Mises Wire |
- Will Argentina's Next President Be a Rothbardian?
- Generalissimo Washington: How He Crushed the Spirit of Liberty
- More than Sixty Years after "Liberation," Cuba Is a Communist Slave State
- How Much Did the US Government Pressure Twitter to Ban Alex Berenson?
- To Avoid Civil War, Learn to Tolerate Different Laws in Different States
- Is the Constitution a Centralizing or Decentralizing Document?
| Will Argentina's Next President Be a Rothbardian? Posted: 11 Jul 2022 12:15 PM PDT Since the 1940s, failed statist schemes have dragged Argentina into poverty. Javier Milei, who is gaining popularity there, hopes to change his nation's sad history. Original Article: "Will Argentina's Next President Be a Rothbardian?" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. |
| Generalissimo Washington: How He Crushed the Spirit of Liberty Posted: 11 Jul 2022 12:00 PM PDT Washington Transforms the ArmyIn June of 1775, George Washington was appointed Major General and elected by Congress to be commander in chief of the American revolutionary forces. Although he took up his tasks energetically, Washington accomplished nothing militarily for the remainder of the year and more, nor did he try. His only campaign in 1775 was internal rather than external; it was directed against the American army as he found it, and was designed to extirpate the spirit of liberty pervading this unusually individualistic and democratic army of militiamen. In short, Washington set out to transform a people's army, uniquely suited for a libertarian revolution, into another orthodox and despotically ruled statist force after the familiar European model. His primary aim was to crush the individualistic and democratic spirit of the American forces. For one thing, the officers of the militia were elected by their own men, and the discipline of repeated elections kept the officers from forming an aristocratic ruling caste typical of European armies of the period. The officers often drew little more pay than their men, and there were no hierarchical distinctions of rank imposed between officers and men. As a consequence, officers could not enforce their wills coercively on the soldiery. This New England equality horrified Washington's conservative and highly aristocratic soul. To introduce a hierarchy of ruling caste, Washington insisted on distinctive decorations of dress in accordance with minute gradations of rank. As one observer phrased it: "New lords, new laws…. The strictest government is taking place, and great distinction is made between officers and soldier. Everyone is made to know his place and keep it." Despite the great expense involved, he also tried to stamp out individuality in the army by forcing uniforms upon them; but the scarcity of cloth made this plan unfeasible. At least as important as distinctions in decoration was the introduction of extensive inequality in pay. Led by Washington and the other aristocratic southern delegates, and over the objections of Massachusetts, the Congress insisted on fixing a pay scale for generals and other officers considerably higher than that of the rank and file. In addition to imposing a web of hierarchy on the Continental Army, Washington crushed liberty within by replacing individual responsibility by iron despotism and coercion. Severe and brutal punishments were imposed upon those soldiers whose sense of altruism failed to override their instinct for self-preservation. Furloughs were curtailed and girlfriends of soldiers were expelled from camp; above all, lengthy floggings were introduced for all practices that Washington considered esthetically or morally offensive. He even had the temerity to urge Congress to raise the maximum number of strikes of the lash from 39 to the enormous number of 500; fortunately, Congress refused. In a few short months, Washington had succeeded in extirpating a zealous, happy, individualistic people's army, and transforming it into yet another statist army, filled with bored, resentful, and even mutinous soldiery. The only thing he could not do was force the troops to continue in camp after their terms of enlistment were up at the end of the year, and by now the soldiers were longing for home. In addition to all other factors, Americans were not geared—nor should they have been—for a lengthy conflict of position and attrition; they were not professional soldiers, and they were needed at their homes and jobs and on their farms. Had they been a frankly guerrilla army, there would have been no conflict between these roles. As the end of 1775 drew near, then, Washington's main preoccupation was in forging a new army to replace the 17,000 men whose terms of enlistment were about to expire. His problems were aggravated by Congress's refusal to pay the bounties for enlistment New Englanders were used to receiving; instead caste distinctions were widened even further by raising officers' pay, while privates' pay remained the same. Only 3,500 of the old army agreed to reenlist; for the rest, very short-term enlistments of Massachusetts and New Hampshire men filled the gap until new enlistees finally swelled the total to about 10,000. As might have been expected, the wealthy and aristocratic Washington, free from money worries, had little understanding of the economic plight of his soldiery. In contrast to the legends about his compassion, Washington railed about the defecting troops as being possessed of a "dirty mercenary spirit" and of "basely deserting the cause of their country."1 A particularly colorful addition to the New England troops in the Continental Army, during the summer of 1775, was a detachment of nine enlisted companies of expert riflemen from the back-country