Libertarian / states’-rights reading of American history: A real tradition of thought, not a fringe one: Calhoun, the 1896 Populists, Rothbard, and Ron Paul all walk some version of this road. Madison in Federalist 10 defines a pure democracy as a society of few citizens governing themselves directly, and says such democracies “have ever exhibited spectacles of turbulence and contention.” The word Democracy appears essentially nowhere in the Declaration or Constitution; “republic” the operative term (Art. IV §4 guarantees each state a republican form of government). Washington, Adams, and others used “democracy” pejoratively. The Bill of Rights – written against concentrated power, and the original design had Senators chosen by state legislatures, specifically so the Senate represented states as governments, not populations.

1913 really, a hinge year: Federal Reserve Act, 16th Amendment (income tax), 17th Amendment (direct election). Deflation after 1865 genuinely crushed debtors — farmers especially — the direct ancestor William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech. Jefferson in Paris when Madison drafted the Bill of Rights. Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) already read “among the several states” expansively, and Justice Marshall, not a states’-rights theorist as Madison & Jefferson. The Commerce Clause – partly written because interstate tariffs under the Articles effectively strangled trade. The Interstate Commerce Act aimed at the Robber Barons – weakly. Akin to how Teddy Roosevelt’s anti-trust law, by means of a logical inference, “permitted” the Government to “establish” government approved monopolies such as the 3rd Central Bank and later the Military Industrial Complex. Bottom line: before 1913 the federal government had no direct grab on individual income and no permanent bureaucratic revenue apparatus; after, it did.

The Interstate Commerce Act aimed at the Robber Barons – akin to how Teddy’s anti-trust laws “permitted” the Government – by the above mentioned logical inference – to “establish” government approved monopolies such as the 3rd Central Bank and later the Military Industrial Complex. Madison argued in Federalist 62 – the Senate a body of the states-as-governments, per the Connecticut Compromise. The 17th Amendment genuinely removed the original intent of the Framer of the Constitution. The Supreme Court should rule that amendment compares directly to Prohibition and the later invalidation of Roe vs. Wade.

The States of the Union forged a Republic. The word “democracy” so emphasized and adored post Civil War, never once employed in the Declaration of Independence nor either the first or second Constitutions of the United States. The Declaration refers to government deriving its powers from “the consent of the governed,” and the Constitution begins “We the People.” A clear interpretation — based upon the bill of Rights in contrast to the 1789 French Rights of Man prioritizes citizens over the rights of feudal lords. Napoleon needed soldiers, hence he included even Jews as citizens.

The influence of 17th and 18th Century philosophers interpreted distinctly different by two completely different cultures and societies of revolutionary America vs revolutionary France. Akin to the original NT Greek manuscripts – “total blindness” to the fundamental distinctions between מלאכה vs. עבודה in shabbat observance. The former a Torah wisdom which dictates prophetic mussar as the k’vanna/intent required by all wisdom-time oriented Av commandments such as in the specific shabbat commandment. The latter static and fixed limited to concrete actions rather than internal matters of the heart.

The Declaration refers to government deriving its powers from “the consent of the governed,” and the Constitution begins “We the People.” A clear interpretation — based upon the bill of Rights in stark contrast with the 1789 French Rights of Man: The latter, explicitly universal and anti-feudal, abolishing Caste system – privilege by feudal ownership of estates together with their serfs; whereas the former frames the Republic’s relationship between the States vs the Central Government. Issue of individual liberty not emphasized based upon the limited voting franchise restricted to land owning men. The Framers of the Constitution lived on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution. Virtually all agricultural based economies throughout human history have required cheap labor, due to farming being labor intensive. Pre-Lincoln’s War, Senator Calhoun retrojection defended the institution of Southern slavery.

However, ‘the hand writing on the wall’, obvious to all who had eyes that see. Czarist Russia after the 1856 Crimean War defeat, reached the identical conclusion, that for Russia to remain a ‘Great Power’ it too had to follow the examples set by England, France and Germany and the United States. Contrast the Crimean War with the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis where both Britain and France ceased as ‘Great Powers’, due to their diminished industrial capacities when compared to the bi-polar super-powers, which pitted the US against the USSR.

