Please enjoy our previous articles listed on the Archives page
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Below:
- Constitutional Minute "Life Without the Bill of Rights" Part 2 To download any previous Constitutional Minute essay in .pdf format click here.
- Constitutional Minute "Life Without the Bill of Rights" Part 1 To download any previous Constitutional Minute essay in .pdf format click here.
- Constitutional Minute "Musings on the Bill of Rights"
To download any previous Constitutional Minute essay in .pdf format click here. - Interview with an Actual Journalist
- Constitutional Minute "Reserved Powers"
- "Higher Interest Rates Will Raise Interest Costs On The National Debt"
- "Meet the American Who Gave the Nation Our Thanksgiving Origin Story"
- Constitutional Minute "A Review of Federal Voting Laws"
Constitutional Minute for 27 December 2022
"Life Without the Bill of Rights" Part 2
The 15th of December was National Bill of Rights Day, based on the fact that on that day in 1791, proposed amendments 3 through 12 received the required ratification of 3⁄4 of the states. I hope you didn’t celebrate by arguing with your spouse that the long shopping lines at this time of year constitute cruel and unusual punishment. There is typically a whole day of activities at the National Constitution Center in Washington – exhibits, seminars and presentations galore. If you didn’t get there --maybe next year.
Last week we explored the idea of an America without the Bill of Rights. I argued that under the view of the Founders prevailing at the time the Constitution was drafted, our Bill of Rights could be entirely repealed without jeopardy because the federal government had been provided no power that would impinge on our rights. Thomas Jefferson stipulated in 1776 that our natural rights were unalienable, irrevocable.
Unfortunately, both the view of rights as unalienable gifts of God as well as the view of a government of limited enumerated powers no longer hold sway with either the ruling elite in Washington nor even many Americans. Many Americans seem to want a powerful central government, even if that power occasionally steps on the liberties of some of our less empowered citizens. We’ve subscribed to Mr. Spock’s philosophy that “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” This of course is the central tenant of democracy; a political system the Founders soundly rejected.
I also mentioned last week that had the Bill of Rights not been adopted, the State Constitutions would have still provided their citizens many protections, but these protections varied from state to state. There used to be a comparison of the rights contained in the various state declarations of rights. But the old link onhttp://teachingamericanhistory.org no longer seems to work. Pity, it was a good comparison.
Virginia’s original Declaration of Rights, while superior to the Bill of Rights in many respects, had no protections for free speech, peaceable assembly, defense against double jeopardy or use of a Grand Jury. These deficiencies were ultimately corrected in later Constitutions, and the Virginia Supreme Court is on record as stating that Virginia’s statement protecting free speech is now even stronger than that of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
But assuming that the Bill of Rights had never been adopted, and neither did state constitutions have rights protections, what could life be like in America?
Without a Sixth Amendment, criminal trials, if you got one at all, would not have to be conducted in public or be speedy, and a jury, again, if you got one, would have no requirement to be impartial (did you know there is no Constitutional requirement for “a jury of your peers?”). You could be tried
anywhere, even outside the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. You would have no right to be informed of the charges against you, no right to confront witnesses against you, nor any ability to compel witnesses in your behalf. If you could afford an attorney you’d probably have one, otherwise you’d go without -- echoes of England’s infamous Star Chamber.
Without the Seventh Amendment there would be no requirement for a jury trial in common law matters, and if the prosecutor didn’t like the innocent verdict you received he could try you again in another venue until he obtained the verdict he was looking for.
Without the Eighth Amendment, bail could be set way above any amount you could afford or borrow, thus ensuring your confinement until your trial date (remember, the trial needn’t be “speedy,” so you could be in jail quite a while). It would be interesting to see whether we the people would vote to resume drawing and quartering people for certain particularly heinous crimes. Probably not, but hangings, firing squads, maybe even the guillotine, all quick and cheap means of dispatching the condemned could certainly return.
Without the Ninth Amendment, we might easily forget that we have other unalienable rights that have not been heretofore specified. But here there is also danger. Under our Constitution, who has the authority to identify and define unenumerated rights – the people or the government? I answer: Whose document is it? Does it begin with “We the people” or “We the government?” If the people forsake their authority over the Constitution, government will gladly step in.
Take the case of Griswold v. Connecticut. Here the Supreme Court identified and defined a right of privacy that had thus far been unknown to the Constitution. The Court did not ask the American people whether a general right to privacy was to be protected or how it was to be defined, the Justices went ahead and defined it themselves.
From Griswold came Roe v. Wade. Did a majority of the American people want to have the Constitution protect an essentially unrestrained right to kill unborn babies? Clearly no, but that is what we now have thanks to the Supreme Court. Without the Court’s usurpation of the people’s authority there would likely be 50 million more wage earners in the workplace today, enough to keep Social Security solvent, for instance. I firmly believe in a natural right to privacy and that this privacy should be secured by our Constitution, but I also believe that the people have the sole power to determine how that right is to be defined and secured.
Without the Tenth Amendment, the idea of nullification would itself be nullified and states would be left without a basis for resisting the unlimited power of the federal government. All governmental power would clearly reside at the federal level; none would be retained by the states or the people.
I think you can see that without the Bill of Rights, government’s power would grow unrestrained (Oh wait, that’s happening already). We would still have a republic, but it would be anyone’s guess as to what rights would be protected. On the plus side, we would certainly not be experiencing a flood of illegal immigrants coursing across our southern border to live “La Dolce Vita” -- there’d be little “dolce” in our “vita.”
Perhaps if they had not ratified the Bill of Rights in 1791 the American people would have gradually seen the need for its protections and demanded amendments be added, one by one. Maybe we’d have ended up with something similar, perhaps something very different. But the fact remains: we do have the Bill of Rights, and it is incumbent upon all Americans to understand what it secures: unalienable rights.
© 2014 This essay first appeared in the Fairfax Free Citizen on 18 Dec 2014. Reproduction for non-profit purposes is hereby given.
Prepared by: Gary R. Porter, Executive Director, Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc. for The Breakfast Club.
"Life Without the Bill of Rights" Part 2
The 15th of December was National Bill of Rights Day, based on the fact that on that day in 1791, proposed amendments 3 through 12 received the required ratification of 3⁄4 of the states. I hope you didn’t celebrate by arguing with your spouse that the long shopping lines at this time of year constitute cruel and unusual punishment. There is typically a whole day of activities at the National Constitution Center in Washington – exhibits, seminars and presentations galore. If you didn’t get there --maybe next year.
Last week we explored the idea of an America without the Bill of Rights. I argued that under the view of the Founders prevailing at the time the Constitution was drafted, our Bill of Rights could be entirely repealed without jeopardy because the federal government had been provided no power that would impinge on our rights. Thomas Jefferson stipulated in 1776 that our natural rights were unalienable, irrevocable.
Unfortunately, both the view of rights as unalienable gifts of God as well as the view of a government of limited enumerated powers no longer hold sway with either the ruling elite in Washington nor even many Americans. Many Americans seem to want a powerful central government, even if that power occasionally steps on the liberties of some of our less empowered citizens. We’ve subscribed to Mr. Spock’s philosophy that “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” This of course is the central tenant of democracy; a political system the Founders soundly rejected.
I also mentioned last week that had the Bill of Rights not been adopted, the State Constitutions would have still provided their citizens many protections, but these protections varied from state to state. There used to be a comparison of the rights contained in the various state declarations of rights. But the old link onhttp://teachingamericanhistory.org no longer seems to work. Pity, it was a good comparison.
Virginia’s original Declaration of Rights, while superior to the Bill of Rights in many respects, had no protections for free speech, peaceable assembly, defense against double jeopardy or use of a Grand Jury. These deficiencies were ultimately corrected in later Constitutions, and the Virginia Supreme Court is on record as stating that Virginia’s statement protecting free speech is now even stronger than that of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
But assuming that the Bill of Rights had never been adopted, and neither did state constitutions have rights protections, what could life be like in America?
Without a Sixth Amendment, criminal trials, if you got one at all, would not have to be conducted in public or be speedy, and a jury, again, if you got one, would have no requirement to be impartial (did you know there is no Constitutional requirement for “a jury of your peers?”). You could be tried
anywhere, even outside the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. You would have no right to be informed of the charges against you, no right to confront witnesses against you, nor any ability to compel witnesses in your behalf. If you could afford an attorney you’d probably have one, otherwise you’d go without -- echoes of England’s infamous Star Chamber.
Without the Seventh Amendment there would be no requirement for a jury trial in common law matters, and if the prosecutor didn’t like the innocent verdict you received he could try you again in another venue until he obtained the verdict he was looking for.