frontier of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, five of them from Pennsylvania. There were over 1,400 of these riflemen in all. The bulk of them were hardy Ulster Scot frontiersmen, wearing hunting outfits bearing the motto Liberty or Death and employing the unique "Kentucky rifle," invented by Pennsylvania German gunsmiths. This long-barreled rifle was uniquely suited for guerrilla warfare. It shot more accurately and over a far longer range than the shorter musket in general use, but it did not reload rapidly, and hence was not useful for orthodox, open-field, positional or linear volley warfare. It is not surprising that these backwoodsmen proved even more individualistic and less tolerant of coercion than the New Englanders. When they terrorized British sentries with their sniping, Washington forbade such seemingly disorganized practice which spent ammunition. Whenever a rifleman was imprisoned for infringing one of Washington's arbitrary but cherished rules, his comrades would break into the prison and set him free. On one occasion, virtually an entire Pennsylvania company mutinied to try to free one of their own, and several regiments were needed to disarm and convict the Pennsylvanians, whose penalty consisted of less than a week's pay. The riflemen, however, were not so much unfit for any military service as they were "by nature and by experience, totally unfitted for inactive life in camp." When the opportunity came for action for which they were suited, they were to serve admirably.2 Winter at Valley ForgeIn December of 1777, Washington sensibly prepared to take his battered and half-fed men into winter quarters, rather than endure the rigors of another winter campaign as they had done the previous year. He favored quarters at Wilmington, where supplies would be plentiful and the weather mild. Furthermore, Delaware and Maryland could be guarded, and American boats could harass British shipping on the Delaware. The officers favored this plan; but in deference to Pennsylvania's howls against letting the British army ravage the countryside, and at the suggestion of Wayne, Washington weakly and unfortunately decided to winter on the icy slopes of Valley Forge, to the west of Philadelphia. Few worse locations for obtaining supplies could have been selected than this ravaged area. Generals James Varnum and "Baron" deKalb were particularly vehement at "wintering in this desert." On December 19, Washington's army, short of food and water, poorly sheltered, and terribly short of shoes and other clothing, staggered into the ill-conceived camp at Valley Forge. In these conditions, disease spread like wildfire through the camp. To obtain food, both the American and British forces sent foraging parties to confiscate cattle and other supplies from the hapless citizens. By the spring of 1778, massive desertions had reduced Washington's army to five or six thousand men. Greene was appointed quartermaster general in the emergency, and he was able to scrape up and confiscate enough provisions to last the army through the winter. During the campaigns of 1777 a suspicion began to well up among many Americans that Horatio Gates was an excellent general and Washington a miserable one, and that maybe something should be done about it. In Congress, forced to meet in the small town of York, Pennsylvania, it was the men of the American Left that were restive, notably Joseph Lovell and Sam Adams of Massachusetts. Dr. Benjamin Rush, a leading Pennsylvania liberal and chief physician in Washington's army, urged his replacement by "a Gates, Lee, or Conway," Thomas Conway being a capable Irish-born French general recently commissioned in the Continental Army. In November 1777, Congress advanced a step toward erecting a professional bureaucracy by creating a five-man Board of War, not composed of members of Congress, to supervise the army. As chairman of the board, Congress appointed the hero Gates, who was then too ill for field command. This apparent attempt to downgrade Washington and elevate Gates never got underway, in fact never reached the stature of an organized campaign. Indeed, no one in Congress ever proposed the replacement of Washington or even the curtailing of his powers. Two major factors contributed to the crushing of any murmurs of dissent against the commander in chief. One was Washington's ruthless use of an indiscretion he discovered—a letter critical of him sent by Gates to Conway. Washington and his influential friends immediately conjured up a nonexistent widespread "plot," the mythical "Conway Cabal," supposedly designed to scuttle Washington. Both Rush and Conway were soon forced out of the army by the vindictive Washington. Conway's fall (and subsequent emigration) and Gates's decline were also spurred by a madcap plan Gates had for another expedition to invade Canada and possibly take Montreal. This proposed expedition was to be independent of Washington's command, and was to be headed by the vain young French Catholic volunteer, the Marquis de Lafayette, in a rather farfetched scheme to appeal to the French Canadian masses. But Lafayette, ever worshipful of his patron Washington, refused to be independent of his commander in chief, and bitterly denounced the supposed conspirator Conway as responsible for an intrigue against Washington. When the proposed expedition fell through in March 1778, the failure hastened the demise of all incipient opposition to Washington. The Board of War fell into a decline, and Gates, in virtual disgrace, and subject to Washington's continuing vengeance, was assigned a tiny and innocuous command on the Hudson highlands. Thus, history had dealt in high irony with the victors at