The federalist papers should be required reading for every kid in school. The worst decision our enlightened educators ever made was getting rid of civics in schools. If you ask just about anyone under the age of 35 they have no idea about our govt. How it works or even the branches of it. It is a joke that isn’t funny. Great piece Doc.
While I agree civics should still be a required course in HS (and college), the problem is that it can be taught in a very unbalanced manner. As an example, I was taking some Econ classes back in the aught years (yes, 2000s, not 1900s) and the micro prof came from a decidedly leftist (he was a borderline commie from Greece) perspective - don’t believe there was a big gummint policy he disagreed with.
To be clear, not running the fella down, just commenting on his world view: I still managed to high ace the class despite my repeatedly challenging him in class. Greatly enjoyed that class and macro: being 2x as old as the median age confers some academic cachet 🤣. Now that I’m a bit more than thrice the median age, there’s some more classes I’m interested in auditing.
That's so interesting the horrible fiscal shape that Greece has been in since the mid-80s. Goldman eventually admitted to cooking the books for Greece's EU entry, and that, as actually constituted, Greece NEVER QUALIFIED to enter the EU! Your prof NEVER LEARNED THE LESSON! WOW.
In my view, when Congress voted to view corporations as citizens and gave them the same rights as an individual the damage was complete! Corporations should be subservient to the citizens of the US. The great harm that has been done and is being done and will accelerate needs to be stopped. The future of this republic should be guided by the needs of the citizens and not the corporations goals which are detrimental to that end. The scales are unbalanced in the halls of justice.
That also reinforced the idea that states could not outlaw out of state money from in state elections. Proposed to my state leg sa bill banning g. soros from buying the next senator from Texas. She agreed with the sentiment but said that particular decision by SCOTUS would make it impossible.
Corporations, by the very structure under law, are answerable to their shareholders. How would they be answerable to citizens, unless those same shareholders are citizens? Doesn't make sense.
So, in 250 years we’ve done a couple things: 1) we’ve flipped the power (I’m)balance in the United States from being State focused to DC focused; this was accomplished by a) impoverishing the states by subsuming the states taxation power thru the 16th A; and b) negating the states political power by removing the states role in the Senate thru the 17th A.
Nice analysis of the 16th, added muchly - including some more to think upon. These two summaries, from a lay person’s pen would be well served by being included in every ConLaw student’s syllabus - as a contrarian view to the majority of what they’ll ingest.
That's a clean summary, you nailed the two-part mechanism in three sentences. Impoverish the states through the 16th, cut their political power through the 17th, same year, one two punch.
Book II traces that exact power shift, just from a different angle. Fourteen historical eras, tracking how the citizens themselves got formed alongside the government structure changing around them. Your read explains how DC took the levers. Mine's been asking why the states and the citizens let it happen without much of a fight. Different half of the same collapse.
If it's useful, I lay the whole arc out at ourcivicspress.com. Appreciate the analysis either way.
Dr. Malone, this is a hell of a piece of work, tracing the exact amendments and case law that gutted the checks the founders built. Most people just wave their hands at "big government" and never name the mechanism. You named it.
Here's what I keep chewing on after reading both essays. You've laid out how the ceiling got raised, how Washington took the levers away from the states one amendment at a time. But none of that happens without the floor moving first. The Seventeenth Amendment doesn't pass in 1913 if the citizens of 1913 are formed the way the citizens of 1776 were. Somewhere along the way the people who were supposed to defend those checks stopped being able to, or stopped caring to.
That's the piece I've spent the last couple years trying to measure. I call it the ceiling of government competence is set by the floor of citizen capacity. You're diagnosing the ceiling. I've been building a twelve-axis diagnostic for the floor, tracing how the founding generation was formed for self-government and how that formation has drifted since. Different layer, same collapse.
If it's useful, I've got a trilogy working through this at ourcivicspress.com. Appreciate the essay either way. Happy 4th.
The power of "Let the rich pay their fair share" rotted the floor.
Yesterday I heard a woman giving a speech saying the FIRST purpose of government was to help "spread the wealth" and equalize things. She was in her 50's, sincere and educated. The idea that Protect us from enemies might be a priority was so outside her radar it was sad. She really had no concept of what a war on our soil would be, or that it was possible.
