SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
March 2003
Volume 10, No. 3
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
Managing Editor: Ronald N. Neff
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CONTENTS
Features
-> Worse Than Pearl Harbor
-> Publisher's Note
-> The Promise of Publius
-> Space and Other Passions
Nuggets (plus Exclusives to this edition)
List of Columns Reprinted
FEATURES
Worse Than Pearl Harbor
(page 1)
As press time approaches, war on Iraq seems all but
certain. I still don't quite understand why most
Americans can't see what is clear to most of the world:
that this is a war of sheer aggression against a country
that hasn't attacked the United States, can't attack it,
and wouldn't dare to attack it -- a country that is now,
as the clock ticks, trying desperately to avoid war by
submitting to every U.S. demand.
The charge of "appeasement" is being hurled at our
European friends, who are trying to save us from our own
folly and arrogance, and to avoid being sucked into the
horrors to come. The usual stale World War II analogies
are really running amok now. Saddam Hussein has been
assigned the role of Hitler, even as he seeks to appease
the unappeasable aggressor, George W. Bush.
In his much-praised speech to the United Nations --
which turned out to be based on very dubious sources --
Secretary of State Colin Powell didn't even pretend to
argue that Iraq had any part in the 9/11 attacks that
provided the impetus for the "war on terrorism." If it
had, the terrorists obviously would have had better tools
than box-cutters to work with; poison gas perhaps. The
Bush administration's case for war has been in equal
measure confused and monotonous.
The administration has tried to persuade us that
this war will not be aggressive, but "preemptive." Though
this rationale might justify any imaginable war, we are
supposed to believe it contains an important distinction.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was surely preemptive
-- a stitch in time saves nine, after all -- but for all
that, it's remembered as a notorious act of aggression.
Would Americans have considered it significantly less
aggressive if the Japanese had announced their intentions
beforehand?
Still, in moral terms, the "sneak attack" at Pearl
Harbor compares favorably with the attack Bush plans on
Baghdad. Franklin Roosevelt was really hurting Japan with
an oil embargo and other measures designed to provoke
war; and Pearl Harbor was a purely military target. Iraq
has done nothing to hurt the United States, and Baghdad
is a civilian center with a population of five million.
The people Bush has scheduled for death are innocent
-- not only the civilians, but the soldiers. They are
young men guilty of nothing but standing ready to defend
their country. Many of them are conscripts who have no
choice.
This war, when it comes, should grieve and shame
every American. But a peculiar feature of it is that the
pseudo-patriots are already impugning the loyalty of
those who still hope to prevent it, even before the real
shooting has started. What a queer concept of
citizenship: we apparently have a duty to support, in
advance, even a *proposed* war!
But there is another kind of patriotism, unknown to
the jingoists. It's the patriotism that feels anguish
when its country dishonors itself. This kind of
patriotism can't desire or enjoy victory in a bad cause,
and can't take satisfaction in the deaths of young
Americans who will fight in that cause. No matter how
this war goes, all the news is bound to be bad news.
Probably the least bad outcome we can hope for is a
quick surrender and a minimum of violence.
Publisher's Note
(page 2)
Dear Loyal Subscriber,
SOBRAN'S is now in its ninth year! We very much
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Fran Griffin
The Promise of Publius
(pages 3-5)
Abraham Lincoln, as we all know, had only a few
months of formal schooling. This fact is usually cited
admiringly, as if a fuller education might have spoiled
his native genius. Actually, if Lincoln had been more of
a pedant, the United States might have been spared the
most disastrous event in its history: the Civil War. More
than 620,000 young men perished because of his ignorance.
So did the U.S. Constitution.
The Civil War revolved around the question of
secession. Were the states sovereign? No, said Lincoln,
and they never had been. "The Union is much older than
the Constitution," he held -- older, in fact, than the
Declaration of Independence. And the Union had given the
states their very existence as states.
This was all nonsense. For a man who quoted the
Declaration so often, Lincoln never read it closely. What
does the Declaration declare? That "these United Colonies
are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent
States." Not one "free and independent *state,*" but
"*states,*" plural. And each of these states, the
Articles of Confederation announce, "*retains* its
sovereignty, freedom, and independence." These were the
terms of union, even during the Revolutionary War: the
states were independent of each other as well as of
Britain. In fact, the Treaty of Paris concluding the war
in 1783 recognized 13 distinct "free, sovereign, and
independent states."
