If This Were a Real Country . . .
Lying to get us involved in war would be considered treason.
So would piling up a catastrophic government debt.
Speculating in paper would not be confused with productivity and prosperity.
Entertainers and athletes would not be among the richest and most admired people.
Children of foreigners would not be promoted for the offices of highest trust.
Dictatorship by judges would not be tolerated.
We would know the difference between defense and aggression.
We would know the difference between a fellow countryman and a foreigner.
We would not fall for the slogan that "9/11 changed everything."
McCain would not be receiving a multitude of votes from people he despises.
The citizens would demand that the media report facts rather than political fashion statements.
We would be able to distinguish between advertising slogans and reasoned judgment.
We would not confuse the federal government with America.
Entries(RSS)
"We would not confuse the federal government with America."
Dr. Wilson,
Here in our Louisiana climes, the "federal government" is very often criticized as being too much and too big; yet, not when it comes to receiving farm subsidies or supporting the war. One is all but accused of treason when one criticizes those things, among others. The "Battle Hymn of the Republic" is belted out in our churches and McCain is trumpeted as "our man" in the upcoming farce. We Southerners have become the federal governments willing Janissary even as the leviathan consumes and subsumes more and more of our land and treasure in military reservations, wilderness areas and blue parking zones.
Professor Wilson,
I have been reading your material for years and, for whatever little it is worth, I must say this is my favorite piece of your's.
I would add my two cents with:
We would not confuse the expedient with the correct.
We would not confuse majoritarian opinion with truth. (Whether that majority opinion emanates from the electorate, judicial benches, academic peer reviewers, a collection of work colleagues, a statistically representative focus group, or mob on the street.)
"Entertainers and athletes would not be among the richest and most admired people."
What does this say about a culture ? That they seek constant diversion in entertainment and sports. That they speak about these people as if they know them personaly. What did leisure mean before the advent of television sports bars, loud sounds, 24 hour news and Hooters ? Were stories told or read more often and remembered ? Did the imagination work more upon naturally existing things and less on artificiality and electronic stimulus and imaging ? Was work always so divorced from play ? Was there ever a time when a culture saw " mans vocation and avocation as one, just as his two eyes made one in sight" as the poet said, or that "only where love and need are one is the job ever really done for heaven and the future's sake." Are we a divided people because of our divided selves or because we have come to despise and divide the past from the present ?
"Children of foreigners would not be promoted for the offices of highest trust."
So since Patrick Calhoun was a foreigner from County Donegal, we should not have entrusted John C. Calhoun to high office? Jeff Davis should not have named Judah Benjamin and Stephen Mallory to the Cabinet. Pat Cleburne should not have been trusted with a command.
Surely Dr. Wilson would not attack giving those men the public trust. What am I missing?
Should'nt we be headed towards civil war right about now?!
"So since Patrick Calhoun was a foreigner from County Donegal, we should not have entrusted John C. Calhoun to high office? Jeff Davis should not have named Judah Benjamin and Stephen Mallory to the Cabinet. Pat Cleburne should not have been trusted with a command."
In the early 19th century, communication and travel was not as easy between the Old and New Worlds as it is now. Maybe, at that point in time, the culture of the American colonies and the British Isles had not diverged as much from each other?
At least in John C. Calhoun's day, you didn't have folks who would proudly remind everyone that they carry dual-citizenship, spent summers over there with their cousins explaining that Mum and Da wanted the children to not be affected by cultureless American society, and has a Republic of Ireland flag as a vanity license plate. They are just as American as somebody whose ancestors were here since the 17th century because we are a nation of immigrants. So they believe that everyone around the world is entitled to come in and have their share of the "American Dream." America being immolated by third-world immigration is fine with them since they have relatives overseas to flee to where for the rest of us, the ancestral door to Europe shut generations ago.
The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.
Deuteronomy 28:43-44 (King James Version)
If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a trolley-car.
*At least in John C. Calhoun’s day, you didn’t have folks who would proudly remind everyone that they carry dual-citizenship, spent summers over there with their cousins explaining that Mum and Da wanted the children to not be affected by cultureless American society, and has a Republic of Ireland flag as a vanity license plate.*
No arguing there. Apart from the techonological anachronism (did they put vanity license plates on buggys?), there was no Republic of Ireland in Calhoun's lifetime, or anywhere near it, and the Irish Tricolor is generally believed to have made its debut just 2 years before his death.
More substantively, the objection to trusting "children of foreigners" with high office is not at all the same as an objection to trusting "children of foreigners who behave a certain way." Comment #6 seems to treat the two the same. Each allows an interesting discussion, but I can't tell which discussion topic would correspond to Roy 's perspective.
