What
Are We Celebrating?
Thoughts on the Fourth
by
David Dieteman
On
July 4, Americans celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration sets forth the principles
of liberty and limited government upon which a new nation was founded.
How
many people actually celebrate the Declaration
of Independence on the Fourth? How many know the following words,
or even agree with their political sentiments any more:
When
in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth,
the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and
of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions
of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation.
We
hold these truths to be self-evident:
That
all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever
any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles,
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence,
indeed, will dictate that governments long established should
not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly
all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to
suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves
by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when
a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably
the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off
such government, and to provide new guards for their future
security.
Notice
that the Declaration declares that overthrowing a tyrannical government
is not only a right – it is a duty.
In
that regard, on July 3, 1997, libertarian columnist par excellence
Vin Suprynowicz related the following tale:
Recently,
President Clinton's then-Drug Czar, Lee Brown, told me the role
of government is to protect people from dangers, such as drugs.
I corrected him, saying, "No, the role of government is to protect
our liberties."
"We'll
just have to disagree on that," the president's appointee said.
As
Suprynowicz continues,
The
War for American Independence began over unregistered untaxed
guns, when British forces attempted to seize arsenals of rifles,
powder, and ball from the hands of ill-organized Patriot militias
in Lexington and Concord. American civilians shot and killed
scores of those government agents as they marched back to Boston.
Are those Minutemen still our heroes? Or do we now consider
them "dangerous terrorists" and "depraved government-haters"?
You
know the answer to that question: many of those living today, in
particular those who voted for Clinton and Gore, and who cheered
the Commie Mommie March, would have been Tories back in the day – willfully helping the British to put down a rebellion, and turning
Thomas Jefferson over to be executed.
Consider
the reigning American view of gun control: although most Americans
appear to believe in the individual right to keep and bear arms,
most unthinkingly assent to the idea that the government is somehow
empowered to regulate which arms can be owned.
In
other words, assuming that you have the right to keep
and bear arms, most today think that the government gets to decide
what you have the right to keep and bear.
But
of course, if the government decides what you can own, then
you don't really have a right to keep and bear arms at all.
You have permission from the state, which is the exact opposite
of a right.
The
purpose of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, and the
related state constitutional provisions – such as Article I, Section
21 of the Pennsylvania Constitution – is to guarantee the individual
right to keep and bear arms.
There
are those who claim that the Second Amendment guarantees a right
to the states. This is utterly wrong for three reasons. First, the
amendment refers to "the people," and not to "the states," in a
document which makes repeated – and purposeful – usage of both terms.
Second, the amendment is the second in a group of ten amendments – known as the Bill of Rights – which sets forth a non-exclusive
list of individual rights which the federal government is
powerless to violate. Third, even if one assumes for the sake of
argument that the Second Amendment gives states the right to have
a militia, this interpretation is logically destroyed by a reading
of the various state constitutions – like the Pennsylvania Constitution – which explicitly recognize an individual right to keep
and bear arms.
Article
I, Section 21 of the Pennsylvania Constitution provides that "The
right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and
the State shall not be questioned." Notice that this constitutional
provision does not so much as use the term "militia."
And
by the way, Senator Kennedy – yes, you, the blowhard who grilled
John Ashcroft for daring to suggest that the right to keep and bear
arms was a check on tyranny – consider the words of a couple of
right-wing wackos: James Madison and Alexander Hamilton (click
here for The Federalist Papers – searchable, no less! on line at
the Yale University Law School Avalon Project).
In
Federalist
No. 46, James Madison writes:
Let
a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country,
be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal
government; still it would not be going too far to say, that
the State governments, with the people on their side, would
be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according
to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any
country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number
of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear
arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States,
an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To
these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million
of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen
from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties,
and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections
and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus
circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of
regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last
successful resistance of this country against the British arms,
will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides
the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over
the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate
governments, to which the people are attached, and by which
the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against
the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which
a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding
the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe,
which are carried as far as the public resources will bear,
the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
A
few questions. First, what country today is "afraid to trust the
people with arms," and has a military establishment "as far as the
public resources will bear"? Hmm. Certainly not the USA.
Second,
note that Madison holds up an armed citizenry as a check on government
tyranny. That dirty Founding Father, Madison, dared to think that
some saintly servant – like Ted Kennedy – might ever get carried
away and become tyrannical. Of course, Madison is thus evil, and
we should perhaps outlaw the study of the Federalist Papers in school.
Third,
note that Madison envisions private citizens – and their guns, Mr.
Bellesiles – defeating the US Army. Would that be possible today,
where the government makes it illegal for anyone but governments
to own the most sophisticated weaponry? Lexington and Concord were
one thing, with muskets in British and colonial hands. But a new
Lexington and Concord might not turn out so well for the forces
of liberty, with bolt actions and semi-automatics in the hands of
the citizens, and an array of fully automatic weapons – and then
some – in the hands of the State. (In this regard, see Vin Suprynowicz'
article "But
which arms do we have the right to 'keep and bear'?" )
By
the way, notice that James Madison was wrong in at least one respect
in Federalist No. 46. In trying to reassure those who wanted to
retain the Articles of Confederation, and who saw in the Constitution
the blueprint for a federal monster that would devour the sovereign
states, Madison attempts to sell these so-called "Anti-Federalists"
(men like Sam Adams, George Mason, and Patrick Henry) by writing
that
The
only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the
State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal
government may previously accumulate a military force for the
projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers
must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could
be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That
the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of
time, elect an uninterrupted succession of men ready to betray
both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly
and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension
of the military establishment; that the governments and the
people of the States should silently and patiently behold the
gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until
it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear
to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious
jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal,
than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism.
