on natural rights. The author quotes a variety of classical authors who make arguments against the legitimacy of tyrannical governments, likening them to robbers. A tyrannical government is not a legitimate government. That statement should make sense if you properly understand the argument made in the Declaration of Independence.

Consider this required reading.

Obviously the post relates to current issues regarding Libya, but it gives no hint about what pragmatic steps can be taken to deal with tyrannical governments. Is there an obligation to remove them from power?

Were the Founders Really in Favor of Limited Government? Is So Why?

Big Tent Revue points to an old article in Dissent which challanges this idea, or at least points out the the country's founders were far more complex politicaly than we give them credit for. They did all seem to believe that disparities in wealth were a big problem and limiting the size of the national government was a way for the wealthy to ensure that any compeition from below was stiffled. The purpose of limiting government was to enhance equality. Things have changed since then.

From Bid Tent Review:

A fascinating and revealing article from an old Dissent about the redistributive dimensions of early Jeffersonian thought. The founding fathers are often portrayed, particularly by rightists, as devoutly laissez-faire. In reality, they seemed to divide up between conservative Hamiltonian corporatists and radical Jeffersonian egalitarians, the former urging government collusion with commercialists and the latter urging some form of leveling to the advantage of small holders and craftsmen. From the start, the only place where laissez-faire prevailed was at the federal level; states and localities had broad powers to police morals and markets. And even at the federal level, “hands off” inherently meant favoring some against others.

“Wealth, like suffrage,” Taylor wrote in his Inquiry Into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States, “must be considerably distributed, to sustain a democratick republic; and hence, whatever draws a considerable proportion of either into a few hands, will destroy it. As power follows wealth, the majority must have wealth or lose power.”

From Dissent:

If the welfare state means progressive taxation, social spending to strengthen the middle class and elevate the poor, and the regulation of corporate power, it does not offend Jeffersonian principles. What offends Jeffersonian principles is a government that “fortifies the conspiracies” of the rich and powerful (as Philadelphia republican George Logan put it in 1792), leaving ordinary people without protection from their strategies and combinations and their public disregard. By that standard, we have reached a new low point of Jeffersonian liberty. In Jefferson’s name, the government has promoted inequality, not restrained it. It has punished poor communities, weakened the middle class, and created a new ruling class that makes our old Loyalist enemies seem moderate and unjustly maligned. The people responsible for this certainly do have a philosophy of limited government. But their limited government is the Gilded Age version, a doctrine of elite self-defense. It is not the early American version, where the beginning of freedom is equality of productive resources, and limiting government is necessary to prevent that equality from being destroyed by wealthy elites.
In 2301, as we begin to discuss public opinion, we need to determine why our attitudes about history changes from time to time. The Diissent article makes a provocative claim the supporters of limits government have distorted what the founders actually thought about the role of government and the need for more equal distribution of wealth.

An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen

Apparently John Adams signed a law in 1798 that looks a lot like the health care act.