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CLT&G Update: 29 Dec 98
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From: "Chip Ford" <[email protected]>
To: "MassLP Reflector" <[email protected]>,
"MassGOP Listserv" <[email protected]>
Subject: CLT&G Update: 29 Dec 98
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 14:31:11 -0500
Sender: [email protected]
Citizens for Limited Taxation & Government
PO Box 408 * Peabody, MA 01960
Phone: (508) 384-0100 * E-Mail: [email protected]
Visit our website at: http://cltg.org
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*** CLT&G Update ***
Tuesday, December 29, 1998
The Boston Globe
Monday, December 28, 1998
The US suffered through turmoil in '98 -- 1798, that is
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist, 12/28/98
So shocking were the president's deeds, so extreme were his
opponents, so furiously did partisan passions roil the public,
that by the end of '98 some of the nation's most eminent
leaders were questioning whether America's experiment with
constitutional democracy was coming undone.
No, not the Clinton scandals. The year was 1798. John Adams
was in the White House and the United States was undergoing an
agony of political turmoil. It was a bitter time, but it
produced two of the most remarkable statements on liberty and
limited government in our history - the Kentucky and Virginia
Resolutions of 1798.
Americans were sharply divided over a host of issues that
year, none more so than US-French relations. The Federalists,
who controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress,
deeply mistrusted the French revolutionaries and refused to
support them when France went to war with Britain. Republicans
led by Thomas Jefferson were sympathetic to the French cause,
which they identified with America's own revolt against royal
abuse two decades earlier. The Jeffersonians denounced Adams
and the Federalists as "monarchists" and "Tories" -
denunciations echoed by a growing population of anti-British
immigrants.
Angered by Washington's neutrality, France began seizing
American vessels. US diplomats in France were snubbed. A
scandal erupted - the famous XYZ Affair - when agents of the
French foreign minister, Talleyrand, demanded a bribe from
President Adams's emissaries. Federalists were outraged; war
fever swept the country. There were rumors that France was
planning an invasion - and that Vice President Jefferson, whose
Republican supporters were violently condemning the federal
government, would join the invaders and overthrow the Adams
administration.
In this superheated atmosphere, Congress and the president
enacted a package of grotesquely unconstitutional laws. The
Alien Enemies Act empowered the president to jail or expel
without trial any foreigner he deemed "dangerous to the peace."
The Sedition Act prohibited all criticism of federal officials
made "with intent to defame." Just seven years after the
ratification of the First Amendment, editors, printers, and
politicians were hauled into court and sent to prison for the
crime of opposing the president.
Jefferson and James Madison - who called the Sedition Act a
"monster that must forever disgrace its parents" - resolved to
strike back. Knowing that a Supreme Court fight would lose (the
bench was dominated by Federalists), they decided to attack
through the state legislatures.
Working with allies in Kentucky and Virginia, Jefferson and
Madison arranged for each state's general assembly to adopt a
statement protesting the new laws. Jefferson drafted the
Kentucky resolution, which was passed on Nov. 16, 1798. Madison
wrote the Virginia resolution, which was adopted on Christmas
Eve.
"Resolved," the Kentucky Legislature declared in its opening
paragraph, "that whensoever the General Government assumes
undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of
no force." Supreme authority in America, it argued, was held
not by the federal government but by the people and the states,
and Congress and the president had only those powers clearly
delegated to them by the Constitution. The Alien and Sedition
Acts were intolerable above all because the federal government
had no right to enact them. In the 20th century, the 10th
Amendment has been largely ignored, but in the Kentucky
Resolution, Jefferson quoted it repeatedly:
"It is true as a general principle, and is also expressly
declared by one of the amendments to the Constitution, that
�the powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved
to the States respectively, or to the people."' Nothing in the
Constitution gave federal officials any right to interfere with
freedom of speech or the press, or to exercise any jurisdiction
over aliens. "Therefore, the act of Congress passed on the 14th
day of July, 1798 ... is not law, but is altogether void, and
of no effect."
The Virginia Resolution was also blunt. Congress and the
president, Madison wrote, have only the powers "enumerated in
that compact [the Constitution]; and that in case of a
deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers
not granted by the said compact, the states ... have the right
and are duty bound to interpose for arresting the progress of
the evil."
These resolutions weren't empty theory. They were a forceful
defense of freedom, and a reminder that when governments are
allowed to infringe the liberty of A, it is only a matter of
time before they move on to B's.
"The friendless alien has indeed been selected as the safest
subject of a first experiment," declared the Kentucky
resolution, "but the citizen will soon follow - or rather has
already followed, for already has a Sedition Act marked him as
its prey."
Jefferson and Madison were fearful, as more Americans should
be today, of allowing power to be concentrated in the central
government. They won the battle: Americans came to hate the
Alien and Sedition Acts, and the Federalists were thrown out in
the election of 1800. But did they win the war? In our day, the
federal government has grown monstrous, strangling Americans'
freedom through endless regulations, restrictions, and taxes.
The bicentennial of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
reminds us how much we have lost - and points the way to win it
back.
Jeff Jacoby is a Globe columnist. You can write Jeff at
[email protected].
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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more
information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
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"The Only Alternative to Limited Taxation and Government
is Unlimited Taxation and Government"
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Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: [email protected]>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'