Saratoga. Gates, after the winter of 1777–78, was relegated out of the action, to a minor command; Arnold, seriously wounded and crippled at Bemis Heights, was never again to bear arms for the United States; and Schuyler, who, for all his faults, had after all harried and delayed Burgoyne in his march from Skenesboro, was in disgrace, suspected—with some justice—of treason. He too was never again to serve in the army; though eventually acquitted at court-martial for his actions at Ticonderoga, he left the army shortly after. Of the main victors over Burgoyne, only Daniel Morgan was to continue in action—and even he was soon to be treated shabbily by George Washington. Meanwhile, Washington, the architect of defeat, surmounted a flurry of opposition and continued more firmly in command than ever. As if the ragged soldiers at Valley Forge did not have enough troubles, they were to be further plagued by the arrival, in February, of a mendacious Prussian braggart and soldier of fortune calling himself "Baron von Steuben." Actually, Captain Steuben was neither a baron nor, as he claimed, a Prussian general; but he managed quickly to be elevated to the post of inspector general of the Continental Army. Steuben set about to Prussianize the American army, and so now the hapless soldiery suffered the infliction of the whole structure of petty and meaningless routine designed to stamp out individuality and transform the free and responsible soldier into an automaton subject to the will of his rulers. Ever since he had embarked on the Philadelphia campaign, Washington had grown ever further away from the guerrilla tactics that had won him victory at Trenton (and had defeated Burgoyne). Washington had no desire to become a guerrilla chieftain; to his aristocratic temper the only path to glory was through open, frontal combat as practiced by the great states of Europe. Washington had tried this formula, and lost dismally at Brandywine and at Germantown, but this experience taught him no real lessons. He was delighted to have Steuben continue the process he himself had begun in the first year of war of imposing petty enslavement upon a body of free men. Until recently, historians have rhapsodized uncritically over the benefits of Steuben's training, of the enormous difference in the army's performance. But Washington's and his army's performance was equally undistinguished before and after Steuben; any differences were scarcely visible. In the midst of this Prussianizing of the American army, Charles Lee was released in a prisoner exchange in early April. While Washington and Steuben were taking the army in an ever more European direction, Lee in captivity was moving the other way—pursuing his insights into a fullfledged and elaborated proposal for guerrilla warfare. He presented his plan to Congress, as a "Plan for the Formation of the American Army." Bitterly attacking Steuben's training of the army according to the "European Plan," Lee charged that fighting British regulars on their own terms was madness and courted crushing defeat: "If the Americans are servilely kept to the European Plan, they will … be laugh'd at as a bad army by their enemy, and defeated in every [encounter]…. [The idea] that a decisive action in fair ground may be risqued is talking nonsense." Instead, he declared that "a plan of defense, harassing and impeding can alone succeed," particularly if based on the rough terrain west of the Susquehannah River in Pennsylvania. He also urged the use of cavalry and of light infantry (in the manner of Dan Morgan), both forces highly mobile and eminently suitable for the guerrilla strategy. This strategic plan was ignored both by Congress and by Washington, all eagerly attuned to the new fashion of Prussianizing and to the attractions of a "real" army. Lee made himself further disliked by expressing yearnings for a negotiated peace, with full autonomy for America within the British Empire. During his year in captivity, it seems he had partially reverted to the position of the English Whigs. He did not realize that the United States was now totally committed to independence, and that peace terms that would have been satisfactory three years earlier would no longer do. Too much should not be made of this, however; General Sullivan, in his earlier term of captivity, had also been temporarily persuaded of similar views. On reaching camp in late May, Lee soon embittered Washington by scorning Washington's abilities, and praising Gates's in a letter to his friend Benjamin Rush. He did succeed, however, in having Steuben's powers curtailed. He also increased his unpopularity by objecting to—though reluctantly taking—a loyalty oath of allegiance to the United States and repudiating Great Britain, an oath forced upon every officer in the army. The old scourge of the Tories, the coercer of loyalty oaths, seemed to be growing soft. During the winter of 1777–78, Howe lost his last opportunity to crush Washington's army. Only twenty miles away, and drilling for open combat, it would have been easy prey. But Howe and his troops remained in Philadelphia: while the Americans froze, starved, and drilled, they reveled and partied, luxuriously enjoying the victuals, wine, and women of Philadelphia. On May 18, Washington, chafing at the inactivity, sent out a force of 2,200 men—one-third of his army—for a reconnaissance in force against the British. He placed in command of this pointless foray the Marquis de Lafayette, who was apparently being rewarded for his assiduous flattery of the commander in chief. Now he could have his own command and end his pouting; but 2,200 men seems an extravagant price for soothing Washington's protégé. Lafayette advanced to Barren