Was the Ratification of the US Constitution a Coup d'Etat?
Did our own constitution, placed in unscrupulous and malicious hands, result in the centralized federal government we have in 2022?
Could the ratification of our own constitution on June 22, 1788, have put America on an immediate path to where we are today?
Facebook friend Rich Davidson reminded me of what Murry Rothbard, the brilliant Austrian School, libertarian economist wrote about our Constitution, noting that the ratification of the current US Constitution was a “truly amazing political coup d’état which illegally liquidated the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with the Constitution.”
Rothbard further notes that “[I]n short, they were able to destroy the original individualist and decentralized program of the American Revolution.”
Without realizing it, I agreed with Rothbard’s premise the US Constitution is a “centralizing document” when I wrote “When one considers it, a republic, with its ready-made centralized structure at the national level, is a perfect Petri dish to start a very quiet Marxist revolution.”
In consideration of Rothbard’s argument, it is difficult to disagree that while the Constitution is designed to promote the power of the states over a centralized federal government (federalism over nationalism), it is also true that in the wrong hands, it is also a plan to strip the states and their people of their constitutional autonomy and vest that power in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats in Washington.
Rothbard concluded his analysis of the Constitution this way:
“Overall, it should be evident that the Constitution was a counterrevolutionary reaction to the libertarianism and decentralization embodied in the American Revolution. The Antifederalists, supporting states’ rights and critical of a strong national government, were decisively beaten by the Federalists, who wanted such a polity under the guise of democracy in order to enhance their own interests and institute a British-style mercantilism over the country. Most historians have taken the side of the Federalists because they support a strong national government that has the power to tax and regulate, call forth armies and invade other countries, and cripple the power of the states. The enactment of the Constitution in 1788 drastically changed the course of American history from its natural decentralized and libertarian direction to an omnipresent leviathan that fulfilled all of the Antifederalists’ fears.”
I realize that rethinking this over the past 24 hours or so seems too little time to consider something of this weight and import, but while not a scholar, I have studied the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance, all the way back to the Declaration of Arbroath in Scotland and the Magna Charta in England. Long story short, my thoughts are not completely bereft of learning.
What this reminder has done is reignited thoughts about what James Madison said in Federalist #51 and something that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Madison in 1789.
Madison famously warned that to protect the sacred rights of the individual the supreme power of the state must be distributed and:
“…the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
Jefferson, in his letter to Madison, wrote:
“On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct [the legal right of using and enjoying the fruits or profits of something belonging to another]. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law has been expressly limited to 19 years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be indeed if every form of government were so perfectly contrived that the will of the majority could always be obtained fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves. Their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils. Bribery corrupts them. Personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents: and other impediments arise so as to prove to every practical man that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal.”
I’ve argued in favor of our constitution and the provisions therein, also recognizing that there are aspects of the Anti-Federalist arguments that were, and remain, valid. I’m not at all sure that the United States could have evolved as a nation only guided by the Articles of Confederation. It seems to me that as a parent must treat a child as they learn boundaries and discipline, the Colonies needed something of a stronger hand than the Articles provided.
What I’m beginning to understand about Jefferson’s point of view is that he wasn’t talking about social trends and cultural shifts, he was really addressing the maturation of a nation and where, like the aforementioned child, the nation falls on the continuum of freedom vs. discipline and control matters.
Jefferson’s 19 years expiration of a constitution is based on his experience of the times, and that much is arguable, but when taken in conjunction with Madison’s “men are no angels” premise, perhaps we should consider that the ratification of the Constitution some 234 years ago was an unintentional (my opinion) slow motion coup d’état that set us on a path to an all-powerful, overweening central government that never was intended.
Perhaps we should have returned to something more like the Articles of Confederation than our badly abused current Constitution.
Some will argue that our current Constitution has failed - but as I have similarly argued when people blame God or the Bible for the historical failures of Christianity, it is the failures of people, not the principles, that caused the failures. I think that is true with any guiding document when given over to the hands of fallible people. It is not that unusual to have the very principles of any structural document be converted to weapons of convenience in the hands of people intent upon their agenda regardless of what the principles require.
More than ever the words of John Adams strike home:
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Adams strikes at the heart of what no guiding document can survive without.
Again, this is some needed heavy thinking.
In our present governing situation, we are in dire need of rational benevolent action to preserve our country as we have known it.
We are on the precipice of major change. None for the common good.
Great piece Michael. Before I even finished reading this statement: "Some will argue that our current Constitution has failed - but as I have similarly argued when people blame God or the Bible for the historical failures of Christianity, it is the failures of people, not the principles, that caused the failures," I was ready to respond to you stating that it is a failure of the people. Not only those in government - for the people should realize that anyone put in a position to govern faces many trials that would easily sway that person toward corruption; such is human nature. The real failure is on the people in general, to hold their representatives (local, state, and federal) accountable, to ensure the federal government adhered to Constitution (which requires knowing and understanding the Constitution - something that is rare these days), and understanding how the structure of authority was architected, the direction of the flow of authority: the people -> the states -> the federal government. Most today have this blueprint reversed which is why the federal government is able to get away with all they do. Even the state governments fail to assert their authority over the federal government and in pushing back against their overreach. People have forgotten the true intent of the Tenth Amendment, fully confining the federal government to the bounds of the Constitution and leaving all other authority to the states and the people. I published this morning another of my fairytales that also points to this amnesia and neglect regarding the Tenth Amendment and how it's led us down this path.