Could you really call an Irish Protestant "foreign" to America in the 19th century?
For that matter, how "foreign" was Obama Senior to 1959 Hawaii?
It's not that Barack Obama (either Senior or Junior) is foreign to America, it is that modern America is foreign to what it once was.
I just do not appreciate it when folks from New York move down to North Carolina and have those foreign flags but say that whenever they see the Confederate battle flag they "think of the Nazis."
Mr. Peters is so right about us Southerners. Unless a genuine change comes over us, the League of the South is wasting its time, and we'll go down with the rest of the country when it declines and falls.
Even so, Southerners are still our best hope and the South has always been the essential part of America. Only a Southerner, such as Clyde Wilson or Robert M. Peters and many more, can even phrase the problem and solution coherently and consistently. Who else even knows what "leviathan" means?
Rob @4:
It takes more than just being born and raised outside the U.S. to be a foreigner. To be a foreigner to the American nation is to be one whose customs, practices, traditions, personal conduct, ideas, ideals, and loyalties are all sharply different from those who consider themselves part of the American nation. It has nothing to do with birthplace or longtime place of residence.
PcH @ 13
Indeed, a remnant of us Southerners take our stand. Whether we will collapse, hold or go over to the offensive remains to be seen. But we do take our stand, and that is a meaningful beginning, however fragile it might be. I am in it for the long haul: several generations beyond my lifetime.
Obama isn't even an American negro. The Southern black is a genuine traditional American folkway and a very old one. If they had nominated someone like Jesse, at least he would have been a authentic American.
I keep repeating this string of names in my head: "Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, William Jefferson Clinton, George W. Bush, BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA!!" Jesse Jackson would have been a much less jarring dissonance.
What a great column, I like these points especially:
-Speculating in paper would not be confused with productivity and prosperity.
-We would know the difference between a fellow countryman and a foreigner.
The sickness of America is due to primarily to these two points.
Country or not just never call the USA a nation since it is clearly is not.
#4. Patrick Calhoun was a founder of the country and the others had contributed to its building up. None of them mentioned were potentially sympathetic to foreign powers nor basing themselves on what the country could do for their ethnic group rather than vice versa.
Professor Wilson,amen to your thoughts. Today I read about a creature named Dennis Hastert,the former Republican Speaker of the House(1999-2006).After fumbling the Republican majority and leaving a legacy of little accomplishment,this fraud (in the sense he pretended to be a patriot)left the hog's pen(my apology to hogs) of Congress for the hog's Eden of ...lobbying.And do you know what the creature lobbies for?On behalf of the Turkish government to deny the genocide of the Armenian Christians.Yes I know it was a long time ago that 1.5 Christians were starved to death,burned alive,crucified,skinned alive,gang raped,sold into slavery,etc.,but as the same events routinely occur wherever Islam reigns it would seem to be important to the WAR ON TERROR to talk about terror and well, pass that pesky resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide.Hastert routinely blocked it;now we know why-the big pay off.Is Hastert any less the child of a foriegner--a harem boy of the Sultan?
Perhaps, as Christians, the Armenians are like the (Christian) Serbians in that they do not exploit their misfortune. They carry their cross in silence. God bless them abundantly for that.
Dr. Wilson.................I recently read your 10 page article "The Yankee Problem"...............Bravo!!!..........Awesome!!!
My state of Alabama places more citizens in the military per capita than any state in the union. What is in our spirit that drives us to be cannon fodder for a Government that despises us?...Yet we allowed George C. Wallace to stand alone, by himself, against the JFK clan.
Even housewives can put 100,000 demonstrators on the mall in Washington to whine about animal cruelty, and other segments of our "Melting Pot" quickly unite to join in solidarity when their culture is threatened!..............But not us!.......We are still happy to be the fenced in doberman ready to attack our "Owners" enemies, as long as we have a pan of food and water.
Therefore, "Leviathan" chuckles when we mention "Seccesion".
"Speculating in paper would not be confused with productivity and prosperity."
Few Americans realize that this was the essential choice at the beginning the republic. Messrs. Jefferson, Taylor, Randolph, et. al. were for productivity from tangible resources; Mr. Hamilton for paper.
This paper empire has been propped up a long time, but its inherent weakness (not to mention social cost) has been laid bare.
#23
"I do not hesitate to say, if Genl. Hamilton had not issued his circular directing bank notes to be received as gold & silver for the publick dues, and if the Bank of the United States had not been created, the whole course of politicks under our system would have been entirely different." John C. Calhoun, 1840
"It had been justly stated by a British writer that the power to make a small piece of paper, not worth one cent, by the inscribing of a few names, to be worth a thousand dollars, was a power to high to be entrusted to the hands of mortal man."