Hill, only two miles north of the British lines, and settled down to wait. He did not have to wait long. Howe, about to be replaced by Clinton as commander in chief, was determined to end his term on a triumphal note by capturing the young Frenchman. But Lafayette, nearly surrounded, managed to elude the enemy with his troops and to speed back home without fighting a major battle. Upon the collapse of Burgoyne, General Howe—joined by his brother—submitted his resignation. After furious objections by Howe's well-placed friends and relatives, Germain replaced him with General Clinton, who assumed command in mid-May. With the end of Howe's term, the last chance for a quick crushing of the American forces had gone, for France was entering the war on the American side. For Britain, the character of the war had now unpleasantly changed; from trying to teach a lesson to revolutionaries, Britain now faced an international, trans-Atlantic, even a worldwide conflict. The first thing to do was end the occupation of Philadelphia, which at best had been a waste of time. Howe had thought of Philadelphia as equivalent to a European capital: the hub and nerve center of administrative, commercial, political, and military life. But in a decentralized people's war such as the Americans were waging, there was no fixed nerve center; indeed, there was scarcely any central government at all. All this gave the Americans a flexibility and an ability to absorb invading armies in a manner highly statified Europe could not understand. This article is excerpted from Conceived in Liberty, Volume IV, chapters 8 and 41. |
| More than Sixty Years after "Liberation," Cuba Is a Communist Slave State Posted: 11 Jul 2022 09:00 AM PDT In his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick has a chapter named "The Tale of the Slave" in which he explains the nine phases from the most restrictive to more liberating states of slavery. He writes that even though enslaved people have certain forms of self-rule, they are still enslaved. He asks: "Which transition from case 1 to case 9 made it no longer the tale of a slave?" Nozick's question highlights that there is no difference between people under indentured servitude and people who have certain liberties that an owner can take away at any time. Both are enslaved people who must respond to a master; it is just a matter of degrees of serfdom. Nozick could be describing current Cuban political phenomena and social intercourse. Although Cubans have rights under a constitution, these are always called into question. Politicians and bureaucrats, not surprisingly, are greedy, looking out for their own benefit and taking advantage of situations for their own advancement. Thus, it should not be difficult to understand that tyrants seek to put chains of servitude on their populace. Some have argued that though these chains are truculent and wanton, the reprimand must succumb to the rulers and not the system itself. The pretension of this essay is nothing more than to expound on how Nozick's argument, albeit controversial, is fruitful in explaining Cubans' abnormal conditions. Cuba's discrete slavery is exemplified by the economic circumstances laborers encounter. According to Bloomberg, inflation in Cuba finished at 71 percent in 2021 amid reforms to get rid of currency duality. This figure takes on more meaning if the reader assumes that inflation is a form of taxation. When Cuba's government pays its citizens by printing money instead of using sound currency and real profits, the state levies extra taxes upon its citizens. No one can cover their expenses when 71 percent of their income is taken away by central planners and corrupt public officials. After the currency has undergone devaluation, not much is left. Likewise, "tiendas moneda libremente convertible," or free convertible currency stores, play a massive role in discriminating against citizens. According to Reuters, the Cuba-based economist David Pajon said that the stores are a source of inequality. To put this in context, only people who have foreign currency can shop at these stores, which means that only Cubans with relatives outside the country who send them money can shop in them. Furthermore, while the government promotes policies to help the less fortunate, they open stores that are not accessible to regular workers. This Machiavellian scheme engenders a hierarchy in which those who have relatives abroad are privileged, while the rest are left behind. Cubans cannot even complain about these economic misdemeanors because freedom of speech is restricted. Human Rights Watch states:
The elite is constantly threatening individuals who express what they think on social media, and the government has stated that only authorized journalists have the right to cover news on the island. Contributing to the freedom of speech issue is that journalists lack tools to do their job. Suzanne Bilello argued in a 1997 report:
Even if it were possible to publish in spite of all the harassment endured, journalists struggle to get supplies and pay for a stable internet connection. Although these issues are very noticeable when searching for a newspaper that does not support the regime, few international organizations have covered them properly. Traveling to another country is not an alternative for Cubans. If someone is caught making a raft or leaving the island other than by air, they are severely punished and even imprisoned. However, the regulations upon national citizens are minuscule compared to those placed on foreigners. For example, last year, Cuban journalist Karla Pérez González was prevented from coming back to the island because of her critiques of the Communist dictatorship. Another remarkable example was the case of the Cuban YouTuber Ruhama Fernández, who was barred from traveling outside the island even though she had a visa to visit the US to attend conferences. The state's national security agency tracks all dissidents' locations, meetings, and actions, somewhat like Big Brother in Nineteen Eighty-Four. To further decimate the reader's morality on this subject, dissidents are always arrested under subjective interpretations of what the agency considers is against the motherland. Independent journalists argue that while the system regulates all the previously mentioned elements, its administrators are corrupt. Such an innocent assumption breaks apart using Nozick's logic. Even if the administrators were removed and substituted by angels, Cuba's condition of slavery would not change a bit. Maybe the lower-class conditions could be better, but people would still be slaves of the state: what Spencer also called "the Coming Slavery." Cuba's issue is not a problem of administrators, angels, or even devils: it is like a tree with poisoned roots. Either a new seed must be planted or the rootstock affecting the tree must be cut. Because it is impossible "to plant" a new Cuba, although Miami could be considered a cultural extension of Cuba, curing Cuba's wound might be a more reasonable approach. So, now a question arises: How can Cuba be cured of the putrescent tyranny that it is suffering? Such a question requires more depth than a mere essay. Despite that, an excellent starting point would be to assume that Fidel Castro's system is condemned and needs to be replaced by a system that rewards individualism as a core social value. This could manifested as opening markets, granting individual rights, and restricting despotic legislators. Liberty is an essential element in the construction of every respectable society. Jose Martí, the national hero of Cuba, said perceptively: "Liberty is the right of every man, to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy." If a man cannot act, speak, or think as he pleases, he is no more than an indentured servant. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| How Much Did the US Government Pressure Twitter to Ban Alex Berenson? Posted: 11 Jul 2022 07:00 AM PDT Nearly a year ago, former New York Times Journalist Alex Berenson was permanently banned from Twitter for writing the following lines about the Covid shot: "It doesn't stop infection. Or transmission. Don't think of it as a vaccine. Think of it—at best—as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity." From the beginning of the Covid hysteria, we followed and cited Berenson many times on the Ron Paul Liberty Report. Berenson took government and mainstream media rhetoric about the pandemic the way journalists used to take it: with a heavy dose of skepticism. And not long after he was banned for saying so, even the CDC Director admitted what he wrote is true. But at the time, he was a danger to the government narrative on Covid, and the "private" social media company Twitter silenced him. They did not only silence one reporter who was a thorn in their side, however. They preemptively silenced anyone else who might might question the narrative. The message was clear to all the would-be Alex Berensons out there: do you want to follow him to the digital gulag? So not only was Berenson's free speech under attack—free speech itself was under attack. Many, especially libertarians, might respond that Twitter as a private company has the right to do business with anyone they wish. That is true, but only to the extent that Twitter is actually acting as a private entity. The real question is to what degree has Twitter and the other social media companies been directly doing the bidding of government? After nearly a year-long legal battle with Twitter over the ban, Berenson settled with Twitter and was reinstated earlier this month. Writing about his reinstatement, he hinted at something very ominous: "The settlement does not end my investigation into the pressures that the government may have placed on Twitter to suspend my account. I will have more to say on that issue in the near future." Elon Musk, who had been in a deal to purchase Twitter until a few days ago, responded to Berenson on Twitter: "Can you say more about this: '… pressures that the government may have placed on Twitter …'" Berenson replied, "I wish I could, but the settlement with Twitter prevents me from doing so. However, in the near future I hope and expect to have more to report." Questions about the vaccine were silenced just as were questions about the origins of the virus. Was it possible that the outbreak originated in a Chinese lab that just happened to be funded by the US government? And if so, how far would powerful people in the government wish to suppress any discussion or investigation into this possibility? At a critical time—just as authoritarians were locking the country down and threatening anyone who refused the shot—all public discussion about the matters was shut down by "private" companies that just happened to have very close ties with the US government. This raises fundamental questions about the First Amendment that hopefully might be explored by Congress after the November elections. The American people deserve to know who is trying to shut them up … and why. Reprinted with permission. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| To Avoid Civil War, Learn to Tolerate Different Laws in Different States Posted: 11 Jul 2022 06:15 AM PDT The end of Roe may force many Americans to recognize that the United States is not one place. It is many places. The key is to reject uniform federal policy. Original Article: "To Avoid Civil War, Learn to Tolerate Different Laws in Different States" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. |