Fran, that right there is the floor rotting in real time. She wasn't lying to you, she wasn't scheming. She just got formed that way. Nobody ever taught her that government's FIRST job is to protect what's already yours, your life, before it does one single other thing. Spreading wealth around, that's not first, that isn't even close to first.
And here's the scary part. She can't even see protection as an option. It's not that she disagrees with it. It never got loaded into her head as a thing to consider in the first place. That's not really on her. That's on everything that formed her, schools, culture, whoever was doing the teaching for fifty years.
A woman like that isn't some weirdo outlier either. She's a whole generation's floor. And policy gets built on that floor whether we like it or not.
I think term limits at all levels of governance the correct solution to one individual gaining too much power. Also, non-unionized staff selected by merit. Perhaps even a thoughtful term limit here as well
This is a wonderful essay for ALL to read. Thank you for putting it out there. Far too many people are oblivious of our history.
On a separate note, I have baby mini donkeys coming soon. I think you need a few to protect your foul! They are fierce protectors. Charlottesville area….stones throw away!
Oh my goodness - baby mini donkeys. I adore donkeys. Years ago, my husband & I went to the island of Bonaire, where they have a donkey sanctuary. It was the first place I wanted to go. They are sooo sweet.
Add to all this the ability of the fed to print money. Build a dam costs umpteen $billion ...print umpteen $billion and all good...except the dollars in our pockets collectively reduced in value by umpteen $billion.
The Civics class I took in the 9th grade gave me such a great introduction to the inner workings of the American government! I was privileged to have an incredible, knowledgeable teacher who engaged the class and made sure we understood what he was teaching! This class colored my learning throughout my educational years and was responsible for my “Common Sense” political views throughout my life. I so wish students of today could share the same experience, with the same excellent teacher who taught me. I fear that a teacher of such caliber would be hard to find in today’s progressive teaching climate. How sad.
I would not be so critical of the Framers. THEIR Constitution forbade what you object to. That Constitution had to be amended to allow what you decry. Don't blame the Framers for not anticipating the bizarre turn politics would take 100 years after their actions. Blame the Progressives and those whose votes they swayed in the early 20th Century.
What the heck happened in 1913 and before, because you know this wasn't an overnight thing. We (the people) have been paying ever since. "To live outside the law, you must be honest" Dylan. I learned how to work around the system at the end of my career. I gave up my license so I couldn't be harassed and only took cash as a donation that I never saw or held. A bowl for donations and willing clients that I simply saw as friends needing a haircut.
The Woodrow Wilson crowd prevailed. In addition to pushing socialism, they breathed new life into racism (which was fading) and encouraged Jim Crow laws be enforced.
Not unlike Obama reinvigorated racism and encouraged socialism.
Your offering here makes irrefutable sense. On the other hand, given the spector of today's managers, I'm unable to feel very hopeful.
Observing education over the course of my lifetime, I conclude it has been directed overall toward producing a citizenry of submission and compliance. Never a fan of numbers, the Bush era rework of teaching and numbers in particular seemed incomprehensible.
Add my experiences with Illinois and Maryland while watching New York, California and Washington. My faith in the citizenry, the States and mobility is sorely challenged.
For one, I do hope knowedgable statesmen will find their way into influential positions within the many governments. That more informed among the public and within the government will support needed reforms. Trump and his cabinet are setting a state for action. Now opens opportunity. May good come of it!
There is also that other financial abomination that was hatched in 1913, namely the Federal Reserve System. While the Constitution prohibits the issuance of Bills of Credit by the states and prohibits states from making anything but gold or silver coin a legal tender for discharging debts, it failed to impose similar prohibitions upon the federal government.
While there had been earlier attempts by Congress at empowering either a central bank or the Treasury at issuing a paper currency, the Fed is unique in that Congress delegated its discretion over the issuance of Bills of Credit (which are obligations of the US Treasury) to a fascist-style public-private partnership (in the current Fed structure, the Board of Governors are political appointees, while the Presidents of the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks are elected by directors representing private member banks and the Board of Governors).
