Tag Archives: jamesmadison

by

Daily Broadside | Did You Commemorate Constitution Day Yesterday?

I can hardly believe in three-and-half years of blogging about faith, culture and politics, I’ve never written about Constitution Day, which was yesterday.

Also known as Citizenship Day, Constitution Day is an American observance begun in 2005, honoring the day 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the United States Constitution. This historic date was September 17, 1787, 236 years ago.

Another important figure in the creation of Constitution Day is Louise Leigh. Leigh, after taking a course in Constitutional History with the National Center for Constitutional Studies, was inspired to spread her newfound love of the Constitution throughout the country. In 1997, she founded a nonprofit organization called Constitution Day, Inc. to help encourage recognition of the importance of this national holiday.

Through her efforts, Constitution Day became an official holiday alongside Citizenship Day in 2004 when, with the help of support from Senator Robert Byrd, the “Constitution Day” amendment to the Omnibus Spending Bill passed. In May 2005, the United States Department of Education backed the law when it announced that it would apply to any school receiving federal funds of any kind.

What is unique about the U.S. Constitution is that it is the only law passed by the People, and legislatures are therefore under the oversight of the People. In other words, the governments of this land, whether federal or state, are answerable to the People through the Constitution. We, the People, have the right and responsibility to demand that our “rulers” honor its authority and do not transgress it, as they are more and more inclined to do.

But to do that we need to know what it says. Here are some facts about the Constitution to get you interested in learning more.

  • James Madison, America’s fourth President (1809-1817), made a major contribution to the ratification of the Constitution by writing The Federalist Papers, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In later years, he was referred to as the “Father of the Constitution.”
  • The U.S. Constitution has 4,400 words. It is the oldest—and shortest—written Constitution of any major government in the world. (To be technically accurate, the Constitution contains 4,543 words, including the signatures, has four sheets, each 28-3/4 inches by 23-5/8 inches. It contains 7,591 words when including the 27 amendments.)
  • Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution.
  • There are 27 Amendments to the Constitution. The first ten are called The Bill of Rights and were ratified in 1791.
  • 39 men signed the Constitution. The oldest was Ben Franklin, who was 81, physically frail, and entered the convention hall in a sedan chair borne by four prisoners from the Walnut Street jail in Philadelphia.
  • The youngest signer was Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey who was 26 years old.
  • George Washington and James Madison were the only presidents who signed the Constitution.
  • As Benjamin Franklin left the Pennsylvania State House after the final meeting of the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787, he was approached by the wife of the mayor of Philadelphia. She was curious as to what the new government would be. Franklin replied, “A republic, madam. If you can keep it.”
  • The word “democracy” does not appear in the Constitution.

If you’ve never commemorated Constitution Day, think about making an effort to understand the Constitution and then observing the day every September 17 by reading it.

by

Daily Broadside | Two U.S. Presidents Embraced Marxist Theory—at the Start of the 20th Century

Daily Verse | Psalm 111:1
I will extol the Lord with all my heart
    in the council of the upright and in the assembly.

July 1 and we’re in the middle of a series of short posts on how the craziness of the Left became what we call “cultural Marxism.” In the last two posts (here and here) I laid out, based on chapter six of Andrew Breitbart’s book, Righteous Indignation, how today’s insanity is rooted in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx.

Rousseau believed that humans are intrinsically good but are corrupted by society. That belief doesn’t square with either the Scriptures or with the Founders’ beliefs about human nature. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 51,

“If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

Karl Marx, who lived during the 19th century, believed that society itself formed human nature. Both Rousseau and Marx believed that men were not free or equal and that society was to blame. Both envisioned replacing the current society with a new one—Rousseau with a new “social contract” and Marx by destroying the surrounding society and replacing it with communism. Both believed that “communism” was the natural and best organizational structure for a flourishing society.

What’s amazing is that near the turn of 20th century, we elected two presidents who embraced what we call “Progressivism.” As Breitbart puts it, “Progressivism was a strain in American thought that merged the Hegelian dialectic with Marxism, backed by a rosy Rousseau-ian view of humanity and the general will—basically, it was soft Marxism without the class struggle” (RI, p.109).

The first president with this ideology was Teddy Roosevelt, who served from 1901 to 1909; the second was Woodrow Wilson, who held the office from 1913 to 1921. Both loathed the Constitution’s place as our authoritative document for how America’s government should work. Roosevelt said, “To hell with the Constitution when the people want coal!” and Wilson said, “Justly revered as our great constitution is, it could be stripped off and thrown aside like a garment, and the nation would still stand forth clothed in the living vestment of flesh and sinew, warm with the heart-blood of one people, ready to recreate constitutions and laws” (RI, pp.110-111).

We don’t need no stinkin’ constitution!

Breitbart goes on to write,

“Both Roosevelt and Wilson were far less concerned about the rights of individuals or the value of republicanism; it was the job of Great Leaders to hand down good governance. They thought that great decisions should be made on high by men of high thought, and that the dirty process of democracy just blocked any chance at true change. The philosophy paved the way for FDR, and it echoes all the way down to Obama” (RI, p.111).

Breitbart wrote this in 2011 and died in 2012; therefore, he wouldn’t have known that it now echoes all the way down to the dementia patient currently occupying the White House.

Nevertheless, there were two U.S. presidents in the early 1900s who embraced Marxist ideology, challenging the Founding Fathers’ ideology. I never knew that. Did you?

But that was just the beginning of it. Tomorrow we’ll look at the Frankfurt School, and that’s when this gets really interesting.