In the early numbers of THE FEDERALIST PAPERS,
arguing for a stronger national government under the
proposed Constitution, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton
(writing, with James Madison, under the shared pseudonym
"Publius") complain that the Union is being hampered by
the obstruction of so many "sovereignties." So everyone,
on both sides of the ratification debate, acknowledged
that the states were in fact sovereign, whether or not
they approved of this -- yet Lincoln would say that the
states had never been sovereign, even when it was
universally agreed that they were!
To put it another way, state sovereignty was the
very thing many advocates of the Constitution hoped to
defeat. In the short run, they failed. But in the long
run, they won.
Lincoln admittedly knew little history. And he
clearly knew little of the history of the founding of the
Republic, including the debate over the Constitution.
The Constitutional Convention that met in
Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 wasn't supposed to be
a constitutional convention. The delegates had been
instructed only to revise the Articles of Confederation.
The first principle of the Articles is stated in
Article II, which reads in its entirety:
"Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and
independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right,
which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to
the United States in Congress assembled."
But those delegates soon disregarded their
instructions and commenced writing a whole new
constitution for the Union. Several delegates departed in
protest and returned home.
During the convention's secret deliberations, two
factions emerged. The ones who generally favored a new
"national" constitution called themselves "Federalists."
Their opponents, who preferred to maintain the Union as a
confederation of sovereign states, therefore became known
as "Anti-Federalists."
These labels were misleading. They were meant to be.
The Anti-Federalists were actually federalists; the
Federalists were actually nationalists. But the
Federalists cunningly claimed the term they knew would
enlist public approval, since most Americans wanted the
Union to remain federal, were attached to their states,
and opposed collapsing all the states into a monolithic
"consolidated" government.
The Federalists were publicly disingenuous about
their purposes. They denied that they wanted a
"consolidation" of the states into a single national
government -- though that was exactly what many of them
did want. Alexander Hamilton called for the abolition of
the states; he wrote to an ally that he sought a "solid
coercive union" giving Congress "complete sovereignty."
When he proposed this to the convention, the reaction was
so hostile that he backed off, explaining the following
day that he had been misunderstood. But he had meant what
he said, and James Madison, at the time, largely agreed
with him. But the idea was far too radical to have a
chance, either with the convention or with the public.
Some Federalists, Madison among them, wanted to
retain the states as "subordinate" governments under a
sovereign national government, which could "negative," or
veto, any state legislation; this would retain the form
of confederation while destroying its substance.
The Federalists, of course, generally prevailed: the
convention did produce a whole new constitution. And to
ensure that it would be based on popular rather than
state sovereignty, it was submitted for approval to
special popularly chosen ratification committees, rather
than to the state legislatures. The Federalists thought
this would circumvent the problem of state sovereignty.
They were in for a bitter surprise.
The Anti-Federalists had won important concessions.
The convention decided that the states would be
represented equally in the Senate, their legislatures
choosing two senators each. The president was to be
elected by state delegations, not by popular vote. Above
all, perhaps, the new Constitution acknowledged and
incorporated the existence of the states.
The Federalists could only hope that certain
provisions of the Constitution would, over time, render
the powers of the states nugatory. When Anti-Federalists
warned that the "supremacy," "general welfare," and
"necessary and proper" clauses might be used to claim
limitless power for the Congress, Madison ridiculed this
as a desperate argument; yet that is just what he hoped
the clauses would achieve -- in effect, the sovereignty
of the national government.
Hamilton and Madison were disappointed by the final
draft of the Constitution. They felt that the Senate
weighted the whole thing in favor of the states; they
preferred the proportional representation of the House of
Representatives.