Things got even worse in 1933 when Federal Reserve Notes were given legal tender status, which previously had been granted only to United States Notes in a highly dubious Supreme Court interpretation of Congress's power to "coin money and regulate the value thereof" in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Things have been really horrible since 1971, when the Treasury cut the last link between dollars and gold. If you go to the Treasury today and ask it to redeem your Federal Reserve Note for lawful money (which it has been legally obligated to do since FRNs were first issued in 1914), they'll just hand you another FRN of equivalent face value. Being forced to accept repayment of a debt instrument with another debt instrument of the same kind is a sick joke, not an honest foundation for a sound monetary system.
The power of the Fed to create legal tender fiat dollars out of thin air (and of private commercial banks to create dollar substitutes out of thin air, which are backstopped by the central bank whenever the financial system suffers from an adverse phase of the boom/bust cycle) serves to monetize longer-term debt obligations issued by the U.S. Treasury and by privileged private sector debtors. This manufacturing of financial assets for the benefit of the government and of well-connected crony corporations (and the commercial banks who cater to their credit needs) is not economically equivalent to creating physical capital goods that make labor and natural resources more productive (in sharp contrast to genuine capitalistic savings, which do aid real capital asset formation instead of just bidding up the prices of such assets).
Rather, it functions as a mighty engine of inflationary exploitation that erodes the purchasing power of honestly-earned incomes of workers, capitalists, and land-owners alike for those on the Fed's gravy train. In that respect, Fed-engineered inflation is just like another income tax.
Murray Rothbard has a lot to say about all this too; a couple of his books on the subject written for general audiences are:
The federalist papers should be required reading for every kid in school. The worst decision our enlightened educators ever made was getting rid of civics in schools. If you ask just about anyone under the age of 35 they have no idea about our govt. How it works or even the branches of it. It is a joke that isn’t funny. Great piece Doc.
While I agree civics should still be a required course in HS (and college), the problem is that it can be taught in a very unbalanced manner. As an example, I was taking some Econ classes back in the aught years (yes, 2000s, not 1900s) and the micro prof came from a decidedly leftist (he was a borderline commie from Greece) perspective - don’t believe there was a big gummint policy he disagreed with.
To be clear, not running the fella down, just commenting on his world view: I still managed to high ace the class despite my repeatedly challenging him in class. Greatly enjoyed that class and macro: being 2x as old as the median age confers some academic cachet 🤣. Now that I’m a bit more than thrice the median age, there’s some more classes I’m interested in auditing.
That's so interesting the horrible fiscal shape that Greece has been in since the mid-80s. Goldman eventually admitted to cooking the books for Greece's EU entry, and that, as actually constituted, Greece NEVER QUALIFIED to enter the EU! Your prof NEVER LEARNED THE LESSON! WOW.
In my view, when Congress voted to view corporations as citizens and gave them the same rights as an individual the damage was complete! Corporations should be subservient to the citizens of the US. The great harm that has been done and is being done and will accelerate needs to be stopped. The future of this republic should be guided by the needs of the citizens and not the corporations goals which are detrimental to that end. The scales are unbalanced in the halls of justice.
That also reinforced the idea that states could not outlaw out of state money from in state elections. Proposed to my state leg sa bill banning g. soros from buying the next senator from Texas. She agreed with the sentiment but said that particular decision by SCOTUS would make it impossible.
Corporations, by the very structure under law, are answerable to their shareholders. How would they be answerable to citizens, unless those same shareholders are citizens? Doesn't make sense.
So, in 250 years we’ve done a couple things: 1) we’ve flipped the power (I’m)balance in the United States from being State focused to DC focused; this was accomplished by a) impoverishing the states by subsuming the states taxation power thru the 16th A; and b) negating the states political power by removing the states role in the Senate thru the 17th A.
Nice analysis of the 16th, added muchly - including some more to think upon. These two summaries, from a lay person’s pen would be well served by being included in every ConLaw student’s syllabus - as a contrarian view to the majority of what they’ll ingest.
