of a people and their society. In the Americanexperience, there was not one founding but thirteen and these “foundings” tookplace over a period of slightly more than a century. Present in these thirteen political orderswere powerful commonalities and significant differences among each of thethirteen distinct societies. What is themost significant cooperative action on the part of these thirteen states, theWar for Independence, was as much a source of division as it was of unity. All the colonial governments seceded for theBritish Empire, but only a minority of colonists, one-third if we believe Mr. JohnAdams, perhaps as low as one-fifth if some scholars are to be believed, favoredsecession from Great Britain. Aplurality just wanted the war to go away. Of course, this is not important,unless one is in the habit of introducing your constitution with the phrase,“We the People . . ..”
The story of the American political order, at least to this point, is the collapse of the influence and autonomy of the local into a consolidated political and financial order, what Jefferson’s people called monarchy. This order is not merely political, it includes cultural, social, religious, and political mores and habits national in their scope and often emanating from institutions closely aligned with the centers of political and economic power. American values and views regarding marriage and family were profoundly and quickly changed by the entertainment produced in Hollywood, financed by Wall Street, and regulated by the politicians and civil servants in Washington, D. C. What we have now is an American imperial order under enormous strain from both external and internal pressures. This American imperial order experienced a meteoric rise after Appomattox and is now undergoing a similarly fast meteoric decline. The symptoms are there for all to see. We have not decisively won an armed conflict since World War Two, we have been bogged down in endless conflicts on the peripheral parts of the American zone of hegemony and resource extraction. The national political conflicts have acquired a tone of stridency incompatible with republican compromise. In Washington, D. C., the conflicts between Trump and his enemies are really about nothing more than holding on to power and its privileges. Both President Trump and his adversaries are attempting to preserve a status quo that can no longer be preserved. Trump’s status quo is an old-fashioned America flexing its industrial and productive might on the world stage. His opponents, the surveillance state, the legacy media, and the beneficiaries of forever war, are committed to a state of affairs allowing them to aggrandize their own power and wealth no matter the cost to ordinary Americans and their civil liberties, not to mention the poor unfortunates across the globe in the sights of the latest drone strike. If you wish to find a villain, the cartographer of this mad destiny, one need look no further than Alexander Hamilton, who mapped the road to political and financial consolidation. True, Hamilton may recoil in horror at what American has become, but what we now have is the logical outcome of his system.
Some defenders of the constitution will view thecurrent disorder in the American state as a deformation of what the “Founders”had in mind. This raises the question asto what the gentlemen at the Philadelphia Convention had in mind for the newplan of government. This is not as easyto discern as some scholars believe. Takethe case of the man reputed to be the “Father of the Constitution,” JamesMadison. Is the Constitution the oneexplicated by Madison, via the medium
Publius, in the Federalist Papers?Both Madison and Hamilton argued against the inclusion of a bill of rights inFederalist 39 and Federalist 84, respectively. Hamilton, true to form, thoughtthe whole idea of a bill of rights was “not only unnecessary . . . but would even be dangerous.” Or perhaps weshould look to Madison’s comment to a correspondent later in life when he wrotethat the true meaning of the constitution was to be derived from theproceedings of the state conventions that ratified the new plan ofgovernment. And if we choose this latterpath, which state conventions shall we look to for the meaning of theConstitution?
What we do know from the history of the republic isthat the
Novus Ordo Seclorum came out of its cradle a bit wobbly. In the first sixty years of the new union’sexistence, at least four major constitutional crises threatened an end to theAmerican experiment. The fourth,erroneously referred to as the Civil War, witnessed the grandchildren of thegeneration who seceded from England filling each other’s bodies with lead. Better evidence for the existence offundamental disagreements regarding the meaning of the Constitution and thenature of the federal union does not exist than the over 600,000 who lay dead onthe battlefields. What has become of the
Novus Ordo Seclorum since Appomattox? In substance, it is a consolidated unitarystate where the old state militias were federalized into a national guard, afederal income tax was fixed upon the people, a new central bank with amonopoly on the currency was created, the federal bureaucracy metastasized in both numbers and politicalpower, and the imperial regime of forever war was inaugurated.