John C. Calhoun, 1841.
"We must curb the Banking system, or it will certainly ruin the country." John C. Calhoun, 1834
After my first post I this following article on the rising number of European ethnics applying for dual citizenship. There is a major incentive now since they have access to living and working in the European Union. I don't know if I could find anything else that gives a better case for this not being a real country.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2008/06/07/s1a_dual_citizenship_0608.html
It's almost as if the United States is becoming like South Africa. Since 1994, the British-South Africans who have more recent roots from another country have been going home while us Southerners are trapped like the Afrikaners having been here for several hundred years in most cases. Sometimes I even wonder how many old-stock Yankees are left up North. It has been documented that the New England birthrates have been the lowest in the country since the 19th century. It seems to have correspond with their apostasy into Unitarianism. Unfortunately, they achieved great success in turning the Catholic immigrants into Yankees through the public education system throughout the 20th century.
Prof. Wilson,
You once said that the U.S. were never supposed to be collectively governed as a republic, but that they were a federal union of republics. This was in refutation of my assertion that America was to be a republic as of September of 1787. A 23-year-old Yankee youngster like myself treads dangerous waters by challenging a statement made by such a wise and educated man as yourself, but here goes.
As I remember it, that statement concerning our federal union of republics was left rather open-ended, so I took it to mean that you were asserting that there never really was supposed to be any federal American government at all, only a federal UNION. This sounds to me more like the status of American government during the days of the Articles of Confederation than that of our constitutional government. Are you perhaps letting your love of the Articles influence your understanding and perception of American constitutional government a little too much?
Mr. Brock @ 26
I would never deign to or even consider daring to answer for Professor Wilson; however, I will give a response from my understanding to your question to him.
The union of republics under the Articles of Confederation could have well run a very healthy and productive course, whatever that might have been, something which we will never know but can certainly speculate on, without the secession from that old union under the Articles and accession to a new union under the Constitution. I will not go into the Federalist (Hamilton and Madison and others) manipulation of the process, a manipulation which initially failed to produce the results which they desired.
However, the Constitution - as ratified by the states, and it is the ratification by the states which gives the Constitution and the general government created through that Constitution their authority and not the intent, real or alleged, of the so-called framers, "founders" or drafters - is, nevertheless still an expression of a union of republics with the states or the republics being and remaining the principals and the general government being their mere agent. Thus, American constitutional government which is best understood as constitutional, federated and republican (NOT Republican, for the sake of the Almighty) is at and upon ratification of the Constitution yet and still a union of federated republics under a Constitution which give to the agent of the principals certain enumerated powers and which reserves to the states and the people thereof all other powers.
Until 1860 or 1865, depending on how one understands that era, the union of federated republics under the Constitution was not a nation and was not A republic.
Now, I will cede that although the Hamiltonians/Federalist failed to get what they wanted in the Constitution toward which they had steered the colonies, they did succeed in getting some phrases and clauses into the Constitution which they and their allies have twisted and turned over the years: general welfare statement in the Preamble, interstate commerce and the so-called elastic clause. They also created out of whole cloth the notion of "implied powers" which is taught as "constitutional fact."
The Confederate Constitution of 1861 did much to cull out the leverage points which the Federalists/Whigs/Republicans had used in the U.S. Constitution; however, the Confederate Constitution is a document in waiting - waiting for a time when there might again be a set of republics with people ready to embrace it.
You mention "our constitutional government." There has not been a constitutional government in my life time, and I am fifty-eight years old. You must live outside the United States in a land of which I have never heard.
"There has not been a constitutional government in my life time, and I am fifty-eight years old. You must live outside the United States in a land of which I have never heard."
Quite true. I was only referring to the American constitutional government created at Independence Hall in Philly almost 221 years ago. Of course every honest student of American history knows that it has not existed for many scores of years. Thank you, by the way, for beginning by deferring to Dr. Wilson for his official answer. Your answer makes me curious about the Confederate Constitution. If it is true that all those broad power-granting clauses that power-hungry elitist Yankee Federalists pushed into the U.S. Constitution were erased by the South to create the Confederate Constitution, I would be proud and honored to live under it.
"Entertainers and athletes would not be among the richest and most admired people."
Though it probably started in the Progressive era and then most noticeably with Babe Ruth, I recall reading (I forget where) the best example of the beginnings of this phenomenon coming from a teammate of Joe DiMaggio who told of riding in a car with Joltin' Joe and several other players while DiMaggio opened his endorsement checks, presumably announcing their amounts. The player noticed that DiMaggio, having no family, was yet receiving compensation for other than playing baseball in excess of the total baseball salaries of all the other men in that car.