Shoot, noticed I left out a phrase: we’ve flipped the script from STATE focused in the "Articles of Confederation…"
There was a more nuanced BALANCE of powers in the succeeding Constitution which has shifted to the central gummint as pointed out in the two essays.
That's a clean summary, you nailed the two-part mechanism in three sentences. Impoverish the states through the 16th, cut their political power through the 17th, same year, one two punch.
Book II traces that exact power shift, just from a different angle. Fourteen historical eras, tracking how the citizens themselves got formed alongside the government structure changing around them. Your read explains how DC took the levers. Mine's been asking why the states and the citizens let it happen without much of a fight. Different half of the same collapse.
If it's useful, I lay the whole arc out at ourcivicspress.com. Appreciate the analysis either way.
Dr. Malone, this is a hell of a piece of work, tracing the exact amendments and case law that gutted the checks the founders built. Most people just wave their hands at "big government" and never name the mechanism. You named it.
Here's what I keep chewing on after reading both essays. You've laid out how the ceiling got raised, how Washington took the levers away from the states one amendment at a time. But none of that happens without the floor moving first. The Seventeenth Amendment doesn't pass in 1913 if the citizens of 1913 are formed the way the citizens of 1776 were. Somewhere along the way the people who were supposed to defend those checks stopped being able to, or stopped caring to.
That's the piece I've spent the last couple years trying to measure. I call it the ceiling of government competence is set by the floor of citizen capacity. You're diagnosing the ceiling. I've been building a twelve-axis diagnostic for the floor, tracing how the founding generation was formed for self-government and how that formation has drifted since. Different layer, same collapse.
If it's useful, I've got a trilogy working through this at ourcivicspress.com. Appreciate the essay either way. Happy 4th.
Steadfast,
J.D. Oliver
The power of "Let the rich pay their fair share" rotted the floor.
Yesterday I heard a woman giving a speech saying the FIRST purpose of government was to help "spread the wealth" and equalize things. She was in her 50's, sincere and educated. The idea that Protect us from enemies might be a priority was so outside her radar it was sad. She really had no concept of what a war on our soil would be, or that it was possible.
Fran, that right there is the floor rotting in real time. She wasn't lying to you, she wasn't scheming. She just got formed that way. Nobody ever taught her that government's FIRST job is to protect what's already yours, your life, before it does one single other thing. Spreading wealth around, that's not first, that isn't even close to first.
And here's the scary part. She can't even see protection as an option. It's not that she disagrees with it. It never got loaded into her head as a thing to consider in the first place. That's not really on her. That's on everything that formed her, schools, culture, whoever was doing the teaching for fifty years.
A woman like that isn't some weirdo outlier either. She's a whole generation's floor. And policy gets built on that floor whether we like it or not.
I think term limits at all levels of governance the correct solution to one individual gaining too much power. Also, non-unionized staff selected by merit. Perhaps even a thoughtful term limit here as well
This is a wonderful essay for ALL to read. Thank you for putting it out there. Far too many people are oblivious of our history.
On a separate note, I have baby mini donkeys coming soon. I think you need a few to protect your foul! They are fierce protectors. Charlottesville area….stones throw away!
JGM - I am all in! you are just going to have to convince Robert that more animals are a necessity...
Oh my goodness - baby mini donkeys. I adore donkeys. Years ago, my husband & I went to the island of Bonaire, where they have a donkey sanctuary. It was the first place I wanted to go. They are sooo sweet.
This essay does not delve into the debt power that followed the taxing power, but that may be a separate topic.
Add to all this the ability of the fed to print money. Build a dam costs umpteen $billion ...print umpteen $billion and all good...except the dollars in our pockets collectively reduced in value by umpteen $billion.
Excellent article.
We're paying for the unintended consequences and short sightedness of actions taken by previous generations of Americans.
The Civics class I took in the 9th grade gave me such a great introduction to the inner workings of the American government! I was privileged to have an incredible, knowledgeable teacher who engaged the class and made sure we understood what he was teaching! This class colored my learning throughout my educational years and was responsible for my “Common Sense” political views throughout my life. I so wish students of today could share the same experience, with the same excellent teacher who taught me. I fear that a teacher of such caliber would be hard to find in today’s progressive teaching climate. How sad.