Without the Eighth Amendment, bail could be set way above any amount you could afford or borrow, thus ensuring your confinement until your trial date (remember, the trial needn’t be “speedy,” so you could be in jail quite a while). It would be interesting to see whether we the people would vote to resume drawing and quartering people for certain particularly heinous crimes. Probably not, but hangings, firing squads, maybe even the guillotine, all quick and cheap means of dispatching the condemned could certainly return.
Without the Ninth Amendment, we might easily forget that we have other unalienable rights that have not been heretofore specified. But here there is also danger. Under our Constitution, who has the authority to identify and define unenumerated rights – the people or the government? I answer: Whose document is it? Does it begin with “We the people” or “We the government?” If the people forsake their authority over the Constitution, government will gladly step in.
Take the case of Griswold v. Connecticut. Here the Supreme Court identified and defined a right of privacy that had thus far been unknown to the Constitution. The Court did not ask the American people whether a general right to privacy was to be protected or how it was to be defined, the Justices went ahead and defined it themselves.
From Griswold came Roe v. Wade. Did a majority of the American people want to have the Constitution protect an essentially unrestrained right to kill unborn babies? Clearly no, but that is what we now have thanks to the Supreme Court. Without the Court’s usurpation of the people’s authority there would likely be 50 million more wage earners in the workplace today, enough to keep Social Security solvent, for instance. I firmly believe in a natural right to privacy and that this privacy should be secured by our Constitution, but I also believe that the people have the sole power to determine how that right is to be defined and secured.
Without the Tenth Amendment, the idea of nullification would itself be nullified and states would be left without a basis for resisting the unlimited power of the federal government. All governmental power would clearly reside at the federal level; none would be retained by the states or the people.
I think you can see that without the Bill of Rights, government’s power would grow unrestrained (Oh wait, that’s happening already). We would still have a republic, but it would be anyone’s guess as to what rights would be protected. On the plus side, we would certainly not be experiencing a flood of illegal immigrants coursing across our southern border to live “La Dolce Vita” -- there’d be little “dolce” in our “vita.”
Perhaps if they had not ratified the Bill of Rights in 1791 the American people would have gradually seen the need for its protections and demanded amendments be added, one by one. Maybe we’d have ended up with something similar, perhaps something very different. But the fact remains: we do have the Bill of Rights, and it is incumbent upon all Americans to understand what it secures: unalienable rights.
© 2014 This essay first appeared in the Fairfax Free Citizen on 18 Dec 2014. Reproduction for non-profit purposes is hereby given.
Prepared by: Gary R. Porter, Executive Director, Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc. for The Breakfast Club.
Constitutional Minute for 13 December 2022
"Life Without the Bill of Rights" Part 1
I’ll wager few Americans realize that we owe our Bill of Rights to a mere 336 votes. That was the margin that sent James Madison to the first Congress instead of his friend, and rival James Monroe. Without Madison’s dogged persistence in that first Congress it is likely the idea of rights-based amendments to the Constitution would have “died on the vine.”
What would life in America be like without the Bill of Rights? Downright terrifying!
First, remember that in 1787, one of the primary arguments against a Bill of Rights was that it was unnecessary; government was not being given any power that would infringe upon the liberties of the people. In Federalist 84, Alexander Hamilton wrote: "I ... affirm that bills of rights ... are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. ... For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?" Under this logic, if the entire Bill of Rights was repealed tomorrow nothing would change regarding our rights. They would be equally present and secure with or without the first ten amendments. How wrong the Founders were on this point. Given that over the years the courts have granted Congress nearly unrestrained power to legislate in whatever way it wishes; the argument that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary now looks ridiculous. Today, the Bill of Rights may be the only thing holding back “Leviathan’s” desire to control our liberty. That doesn’t make it right, just a reflection of reality. Former Representative Peter Stark’s (D-CA) view that “The federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country” is much closer to the truth today than Madison’s view of limited and enumerated powers.
In addition to the threat from a government unrestrained by enumerated powers, loss of the Bill of Rights would be worsened by the fact that we have also abandoned the concept of natural rights. Jefferson’s idea that “certain unalienable rights” had been “endowed by their Creator” is today viewed by many as a quaint relic of a by-gone era. Our “enlightened” intelligentsia has risen above this “infantile” attachment to an omniscient Creator. Unfortunately for the intelligentsia, unalienable rights and the God who created them don’t disappear just because you click your heels three times and wish real hard. We obtain our unalienable rights (Virginia’s Declaration called them “inherent” rights) at conception. They are irrevocable and non-transferable (some can of course be forfeited by breaking certain laws).
At law schools, natural rights theory was replaced by “legal positivism,” the theory that all laws (and thus the rights that laws protect) are the creation of man. The effect of this stark: take away the law and you’ve taken away the right. This view is why you can find on today’s White House website a sentence claiming “The 2nd Amendment grants us the right to bear arms.” The Amendment, of course, does no such thing, but such is the thinking of today’s progressives. In their view, to provide government an unrestrained power to control guns we need only get rid of the 2nd Amendment.
Although natural rights have fallen out of favor, they have not completely disappeared, just as the God who created those rights has not “left the building,” as Elvis famously did. The rights are still there, waiting to be invoked. So what would America be like without the Bill of Rights?
Government would have full sway in determining what verbal and symbolic speech would be prohibited. Our government has attempted to limit speech many times, of course, and has usually been rebuked by the Court, based on the First Amendment. Without the Amendment, expressions allowed today could easily be prohibited tomorrow.
Without the First Amendment a national religion might have been declared; New England’s Congregationalists were all for it and their Federalist party dominated the first Congress. Such a national religion might have even persisted for a time before the waves of Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom washed over the rest of the country.
Attempts by the citizens to assemble and petition their government would be greatly restricted if not outright prohibited. Governments hate criticism. The press would likely have to obtain permission to publish on certain topics, particularly anything critical of the current administration.
Guns, since they are clearly “dangerous,” would be limited to the military, the police, and the bodyguards of the rich and powerful. Of course, the lawless element in society would still obtain them, and use them, as folks in Britain and Australia from time to time discover. Personal self-defense would probably be limited to pepper spray and baseball bats (sharp knives would even be controlled, as is now being attempted in Britain).
Government could lodge troops in your home at any time, for any reason.
Governments at all levels would search your person, vehicle and home at any time, for any reason, without the need to obtain consent of a judge. Store security would be able to pat you down leaving their store if you even looked suspicious. Any police traffic stop could result in a search of your car, with or without “probable cause.” Based on phone calls from jealous neighbors, homes would be raided and searched at all hours of the day and night. People would live in fear of a knock on their door. “We’re here to search your home, Sir; we observed you were staying up past the mandatory curfew hour and just want to see what you were up to. Won’t take long; could you and the misses please step outside while we take a look around?” (Notice they said “please.”)
Your testimony in court (or even before you are charged with a crime) could be compelled, including through torture if necessary. “We can’t have the guilty remaining free now, can we?”
Whew! This only covers the first five articles of the Bill of Rights, and then only superficially, but you can see where this is going. Read Amendments 6-10 yourself and imagine life without them. Life in America would be a very bad experience, for everyone. Think about it. (To be continued)
Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc., a project to inform Americans about the Founder’s view of their Constitution. Comments on this essay and ideas for future essays should be sent to [email protected]. This essay first appeared in the Fairfax Free Citizen on 11 December 2014 and in the Yorktown Crier-Poquoson Post on 18 December 2014.
To download any previous Constitutional Minute essay in .pdf format click here.
Prepared by: Gary R. Porter, Executive Director, Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc., for The Breakfast Club.
"Life Without the Bill of Rights" Part 1
I’ll wager few Americans realize that we owe our Bill of Rights to a mere 336 votes. That was the margin that sent James Madison to the first Congress instead of his friend, and rival James Monroe. Without Madison’s dogged persistence in that first Congress it is likely the idea of rights-based amendments to the Constitution would have “died on the vine.”
What would life in America be like without the Bill of Rights? Downright terrifying!
First, remember that in 1787, one of the primary arguments against a Bill of Rights was that it was unnecessary; government was not being given any power that would infringe upon the liberties of the people. In Federalist 84, Alexander Hamilton wrote: "I ... affirm that bills of rights ... are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. ... For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?" Under this logic, if the entire Bill of Rights was repealed tomorrow nothing would change regarding our rights. They would be equally present and secure with or without the first ten amendments. How wrong the Founders were on this point. Given that over the years the courts have granted Congress nearly unrestrained power to legislate in whatever way it wishes; the argument that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary now looks ridiculous. Today, the Bill of Rights may be the only thing holding back “Leviathan’s” desire to control our liberty. That doesn’t make it right, just a reflection of reality. Former Representative Peter Stark’s (D-CA) view that “The federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country” is much closer to the truth today than Madison’s view of limited and enumerated powers.
