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Americans may be the most-ignorant people on earth about their home. They will claim support and love for our Constitution but, in reality, few people really understand that document. This article tries to set straight some common misconceptions about our nation and our Constitution.THIS IS A CHRISTIAN NATION.
This falsehood rests on the fallacious story that the Puritans, our so-called pilgrims of the Mayflower who arrived in Massachusetts in 1620 for religious freedom, are the basis of the nation. That's nonsense.
First off, the pilgrims were not early arrivals on the shores of the new world. British settlements began appearing in present day Canada by 1606 and had moved south into present-day New England by 1610. Britain had established the Jamestown colony in what is now Virginia in 1607, but it was an agriculture colony, not religious, so is ignored. The Dutch established a colony called Fort Nassau near present-day Albany, NY, in 1615.
Secondly, the pilgrims did not come to the Western Hemisphere for religious freedom. They left England for religious freedom in 1907-8 but went to Belgium. There, they found making a decent living was difficult for immigrants so entered into a contract with the London Company to come to America to establish one more agriculture colony. Religion had nothing to do with it. The Mayflower was a hired ship, leased by the London Company specifically for that trip, and the trip was made for economic reasons, not religious.
Additionally, the first black slaves were brought here in 1619, so if arrival time were the basis of creating a nation, we would have to admit to being a slave nation before we could make any claim of being a Christian nation.
UNITED STATES WAS FOUNDED JULY 4, 1776.
It's "common knowledge" that the United States was founded on the day of independence, July 4, 1776. That knowledge is wrong, but one hears it regularly from many quarters each July Fourth, including on OpEdNews, where people should know better. The truth is the United States was founded on March 1, 1781, when the Articles of Confederation became operative. We should know this is so just by reading and understanding the English language.
When the First Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, the document referred to the "united States of America" indicating only that the states were united in seeking their independence. That "united" being lower case, shows that it was an adjective, not a noun which it would become in the Articles when it became the "United States of America." The capital "U" is important because it signifies a proper noun and that of a name or title. It is also worth knowing that many writers at the time capitalized most or all nouns, which demonstrated an added difference from an adjective. Many people think the capitalized nouns in the Constitution signify some importance; they only signify that Gouverneur Morris, whose penmanship is the original Constitution, capitalized all nouns.
But the nation under the Confederation was little more than a collection of semi-sovereign mini-nations under a single banner so those states had to be united into one nation with the Constitution that became effective in 1789.
WE HAVE A REPUBLIC NOT A DEMOCRACY.
The word "democracy" ~ or a derivative ~ doesn't appear in the Constitution and "republic" only appears once, when the federal government guarantees to the states a "republican form of government."
In the Federalist Papers, James Madison clearly stated that, "In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people ..."
A democracy is a system in which government power is held and exercised by the people. In a republic, power is delegated to, and exercised by, a select group. It should be noted here that according to Madison's statement, power originated with the people, a democracy, but the people gave it up to the new nation that had a republican form of government. Since power came from the people, as opposed of coming from a god (a theocracy), from an elite group (an aristocracy), from a royal family (a kingdom), it is democratic power. That means the United States has a republican form of government based on democratic principles.
Nazi Germany was a republic, as was the Soviet Union, and as is modern-day China. The difference being that Nazi Germany's republic relied on fascist principles, the Soviet Union's was based of Marxist principles as interpreted by Lenin and China's republic is based on Lenin's interpretation of Marxist principles as refined by the Chinese Communist Party.
Logic also tells us that when we surrender our powers to government, we can only surrender those powers we would have if government didn't exist. We would not have the power in a governmentless world to dictate to others what they say or think, what god they worship, or what private morality they are to observe. We also would not have the power to tell others who they could love or marry, nor could we dictate to any woman whether or not she should carry a pregnancy to term, nor could we tell others they don't have the right to be born homosexual. We would not have the power to tell others how much "patriotism" they must demonstrate. Therefore, government doesn't have the power to make such decision for us; we have never empowered government to do such things because we couldn't, and that is reflected in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights against government reaching too far and in the absence of powers in other areas such as love lives, marriages and regulation of the procreation process. Government's authority over marriages can only be its power to regulate commerce and that could only be used to oversee the obligations of a contract, which marriage is. Right-wingers who are currently conducting a war against gay rights are subconsciously claiming gays cannot enter into the very contracts that straights can. When courts, such as those in Massachusetts and California, rule in favor of same-sex marriages they are only reflecting that the right of contracting belongs to all competent parties, one of the four conditions of a contract. Righties will often argue against gay-marriage with the ridiculous claim that if homosexuals could marry there would be nothing to prevent a man from marrying his dog or a tree. They will fail to explain how a dog or tree could meet all four conditions of a contract in order to be partners in a contract.