The Commerce Clause together with the 10th Amendment served as the vision of freedom for the States of the Republic to manage and regulate through “State(s) Rights” all intra-State trade and commerce. Likewise, the other 9 Amendments of the Bill of Rights too policed the Federal and State governments from political “over-reach” by setting limits on the new federal government which now established an additional Executive Branch, which the Articles did not mandate.

This second Constitution gave Congress power to [bureaucratically] regulate inter-State commerce. Post Lincolns’ War restoration of the Republic, both Parties in Congress passed the Inter-State Commerce Act. Madison\Jefferson’s Bill of Rights clearly feared a strong “king-like” Executive Branch that it, along with the other two mandated branches of the Government might abuse their powers and authority such as “divine right of kings” or Big Brother carpet bagger bureaucrats which defined Czarist Autacracy and post Lincoln’s War America. The contrast of the 2nd US Constitution to the later French Revolution which witnessed the rise of Napoleon – a clear rejection of democracy – proved the fears of the Bill of Rights as meritorious.

While the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 had bi-partisan support in Congress, it came AFTER the Radical Republicans restricted Lincolns’ ‘Greenback’ fiat money by some 25%. This economic stupidity concentrated wealth and effectively contributed to the rise of the ‘Robber-Barons’, whose monopolies, starting with the railroads, would shape post Civil War America.

The Citizens United political expression recognizes corporate rights to spend on political speech, while the SAVE America Act, generally speaking – seeks stricter eligibility and identification requirements for citizens voters, based upon the premise that the Bill of Rights most essentially serve to protect citizens of America rather than peoples’ who enter the country illegally. Peoples living in other lands come under the laws of those lands not the laws of America. Just as American citizens their rights to vote in other democratic national elections equally restricted. Citizens United recognizes the 1st Amendment as inclusive of certain corporate political spending. The Save America Act stated aim – tighter citizenship-documentation and voter-ID requirements

Mitt Romney said “Corporations are people, my friend” at the Iowa State Fair on August 11, 2011, during his campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He based this response upon Citizens United v. FEC (2010). Candidates elected receive huge “donations” which defines the corruption of “democracy” over defeated Confederate States-Rights. The 17th Amendment to stripped State legislators from appointing Senators to Washington combined with the 1937 expansive Commerce Clause reading, set the stage for the SC Roe vs Wade ruling.

NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. (1937) the Court pivots from “Direct” to “indirect” effects. Before 1937, the Court (the Lochner era Court) held that manufacturing and production were local activities, strictly outside Congress’s power. Only the actual exchange of goods across state lines was “interstate commerce.” The National Labor Relations Board ordered Jones & Laughlin Steel to stop unfair labor practices. Steel argued that labor relations were local manufacturing, not interstate commerce. If the effect on interstate commerce is indirect, Congress cannot regulate it; based upon the Schechter Poultry and Carter v. Carter Coal Co. precedent. In 1937 the Court shifted the test from “Is the activity itself commerce?” to “Does the activity substantially affect commerce?” The consequences of this ruling: Labor relations, wages, and hours—previously off-limits—now federalized because they exist as “burdens on” commerce.

United States v. Darby (1941) overturned the Hammer v. Dagenhart and Cementing the “Substantial Effect” Test. In Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), the Court had struck down a federal ban on child labor goods, distinguishing between the “evil” (child labor) and the “goods” (commerce). It said Congress couldn’t regulate local labor conditions just because the resulting goods moved across state lines. In 1941 the Court unanimously overruled Hammer v. Dagenhart. Justice Stone (who had dissented in Hammer) wrote that the power to regulate commerce “is the power to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed.” Darby kicked the hinges off the 10th Amendment. The Court declared that Congress can exercise its commerce power to prohibit the movement of any article in interstate commerce that it deems harmful to the public welfare; federal bureaucratic regulation of local production standards (wages/hours), fully constitutional because regulating the goods shipped interstate implicitly regulated the labor that made them.

