By ignoring the Articles, the Right can pretend that the Constitution was written with the goal of establishing a system dominated by the states with the central government kept small and weak. That version of history then is cited to support right-wing claims that federal officials, such as Roosevelt and Obama, violate the Constitution when they seek national solutions to the country's economic and social problems.
However, in the real history, the Framers of the Constitution, particularly George Washington and James Madison, were rejecting the structure of "independent" and "sovereign" states (with a weak central government or "league of friendship") as established by the Articles of Confederation. The Framers had witnessed how that system had failed and how it was threatening the future of the newly independent nation.
Thus, Washington and Madison led what amounted to a coup d'etat at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Though their instructions were simply to propose amendments to the Articles and refer those suggestions back to the state legislatures, Washington and Madison instead threw out the Articles entirely and produced a dramatically different structure.
Gone was the language in the Articles about "sovereign" and "independent" states. Instead, national sovereignty was shifted to "We the People of the United States." The new Constitution made federal law supreme and granted the central government sweeping new powers over currency and commerce as well as broad authority to act on behalf of the "General Welfare."
Washington and Madison also circumvented the state legislatures, putting the new Constitution before special conventions and requiring only approval of nine of the 13 states for ratification. The proposed changes were so radical that a determined opposition arose, known as the Anti-Federalists.
To save his plan, Madison joined in writing a series of articles called the Federalist Papers, in which he mostly tried to downplay how radical the changes actually were. He also agreed to tack on a Bill of Rights, spelling out specific guarantees for individuals and the states.
Misreading Amendments
Some of the first 10 amendments were substantive and others mostly rhetorical, For instance, the Tenth Amendment states that powers not granted by the Constitution to the central government remain with the people and the states. However, the whole point of any constitution is to define the limits of a government's powers -- and the powers granted to the central government by the Constitution were extraordinarily broad.
So, the Tenth Amendment -- despite efforts by today's Right to exaggerate its significance -- was mostly a sop to the Anti-Federalists. To recognize how insignificant it is, it should be contrasted with Article Two of the Articles of Confederation, which it essentially replaced. [See Robert Parry's America's Stolen Narrative.]
Today's Right also has misrepresented the original intent of the Second Amendment, which reads: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." This concession also was primarily to the states which wanted militias to maintain "security."
The context for those concerns related to the recent experience of Shays' Rebellion in western Massachusetts (in 1786-87) as well as the fear of slave revolts in the South and raids by Native Americans on the frontier. The states wanted their own militias to put down such uprisings.
In the early days of the Republic, the Second Amendment also was not seen as a universal right for individuals. For instance, some states passed "Black Codes" that barred all African-Americans from owning guns. When the Second Congress passed the Militia Act of 1792, the law specified arming "white" men of military age.
Yet, despite some of the ugly compromises that went into drafting the Constitution, such as its tolerance of slavery, the chief goal of the Framers was to create a framework for a democratic Republic that would enable the new nation to pass laws necessary for the country's growth and success.
European monarchies were predicting that this experiment in self-governance would fail, so the likes of Washington and Madison wanted to show that Americans could govern themselves without resort to violence. The Framers stated as one of their top goals, "domestic Tranquility."
The Framers also recognized the failure of the Articles and the need for a vibrant central government in a country as sprawling as the United States. The last thing they wanted was an armed population violently resisting the constitutionally elected government of the United States. Indeed, they declared such behavior to be "treason." [See Consortiumnews.com's "More Second Amendment Madness."]
But today's neo-Confederates and other right-wingers have spent vast sums of money distorting American history and deluding many Americans into believing that they must do whatever is necessary to "take back" their country from the likes of Barack Obama.
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