Madison's statement also defines the Tenth Amendment, something that most Americans haven't the faintest idea of its meaning. (A professor at Georgetown University Graduate School of Government once stated to his class that, "Nobody knows what the Tenth Amendment means.") Well, it means what Madison alluded to, that powers the people didn't give to the new federal government or to the states, are retained by the people. The US Supreme Court said in a 1990 decision that, " '[T]he people' seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution. The Preamble declares that the Constitution is ordained and established by 'the people of the United States.' The Second Amendment protects 'the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,' and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that certain rights and powers are retained by and reserved to 'the people'. "
Note that the Court said the Tenth designates "power ... reserved to the people" therefore it is a "peoples' power" amendment, not a "states' rights" amendment, as is commonly thought. It is also noteworthy to see the Ninth refers to rights retained by the people and the Tenth refers to powers reserved to the people, proving the two are related and that the entire Bill of Rights pertains to the relationship between the federal government and the people of America and has nothing to do with states or state powers or rights. Incidentally, states have power and only power, people have rights. The Tenth makes the people the fourth branch of government alongside the legislative, executive and judicial branches and the fourth component of government with the federal, state and local components. People proclaiming "state's rights" or "sovereignty of the states" under the Tenth Amendment are engaging in subversive prattle.
That subversive prattle is exactly what happened recently in Oklahoma when its legislature passed House Joint Resolution 1089 claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Republic and democracy are of two different genres and are not in conflict. The best government is a government that contains both.
THE DRED SCOTT DECISION STARTED CIVIL WAR.
That is nonsense, but we hear it often, especially by those who think the Civil War was unnecessary. One writer at the Huffington Post declared Dred Scott v. Sandford as "the case holding that blacks were not persons, undoing the Missouri Compromise and setting the stage for the civil war." That is stretching the decision quite a bit.
Had the slave Scott won his case in the 1857 session of SCOTUS and been freed at that time, southern slave states would have declared independence immediately and attacked federal forces at that time and the war would have stared during the James Buchanan administration. Buchanan is considered in many academic quarters as the worst president in history (worse than George W. Bush?) and one of the knocks on him is that he did nothing to halt the southern states from leaving the union therefore would have done nothing to keep the nation intact. South Carolina declared its secession Dec. 21, 1860, and others soon followed, but Buchanan ignored that and left the matter up to his successor, Abraham Lincoln; just as Bush will leave the Iraqi mess to his successor.
The Dred Scott decision wasn't about slavery, whether it was necessary or evil, and wasn't about whether or not blacks were persons. It was about citizenship. At the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, the 13 colonies existed as independent sovereign nations, making their own determinations on all matters. When they officially entered into the Articles of Confederation in 1781, they still retained most of their sovereignty, giving up little to the Confederation. When that arrangement failed, the Founding Fathers gathered and wound up writing a new Constitution rather than strengthening the Articles, which had the very limited authority of making war, printing and borrowing money, making foreign agreements and handling issues of the western territories. In short, Texas GOP Rep. Ron Paul's ideal nation. Had the Founders had any inclination toward the libertarianism espoused by Paul they would have stuck with the Articles and not written the new Constitution.
But the Constitution left the matter of citizenship with the states. A person was a citizen of a state first, and that state citizenship conferred US citizenship. That is why a well-regarded United States general, Robert E. Lee, fought for the rebellious Confederacy rather than the Union; he was a Virginian and owed his primary allegiance to that state. When the states refused to grant state citizenship to slaves, US citizenship was also denied. So the Supreme Court ruled that Scott, not being a citizen of the state in which he was born or in which he resided, was also not a citizen of the United States and couldn't claim the rights of a citizen of a state or of the nation. Chief Justice Roger Taney, a slave owner, made some silly statements in the written decision, but they weren't the rule of law that mattered.
The Fourteenth Amendment corrected this oversight and made national citizenship automatic to all born or naturalized in the US.
JOHN MCCAIN INELIGIBLE FOR PRESIDENCY BECAUSE HE WAS FOREIGN BORN
Many people are of the opinion that McCain is ineligible for the presidency because he was born in Panama, on a US military base to which his naval officer father was assigned.
They point to the constitutional provision that only "natural born" Americans are eligible for the presidency as specified in Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution. That issue had been raised before when George Romney sought the GOP nomination in the 1960s. It was an invalid argument then and is an invalid argument now.
The problem arises because those who deny McCain's eligibility have a problem with reading. The important word is "natural" and McCain by being born to American parents is natural born; that is, he's an American by nature.
If the Constitution denied the presidency to those who are not "native born" Americans, McCain may not be eligible, but it doesn't say that.
