Ironic, isn't it. The Tea Party, militia types and the god botherers all seem to hate everything that the U.S. Constitution they claim to revere so much was created to foster, preserve and protect.
Cliven Bundy With Handy Shirt Pocket Edition of U.S. Constitution
Yet, along with ostentatious displays like Mr. Bundy's, pictured above, they blather and posture endlessly about their love for and devotion to the Constitution. But, just as so many of them tend to do with their Bibles, they fixate only upon bits and pieces of the Constitution to obsess about, while ignoring the overarching meaning and intent of the whole thing and forgetting about the parts they find inconvenient. Second Amendment? Damned straight, Bubba! Presidential Qualifications? Get that Kenyan Muslim outta my White House! Supremacy Clause, Equal Protection, providing for the general Welfare, etc? {{crickets}}
Their "Christian Nation" delusions about the origins of the Constitution betray profound ignorance of actual American History. Their blind adherence and near religious devotion to the orthodoxy of free enterprise betrays a similar ignorance of the conditions preceding the creation of the U.S. Constitution and the needs that our national government was created to satisfy. They completely overlook the historical fact that a main reason that the U.S. Constitution exists is that the Confederation of States that preceded it, along with other shortcomings, inadequately provided for power to levy national taxes and power to regulate national business and commerce. One rarely hears them mention the United States government that preceded the present US Constitution, and the opposition neither professes nor displays any insight into why the United States of America ever came to exist as a nation in the first place. Notwithstanding their willful ignorance, the right has tried to hijack what I think of as my Constitution, dammit. They can't have it, not their perverse version of it, anyway.
Come out into the tall grass for some of the sometimes quirky history of the U.S. Constitution's origins and to ponder what is possible when independent nations come together to protect, defend and secure the general welfare of everyone in them by yielding ultimate power to a higher authority.
In 1776, when 13 formerly British colonies severed the ties of their people as subjects of the British crown, lawyers, judges, statesmen and, hence, almost everyone regarded each one of them to be entirely separate, distinct, and independently sovereign states. Once declared independent, the colonies were in no way governed by any outside or higher authority and in only very limited ways the colonies had been acting together, more or less, in various matters mostly relating to relations with Britain, in the First and Second Continental Congresses beginning in 1774.
Thomas Jefferson
The Continental Congresses possessed no written basis and no actual power to govern. They existed simply because a call had gone out for colonies to send delegates, and the colonies had done so. At the same time that Congress assigned Thomas Jefferson to propose a declaration of the reasons for independence, another delegate, John Dickinson, was producing the first draft of Articles of Confederation, the first written foundational proposal for formalizing the relationships between the now independent former colonies.
Just as Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence was fiercely debated and amended by Congress, so were Mr. Dickinson's Articles of Confederation, and then some. The Second Continental Congress finally agreed upon the text of the Articles in 1777 but that only kicked off
John Dickenson
a ratification process that dragged out four more years, as the Revolutionary War raged on.
In the end, the ratification fight came down to the question of who would control the lands in the West that the White British colonists intended to seize from native peoples in the future.
As
explained by History.com:
By 1779 all the states had approved it except Maryland, but prospects for acceptance looked bleak, because claims to western lands by other states set Maryland in inflexible opposition. Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts claimed by their charters to extend to the “South Sea” or the Mississippi River. The charters of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island confined those states to a few hundred miles of the Atlantic. Land speculators in Maryland and these other “landless states” insisted that the West belonged to the United States, and they urged Congress to honor their claims to western lands. Maryland also supported the demands because nearby Virginia would clearly dominate its neighbor should its claims be accepted. Eventually Thomas Jefferson persuaded his state to yield its claims to the West, provided that the speculators’ demands were rejected and the West was divided into new states, which would be admitted into the Union on the basis of equality with the old. Virginia’s action persuaded Maryland to ratify the Articles, which went into effect on March 1, 1781.