In addition to the threat from a government unrestrained by enumerated powers, loss of the Bill of Rights would be worsened by the fact that we have also abandoned the concept of natural rights. Jefferson’s idea that “certain unalienable rights” had been “endowed by their Creator” is today viewed by many as a quaint relic of a by-gone era. Our “enlightened” intelligentsia has risen above this “infantile” attachment to an omniscient Creator. Unfortunately for the intelligentsia, unalienable rights and the God who created them don’t disappear just because you click your heels three times and wish real hard. We obtain our unalienable rights (Virginia’s Declaration called them “inherent” rights) at conception. They are irrevocable and non-transferable (some can of course be forfeited by breaking certain laws).
At law schools, natural rights theory was replaced by “legal positivism,” the theory that all laws (and thus the rights that laws protect) are the creation of man. The effect of this stark: take away the law and you’ve taken away the right. This view is why you can find on today’s White House website a sentence claiming “The 2nd Amendment grants us the right to bear arms.” The Amendment, of course, does no such thing, but such is the thinking of today’s progressives. In their view, to provide government an unrestrained power to control guns we need only get rid of the 2nd Amendment.
Although natural rights have fallen out of favor, they have not completely disappeared, just as the God who created those rights has not “left the building,” as Elvis famously did. The rights are still there, waiting to be invoked. So what would America be like without the Bill of Rights?
Government would have full sway in determining what verbal and symbolic speech would be prohibited. Our government has attempted to limit speech many times, of course, and has usually been rebuked by the Court, based on the First Amendment. Without the Amendment, expressions allowed today could easily be prohibited tomorrow.
Without the First Amendment a national religion might have been declared; New England’s Congregationalists were all for it and their Federalist party dominated the first Congress. Such a national religion might have even persisted for a time before the waves of Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom washed over the rest of the country.
Attempts by the citizens to assemble and petition their government would be greatly restricted if not outright prohibited. Governments hate criticism. The press would likely have to obtain permission to publish on certain topics, particularly anything critical of the current administration.
Guns, since they are clearly “dangerous,” would be limited to the military, the police, and the bodyguards of the rich and powerful. Of course, the lawless element in society would still obtain them, and use them, as folks in Britain and Australia from time to time discover. Personal self-defense would probably be limited to pepper spray and baseball bats (sharp knives would even be controlled, as is now being attempted in Britain).
Government could lodge troops in your home at any time, for any reason.
Governments at all levels would search your person, vehicle and home at any time, for any reason, without the need to obtain consent of a judge. Store security would be able to pat you down leaving their store if you even looked suspicious. Any police traffic stop could result in a search of your car, with or without “probable cause.” Based on phone calls from jealous neighbors, homes would be raided and searched at all hours of the day and night. People would live in fear of a knock on their door. “We’re here to search your home, Sir; we observed you were staying up past the mandatory curfew hour and just want to see what you were up to. Won’t take long; could you and the misses please step outside while we take a look around?” (Notice they said “please.”)
Your testimony in court (or even before you are charged with a crime) could be compelled, including through torture if necessary. “We can’t have the guilty remaining free now, can we?”
Whew! This only covers the first five articles of the Bill of Rights, and then only superficially, but you can see where this is going. Read Amendments 6-10 yourself and imagine life without them. Life in America would be a very bad experience, for everyone. Think about it. (To be continued)
Gary Porter is Executive Director of the Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc., a project to inform Americans about the Founder’s view of their Constitution. Comments on this essay and ideas for future essays should be sent to [email protected]. This essay first appeared in the Fairfax Free Citizen on 11 December 2014 and in the Yorktown Crier-Poquoson Post on 18 December 2014.
To download any previous Constitutional Minute essay in .pdf format click here.
Prepared by: Gary R. Porter, Executive Director, Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc., for The Breakfast Club.
Constitutional Minute for 13 December 2022
"Musings on the Bill of Rights"
It’s interesting to notice which historical events we celebrate and which we largely ignore. Sometimes on radio shows you’ll hear a commentator groping for content do a piece on “This Day in History.” “On this day in 1952, Elmer Jenkins rolled a peanut 2 miles using only his nose to earn donations for the Red Cross.” (Note: full disclosure here, I made that up; don’t go looking it up on Wikipedia!)
Most patriotic Americans remember “Constitution Day,” September 17th, the day in 1787 when the Constitution was signed; but I don’t know anyone who even remembers, let along celebrates “Ratification Day,” June 21st, the day in 1788 when New Hampshire’s ratification put the Constitution in operation. On September 17, 1787, the Constitution was just a piece of paper (actually four pieces of parchment), just like any other draft document. As opposed to most legal documents which are put into effect with signatures, signing the Constitution had no legal effect whatsoever. Ratification did, at least when nine states had done so. So why don’t we celebrate Ratification Day with fireworks and concerts the way we do Independence Day? Asking for a friend.
Another day we should celebrate, and don’t, is December 15th, especially here in Virginia. On that day in 1791, Virginia’s ratification of ten of the twelve articles proposed by Congress to “amend” the Constitution, put what we now call the Bill of Rights into effect (it wasn’t routinely called the Bill of Rights until after the Civil War, when Amendments 13-15 were added).
The debate over the idea of adding a “Bill of Rights” to the Constitution didn’t even come up until 5 days before the convention adjourned. George Mason thought it a good idea (“It would give great quiet to the people”); others saw no need for it, most of the state constitutions in effect at the time had declarations of rights, a federal one would be redundant. Mason’s motion to form a committee to draft a Bill of Rights (BoR) was defeated and its absence became the primary reason Mason and two other gentlemen refused to sign the finished document. At the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788, Partick Henry chided the Federalists over the omission: “Would it consume too much paper?”
Massachusetts is the state that actually started the ball rolling on a BoR. In exchange for the Anti-Federalists votes to ratify the Constitution, the Federalists at Massachusetts’s convention promised them they would be allowed to submit recommendations for both amendments to the Constitution and articles for a new Bill of Rights. After Massachusetts “broke the ice,” most other states followed Massachusetts’s example and submitted their ideas along with their ratification certificate.
James Madison, “Father of the Constitution” (a title he argued was inappropriate) is in fact solely responsible for creation of the Bill of Rights. Had he lost the election to the First Congress, I’m certain a Bill of Rights would today not exist. Congress was busy building a government from the ground up and had no interest in adding a Bill of Rights, but Madison’s dogged determination to fulfill a campaign promise he made to the Baptists of Orange County, Virginia met with success. Wikipedia has a very comprehensive page on the Bill of Rights, showing the various iterations the articles went through as they worked their way through Congress; it is worth the read.
As a testament to the success of the Bill of Rights we now have myriad copycats: “Patient’s Bill of Rights,” “Passenger Bill of Rights,” “Cell Phone Bill of Rights,” “Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights.” Might there be a “Ferret-owners Bill of Rights” being drafted as I write this?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously proposed adding a Second Bill of Rights in 1944. Americans, he thought, had a “right” to a decent job, an adequate income, freedom from unfair competition and monopolies, a decent house, adequate medical care, social security (of course) and a right to an education. If people had trouble providing these accoutrements for themselves, government would provide them. Congress didn’t take the bait (thank goodness) and propose the various amendments necessary to bring FDR’s idea to fruition and the proposal died. But you’ll occasionally encounter people today trying to resurrect it.
I think I’ve mentioned that from 2013 to 2017 I was writing a weekly column called “Constitutional Corner” and sending these at times lengthy essays (sometimes they would run to 8 pages or more) to an extensive subscriber list. I’m going to put my “pen” down for the remainder of December and enjoy the holidays, but I can’t countenance any of my faithful readers suffering from Constitutional Minute “withdrawal,” so, in keeping with our Bill of Rights Day theme I will send you on or before 20 and 27 December, essays I wrote on 18 and 21 December 2014 entitled: “Life Without the Bill of Right” Parts 1 and 2. I hope you enjoy them (warning, there might be some dated material therein).
I think we can all agree that the contention of the Federalists in 1787 that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary (“Why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do”[i]), have turned out to be shockingly wrong. Without the Bill of Rights, America would today be a far different place in terms of individual freedom. The Supreme Court has given the federal government powers it created out of thin air or through expansive interpretations of ambiguous language; and without the Bill of Rights.…. Well, you’ll see in the next two essays.
Have a very Merry Christmas and don’t forget the “Reason for the Season.” See you next year.
[i] Alexander Hamilton writing in Federalist 84
To download any previous Constitutional Minute essay in .pdf format click here.
Prepared by: Gary R. Porter, Executive Director, Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc., for The Breakfast Club.
"Musings on the Bill of Rights"
It’s interesting to notice which historical events we celebrate and which we largely ignore. Sometimes on radio shows you’ll hear a commentator groping for content do a piece on “This Day in History.” “On this day in 1952, Elmer Jenkins rolled a peanut 2 miles using only his nose to earn donations for the Red Cross.” (Note: full disclosure here, I made that up; don’t go looking it up on Wikipedia!)