Nevertheless, they defended the Constitution. It was
still, to their minds, a big improvement on the Articles
and the best they could hope for in the political climate
of the time. Madison argued publicly that it was "partly
federal, partly national," neglecting to tell his readers
that he hoped the "national" features would eventually
defeat the "federal" ones. Instead he downplayed the
"national" aspect, assuring his readers that the
Constitution would mean not so much a grant of new powers
to the Union as an "invigoration" of its existing powers
under the Articles. The powers of the Federal Government
would be "few and defined," concerned chiefly with
"external objects" (foreign relations); the powers
remaining with the states would be "numerous and
indefinite," comprising most of the business of everyday
life. THE FEDERALIST PAPERS are some of the slickest
propaganda ever written.
Aside from the charge of consolidation -- that the
Constitution had a "tendency," "design," or even "intent"
to "annihilate," "destroy," "abolish," "devour," or
"swallow up" state sovereignty -- the Anti-Federalists
complained chiefly about the absence of a bill of rights,
especially protection for religion, speech, and the
press.
To this the Federalists had two replies.
Unfortunately, each of these contradicted the other.
First, they said there was no need for a bill of
rights in a republican constitution, as opposed to a
monarchical system. The people ruled, and they needed no
protection against their own powers, since the government
would have no powers except those the people delegated to
them. Why forbid the government to violate (say) freedom
of the press, when it had been given no power to control
the press? "Everything not granted is reserved," the
Federalists said reassuringly.
Besides, they added, the Constitution already
contains a bill of rights, such as the rights of habeas
corpus and trial by jury.
The Anti-Federalists jumped on this second argument.
If no bill of rights was necessary, they asked, why were
these rights specifically protected against the Federal
Government? Wasn't their inclusion an admission that the
first argument was feeble after all? And if the listed
rights needed explicit safeguards, why not others as
well?
These questions were hard to answer, and the demand
for a bill of rights became overwhelming. It was one of
the Anti-Federalists' great victories. Many of their
demands were included in the final Bill of Rights.
In fact the Bill of Rights should be regarded as our
Anti-Federalist heritage. It was a defeat for the
Federalists; they accepted it, for the most part,
grudgingly. The Tenth Amendment was almost a paraphrase
of Article II of the Articles of Confederation: "The
powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Yet Madison hoped that it would ultimately be nullified
in practice as the "implied powers" of the national
government gradually expanded.
The Federalists suffered one more crucial defeat.
Though the ratification process was stacked to exclude
the state legislatures, the ratification committees of
three states -- New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island --
ratified with the provision that they reserved the right
to secede from the Union later. This was chiefly a threat
to secede unless a satisfactory bill of rights was
adopted.
Hamilton was infuriated. Conditional ratification
was invalid, he insisted. Ratification must be
irrevocable, "forever." But his objections were
unavailing. The conditional ratifications, if accepted,
would mean that the states remained, in the last
analysis, sovereign. And the other states did accept
them. This implied that any state might secede whenever
it saw fit. That is what sovereignty means. Despite
Federalist efforts to liquidate the states, each state
was still "free and independent."
Over the early decades of the Republic, several
states contemplated or threatened secession. As the first
president to face the issue, Thomas Jefferson hoped they
would remain in the Union, but agreed that it was their
prerogative to withdraw. Not until Andrew Jackson would a
president claim the power to invade a state to suppress
secession; his threat horrified even so strong a Unionist
as Daniel Webster.
By the late 1850s the Union was bitterly divided
along sectional lines. The South was talking secession;
the North was talking war to prevent it. President James
Buchanan took the view that no state had the right to
secede under the Constitution, but that the Constitution
gave the Federal Government no power to stop any state
from doing so.
When, after Lincoln's election in 1860, the Southern
states actually began to secede, America wondered what,
if anything, he intended to do about it. He gave no
answer, but kept a long, agonizing silence between his
November election and his March inauguration. Meanwhile,
behind the scenes, negotiations proceeded in the hope of
averting war. Lincoln instructed the Republicans not to
yield an inch. It appears that he was already preparing
to go to war.
Lincoln, in 1861, had no good answer to the
secessionist arguments, because he was largely unaware of
their basis in the ratification debates. The Declaration
itself was an act of secession, which is, after all, the
same thing as asserting independence. Ironically, part of
New York had threatened to secede from the state in 1789
in order to *join* the Union under the new Constitution!