Brock @ 26. I think we can clarify the situation somewhat if we remember that no republic was created in Philadelphia. That meeting had no such power. The states sent delegates to a meeting, in which each state had one vote, to draw up a proposal for governing their mutual affairs better, so it was thought, than under the existing Articles. To endow the Convention and drafters of the Constitution with some sort of godlike wisdom and power of creation is part of the mystification of nationalism that was made up in the 1800s to provide emotional plausibility for consolidated national government. Republican government was certainly not invented in the Constitution. The states had already established republican governments, as John Adams observed in His "A Defense of the ConstitutionS of the United States." The Constitution had no validity until it was accepted by the people of each State and that acceptance could not be binding on any other state. Otherwise, the Constitution would not be republican---how could it be unless resting on the consent of the people! The nationalist interpretation leaves out the actual people and claims to Constitution was ratified by some mystical "people of the U.S." that had no political existence. In the process of ratification the states demanded that certain changes be made in the draft---some states even declared their right to withdraw their ratification at a later date if dissatisfied. And it was understood that amendments would be adopted as soon as possible to prevent the federal government from exceeding its powers---amendments topped off by the Tenth, which is plain though now null and void. What was created was a federal government of a type not familiar before, with a central government authorised to exercise some "national" powers. The United States were always spoken of as a plural when referring to the central government and the locus of final authority remained in the people of the states. Otherwise it was not a republican government and the final authority would be lodged not in the people but in the federal government itself. As today the Supreme Court, not the people, is the sovereign authority on all domestic matters. Americans sometimes spoke of the "nation" because they had a fellow feeling as people with a great deal in common and who had shared the experiences of the War of Independence. But most of the time they spoke of "the Union."
The economic and moral imperialism of New England eventually destroyed the fellow feeling and substituted imperial force for fellow feeling and consent of the people.
Usually in history, we can get the closer to the truth by looking at concrete facts and exact chronology. People who deceive us about the past often do so by using vague generalities.
Best wishes in your continuing adventure toward the true and right.
Excellent discussion. I retract my reference to "the republic" (in a national sense) in #23; I misspoke. As Mr. Peters noted, the Hamiltonians did not get everything they wanted in the beginning, but John Marshall opened the flood gates with McCullough v. Maryland -- which brings us back to the beginning of a paper empire, no matter how you slice it.
Don't forget (MANY) of the low-IQ robots in the U.S. military who for some reason equate patriotism with following orders / fighting wars from the criminals in Washington
http://www.vetsforfreedom.org
If someone told these idiots to machine-gun a family or bomb a civilian neighborhood right here in America, they'd probably do it. These people are no heroes. True heroes would be part of a military offensive against Washington DC.
Mr. Brock @ 28
Your words:
"If it is true that all those broad power-granting clauses that power-hungry elitist Yankee Federalists pushed into the U.S. Constitution were erased by the South to create the Confederate Constitution, I would be proud and honored to live under it."
Just a few words from my understanding on the Confederate Constitution and the U.S. Constitution. The Confederate Constitution was/is, as are all documents, a flawed document written by fallen men. Neither it nor its U.S. counterpart should be imbued with some sacred aura. The Confederate Constitution did not take us back to the Articles of Confederation. Though it the states and the respective people thereof, given a particular historical context, attempted to correct what hindsight revealed as mistakes in the U.S. Constitutions.
Also, I do not live under a Constitution. The general government created by the states and the people thereof exists through and under the Constitution. The Constitution and the general government which exists through it are creatures of the states and the people. The Constitution is our prompt and our tool to control the creation, i.e. the general government. However,a prompt and tool are both useless unless one responds to the prompt and uses the tool. Thus the creature's usurpation of power is a result of the states and the people not responding to the prompt and not using the tool to keep the general government in check. Without the right awareness and the will to use the tool, the the Constitution or any constitution is a failed document - utterly meaningless. In fact, I assert that the more we are inclined to worship the Constitution as a gift of the gods the more of our freedoms and our duties and responsibilities we have actually given up. We are conned into believing or have conned ourselves into believing that it is the Constitution which protects us rather than our own vigilance. From my perspective, the Constitution is now actually as meaningless as the Queen of England. She is trotted out as a vestige of a past authority to begin Parliament, and the Constitution is trotted out as a vestige of a past authority behind which factions carry out their nefarious schemes in the full assurance that the states and their respective people are going to do nothing to check them.