Most patriotic Americans remember “Constitution Day,” September 17th, the day in 1787 when the Constitution was signed; but I don’t know anyone who even remembers, let along celebrates “Ratification Day,” June 21st, the day in 1788 when New Hampshire’s ratification put the Constitution in operation. On September 17, 1787, the Constitution was just a piece of paper (actually four pieces of parchment), just like any other draft document. As opposed to most legal documents which are put into effect with signatures, signing the Constitution had no legal effect whatsoever. Ratification did, at least when nine states had done so. So why don’t we celebrate Ratification Day with fireworks and concerts the way we do Independence Day? Asking for a friend.
Another day we should celebrate, and don’t, is December 15th, especially here in Virginia. On that day in 1791, Virginia’s ratification of ten of the twelve articles proposed by Congress to “amend” the Constitution, put what we now call the Bill of Rights into effect (it wasn’t routinely called the Bill of Rights until after the Civil War, when Amendments 13-15 were added).
The debate over the idea of adding a “Bill of Rights” to the Constitution didn’t even come up until 5 days before the convention adjourned. George Mason thought it a good idea (“It would give great quiet to the people”); others saw no need for it, most of the state constitutions in effect at the time had declarations of rights, a federal one would be redundant. Mason’s motion to form a committee to draft a Bill of Rights (BoR) was defeated and its absence became the primary reason Mason and two other gentlemen refused to sign the finished document. At the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788, Partick Henry chided the Federalists over the omission: “Would it consume too much paper?”
Massachusetts is the state that actually started the ball rolling on a BoR. In exchange for the Anti-Federalists votes to ratify the Constitution, the Federalists at Massachusetts’s convention promised them they would be allowed to submit recommendations for both amendments to the Constitution and articles for a new Bill of Rights. After Massachusetts “broke the ice,” most other states followed Massachusetts’s example and submitted their ideas along with their ratification certificate.
James Madison, “Father of the Constitution” (a title he argued was inappropriate) is in fact solely responsible for creation of the Bill of Rights. Had he lost the election to the First Congress, I’m certain a Bill of Rights would today not exist. Congress was busy building a government from the ground up and had no interest in adding a Bill of Rights, but Madison’s dogged determination to fulfill a campaign promise he made to the Baptists of Orange County, Virginia met with success. Wikipedia has a very comprehensive page on the Bill of Rights, showing the various iterations the articles went through as they worked their way through Congress; it is worth the read.
As a testament to the success of the Bill of Rights we now have myriad copycats: “Patient’s Bill of Rights,” “Passenger Bill of Rights,” “Cell Phone Bill of Rights,” “Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights.” Might there be a “Ferret-owners Bill of Rights” being drafted as I write this?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously proposed adding a Second Bill of Rights in 1944. Americans, he thought, had a “right” to a decent job, an adequate income, freedom from unfair competition and monopolies, a decent house, adequate medical care, social security (of course) and a right to an education. If people had trouble providing these accoutrements for themselves, government would provide them. Congress didn’t take the bait (thank goodness) and propose the various amendments necessary to bring FDR’s idea to fruition and the proposal died. But you’ll occasionally encounter people today trying to resurrect it.
I think I’ve mentioned that from 2013 to 2017 I was writing a weekly column called “Constitutional Corner” and sending these at times lengthy essays (sometimes they would run to 8 pages or more) to an extensive subscriber list. I’m going to put my “pen” down for the remainder of December and enjoy the holidays, but I can’t countenance any of my faithful readers suffering from Constitutional Minute “withdrawal,” so, in keeping with our Bill of Rights Day theme I will send you on or before 20 and 27 December, essays I wrote on 18 and 21 December 2014 entitled: “Life Without the Bill of Right” Parts 1 and 2. I hope you enjoy them (warning, there might be some dated material therein).
I think we can all agree that the contention of the Federalists in 1787 that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary (“Why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do”[i]), have turned out to be shockingly wrong. Without the Bill of Rights, America would today be a far different place in terms of individual freedom. The Supreme Court has given the federal government powers it created out of thin air or through expansive interpretations of ambiguous language; and without the Bill of Rights.…. Well, you’ll see in the next two essays.
Have a very Merry Christmas and don’t forget the “Reason for the Season.” See you next year.
[i] Alexander Hamilton writing in Federalist 84
To download any previous Constitutional Minute essay in .pdf format click here.
Prepared by: Gary R. Porter, Executive Director, Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc., for The Breakfast Club.
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Interview With an Actual Journalist
December 2022 PERMALINK |
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Meet Quin Hillyer, an actual journalist, who currently writes for the Washington Examiner as a senior commentary writer and editor. He has worked at the American Spectator as executive editor, the Washington Times as senior editorial writer, and as contributing editor at National Review Online. Hillyer’s articles have appeared in many national publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Review, the New Republic, the (UK) Guardian, and Investor’s Business Daily.
Quin grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he remembers being inspired at age 12 as nearly a year-long Bicentennial celebration, in 1976, of the Declaration of Independence, enveloped the country. “It made a huge impression on me,” Hillyer expressed, as he saw the entire country caught-up in the commemoration of the document that was the mission statement for our Constitution. He said that in 1976, “there was none of this breast-beating of how awful we are” as a nation. It was there that Quin began a lifetime of respect and admiration for all things American, with a thirst to learn more about our founding and the Constitution.
He graduated from the Isidore Newman School in 1982 and went on to acquire an A.B. in government and theology in 1986 from Georgetown University. Hillyer speaks fondly of his experience at Georgetown as a freshman in his honors government program which was taught by renowned Constitutional scholars. He says after Georgetown, because of his keen interest in both disciplines, that he “hopped around between both the political world and journalism for a while, like you’re not supposed to do.”
To begin his career after graduation, Quin returned home to New Orleans and became a correspondent at the Times-Picayune. He cut his journalistic teeth while covering sports. Because of his love of our founding documents, Hillyer was a Reagan appointee to Public Affairs in late 1986, however, his real experience in politics was launched in 1987, while serving as research and issues director for U. S. Representative Bob Livingston’s gubernatorial campaign.
Following his calling once again, Hillyer felt he “was meant for journalism” which led him in 1989 to become managing editor of Gambit Weekly, a newsmagazine in the New Orleans area where he gained notoriety “doing investigative pieces on the rise of David Duke and pointing out (Duke’s) neo-Nazi ties.”
Quin boomeranged back into politics for 5 years, serving as press secretary for Congressman Bob Livingston. But, by 1996, he realized he missed writing again. With the battle between his two passions raging, Hillyer told me that columnist Fred Barnes “advised me to go make a name for myself away from D. C. and make my way back.” That’s when Pulitzer-Prize winner Paul Greenberg at the Arkansas Democrat Gazette hired him to join the editorial staff. Quin says he “did not particularly enjoy the circumstances of the job.” He was hired as lead editorial writer at the Mobile Register in 1998, where he earned the Carmage Walls Commentary Award and the Green Eyeshade Award, making good on the suggestion by his colleague, Fred Barnes.
Hillyer was ready to return to Washington in 2006 to navigate covering the political scene once again as executive editor with The American Spectator before assuming the post of Associate Editorial Page Editor at The Washington Examiner in 2008.
Today, Quin resides in Alabama and writes furiously and brilliantly on the matters plaguing the nation.
I asked Hillyer why journalism has become more of an activist profession rather than what it was originally intended to be, a watchdog over the government for the people protected by the First Amendment. Hillyer responded that “very few (journalists) try to be neutral or watchdogs.” He reminds us that at the turn of the 20th century, the “rise of the objective neutral media was a good thing,” however, today, that neutrality “has disappeared.”
“For the left, everything is politics,” lamented Quin. “So many writers are covering things they know nothing about.” According to Quin, media-types mostly consider ideology when hiring writers these days, unless they are conservative media employers who mainly look for skill and talent. When I asked how many writers in the country know the Constitution and what the law means, he responded, “less than 10%.” That explains a lot about the establishment media.
As an actual journalist, Hillyer digs for the facts. One of his latest investigative reporting projects for the Washington Examiner centers around the controversy at James Madison’s Montpelier and the “hostile takeover” of the property, as well as at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Hillyer further characterizes the takeover from his article, “Woke Montpelier leaders envision massive land grab in Virginia” in this way: “. . . the wholly untrustworthy “trusts” that operate James Madison’s Montpelier and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello — the homes of the two most influential thinkers who laid the foundation of this nation’s grand experiment of liberty — are on a malevolent mission to trash the reputations of those two great founders.”
This is personal for Quin and to those of us who value the truth and the legacy of our brilliant founders.