Wickard v. Filburn (1942) – the final nail into the coffin. If Darby federalized labor, Wickard federalized everything, including pure self-consumption, this in-effect buried “local” non-commercial distinctions. Roscoe Filburn grew wheat on his own farm in Ohio, exceeding his allotment under the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The excess wheat he fed to his own poultry and used for his own family’s consumption – purely local, non-commercial activity. Justice Jackson wrote that even if Filburn’s activity is local and not commercial, if it is economic in nature, and if the aggregate of such activities by thousands of farmers substantially affects the supply and price of wheat in interstate commerce, then Congress can regulate it. The distinction between “interstate” and “intrastate” commerce, and between “production” and “commerce,” was erased. Almost any human activity with an economic dimension became subject to federal control.

This undercuts the framers intention to establish Constitutional checks and balances to shape the 3 mandated branches of Government and their priority relationship with the States of the Republic. The post WWII National Debt primarily reflected caused by the Federal Government became the largest employer of Americans than private industry.

Therefore the 20th Century revolving door between bureaucracies and Corporate monopolies – a clear incest abomination. Madison argued in Federalist 62, which describes the Senate a body of the states-as-governments, per the Connecticut Compromise. The 17th Amendment genuinely removed the original intent of the Framer of the Constitution and like Roe vs Wade the Supreme Court should weigh this Amendment on par with the Prohibition Amendment.

Post Civil War, about $44 million in greenbacks withdrawn before Congress ended the Contraction Act’s redemption program in February 1868. The Public Credit Act of 1869, a separate later measure concerning repayment of Civil War bondholders The later Specie Resumption Act of 1875 set redemption in gold for 1879 and renewed the contraction debate. Compare this policy of “economic stupidity” to the Federally established monopoly which determine the interest charged on money by all banking institutions; the Fed under FDR it likewise duplicated the same “economic stupidity” post collapse of Wall Street in 1929, Hoover’s depression.

This “dog returns to eat its own vomit” error effectively contributed to the negation of the Homestead Act of 1862, corporate monopolies acquisition of properties who paid pennies on the dollar for the bankrupted farm lands. Described aptly in the story: “The Grapes of Wrath”. This novel portrays the horrors suffered by tenant farmers driven from Oklahoma by drought and foreclosures; & their exploitation and the harsh conditions these “refugees” endured in California. A virtual replay of Andrew Jackson’s trail of tears – karma has its consequences.

That same year Wilson radically changed the US experiment and abandoned the advice by the Founding Fathers wherein he duplicated European Central Banking monopoly traditions, that same year the Federal Government abandon tariffs as the main tool to raise money in favor of taxation through the bureaucracy of the IRS\16th Amendment, and passage of the 17th Amendment which stripped the Constitutional power mandated to the States to send Senators as “ministers of the States” to Washington.

This Amendment ignored the warning issued in the Federalist Papers that democracy requires an educated public. State legislators watched their appointed Senators whom they sent to Washington with the “educated eyes” of a predatory hawk; the general public more bread and potatoes reactionary in nature. Hence election of Representative every two years while Senators every 6 years. The general election of Senators has aroused the call for term limits; perhaps a Senators too should stand for election no different from Representatives.

While the Feds Board of Governors a federal agency appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, once in power the Fed operates independent from Government over-view no different than most regulatory laws the eyes of Congress never debate. J.P. Morgan & Co. made huge loans to England and France; in 1917 the Fed extended roughly $2.3 billion in credits to the Allies. When Wilson declared war on Germany, the threat of the consequences of declaring war upon England and France stood as the darkest shadow – that both countries would negate their obligations to pay the loans, like as did the Bolshevik Russia after they seized power.

J.P. Morgan died in 1913. None the less his banking interests greatly influenced the 1910 Jekyll Island planning meeting for the establishment of the 3rd Central Bank; a group including Senator Nelson Aldrich and prominent financiers drafted the banking-reform Aldrich Plan that influenced the later Federal Reserve. John Jacob Astor IV opposed the Aldrich Plan, his tragic death on the Titanic compares to the damned Yankees winning the Civil War in scope; as did passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913.

The land consolidation and mechanization, initiated by FDR’s socialist policies driven by tractor economics and later USDA production policy committed Washington to pay huge farming subsidies to the “Industrial Revolution” of farming industries.