The Constitution Is Not What You Think

And neither are several of the American Founding Fathers (DN: 1.19)

Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |

(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14 | 1.15 | 1.16 | 1.17 | 1.18 | 1.19

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Chapter 1: WHY

1.19 — There Is Nothing to Return To, Part 1

We are nearing the end of Part I and its lone chapter: Why.

I have sought to explain what our rights are and where they come from. I have laid out why government is wholly a menace to those rights. I have described, in rather painstaking detail, why democracy (yes, including the American constitutional republic) is not only not a solution to the problem of government, but an egregious manifestation of that problem.

I have not gone into great depth about the specifics of the manmade madness under which we currently languish, since you are all already familiar with that. (Indeed, such matters occupy much of your own explorations and writings.) My job, rather, is to make the general, categorical case for why involuntary governance of any kind is wholly unacceptable.

In other words, before I can lay out the who, what, where, when, and how of the distributed nation, I have worked to lay out the reasons why we ought even to consider such a radical notion.

The last task on that front is to (do my best to) disabuse you of any remaining belief that salvation lies in winding back the clock to some earlier condition. Knowledge and lessons certainly do lie in the past, but our actual direction of travel must be forward. Continuing to gaze wistfully to the past not only holds us back from the journey we must undertake, it also constitutes a belief in a false idol.

The past, simply put, is not what you think it is.

One important example of this involves the hagiographic way in which we treat the American Founders, the Constitution, and the events surrounding that document’s introduction and (supposed) ratification.

Once upon a time, my patriotic inclinations would have told me that what I am about to say is tantamount to heresy, and I know that many of you will now find it similarly hard to hear. But we mustn’t shy away from truths, even when they are hard truths.

Those who have been reading my writing and comments know that I try to welcome new information and admit when there is something I do not know. It has only been in the last year that I have even begun to scratch the surface of this topic, and I have much yet to learn. But I cannot unlearn what I have learned thus far…

That the Constitution is not the magnificent document many insist that it is…

That it was rammed through in extremely sleazy ways and may never have been properly ratified at all. That it was, in essence, a secret coup by a cadre of centralizers and bankers. That it was designed to preserve slavery, neuter the states, and open the door direct taxation, standing armies, and foreign war. That these conspirators, who include many Founders whom we are told to revere, were willing to wage war on Rhode Island for daring to resist that coup.

That the Bill of Rights, which we so cherish as the greatest achievement of that Constitution, was actually a watered down sop that Madison contrived in order to trick the states into accepting the Trojan horse of the Constitution.

That many of the Founders we adulate today were the worst among them, and quite unworthy of that adulation…

That Hamilton and Jay were elitists who believed the rest of us peasants needed to be ruled with a firm hand. That Madison was a manipulative operator who played both sides of the fence and that Hamilton was, in many ways, the true villain of the early American story. That even Washington, while a great general and leader of men, was also a law-and-order guy who wanted states and people alike to be controlled with a firm, centralizing hand.

I have explained in philosophical terms the reasons why the American Constitution cannot be a model for any future of human liberty. But Tereza Coraggio, Jim Davidson—and the many authors whom they cite—tell the other half of that tale: that the Constitution may not even be worthy of the reverence we have thus far accorded it.

That it may not be merely a flawed product of an earlier time, but a cynical and intentional instrument of statist control, centralization, and usurpation of the natural rights over which the Revolution was fought. Indeed, as Jim Davidson notes, citing Bill Buppert: “The Constitution is the casket in which they buried the Declaration.”

The Founders we remember are, for the most part, the Founders who won. That is the way things work. George Mason, Patrick Henry, Robert Yates, and the scores of others who opposed the Constitution were not “lesser Founders.” They were merely the Founders who were overborne by the machinations of Hamilton and his cronies. History, as Liz LaSorte trenchantly notes, is written by the victors.

Indeed, Robert Yates said of these machinators that they were “wilfully endeavoring to deceive, and to lead you into an absolute state of vassalage” under the Constitution. Why is the view of this Founder less worthy than that of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay? After all, these men shared Hamilton’s raging sense of elitism and belief that,

“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and the well-born; the other the mass of the people” and that the mass are “turbulent and changing” and “seldom judge or determine right,” and thus that we should “give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the Government.”

In other words, we rabble are idiots who need to be controlled by our betters. (If you want to revere any American Founders, perhaps it would be better to look to men like Henry, Mason, and the rest of the Antifederalists.)

Note the Orwellian doublespeak: the Hamilton and the rest of the Federalists opposed the genuine federalism of the Articles of Confederation, while the Antifederalists were the true federalists. Kind of like how the Mensheviks (from the Russian word for “small”) initially outnumbered the Bolsheviks (from the Russian word for “large”). The Federalists named themselves and their opponents, just as the Bolsheviks did. See how that works? Orwellian propaganda and doublespeak at work in early America. Pass the potato salad and light up the fireworks…

Citing “Kenneth W. Royce…and his seminal book, The Hologram of Liberty and Kevin Gutzman’s Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution,” the aforementioned William Buppert describes how the Constitution

was drafted in the summer of 1787 behind closed doors in tremendous secrecy because if word leaked out of the actual contents and intent, the revolution that had just concluded would have been set ablaze again. They were in a race against time and did everything in their power to ensure that the adoption took place as quickly as possible to avoid reflection and contemplation in the public square that would kill the proposal once the consequences of its agenda became apparent. They were insisting that the states ratify first and then propose amendments later. It was a political coup d’état. It was nothing less than an oligarchical coup to ensure that the moneyed interests, banksters and aristocrats could cement their positions and mimic the United Kingdom from which they had been recently divorced.

This, and the rest of Buppert’s analysis, are difficult for many of us to accept. Indeed, Buppert himself describes his discoveries as “heart-breaking” and adds that

Hamilton’s machinations and influence probably single-handedly turned the product of this secret confab into one of the most successful instruments of political oppression before even the creation of the USSR. What makes it even more sublime as a tool of big government is the sophisticated propaganda and hagiographic enterprise which has both spontaneously and through careful planning suborned the public’s skepticism of the nature of the machine erected to control their behavior, which has resulted in an almost religious observance of all things Constitutional. Carefully cultivated over two hundred years, this religious idolatry had certainly fogged the thinking of this writer for most of his adult life. This sleeper has awakened. (Emphasis mine)

I know that all of this is new to many people. I know that it is a challenge to long-held and cherished beliefs. I know that some of you will feel like it is robbing you of the one hope to which you’ve been clinging: that we can undo the corruption of the present and restore a purer past. I get it.

You can yell at me if you want. You can unsubscribe and call me names. But you cannot undo the facts. And the facts are that the past is not what we thought and neither are many of our cherished heroes. There is nothing to return to.

Our way lies forward.

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Instead of unsubscribing, please consider throwing your support into my larger project, which is to fulfill the aspiration of the Declaration rather than to make obeisance to the bastard child that usurped it!