KEITH OLBERMANN: It is unclear at this hour whether they read the Constitution tomorrow as if they wrote it, and as if they own it, House Republicans will skip those little amended clauses, like the part about slaves being three-fifths of a person. The reading was a tea party priority, but in our fourth story tonight, progressives have seen an opening. They are relishing the prospect that incoming tea party Republicans forced to read aloud from the Constitution the proof that their ideas about the Constitution are wrong.
The reading embraced by new Speaker Boehner but originated by tea party original-intent Founding-Father worshippers who think that tomorrow’s reading will somehow part the seas for their vision of the country to emerge. They might be in for a shock tomorrow. That is, if they even understand the words they will read. That’s not a gratuitous jab. The ability to understand the Constitution relies on the ability to understand words and that ability is by no means certain. Tea party Congresswoman Michele Bachmann having called the words, “We the People,” quote, “infamous,” unquote.
Mr.Boehner himself said last fall that. quote, “We always hear members of Congress talking about swearing an oath to represent their constituents, when in reality the only oath we take is to the Constitution.”
Tomorrow, at least, they hear the words of reality. What they will learn about the Constitution, the Founders’ original intent, may surprise them. After ten years of the Founding Fathers’ original plan, the Articles of Confederation, which let the states run the show, they trashed the thing, substituting the Constitution to create a stronger central government with powers both vague and specific.
Article One, Section Eight, Clause One: The power specifically to raise your taxes and then to spend it on pretty much whatever the government wants. The quote “to provide for the general welfare.” The power to regulate commerce across national borders and across state borders. The power to write the rules of naturalizing citizens. Eight separate amendments gave the federal government more power — to ensure voting rights, civil rights and levy income tax.
The 17th Amendment took away the power of state legislatures to elect U.S. Senators, adding to existing constitutional limits on the states. no separate foreign policies. no state currency, no taxing goods to or from other states and the list goes on.
As Garrett Epps of The Atlantic wrote, the U.S. Constitution even refers to international law.
Joining us now on the horrors that await the tea party and the Constitution tomorrow, Akhil Reed Amar, the associate professor of law and political science at Yale where he teaches constitutional law. Thank you for your time.
AMAR: It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m a fan.
OLBERMANN: Is the headline from tomorrow’s reading or should we expect the Revolution was not conducted by and the Constitution was not written by conservative people?
AMAR: Exactly. The American revolutionaries were just that. They actually took on the world’s most powerful monarchy. They were the liberal democrats of their era, and the people who gave us the Constitution were the nationalists. So the liberal nationalists give you the Constitution, we call them “Federalists.”
The states’ rights folks, the Articles of Confederation folks, the conservatives, they were against it. They were the anti-Federalists. Then we have a great Civil War, and, once again, the liberal nationalists, the party of Lincoln, the Republican Party, who add a 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment to the Constitution. Again, egalitarian, liberal, nationalizing.
Then in the 19-teens, we have a series of amendments — the income tax amendment, women’s suffrage, changing the Senate. Again, liberal, egalitarian nationalists.
And once again in the 1960s, a series of amendments ending poll taxes, bringing D.C. into the system in a stronger way. A lot of black people live in D.C. So these are, again, liberal nationalizing anti- states’ rights amendments.
A whole bunch of the amendments end with the words “Congress shall have power…” And you got it just right. The longest article of the Constitution, Article One, its longest section is Section Eight. I will pull it out right here and it doesn’t just say taxes once. It says it, in effect, four times. Just in case you missed the point.
“The congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.” So they’re very clear, “We’re going to have taxes, and we’re going to have them because that is necessary for proper purposes, for common defense and general welfare.
OLBERMANN: Tea partiers and even members of Congress, Professor, have been known to add this word “expressly” to the phrase that says that any powers that are not given to the federal government go to the states or to the people. but that word “expressly” has its own little interesting history in the failed original plan, the Articles of Confederation, correct?
AMAR: It does. It was a word in Article Two in the Articles of Confederation. It was purposely omitted from the “Necessary and Proper Clause,” Article One, Section Eight, which I just read.
And by the way, I always carry this [holds up copy of the Constitution] with me and have for 20 years. When I’m not in the shower, that’s the one exception. But I’m with them on reading the thing. Let’s take it seriously. The Framers purposely omitted teh word “expressly.” This was emphasized in two different Federalist Papers, in numbers 33 and 34. And then a 1Oth Amendment is added. It’s affirming the idea that the federal powers are still limited. states’ rights folks wanted to add the word “expressly” to that. It was the guy from South Carolina, of course it would be from South Carolina, Thomas Tucker, who proposed it.
Let me read what you Madison said in response. This is James Madison, the father of the Constitution, the father of the Bill of Rights. He fights off this effort to put “expressly” into the 10th Amendment. Here is what he says, a direct quote from the 1st Congress:
“It was impossible to confine a government to the exercise of express powers. There must necessarily be admitted powers by implication. unless the Constitution descended to count every minutia.”
