Thank God for the Internet. Must-reading for all interested in federalism and related issues surrounding Kelo and other constitutional issues is: St. George Tucker, View of the Constitution of the United States with Selected Writings (1803). As Tom DiLorenzo mentioned to me in a private email about this:
The indispensable resource for [the pro-federalist] argument is St. George Tucker’s book, A View of the Constitution. It lays out the Jeffersonian interpretation of the Constituton, which was replaced by the centralizing, big government, Lincolnite interpretation after 1865. Clyde Wilson’s foreword brilliantly summarizes the importance and context of the arguments. The first chapter of the book [Of the Several Forms of Government], as well as the first part of the next chapter [View of the Constitution of the United States] contain a lot of his essential ideas and are really all that is needed. The “libertarians” you are debating are completely ignorant of all of this. They are only aware of the New England reinterpretation of the founding that was invented in the post-1865 era. That’s why they worship The Federalist Papers, unlike Tucker, who was highly suspicious of them despite the fact that a few of the articles were solid.
Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their Legacy, by William J. Watkins Jr. is an updated version of this argument. It is excellent.
Tom is right. This material really demonstrates that the modern libertarian centralists who smear advocates of federalism as being covert racists and apologists for slavery, are just idiots, and really ignorant of the subject they claim to be experts on.
Note also: Tucker proposed the abolition of slavery in Virginia in the 1790s–just to rebut ahead of time any claism of these dimwit-Seriosos that Tucker’s work was “an apology for slavery,” which is the boring, monotonous refrain of all these PC, smearblogging jerks.
12:05 pm on July 7, 2005