In 2000, Quin penned a column asking Congress to establish a commission of scholars to commemorate James Madison’s 250 birthday in 2001 and use it as an occasion for civic education. He said the commission “should sponsor or encourage high school essay contests about the Constitution, that the scholars should meet together at least once, and a few other things.”
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) “saw the column and turned it into a bill.” Quin writes of the event on March 16, 2001: “The scholars were appointed; they held a symposium in an ornate room in the Library of Congress on March 16, 2001, with me as the only reporter present for the private part of the session; and they promulgated a call for civic education. There was a grand dinner that night at a banquet hall in the Library of Congress honoring Madison, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Sessions presiding and Justice Antonin Scalia among the numerous public officials in attendance. By happenstance, I rode the elevator with Scalia, but I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say.”
In his Washington Examiner commentary, “The woke assault on James Madison feels personal, but everyone should care,” from July 20, 2022, Hillyer continued to recall that day, “For me, it capped a day in which I had driven the 95 miles out to Montpelier, then only in the early phases of its restoration from what the DuPont family had done to alter it radically, and I enjoyed a fascinating private tour of all they were planning. The curators said the law creating the commission and the commemoration had hugely helped draw attention to Montpelier’s mission of celebrating the life and thought of the Father of the Constitution.”
The Montpelier Foundation, formed in 1998, has been busy for two decades restoring the estate of James Madison, accurately preserving his legacy while also telling the critical story of slavery and its impact on the history of the plantation. After all, one of the first acts of the Foundation was to locate descendants of Montpelier’s slave population to honor their stories in the exhibits on the property.
Archaeologist, Matthew Reeves, was hired by the Foundation Board in 2000 to oversee the rigorous endeavor to uncover details about the lives and work of Montpelier’s enslaved. Quin reports, ”In 2001, shortly after Madison’s 250th birthday celebration, Montpelier organized a three-day Slave Commemoration Gathering , and over the next 15 years, it received numerous national awards for permanent and prominent exhibits on slavery’s role there.” I should note here that Reeves was fired from his Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration position this year.
Quin visited Montpelier several years after 2001 for another private tour, then again 5 years later, when the “restoration” was almost complete. He said that by that time, “the foundation was well into its efforts to excavate evidence of the lives of the slaves who lived there.” In context, that undertaking was appropriate and wise. Little did I know that almost all context would be thrown aside, with slavery essentially becoming Montpelier’s predominant focus.”
Incrementally, monied leftists and radical organizations have successfully orchestrated a coup upon the Boards and the Trusts tasked with operating both Monticello and Montpelier. Mary Alexander, an authentic and verifiable descendent of Madison’s manservant, Paul Jennings, has said that Montpelier is now “a black history and black rights organization that couldn’t care less about James Madison and his legacy.”
Acknowledging that slavery was “an unjust and horrible system,” she nonetheless said that Montpelier has a unique mission (to honor Madison). “There were hundreds of thousands of slaveowners but not hundreds of thousands who wrote the Constitution,” as Alexander so precisely asserted the obvious as documented by Quin Hillyer in “The ideals – and homes – of Madison and Jefferson are worth defending from the leftists.”
In his September 9, 2022, “James Madison’s Foundation, destroyed from within,” Hillyer determines, “. . . self-proclaimed “termites,” aided by a sympathetic media and discredited organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, have driven the foundation, put its financial health at great risk, and even flirted with a United Nations-aided land grab of the region around James Madison’s Montpelier by designating it one large UNESCO heritage site,” explains Hillyer.
Enter stage left, the National Trust for Historic Preservation at Montpelier. “In 2017, the ascendant liberal leadership of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns Montpelier but by charter is not supposed to “have authority over either management or board governance,” created an African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, dedicated not just to the preservation of sites related to “significant African American history” but also to a “social justice … movement that uses preservation as a force for enacting positive social change … to realize equity-driven outcomes.”
In other words politics, not history.
Even on September, 17, 2022, Constitution Day, the ideological overthrowers decided to ignore the facts again. Hillyer writes, “amid staff disruptions and swirling questions about its finances, the foundation created to honor the “Father of the Constitution” is scrambling to mark Constitution Day on Saturday with two woke, anti-Constitution panel discussions.” Read “Saturday is Anti-Constitution Day at James Madison’s house.”
The latest on how Montpelier’s National Trust is faring, or not, read Hillyer’s “National Trust must worry about finances of Madison’s Montpelier,” and “National Trust CEO steps down amid unrest at James Madison’s Montpelier.”
“The plan is to establish Montpelier as a beachhead for radical reinterpretations of history. To a somewhat lesser extent, leftists have succeeded in doing the same at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.” No, James Madison is not alone.
Meanwhile, back over at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Quin continued his reporting on the matter this year by encapsulating Jeffery Tucker’s demoralizing excursion to Monticello on the Fourth of July. From the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, to the exhibits and the tour guides, our beloved author of the Declaration of Independence is being besmirched and defamed in his own home.
Affluent Democrat donors to social justice organizations populate the Board of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, so they can have their way with how history is rewritten at Monticello. Books by Ibram X. Kendi and fans of critical race theory occupy the gift shop. You can read “How and Why the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Trashes its own Namesake” here.
As the actual journalist, Quin Hillyer notes, “. . . but suffice it to say that the Sage of Monticello did more for human liberty and expansion of human knowledge than all but a handful of individuals in human history. The Left’s obsessive attempts to destroy his [Jefferson’s] reputation are both malicious and historically and contextually ignorant.”
Ultimately, Quin wisely chose writing over politics. When asked why, he said, “I could have my own voice, rather than promoting someone else's interests/agenda. Plus, I really detested many parts of politics – and, I like to write.”
We need more actual journalists like Quin Hillyer who dig for the truth, gather facts and report them so the people can decide. Quin is that watchdog for the people on a quest to protect our heritage so future generations can know the truth.
Quin grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he remembers being inspired at age 12 as nearly a year-long Bicentennial celebration, in 1976, of the Declaration of Independence, enveloped the country. “It made a huge impression on me,” Hillyer expressed, as he saw the entire country caught-up in the commemoration of the document that was the mission statement for our Constitution. He said that in 1976, “there was none of this breast-beating of how awful we are” as a nation. It was there that Quin began a lifetime of respect and admiration for all things American, with a thirst to learn more about our founding and the Constitution.
He graduated from the Isidore Newman School in 1982 and went on to acquire an A.B. in government and theology in 1986 from Georgetown University. Hillyer speaks fondly of his experience at Georgetown as a freshman in his honors government program which was taught by renowned Constitutional scholars. He says after Georgetown, because of his keen interest in both disciplines, that he “hopped around between both the political world and journalism for a while, like you’re not supposed to do.”
To begin his career after graduation, Quin returned home to New Orleans and became a correspondent at the Times-Picayune. He cut his journalistic teeth while covering sports. Because of his love of our founding documents, Hillyer was a Reagan appointee to Public Affairs in late 1986, however, his real experience in politics was launched in 1987, while serving as research and issues director for U. S. Representative Bob Livingston’s gubernatorial campaign.
Following his calling once again, Hillyer felt he “was meant for journalism” which led him in 1989 to become managing editor of Gambit Weekly, a newsmagazine in the New Orleans area where he gained notoriety “doing investigative pieces on the rise of David Duke and pointing out (Duke’s) neo-Nazi ties.”
Quin boomeranged back into politics for 5 years, serving as press secretary for Congressman Bob Livingston. But, by 1996, he realized he missed writing again. With the battle between his two passions raging, Hillyer told me that columnist Fred Barnes “advised me to go make a name for myself away from D. C. and make my way back.” That’s when Pulitzer-Prize winner Paul Greenberg at the Arkansas Democrat Gazette hired him to join the editorial staff. Quin says he “did not particularly enjoy the circumstances of the job.” He was hired as lead editorial writer at the Mobile Register in 1998, where he earned the Carmage Walls Commentary Award and the Green Eyeshade Award, making good on the suggestion by his colleague, Fred Barnes.
Hillyer was ready to return to Washington in 2006 to navigate covering the political scene once again as executive editor with The American Spectator before assuming the post of Associate Editorial Page Editor at The Washington Examiner in 2008.
Today, Quin resides in Alabama and writes furiously and brilliantly on the matters plaguing the nation.
I asked Hillyer why journalism has become more of an activist profession rather than what it was originally intended to be, a watchdog over the government for the people protected by the First Amendment. Hillyer responded that “very few (journalists) try to be neutral or watchdogs.” He reminds us that at the turn of the 20th century, the “rise of the objective neutral media was a good thing,” however, today, that neutrality “has disappeared.”