If you actually had to specify every single power, the document would be way too long. Ordinary people couldn’t understand it. It wouldn’t come from “We, the people.” It doesn’t say, for example — there’s no “bank clause: in the Constitution, and yet we have a federal — we have a federal bank early on, the great John Marshall, affirmed that Congress could do that even though there’s no — and he says this very clearly, no express provision. It’s an implied power.
OLBERMANN: James Madison was a well-known socialist. Just have to throw out anything that he says. What about the idea that to a certain degree the tea party and even Republicans look at the Constitution as if it were the Bible, both in how they seem to think it’s holy and perfect but also this ability they seem to have, especially if they don’t understand the words very well, to read into it whatever they want?
AMAR: Well, it’s — I respect their reverence for the document. I have it, too. But it’s not holy writ. That’s why it can be amended. We don’t go around generally adding new scriptures. But this thing has been amended over the years and in fact, the tea partiers themselves say, “Well, we want to rethink the 14th, 16th, the 17th amendments In that way, it’s not quite holy writ. It’s man-made. It’s a more perfect union. It can be made more perfect still with amendments, and those amendments can be liberal or conservative.
OLBERMANN: Akhil Reed Amar, the professor of law and political science at Yale. Great thanks for your time. Very informative and entertaining at the same time.
I always find it interesting that tea partiers never mention either the Elastic Clause or the Supremacy Clause, or maybe they don’t mention them because they destroy their claim that states should be able to nullify federal laws they don’t like.
If Andrew Jackson were president, they’d get a lesson on how a president would be willing to not only warn them about their desire to nullify federal laws, but how a president would be more than willing to organize the military to make sure that they understood that the power of the federal government is greater than that of individual states.
IMO, the tea partiers not only need to read and understand the Constitution. They also need instruction in American history to order to understand why some of their ideas about the Constitution, especially the 10th Amendment are inaccurate when viewed from a historical perspective.
It should be noted that Congress had a ‘rule’ requiring that all legislation considered/passed include a statement to the effect that it was constitutional. That rule was put aside when the Congress considered (sic) the Patriot Act in the aftermath of 911.
Do you think that the Patriot Act could have been shown to be ‘constitutional’? Not likely.
The title of the above article should be made more clear, that yes, while the party of Jefferson, the Democratic Republicans were Classic Liberals whose views transended into todays Libertarians and Civil Libertarians of left and right, that moreover the Federalists who were pitted against Jefferson and his party, closely embody todays Modern Liberals rather than that of yesterdays Classic.
The title of this the above article is bias and has no truth in todays sense of what Liberals are and what Liberals were.
A better non-partisan title and article would have read like this:
Establishment Republicans Omit Crucial Passage in Constitution Reading Stunt:
The Constitution reading stunt performed by establishment Republicans designed to placate a co-opted Tea Party fizzled Thursday when Congress critters failed to recite the entire document. It is rather interesting to note what part they left out.
“Democrats asked why original sections that later were amended, including references to slaves, were left out of the recital, and lawmakers initially did not catch that a couple of key paragraphs were omitted when two pages got stuck together,” reports the Associated Press.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the organizer of the stunt, later admitted the omission and returned to the House floor and read the missing part into the Congressional Record.
Republicans had earlier failed to read Article IV and Article V.
Section 4 of Article IV reads as follows: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”
Some scholars and historians argue that Section 4 is the most significant part of the Constitution. It was the motivating force behind the delegates convening in Philadelphia in 1787. They wanted to create a federal government capable of protecting the people from foreign invasion and violent threats from within.
Alexander Hamilton considered domestic dangers “more alarming than the arms and arts of foreign nations.”
In addition, the federal government, under the rule of both Democrats and Republicans, has not guaranteed to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.
In fact, the federal government has worked tirelessly to eradicate the republicanism of the states and has supplanted it with creeping federalism. This process began with the Lincoln administration during the Civil War (otherwise known as the War of Northern Aggression) and has increased significantly over the last fifty or so years.
Maybe those pages did stick together as claimed. Maybe they were intentionally omitted.
Regardless of the explanation, the fact remains that the federal government and rule by Republicans and Democrats threatens the states and undermines the Constitution.
The Establishment Republicans and their coterie of Establishment Democrats are sworn enemies of the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights. The Establishment of left and right demands not only the elimination of the states, but also national borders and sovereignty.
It is no mistake the federal government has failed to live up to Section 4 of Article IV.
It is an integral part of the Establishment Republican and Democratic party agendas.
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Otherwise, kudos to the poster of the article, let it be understood that these parties of left and right are in no sense different than one another, rather they are both heard and seen on the same frequency. This is a shame for our Republic and Democracy as a whole
Also want to add that the patriot act did infact have bi-partisan support.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/patr-m02.shtml