Are you listening, Mr. Bundy? This principle is even older than the Constitution: the United States, not the individual States and not individual people, except by grant and title, own the open lands of the West. The very compromise that created our first national government gave that government the powers to deal with foreign states, make treaties, fight wars, grant lands and change and expand the nation by adding new sovereign States. Those very basic sovereign powers (claimed by all the European states and responsible for the creation of the colonies in the first place) clearly demonstrated the character of the United States as an independent, sovereign nation. Deny it all you want, Mr. Bundy, but the United States exists and its power is real. Look. It. Up.
As a basis for governing the nation, the moneyed interests almost instantly recognized the Articles of Confederation as a national disaster. The national government thus created was a movie-like, sad, huge, powerful monster, tragically brought low because it could not feed itself or control its dangerously rumbly tummy. The monster could wage war, but could not levy taxes or regulate business. It was the Koch brothers' dream come true.
In hindsight its easy to foresee the outcome. Ordinary folks were actually living the national economic disaster. Restless, impoverished, unhappy, well armed, ordinary folks were the rumbly tummy of the United States under the Articles of Confederation.
In 1786, in Western Massachusetts, foreclosures and debt collection suits were rendering families destitute to the point that armed men staged attacks that closed the courts, to stop the cases and prevent the ruin of shopkeepers and smallholders. A force of 1200 men attacked the federal arsenal at Springfield, MA but were repulsed by Massachusetts Commonwealth militia, ending the outbreak of violence but helping to cement national sentiment in favor of greater federal power. That was
Shays's Rebellion.
That same year, delegates from fives States meeting in Maryland realized that problems strangling the growth of the national economy could not be resolved without a stronger national government, the Annapolis Convention sent out a call for a Constitutional Convention.
The result, as they say, is history, summarized thus by Britannica.com:
The authors of the Constitution were heavily influenced by the country’s experience under the Articles of Confederation, which had attempted to retain as much independence and sovereignty for the states as possible and to assign to the central government only those nationally important functions that the states could not handle individually. But the events of the years 1781 to 1787, including the national government’s inability to act during Shays’s Rebellion (1786–87) in Massachusetts, showed that the Articles were unworkable because they deprived the national government of many essential powers, including direct taxation and the ability to regulate interstate commerce. It was hoped that the new Constitution would remedy this problem.
The U.S. Constitution fundamentally changed the character of the federal government, but only by granting greater powers without taking away any national power previously exercised under the Articles of Confederation. Since the U.S. Constitution took effect in 1789, the power of the federal government to levy taxes has never been reduced by constitutional amendment, though the 16th Amendment did enlarge federal taxing power in 1913.
A national government that will not tax or will not regulate national commerce is as useless as a government that lacks such powers. Under the Articles of Confederation, we tried it the Koch brothers' way. Even in a nation that moved as slowly as 18th Century America, it did not work.
But on those rare occasions when Congress has briefly recognized its power and duty to regulate commerce and impose taxes for the general Welfare of the People of the United States (Social Security, Medicare, Affordable Care Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, etc.), the general Welfare improves. Go figure.
The notions that pass for ideas among the Tea Party, militia types and the god botherers seem fundamentally un-American. They are subversive. They seek to strip the federal government of powers that it has and give it powers it doesn't have. They would take away its ability to exercise its tax and regulatory powers effectively, but would have the national government exercising religious powers that it does not have. They would create another sad, helpless monster that can't feed itself or maintain the peace. If they finally managed to create their A Handmaid's Tale-style dystopia in America, they would probably call it a City on the Hill.
But the United States is greater than the sum of its parts because the individual States have yielded a portion of their sovereignty to create a supreme governing authority. The United States is greater than a bunch of ignorant Tea Party, militia types and god botherers. It is greater than billionaire anarchists. In its history, the United States has faced troubling times of terrible income inequality, polarization, even Civil War, as well as regulatory dysfunction. But the USA has survived, so far, and American life, viewed on a long enough time scale, has improved. In the hands of honest people of good will, our institutions are equal to this challenge and we may yet see our national government act efficiently to exercise its tax and regulatory power to further improve the general Welfare of the People of the United States.