“For the left, everything is politics,” lamented Quin. “So many writers are covering things they know nothing about.” According to Quin, media-types mostly consider ideology when hiring writers these days, unless they are conservative media employers who mainly look for skill and talent. When I asked how many writers in the country know the Constitution and what the law means, he responded, “less than 10%.” That explains a lot about the establishment media.
As an actual journalist, Hillyer digs for the facts. One of his latest investigative reporting projects for the Washington Examiner centers around the controversy at James Madison’s Montpelier and the “hostile takeover” of the property, as well as at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Hillyer further characterizes the takeover from his article, “Woke Montpelier leaders envision massive land grab in Virginia” in this way: “. . . the wholly untrustworthy “trusts” that operate James Madison’s Montpelier and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello — the homes of the two most influential thinkers who laid the foundation of this nation’s grand experiment of liberty — are on a malevolent mission to trash the reputations of those two great founders.”
This is personal for Quin and to those of us who value the truth and the legacy of our brilliant founders.
In 2000, Quin penned a column asking Congress to establish a commission of scholars to commemorate James Madison’s 250 birthday in 2001 and use it as an occasion for civic education. He said the commission “should sponsor or encourage high school essay contests about the Constitution, that the scholars should meet together at least once, and a few other things.”
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) “saw the column and turned it into a bill.” Quin writes of the event on March 16, 2001: “The scholars were appointed; they held a symposium in an ornate room in the Library of Congress on March 16, 2001, with me as the only reporter present for the private part of the session; and they promulgated a call for civic education. There was a grand dinner that night at a banquet hall in the Library of Congress honoring Madison, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Sessions presiding and Justice Antonin Scalia among the numerous public officials in attendance. By happenstance, I rode the elevator with Scalia, but I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say.”
In his Washington Examiner commentary, “The woke assault on James Madison feels personal, but everyone should care,” from July 20, 2022, Hillyer continued to recall that day, “For me, it capped a day in which I had driven the 95 miles out to Montpelier, then only in the early phases of its restoration from what the DuPont family had done to alter it radically, and I enjoyed a fascinating private tour of all they were planning. The curators said the law creating the commission and the commemoration had hugely helped draw attention to Montpelier’s mission of celebrating the life and thought of the Father of the Constitution.”
The Montpelier Foundation, formed in 1998, has been busy for two decades restoring the estate of James Madison, accurately preserving his legacy while also telling the critical story of slavery and its impact on the history of the plantation. After all, one of the first acts of the Foundation was to locate descendants of Montpelier’s slave population to honor their stories in the exhibits on the property.
Archaeologist, Matthew Reeves, was hired by the Foundation Board in 2000 to oversee the rigorous endeavor to uncover details about the lives and work of Montpelier’s enslaved. Quin reports, ”In 2001, shortly after Madison’s 250th birthday celebration, Montpelier organized a three-day Slave Commemoration Gathering , and over the next 15 years, it received numerous national awards for permanent and prominent exhibits on slavery’s role there.” I should note here that Reeves was fired from his Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration position this year.
Quin visited Montpelier several years after 2001 for another private tour, then again 5 years later, when the “restoration” was almost complete. He said that by that time, “the foundation was well into its efforts to excavate evidence of the lives of the slaves who lived there.” In context, that undertaking was appropriate and wise. Little did I know that almost all context would be thrown aside, with slavery essentially becoming Montpelier’s predominant focus.”
Incrementally, monied leftists and radical organizations have successfully orchestrated a coup upon the Boards and the Trusts tasked with operating both Monticello and Montpelier. Mary Alexander, an authentic and verifiable descendent of Madison’s manservant, Paul Jennings, has said that Montpelier is now “a black history and black rights organization that couldn’t care less about James Madison and his legacy.”
Acknowledging that slavery was “an unjust and horrible system,” she nonetheless said that Montpelier has a unique mission (to honor Madison). “There were hundreds of thousands of slaveowners but not hundreds of thousands who wrote the Constitution,” as Alexander so precisely asserted the obvious as documented by Quin Hillyer in “The ideals – and homes – of Madison and Jefferson are worth defending from the leftists.”
In his September 9, 2022, “James Madison’s Foundation, destroyed from within,” Hillyer determines, “. . . self-proclaimed “termites,” aided by a sympathetic media and discredited organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, have driven the foundation, put its financial health at great risk, and even flirted with a United Nations-aided land grab of the region around James Madison’s Montpelier by designating it one large UNESCO heritage site,” explains Hillyer.
Enter stage left, the National Trust for Historic Preservation at Montpelier. “In 2017, the ascendant liberal leadership of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns Montpelier but by charter is not supposed to “have authority over either management or board governance,” created an African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, dedicated not just to the preservation of sites related to “significant African American history” but also to a “social justice … movement that uses preservation as a force for enacting positive social change … to realize equity-driven outcomes.”
In other words politics, not history.
Even on September, 17, 2022, Constitution Day, the ideological overthrowers decided to ignore the facts again. Hillyer writes, “amid staff disruptions and swirling questions about its finances, the foundation created to honor the “Father of the Constitution” is scrambling to mark Constitution Day on Saturday with two woke, anti-Constitution panel discussions.” Read “Saturday is Anti-Constitution Day at James Madison’s house.”
The latest on how Montpelier’s National Trust is faring, or not, read Hillyer’s “National Trust must worry about finances of Madison’s Montpelier,” and “National Trust CEO steps down amid unrest at James Madison’s Montpelier.”
“The plan is to establish Montpelier as a beachhead for radical reinterpretations of history. To a somewhat lesser extent, leftists have succeeded in doing the same at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.” No, James Madison is not alone.
Meanwhile, back over at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Quin continued his reporting on the matter this year by encapsulating Jeffery Tucker’s demoralizing excursion to Monticello on the Fourth of July. From the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, to the exhibits and the tour guides, our beloved author of the Declaration of Independence is being besmirched and defamed in his own home.
Affluent Democrat donors to social justice organizations populate the Board of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, so they can have their way with how history is rewritten at Monticello. Books by Ibram X. Kendi and fans of critical race theory occupy the gift shop. You can read “How and Why the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Trashes its own Namesake” here.
As the actual journalist, Quin Hillyer notes, “. . . but suffice it to say that the Sage of Monticello did more for human liberty and expansion of human knowledge than all but a handful of individuals in human history. The Left’s obsessive attempts to destroy his [Jefferson’s] reputation are both malicious and historically and contextually ignorant.”
Ultimately, Quin wisely chose writing over politics. When asked why, he said, “I could have my own voice, rather than promoting someone else's interests/agenda. Plus, I really detested many parts of politics – and, I like to write.”
We need more actual journalists like Quin Hillyer who dig for the truth, gather facts and report them so the people can decide. Quin is that watchdog for the people on a quest to protect our heritage so future generations can know the truth.
Constitutional Minute for 6 December 2022
"Reserved Powers"
I recently answered a question on Quora.com which read: “In the 10th Amendment, what does "to the people" mean?” The requestor was, of course, referring to these words:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Here’s how I answered the question (note: I get a half-dozen requests on Quora each day. I don’t take them all, but even when I do I tend to write short, succinct answers):
"The People are Sovereign…(A)t the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the People and they are truly the sovereigns of the country…the Citizens of America are equal as fellow Citizens and as joint Tenants in the sovereignty." (Chief Justice John Jay, writing in Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793)
Basically, the 10th Amendment implies that all political power not given up, through constitutions, to either the state or federal governments, remains (theoretically at least) in the hands of the ultimate sovereigns: the people.
Unfortunately, the 10th Amendment is largely a “dead letter” today, the Supreme Court long ago having given Congress plenary power not found in the Constitution. Today, Congress can spend money on anything its little heart desires, whether that object is found in the Constitution or not (see U.S. v. Butler, 1936 and Helvering v Davis, 1937). Congress can borrow money without limit, and tax us without limit. They can delegate their legislative power to the Executive Branch whenever they want (see Mistretta v. U.S., 1989). Today, nearly all political power lies with the federal or state governments, not with the people. The people appear to retain, for the time being, simply the power to elect their representatives and change those representatives when the previous choice reveals itself to have been wrong.
"It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.” (James Madison, First Inaugural Address, 1809)
There is a lot more to the 10th Amendment than my short answer covers. For instance, while I claimed the 10th as a “dead letter,” implying it was devoid of meaning, the Supreme Court’s official stance, expressed in United States v Darby Lumber Co., was that “The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered” In other words, the court agreed with the basic premise that the Constitution is one of limited powers, which is essentially what the 10th says, and thus the 10th adds nothing new to our understanding of the Constitution. “Its purpose was … to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers.”
There had been a similar statement in the Articles of Confederation (Article II), which read: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” Note that mention of “the people” was added in the 10th Amendment.
So, to summarize: All political power originates in the sovereignty of the people. They give up some sovereign to the national government through the U.S. Constitution and some to their state government through the state constitution; the rest they retain or reserve to themselves. If “we the people” would only remember that.