At his inauguration, Lincoln would also say that
"the central idea of secession is the essence of
anarchy." Despite his professed desire for peace, the
South saw that he meant war. He denied the sovereignty of
the states and equated secession with rebellion.
Yet, during the ensuing war, he accepted the
secession of West Virginia from Virginia, when part of
Virginia wanted to rejoin the Union Virginia had
withdrawn from -- even though West Virginia's secession,
without the consent of Virginia's state government, was
plainly unconstitutional. Lincoln, remember, insisted
that Virginia was still part of the Union and that the
Constitution still fully applied to it.
Virginia itself had been reluctant to secede. With
several of the other states of the Upper South, it had
remained in the Union after Lincoln took office. But when
he proceeded to make war -- unconstitutionally, without
even seeking congressional approval -- by invading South
Carolina, these states were outraged and joined the
Confederacy. The issue, for them, was state sovereignty.
That issue, of course, was decided by the sword. The
sheer military and industrial power of the North was
finally too much. As a practical matter, the Union was
sovereign. Constitutional niceties didn't matter. Lincoln
arrested dissenters, including legislators, suppressed
newspapers, rigged elections, and finally created
military governments in the conquered states -- all this
while claiming to save the Constitution and self-
government.
The Constitution itself was a casualty of the war.
After Lincoln's death, the victors adopted three
constitutional amendments and forced the Southern states
to ratify them as a condition of readmission to the
Union. (Never mind that, according to the North, the
Southern states had never legally *left* the Union.)
The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The
Fifteenth abolished racial requirements for suffrage.
Nobody is quite sure what the badly drafted (and
scandalously ratified) Fourteenth Amendment meant, but
the Federal courts soon began using it with abandon to
void state laws, North and South.
Eventually, in great part through judicial review,
the Federalist dream of a consolidated Union was
realized. The scope of the Fourteenth Amendment grew and
grew, until it became the tool with which the Federal
Government struck down state laws on such varied matters
as racial segregation, legislative districting, and
abortion. The Tenth Amendment, through which the Anti-
Federalists had hoped to secure the principle of
federalism, became a dead letter; both Congress and the
courts ignored it.
The final consolidation of the United States into a
single United State took a longer and more circuitous
route than "Publius" could have imagined; but it finally
happened. Today it seems irreversible. We have to wonder,
however, whether even "Publius" would be pleased with the
result.
One thing is clear enough. The United States of
America has become everything "Publius" promised it would
never be. If Americans in 1789 had realized this, they
would never have ratified the Constitution.
Space and Other Passions
(page 6)
I couldn't get into the spirit of mourning for the
seven astronauts on the doomed space shuttle, and I
frankly doubt that most people could. Too bad, of course,
but so are plane crashes and car wrecks and heart
attacks, and you can't feel sorry for every stranger who
comes to a sad end.
Were we supposed to mourn because the space program
is a U.S. Government project? That's the very last reason
I'd feel sympathy for the dead. My philosophical friend
Butler Shaffer has written some interesting thoughts
about how the space program illustrates the insights of
chaos theory -- an extension of the law of unintended
consequences, as I understand it.
Government projects notoriously have a way of going
wrong. So do most human enterprises, but there's a
difference. In private enterprises, people gamble their
own money and try to limit their own risks prudently.
Government -- well, President Bush has just proffered a
budget of $2.23 *trillion* for the next fiscal year. Over
two centuries, U.S. Government spending has gone from the
low millions to the low *trillions.* Apparently billions
were just an intermediate phase. For that matter, so may
trillions. Let us begin to brace ourselves for
quadrillions.
This is a sign of not only limitless government, but
fantastic mismanagement. Bush's budget is expected to
mean a $300 billion deficit. I can remember when people
were alarmed at annual budgets a third that size. (Albeit
with deficits of a few billion -- cute little things, as
they now seem.) The national debt? I've heard figures
like five and seven trillion, but it may be much higher.
Is it too much to ask that the government spend less
than it takes in? Imagine a private corporation that lost
money and fell deeper into debt nearly every year. The
shareholders would be diving overboard, and the company
would soon be out of business. From this angle, the U.S.