| Is the Constitution a Centralizing or Decentralizing Document? Posted: 11 Jul 2022 04:00 AM PDT Two years before the end of the Revolutionary War on March 1, 1781, the Articles of Confederation were officially put into effect. While the articles still established a small national government, there were a decentralizing document that put more power in the hands of individual states. There was no national currency, Congress could not collect taxes from the states, Congress could not draft soldiers, and Congress could not control commerce between the states. For the Federalist faction, this was a weak constitution and a stronger one was needed. A constitutional convention convened in 1787 and drafted a new governing document. In 1788, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay published The Federalist Papers, which outlined the need for a stronger constitution for a stronger national government. The Federalists would get their wish on June 21, 1788, when the Constitution was ratified after long debate and votes by the states. What changes were made and were they centralizing or decentralizing? This is the question that must be answered. The Decentralizing AspectThe Constitution was nowhere near as decentralist as the Articles of Confederation. Both the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists had to make a slew of compromises to make the other faction happy. One of these compromises was the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution). This was a set of rights that certain founders believed were inherent and shouldn't be violated by the federal government. The Tenth Amendment stated:
This made it very clear to the Federalists that even though the states may not have as much power as they did under the Articles of Confederation, states would still have a form of self-governance. Other amendments would also try to protect the rights of the individual: the Second Amendment gave the right to bear arms so that individuals may protect their rights to speech, assembly, and religion and fight against a tyrannical government. Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William Crawford in 1816 gave his beliefs on secession:
While the states still have a government, any separation of power from a national government is decentralization and a step closer to liberty. Secession itself would be made unconstitutional in 1869, when the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White that the United States "is an indestructible union from which no state can secede." This is the ultimate problem with the Constitution. Since it is the supreme law of the land, any provision that enhances the power of the federal government has supremacy over all states. The Centralizing AspectTwo major changes under the Constitution were that Congress could regulate commerce between the states and that the federal government would be the sole minter of money. Article 1, section 10 of the Constitution states:
This section of the Constitution would cause a lot of grief for future generations. The expansion of money unbacked by gold or silver would first cause the recession of 1819, and the inflation of silver coins and certificates would spark the recession of 1893. The amendments are not exempt from violations either; in fact, just ten years after the Constitution was ratified, the Sedition Act passed by the Federalist Congress made it illegal to publish any scandalous or malicious writing against the government. The individual states could do nothing about this because article 4, clause 2 of the Constitution contains up the Supremacy Clause, which provides that the Constitution, federal laws made pursuant to it, and treaties made under its authority constitute the supreme law of the land. It provides that state courts are bound by the supreme law; in case of conflict between federal and state law, the federal law must be applied. Even state constitutions are subordinate to federal law. In response to the Sedition Act, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which would grant states the power to nullify federal laws they deemed "unconstitutional." Madison's resolution actually passed the state legislature, but this resolution proposed the idea of interposition of the law, meaning states can prevent the federal government from enforcing a law in their borders but cannot nullify the law outright. But in 1958, the Supreme Court in Copper v. Aaron, rejected the idea of interposition and stated that only federal courts can decide if a federal law is unconstitutional. In effect, only a federal entity—whose judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by a majority vote by a federal congress who more than likely belong to the same party as the president—can decide if a federal law is unconstitutional. ConclusionThe Constitution is not a decentralizing document. It has not only proven itself to be centralizing and biased in many aspects, but has also failed to prevent further centralization and rights violations. The Sedition Act would not be the last time the federal government attempted to silence its critics. Abraham Lincoln silenced pro-Southern newspapers, the Espionage Act of 1917 made it illegal to critique American involvement in World War I, and the 2001 PATRIOT Act legalized the unwarranted search, seizure, and arrest of US citizens. In the end, the Constitution has been a useful tool for those who wish to expand their power by ignoring it or amending it. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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