Nationalists with a triumphalist bent will argue thenecessity and the good of the American imperial regime. They believe there was no other choicepresent in 1789, the thing needed to be set in motion to achieve somethingcalled American greatness. The old Roman question, “Cui bono?” applies here.Were there no other choices in 1789? Crucial situations in the foreign anddomestic arenas needed to be addressed. The British had not yet withdrawn fromthe Northwest as stipulated in the Treaty of Paris. The Spanish denied American shippers theright of deposit in New Orleans. AllEuropean nations were reluctant to extend any sort of most favored nationstatus to the American confederacy. Shay’s Rebellion underscored the potentialfor civil disorder among the unpaid veterans of the recently won war forindependence. No doubt, the framework ofthe confederation needed bolstering and improving. Most Americans in public life believed thiswas possible if the Congress were given a source of revenue independent of thestates, say a five percent
ad valorem duty on imports. Such a duty could fund a naval force crucialto protecting American commercial interests. Some sort of free trade zone among the members of the confederacy wasimportant to achieve, as was also the framework for a unified foreignpolicy. The states sendingrepresentatives to the Philadelphia Convention had these reforms and issues inmind. The delegates from Delaware,Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and New Hampshire were given implicitinstructions to modify the Articles of Confederation. The legislatures of Massachusetts, New York,and Maryland were much more explicit in their instructions to do nothing morethan modify the Articles. Only the delegates from New Jersey received a blankcheck to do as they saw fit at the convention. All but the delegates of NewJersey exceeded their authority. The plan for government that came from the Philadelphiaconvention was what Patrick Henry referred to as a beautiful butterfly with“poison under its wings.”
The supremacy clause of the Constitution is a tale ofboth poison and the operation of the law of unintended consequences. James Madison introduced a motion give thenew national legislature a veto over state laws. The motion met considerable resistance anddebate. Luther Martin of Maryland, a committed defender of the rights ofstates, reached back to the old New Jersey plan for a compromise. Martin proposed that the laws made by Congressand the treaties made and ratified by the new government would be the supremelaw of the “respective states, as far as those acts or treaties relate to thesaid states” and judiciaries of the states were bound by these laws andtreaties “in their decisions.” The clause as proposed by Martin wasunanimously agreed to without dissent at the convention. In later drafts it wasaltered to further strengthen the hand of the federal government, federal lawsand treaties being the “supreme law of the land,” and thus became thecornerstone of federal judiciary power. Martin had intended the laws of the federal government to enjoysupremacy only when explicitly contradicted by state law and to enjoy asupremacy over state constitutions and bills of rights.
The predicament for the defenders of states’ rightsand local governance is even worse than that caused by the supremacy clause. John Randolph of Roanoke once labeled theConstitution a “paper barrier,” easily trespassed upon and violated. Within its confines, any number of clausescan be and have been used to justify the most egregious power grabs. Take you pick: the treaty making clause, thewar powers clause, the general welfare clause, or as Randolph warned, all thesepowers in the aggregate will be invoked to grow the federal leviathan at theexpense of the states and the people. Ifit is true that the Constitution brought forth a governing order not seen sincethe High Middle Ages, the
imperium in imperio, it has proven even morecorrect that the Constitution, in the words of Patrick Henry, “squints atmonarchy.” The parchment barriers erected against monarchy and consolidation,primarily the separation of powers and the bill of rights, are only aseffective as the force which backs them. In this age of the surveillance state, star chamber proceedings andblack budgets, and the flouting of any rule of law by our politicians and theirfinancial backers, how is it that Henry was not right?
The constitutional order framed in Philadelphia maywell be the result of a great American defect—impatience. At the Virginia state ratifying convention,Patrick Henry pleaded for due time for careful deliberation. It was not forthcoming, and it is significantthat the champions of the Constitution, especially Edmund Randolph, made theargument in favor of haste. When theSecond War of Independence, the War Between the States, ended in the defeat ofthe secessionists, what Henry and Randolph envisioned came to pass, an Americanimperium of consolidated and omnipresent government.
If impatience in part resulted in the defeat of thelocalists, patience will assure their victory. The Hamiltonian order is not sustainable, we are living through thetwilight of the international American imperium, and at home we flirt with domesticand civil unrest. The restoration of thelocal will begin in the localities of America. It will result from living deeply in the communities where we aresituated, from being good neighbors, and engaging in the public affairs of ourlocal neighborhoods, towns, and counties. It requires a secession of the heart from the propaganda and distortionsdirected at us by Leviathan and its handmaiden, the legacy media, and a turningtoward faith, the old virtues: theological, cardinal, and civic, family, tradition,and property. Next to true charity, the willing of the good, it requirespatience and a commitment to “the long game.” We plant seeds in our time, wewill not live to see the harvest—but our affection and charity reaches out tothe generations who will benefit from our husbandry. Thus, will the authentic American order berestored.