Government appears as a stupendous corporation managed by
people who, in private life, would be bankrupts. As
"public servants," they bear no personal responsibility
for the losses they incur or the money they waste. On the
contrary, they are rewarded.
Of course this corporation has a unique resource:
the captive shareholder, also known as the taxpayer. He
can't really fire the managers and he can't pull his
money out. He is forced to keep investing, no matter how
heavy his losses. The managers face no penalty for the
most palpable incompetence. Unlike private businessmen,
they can't be sued or fined or prosecuted for fraud. They
have no incentive for restraint or prudence. They respond
only to the stockholders who demand more spending -- who
are generally the ones who have the least invested.
Think of that: the government can force us to pay as
much as it likes, yet it still can't stay in the black!
The personal income tax we've been paying for nearly a
century has left it no excuse. If it could balance the
books before that bonanza of tyranny, why not now? Even
more bafflingly, why do the taxpayers remain loyal and
submissive to this government? Why do they continue to
trust it? This confidence passeth all understanding.
After the crash, I listened to a radio debate over
whether the space program is worth the cost. The obvious
answer, given by none of the debaters, is tautological:
it's worth it to those who feel it's worth it. They
should be able to invest their own money in it -- and
nobody else should be forced to. Space exploration
thrills some people and leaves others cold. Its benefits
are felt by some and not by others. Let everyone decide
for himself by privatizing it. What has such an
enterprise, whatever its merits, to do with law and
government? Why should anyone, qua citizen, be compelled
to subsidize the passions, underwrite the profits, assume
the losses, and pay for the mistakes of others? Without a
market to measure demand in the form of prices, it's idle
to discuss whether any enterprise is "worth it."
As you can tell by now, I have never taken much
interest in space exploration. I didn't even bother
watching the first moon landing in 1969; I figured that
if it could be done, it would be done, eventually. I'm
even willing to be generous and call it the greatest
achievement of socialism. It accelerated the date of the
inevitable, perhaps by many years. It was, in its way, a
great feat.
Still, I wanted no part of it. I couldn't have told
you why at the time. I just felt unconnected to it. As an
American, I took no pride in it, even though (in terms of
the Cold War) it meant "we" had bested the Russians. I
couldn't feel real enthusiasm for statist "achievements."
It was indeed "one small step for man," but a giant leap
for collectivism.
NUGGETS
HERE I STAND: Years ago I quipped that the NEW YORK TIMES
should be renamed HOLOCAUST UPDATE, and this is still
cited as proof of my bigotry. I see no reason to recant.
The other day I was able to find only one Holocaust story
in the TIMES; I figured it must be a slow news day.
(page 6)
BRAVE MEN: The Bush team says it's prepared to "go it
alone," if necessary, even if all its allies are against
it. Would that include Ariel Sharon? (page 8)
SUGGESTION: If we're going to install a new government in
Iraq, why not lend them our Constitution? We can spare
it; after all, we aren't using it. (page 9)
KWERI: Why is the phonics method of teaching reading so
popular, when the very word "phonics" isn't spelled
fonicli? (page 9)
AND FINALLY: A friend reports seeing a bumper sticker
with a picture of Uncle Sam saying, "My boss is a Jewish
terrorist." (page 9)
UNBORN IRAQIS: One predictable result of attacking Iraq
will be to cause a number of pregnant women to miscarry.
Maybe conservatives would be less hawkish if they could
be made to see war as a form of abortion. (page 10)
AXIS OF EVIL: A radio talk-show host of my acquaintance
informs me that many of his callers confuse Saddam
Hussein with Osama bin Laden. And they probably think the
Dalai Lama is one of those terrorists. (page 12)
Exclusive to the electronic version:
CUI BONO? Pardon my cynicism, but I want to know if any
members of the Bush administration have links to the
duct-tape industry.
REPRINTED COLUMNS (pages 7-12)
* The Missing Word (January 23, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030123.shtml
* The School of Experience (January 28, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030128.shtml
* Tracing the Box-Cutters (January 30, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030130.shtml
* Mourning in America (February 4, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030204.shtml
* What Happened to the War on Terrorism?
(February 6, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030206.shtml
* France and the Bush Doctrine (February 11, 2003)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030211.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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