The Supreme Court has often ruled that certain powers are reserved to the states simply because they are not found in the U.S. Constitution; but what I find lacking in the Court’s logic is an acknowledgement that the state don’t have every power not given in the U.S. Constitution, they have only those powers given them in their respective stateconstitutions. The court seems to conveniently forget “the people.” (Of course, “the people” know none of this is going on because “the people” don’t usually read SCOTUS rulings -- except a few Breakfast Clubbers).
The Court occasionally rules that the national government simply lacks the power it is trying to implement, not necessarily that it is a reserved power of the states. An example: the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 mandated a "gun-free zone" on and around public school campuses across the country. In United States v. Lopez (1995), the federal government claimed the gun-prohibiting power was to be found in the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. Without specifically mentioning the Tenth Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled that there was no clause in the Constitution authorizing such a power. And so, the GFSZA was struck down, replaced two years later by a new law that did the same thing, claiming a different origin for the power.
If “the people” could ever figure out how to speak with one voice, I think they could be more powerful than even Joe Biden’s “we’ve got nukes” federal government. Granted, that’s a big “if,” but I can dream, can’t I?
Prepared by: Gary R. Porter, Executive Director, Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc., for The Breakfast Club.
"Reserved Powers"
I recently answered a question on Quora.com which read: “In the 10th Amendment, what does "to the people" mean?” The requestor was, of course, referring to these words:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Here’s how I answered the question (note: I get a half-dozen requests on Quora each day. I don’t take them all, but even when I do I tend to write short, succinct answers):
"The People are Sovereign…(A)t the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the People and they are truly the sovereigns of the country…the Citizens of America are equal as fellow Citizens and as joint Tenants in the sovereignty." (Chief Justice John Jay, writing in Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793)
Basically, the 10th Amendment implies that all political power not given up, through constitutions, to either the state or federal governments, remains (theoretically at least) in the hands of the ultimate sovereigns: the people.
Unfortunately, the 10th Amendment is largely a “dead letter” today, the Supreme Court long ago having given Congress plenary power not found in the Constitution. Today, Congress can spend money on anything its little heart desires, whether that object is found in the Constitution or not (see U.S. v. Butler, 1936 and Helvering v Davis, 1937). Congress can borrow money without limit, and tax us without limit. They can delegate their legislative power to the Executive Branch whenever they want (see Mistretta v. U.S., 1989). Today, nearly all political power lies with the federal or state governments, not with the people. The people appear to retain, for the time being, simply the power to elect their representatives and change those representatives when the previous choice reveals itself to have been wrong.
"It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.” (James Madison, First Inaugural Address, 1809)
There is a lot more to the 10th Amendment than my short answer covers. For instance, while I claimed the 10th as a “dead letter,” implying it was devoid of meaning, the Supreme Court’s official stance, expressed in United States v Darby Lumber Co., was that “The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered” In other words, the court agreed with the basic premise that the Constitution is one of limited powers, which is essentially what the 10th says, and thus the 10th adds nothing new to our understanding of the Constitution. “Its purpose was … to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers.”
There had been a similar statement in the Articles of Confederation (Article II), which read: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” Note that mention of “the people” was added in the 10th Amendment.
So, to summarize: All political power originates in the sovereignty of the people. They give up some sovereign to the national government through the U.S. Constitution and some to their state government through the state constitution; the rest they retain or reserve to themselves. If “we the people” would only remember that.
The Supreme Court has often ruled that certain powers are reserved to the states simply because they are not found in the U.S. Constitution; but what I find lacking in the Court’s logic is an acknowledgement that the state don’t have every power not given in the U.S. Constitution, they have only those powers given them in their respective stateconstitutions. The court seems to conveniently forget “the people.” (Of course, “the people” know none of this is going on because “the people” don’t usually read SCOTUS rulings -- except a few Breakfast Clubbers).
The Court occasionally rules that the national government simply lacks the power it is trying to implement, not necessarily that it is a reserved power of the states. An example: the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 mandated a "gun-free zone" on and around public school campuses across the country. In United States v. Lopez (1995), the federal government claimed the gun-prohibiting power was to be found in the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. Without specifically mentioning the Tenth Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled that there was no clause in the Constitution authorizing such a power. And so, the GFSZA was struck down, replaced two years later by a new law that did the same thing, claiming a different origin for the power.
If “the people” could ever figure out how to speak with one voice, I think they could be more powerful than even Joe Biden’s “we’ve got nukes” federal government. Granted, that’s a big “if,” but I can dream, can’t I?
Prepared by: Gary R. Porter, Executive Director, Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc., for The Breakfast Club.
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"Meet the American Who Gave the Nation Our Thanksgiving Origin Story"
"Mourt's Relation" includes (Edward) Winslow's brief, undated description of a three-day celebration in the autumn of 1621, after "our harvest being gotten in," during which the English settlers and a much larger group of Wampanoag friends feast on fowl and deer. It is the first Thanksgiving.
Winslow’s account is the only version of the origin story of our national holiday written by Somebody Who Was There." Read more here.
"Mourt's Relation" includes (Edward) Winslow's brief, undated description of a three-day celebration in the autumn of 1621, after "our harvest being gotten in," during which the English settlers and a much larger group of Wampanoag friends feast on fowl and deer. It is the first Thanksgiving.
Winslow’s account is the only version of the origin story of our national holiday written by Somebody Who Was There." Read more here.
Constitutional Minute for 11 October 2022
"A Review of Federal Voting Laws"
For nearly 90 years after the Constitution was ratified the federal government stayed out of regulating federal elections in any significant way. Finally, after ratification of the 15th Amendment, Congress was forced to act.
The Fifteenth Amendment stated: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Most people overlook Section 2 of the Amendment which states: “The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” And enforce it they had to.
Democrat-controlled Southern states were none too happy about having to extend the franchise to freed slaves. They came up with all sorts of laws and conditions which restricted or essentially prohibited freed-blacks from voting. Poll taxes, poll tests, gerrymandering, and other restrictions were placed in the way. In 1870, Congress had had enough and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1870. Also known as the Enforcement Act or the First Ku Klux Klan Act, the act provided criminal penalties for those attempting to prevent African Americans from voting by using or threatening to use violence or engaging in other tactics, such as making threats to terminate a person’s employment or evict them from their home.
Numerous continued violations of the 15th Amendment led to the enactment of the second Enforcement act, which passed in February 1871. The second Enforcement Act added more severe punishments for violations of the first act. Two months later, in April 1871, Congress passed the third and final measure, commonly called the second Ku Klux Klan Act. This outlawed terrorist conspiracies by all racist vigilantes including but not limited to the Ku Klux Klan. It allowed the President to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus in areas prone to Klan activities.
In 1876, one section of the Enforcement Act was ruled unconstitutional in United States v. Reese et al. The Supreme Court decided that the 15th Amendment did not confer a right to vote to freed slaves, it merely prevented denying the vote based on race or previous condition of servitude. This may seem like a distinction without a difference, but in the world of legal terminology the effect was real and served to weaken the 15th Amendment and strengthen state voting laws.
An attempt was made to add more voting rights protections for blacks in the Civil Rights Act of 1957 but these provisions were removed in the Senate version under the direction of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson.
The Civil Rights Act of 1960 established federal inspection of local voter registration polls and introduced penalties for anyone who obstructed someone from registering to vote.
The landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act devoted the entirety of Title I to Voting Rights. It prohibited unequal application of voter registration requirements. It required that voting rules and procedures be applied
equally to all races, but it did not abolish the concept of voter "qualification." This allowed voters continue to have to pass “literacy tests,” which were being widely used to disenfranchise both black voters and poor whites in the South. These were finally eliminated in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the first legislation devoted exclusively to voting. This act states it is “an act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution,” something Congress had ironically been trying to do for 95 years.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the most significant statutory change in the relationship between the federal and state governments in the area of voting since Reconstruction. It was immediately challenged in the courts. For the next five years, the Supreme Court issued several key decisions upholding the constitutionality of the Act. [South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 327-28 (1966) and Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U.S. 544 (1969)] The Supreme Court struck down the “coverage formula” as unconstitutional in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) which affected voting operations in nine states. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was readopted and strengthened in 1970, 1975, and 1982 and has been amended numerous times since then. Most modern charges of “voter suppression” claim violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Other voting-related acts that have addressed narrow and very specific areas of voting, such as:
The Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984 required polling places be accessible to people with disabilities. Each precinct in VA has a specific voting machine for this purpose.
The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986 allowed members of the U.S. armed forces and overseas U.S. voters to register and vote by mail, even by email.
The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 (the “Motor Voter Act”) created new ways to register to vote, particularly DMV offices. It also called for states to keep more accurate voter registration lists.