NOTHING IN CONSTITUTION PREVENTS STATES FROM LEAVING UNION.
Former US Attorney General and US Senator John Ashcroft had addressed a southern white-supremacist group years ago telling its members that the southern states had every right to secede from the US and establish an independent nation of their liking, one that could have theoretically maintained slavery into perpetuity. That is absolute nonsense and an indictment of the voters of Missouri (pronounced misery) for electing him to an important Senate seat, after electing him governor of the state, and of the George W. Bush administration for ever considering this man for an important post ~ although he was arguably superior as attorney general to his successor, Alberto Gonzales.
A New Republic magazine article tracing the musings of Rep. Paul said, "his newsletters have themselves repeatedly expressed sympathy for the general concept of secession. In 1992, for instance, the Survival Report argued that 'the right of secession should be ingrained in a free society' and that 'there is nothing wrong with loosely banding together small units of government. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, we too should consider it.' "
The Constitution disagrees with both men.
Article IV, Section 3, clearly states that no state can divide itself into two states ~ i.e. Virginia and West Virginia ~ without approval of the state legislature and of the US Congress, and that no two or more states can join together to form a new state. The same article states that no US property can be disposed off except by approval of Congress. When 11 Southern States tried to leave the union, they violated the first part of this article by uniting to form one governmental entity and they tried to take considerable US property with them. A third prohibition is that the US was created by the people: clearly says that in the Preamble, and Founding Father John Marshall reiterated that in an 1819 Supreme Court decision. No state government can unilaterally undo what the American people created. The final kicker on the question is Article I, Section 10, that clearly states "No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation." And that one doesn't grant Congress power to concur or grant permission. It says "no" and it means "no"; that is final. If any people wish to secede from the union, they are perfectly entitled to do so; they just can't take US property or territory with them.
GOLD AND SILVER ARE ONLY FORM OF LEGAL MONEY
This is an arguing point from many on the political right, including Paul. But it just isn't so. Article I, Section 10, says that no state "can make anything but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts ..." and that statement applies only to the states. There is nothing in the Constitution that establishes gold and/or silver as the coin of the national realm. There is nothing that says some other metal or paper can't be legal tender.
The prohibition on the states was put there because the economy of the 13 colonies was in shambles after the Revolutionary War. Great Britain had been the primary trading partner of the colonies and the British were a tad bit piqued about the outcome of hostilities so little commerce was exchanged. With no income, local politicians, who were also the merchants and planters, would make a commodity a form of payment. How a bank was to operate receiving bales of cotton or bushels of beans to pay for outstanding loans was of no concern to those paying that way.
RIGHTS COME FROM GOVERNMENT
Paul had this to say while opposing campaign-finance reform: "The First amendment unquestionably grants individuals and businesses the free and unfettered right to advertise, lobby, and contribute to politicians as they choose. Campaign reform legislation blows a huge hole in these First amendment protections by criminalizing criticism of elected officials."
In slamming the court for the Roe v. Wade decision Paul claimed the judges created "new rights out of thin air."
Others on the political right are just as wrong on this matter as is Paul.
Richard Nixon once proclaimed that the right of free speech didn't extend to "abuse" of speech, therefore that right could be rescinded by government since government granted the right in the first place.
Inept former Attorney General Gonzales once testified before Congress that the Constitution didn't grant a right of Habeas Corpus, only protected it if it were to be granted by law.
Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia, who couldn't find a right to privacy in the Constitution, said that if the people want such a right, they should just pass a law creating that right.
They are all wrong; our rights predate the Constitution and government, laws or politicians have not created them for us, as these right-wingers allude. In the Federalist Papers, John Jay said that Americans would be surrendering some of their rights in order that the new government have necessary powers, a statement showing rights predated the Constitution. The Ninth Amendment refers to rights "retained by the people," another statement proving rights do not come from government.
In an 1876 decision, the Court held, "The right of the people peaceably to assemble for lawful purposes existed long before the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. In fact, it is, and always has been, one of the attributes of citizenship under a free government... It is found wherever civilization exists. It was not, therefore, a right granted to the people by the Constitution. The government of the United States when established found it in existence, with the obligation on the part of the States to afford it protection..."
If logic ruled, Staten Island would belong to New Jersey, Michigan's Upper Peninsula would be northeastern Wisconsin, the Delmarva Peninsula would be only Delaware, the Red Lake Indian Reservation would be Canadian, all territory south of the St. Lawrence River would be US territory and children living in Point Roberts, Washington, wouldn't have to travel through Canada to attend school just a few miles away in Blaine, Washington. But logic doesn't prevail, so we must muddle through best we can, and the best we can is to ignore those who don't know what they're talking about.