It
is at this point that Madison adds the section previously quoted – the section where he mentions that an armed citizenry can never
be enslaved by a tyrannical government.
And
as for the idea that the federal government, with the consent of
the people, could accumulate an army sufficient to defeat the states
on the battlefield, how ridiculous.
Notice
that Madison mentions that for such an event to happen – a Federal
army defeating the armies of the states on the battlefield – the
politicians in office would have to be "ready to betray both...the
people and the States." Madison calls such men "traitors."
What
kind of idiots, Madison wonders, would build up a Federal army "until
it should be prepared to burst on their own heads"? Madison says
that such an idea is "delirious jealousy" and "the misjudged exaggerations
of a counterfeit zeal," rather than "the sober apprehensions of
genuine patriotism."
In
other words, Madison paints the opponents of the Constitution as
"counterfeit" zealots in defense of liberty. They are "delirious"
and "dreaming," if not drunk (the opposite of "sober apprehensions
of genuine patriotism").
As
Madison concluded,
On
summing up the considerations stated in this and the last paper,
they seem to amount to the most convincing evidence, that the
powers proposed to be lodged in the federal government are as
little formidable to those reserved to the individual States,
as they are indispensably necessary to accomplish the purposes
of the Union; and that all those alarms which have been sounded,
of a meditated and consequential annihilation of the State governments,
must, on the most favorable interpretation, be ascribed to the
chimerical fears of the authors of them.
Sign
on the dotted line! The new federal government will be strictly
limited to the powers it needs to do its job – that's all!
If you don't like it, you can return it in 30 days for a full refund,
no questions asked. Anyone who says otherwise is just crazy. The
only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Alexander
Hamilton, in Federalist
No. 28, makes much the same points as Madison. Propounding on
the virtues of a standing Federal army (hey, you might need it to
crush a rebellion!), Hamilton writes,
When
will the time arrive that the federal government can raise and
maintain an army capable of erecting a despotism over the great
body of the people of an immense empire, who are in a situation,
through the medium of their State governments, to take measures
for their own defense, with all the celerity, regularity, and
system of independent nations? The apprehension may be considered
as a disease, for which there can be found no cure in the resources
of argument and reasoning.
No
Federal army could ever defeat the states! It might put down unjustified
rebellions, but it could never be a tool of tyranny. The
states are like "independent nations," notes Hamilton, and able
to raise armies to defend themselves. As Hamilton also writes in
Federalist No. 28,
If
the representatives of the people betray their constituents,
there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original
right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms
of government, and which against the usurpations of the national
rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success
than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In
a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power
become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts
of which it consists, having no distinct government in each,
can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must
rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system,
without resource; except in their courage and despair. The usurpers,
clothed with the forms of legal authority, can too often crush
the opposition in embryo.
In
other words, if the federal government were to become tyrannical,
the people would exercise their "right of self-defense," and "rush
tumultuously to arms." And besides – no usurper would ever be able
to convince everyone that he hadn't really usurped power. How silly!
Hamilton
also noted that the territory of the states was too large for any
Federal army to conquer:
The
great extent of the country is a further security. We have already
experienced its utility against the attacks of a foreign power.
And it would have precisely the same effect against the enterprises
of ambitious rulers in the national councils. If the federal
army should be able to quell the resistance of one State, the
distant States would have it in their power to make head with
fresh forces.
Say,
did they have transcontinental railroads in Hamilton's time? Steamships?
Hmm. How about stealth fighters and nuclear weapons?
Madison
and Hamilton were wrong. Utterly, horribly, terribly wrong.
On
July 4, 1863, the city
of Vicksburg fell. It fell to armies controlled by a man who
some scholars still claim "defended" the Constitution. He had to
suspend and violate the Constitution in order to save it, don't
you see? It's what makes him great.
(As
an aside, David McCullough, in his recent book on John Adams, gives
the same excuses for President John Adams' nullification of the
First Amendment, via the Alien
and Sedition Acts of 1798 , which criminalized opposition political
speech. There was a war going on! Doesn't everybody suspend the
Constitution during a war? So what if Adams imprisoned a bunch of
newspaper writers and editors? See if McCullough would say the same
thing were he thrown in jail for his writings.)
Never
mind that some of the states, such as Virginia, only took up arms
in defense of the "guarantees" of the Constitution (is the Constitution
covered by the Lemon Law?), after the "great leader" had raised
troops to invade other states – states which had the audacity to
have claimed their independence, this time from Washington, DC,
rather than from England. The great leader, you see, knew that the
Union was akin to what the Eagles call the Hotel California ("you
can check in any time you like, but you can never leave").
July
4, 1776 to July 4, 1863. Not very long for an experiment in limited
government to last. Of course, the limitations on the powers of
the federal government had been removed long before the fall of
Vicksburg.
The
historian and novelist Shelby Foote notes that the Fourth of July
was not celebrated in Mississippi when he was a boy. The Fourth
was the day when Vicksburg fell.
Perhaps
you've heard of a Federal army that defeated the states. No, that
would be silly. Listen to Hamilton and Madison. Trust your government.
It could never happen.
 But
of course, Hamilton and Madison told people to "trust the government"
precisely because the people were armed, and could supposedly defeat
a federal government army in battle. Today, the politicians and
the media tell you "You don't need to own a gun. If you do own a
gun, let the government tell you what guns you are allowed to own.
Are you crazy? No one should be afraid of the government."
Happy
Fourth of July.
July
4, 2001
Mr.
Dieteman [send him mail]
is an attorney in Erie, Pennsylvania, and a PhD candidate in philosophy
at The Catholic University of America.
©
2001 David Dieteman
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