What a wonderful testimony!
I would not be so critical of the Framers. THEIR Constitution forbade what you object to. That Constitution had to be amended to allow what you decry. Don't blame the Framers for not anticipating the bizarre turn politics would take 100 years after their actions. Blame the Progressives and those whose votes they swayed in the early 20th Century.
The fact that everything you wrote is not common knowledge is one more example of the "advantage" of dumbing down education.
What the heck happened in 1913 and before, because you know this wasn't an overnight thing. We (the people) have been paying ever since. "To live outside the law, you must be honest" Dylan. I learned how to work around the system at the end of my career. I gave up my license so I couldn't be harassed and only took cash as a donation that I never saw or held. A bowl for donations and willing clients that I simply saw as friends needing a haircut.
The Woodrow Wilson crowd prevailed. In addition to pushing socialism, they breathed new life into racism (which was fading) and encouraged Jim Crow laws be enforced.
Not unlike Obama reinvigorated racism and encouraged socialism.
Wilson was a thoroughly odious creature.
Your offering here makes irrefutable sense. On the other hand, given the spector of today's managers, I'm unable to feel very hopeful.
Observing education over the course of my lifetime, I conclude it has been directed overall toward producing a citizenry of submission and compliance. Never a fan of numbers, the Bush era rework of teaching and numbers in particular seemed incomprehensible.
Add my experiences with Illinois and Maryland while watching New York, California and Washington. My faith in the citizenry, the States and mobility is sorely challenged.
For one, I do hope knowedgable statesmen will find their way into influential positions within the many governments. That more informed among the public and within the government will support needed reforms. Trump and his cabinet are setting a state for action. Now opens opportunity. May good come of it!
There is also that other financial abomination that was hatched in 1913, namely the Federal Reserve System. While the Constitution prohibits the issuance of Bills of Credit by the states and prohibits states from making anything but gold or silver coin a legal tender for discharging debts, it failed to impose similar prohibitions upon the federal government.
While there had been earlier attempts by Congress at empowering either a central bank or the Treasury at issuing a paper currency, the Fed is unique in that Congress delegated its discretion over the issuance of Bills of Credit (which are obligations of the US Treasury) to a fascist-style public-private partnership (in the current Fed structure, the Board of Governors are political appointees, while the Presidents of the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks are elected by directors representing private member banks and the Board of Governors).
Things got even worse in 1933 when Federal Reserve Notes were given legal tender status, which previously had been granted only to United States Notes in a highly dubious Supreme Court interpretation of Congress's power to "coin money and regulate the value thereof" in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Things have been really horrible since 1971, when the Treasury cut the last link between dollars and gold. If you go to the Treasury today and ask it to redeem your Federal Reserve Note for lawful money (which it has been legally obligated to do since FRNs were first issued in 1914), they'll just hand you another FRN of equivalent face value. Being forced to accept repayment of a debt instrument with another debt instrument of the same kind is a sick joke, not an honest foundation for a sound monetary system.
The power of the Fed to create legal tender fiat dollars out of thin air (and of private commercial banks to create dollar substitutes out of thin air, which are backstopped by the central bank whenever the financial system suffers from an adverse phase of the boom/bust cycle) serves to monetize longer-term debt obligations issued by the U.S. Treasury and by privileged private sector debtors. This manufacturing of financial assets for the benefit of the government and of well-connected crony corporations (and the commercial banks who cater to their credit needs) is not economically equivalent to creating physical capital goods that make labor and natural resources more productive (in sharp contrast to genuine capitalistic savings, which do aid real capital asset formation instead of just bidding up the prices of such assets).
Rather, it functions as a mighty engine of inflationary exploitation that erodes the purchasing power of honestly-earned incomes of workers, capitalists, and land-owners alike for those on the Fed's gravy train. In that respect, Fed-engineered inflation is just like another income tax.
Murray Rothbard has a lot to say about all this too; a couple of his books on the subject written for general audiences are:
https://mises.org/library/book/what-has-government-done-our-money
https://mises.org/library/book/mystery-banking