Jefferson and the Constitution

Lew, it is fantastic to have your wonderfully illuminating discussion of “Who Killed the Constitution” with Tom Woods appear once again on LRC. This interview decisively points out the hopeless futility of the utopian ideal of a strictly limited federal republic under the rule of law not being transformed over the course of time into a consolidated imperial welfare-warfare state. The Constitution was conceived in a counter-revolution, in a secretive coup d’état by duplicitous nationalists. Many libertarians, particularly those under the mesmerizing enchantment of Albert Jay Nock, point to the great Thomas Jefferson as the courageous champion who single-handedly stopped this erosion of constitutional restraint by seeking to reverse the egregious excesses of the Washington and Adams administrations which proceeded his own. But a closer examination of the historical record finds something remarkably different.

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11:28 am on September 28, 2013