The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 authorized federal funds for elections. It also created the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The EAC helps states comply with HAVA to adopt minimum standards on voter education, registration, and ballots. HAVA required that states implement: Provisional Voting, Voting Information, Updated and Upgraded Voting Equipment, Statewide Voter Registration Databases, Voter Identification Procedures and Administrative Complaint Procedures.
The Military and Overseas Voting Empowerment (MOVE) Act of 2009 improved access to voting by military and overseas voters.
The Freedom to Vote Act, was introduced in the Senate on 14 September 2021. It would enact automatic and same-day registration, establish Election Day as a federal holiday, limit when voters can be removed from voter rolls, require all states have a minimum of two-weeks of early voting, require states to conduct post-election audits of federal elections, prohibit mid-decade redistricting, and clarify that felons can not be denied the vote unless they are serving a conviction for a felony on election day (which seems to imply they would be automatically re-enfranchised upon completing their sentences). On October 20, 2021, Republicans successfully blocked the measure when it failed to win a filibuster- proof vote.
Prepared by: Gary R. Porter, Executive Director, Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc. for The Breakfast Club.
"A Review of Federal Voting Laws"
For nearly 90 years after the Constitution was ratified the federal government stayed out of regulating federal elections in any significant way. Finally, after ratification of the 15th Amendment, Congress was forced to act.
The Fifteenth Amendment stated: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Most people overlook Section 2 of the Amendment which states: “The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” And enforce it they had to.
Democrat-controlled Southern states were none too happy about having to extend the franchise to freed slaves. They came up with all sorts of laws and conditions which restricted or essentially prohibited freed-blacks from voting. Poll taxes, poll tests, gerrymandering, and other restrictions were placed in the way. In 1870, Congress had had enough and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1870. Also known as the Enforcement Act or the First Ku Klux Klan Act, the act provided criminal penalties for those attempting to prevent African Americans from voting by using or threatening to use violence or engaging in other tactics, such as making threats to terminate a person’s employment or evict them from their home.
Numerous continued violations of the 15th Amendment led to the enactment of the second Enforcement act, which passed in February 1871. The second Enforcement Act added more severe punishments for violations of the first act. Two months later, in April 1871, Congress passed the third and final measure, commonly called the second Ku Klux Klan Act. This outlawed terrorist conspiracies by all racist vigilantes including but not limited to the Ku Klux Klan. It allowed the President to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus in areas prone to Klan activities.
In 1876, one section of the Enforcement Act was ruled unconstitutional in United States v. Reese et al. The Supreme Court decided that the 15th Amendment did not confer a right to vote to freed slaves, it merely prevented denying the vote based on race or previous condition of servitude. This may seem like a distinction without a difference, but in the world of legal terminology the effect was real and served to weaken the 15th Amendment and strengthen state voting laws.
An attempt was made to add more voting rights protections for blacks in the Civil Rights Act of 1957 but these provisions were removed in the Senate version under the direction of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson.
The Civil Rights Act of 1960 established federal inspection of local voter registration polls and introduced penalties for anyone who obstructed someone from registering to vote.
The landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act devoted the entirety of Title I to Voting Rights. It prohibited unequal application of voter registration requirements. It required that voting rules and procedures be applied
equally to all races, but it did not abolish the concept of voter "qualification." This allowed voters continue to have to pass “literacy tests,” which were being widely used to disenfranchise both black voters and poor whites in the South. These were finally eliminated in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the first legislation devoted exclusively to voting. This act states it is “an act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution,” something Congress had ironically been trying to do for 95 years.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the most significant statutory change in the relationship between the federal and state governments in the area of voting since Reconstruction. It was immediately challenged in the courts. For the next five years, the Supreme Court issued several key decisions upholding the constitutionality of the Act. [South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 327-28 (1966) and Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U.S. 544 (1969)] The Supreme Court struck down the “coverage formula” as unconstitutional in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) which affected voting operations in nine states. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was readopted and strengthened in 1970, 1975, and 1982 and has been amended numerous times since then. Most modern charges of “voter suppression” claim violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Other voting-related acts that have addressed narrow and very specific areas of voting, such as:
The Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984 required polling places be accessible to people with disabilities. Each precinct in VA has a specific voting machine for this purpose.
The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986 allowed members of the U.S. armed forces and overseas U.S. voters to register and vote by mail, even by email.
The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 (the “Motor Voter Act”) created new ways to register to vote, particularly DMV offices. It also called for states to keep more accurate voter registration lists.
The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 authorized federal funds for elections. It also created the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The EAC helps states comply with HAVA to adopt minimum standards on voter education, registration, and ballots. HAVA required that states implement: Provisional Voting, Voting Information, Updated and Upgraded Voting Equipment, Statewide Voter Registration Databases, Voter Identification Procedures and Administrative Complaint Procedures.
The Military and Overseas Voting Empowerment (MOVE) Act of 2009 improved access to voting by military and overseas voters.
The Freedom to Vote Act, was introduced in the Senate on 14 September 2021. It would enact automatic and same-day registration, establish Election Day as a federal holiday, limit when voters can be removed from voter rolls, require all states have a minimum of two-weeks of early voting, require states to conduct post-election audits of federal elections, prohibit mid-decade redistricting, and clarify that felons can not be denied the vote unless they are serving a conviction for a felony on election day (which seems to imply they would be automatically re-enfranchised upon completing their sentences). On October 20, 2021, Republicans successfully blocked the measure when it failed to win a filibuster- proof vote.
Prepared by: Gary R. Porter, Executive Director, Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc. for The Breakfast Club.
SEL 2.0: The “Fundamental Transformation” of America Continues
By Claudia Henneberry
June 2022
PERMALINK
By now, you have probably heard of “SEL”, or, Social Emotional Learning. This is perhaps the latest and greatest of the hundreds of fads, gimmicks, and “reforms” that have been used by educrats over the last century to affect the outcome of education of our children in kindergarten through high school. But this is not your grandparents’ Character Education!
Social and Emotional Learning became a thing during the Greek Republic. They knew that education must address not only the traditional academic disciplines, but also morality in order to produce “good citizens”. Fast forward to the 1960s when a Yale researcher, James Comer, produced a pilot called the Comer School Development Program. Comer’s belief was “the contrast between a child’s experiences at home and those in school deeply affects the child’s psychosocial development and that this, in turn, shapes academic achievement.” His test study included a school in New Haven, CT. The school had abysmal attendance, but after the study concluded, the school exceeded the national standard of attendance and student success.
New Haven became the lab for SEL research. Between 1987 and 1992, Yale professor Robert P. Weissberg and a New Haven public school educator, Timothy Shriver, led an effort to devise curriculum for schools through the W. T. Grant Foundation.
Throughout the 1980s, SEL came to the classroom in the form of anti-bullying and good character discussions, which was absolutely acceptable and probably needed for some students. Yet these discussions were limited, otherwise, schools would be overstepping their bounds.
By 1994, the nonprofit, CASEL - the Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning - was born. Then in 1995, CASEL changed its name to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, as if to admit that they had left out the term “Academic”. Their goals, as stated by the formulators, was toensconce “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.” Who can be against helping students develop good attitudes, manage emotions, and make caring decisions, right? But, whose attitudes, emotions, and decisions? And, isn’t that the job of parents?
Fast forward to 2020 and, from stage left, enters “Transformative SEL” onto the education scene. According to CASEL.org, the new and improved “Transformative SEL” is “a process whereby young people and adults build strong, respectful, and lasting, relationships that facilitate co-learning to critically examine root causes of inequity, and to develop collaborative solutions that lead to personal, community, and societal well-being.”
The Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the CDC are intertwined with CASEL to likewise support the implementation of SEL practices in K-12 classrooms, to some extent or another, across the U. S., which begs the question, why is the Department of Education entering into the mental health arena and why would the Centers for Disease Control involve itself in education? Food for thought for another article. There are so many layers to this onion.
Back to the task at hand. Notice in their definition of T-SEL that, among the jargon used, the word “inequity” stands out. That leads us to question why “inequity” and not “inequality”. “Equality” was once considered a great thing, an American thing, but according to SEL compatriots, it’s a really bad thing. Equality means treating people the same; equity, by contrast, means treating some people better than others depending on the level of oppression they can claim for themselves or their ancestors or unrelated people with the same skin color or chromosomal makeup. Today, SEL is all about “anti-racist” education and is using CRT (Critical Race Theory) in its curricula. Therefore, whatever the educrats deem an inequity shall be condemned and the perpetrators punished.
Jane Robbins is an attorney and senior Fellow with the American Principles Project and an expert on the subject of education and SEL. She contends that “the new concept of ‘anti-racism’ has a more sinister meaning,” whereby “white children are by definition oppressors, minority children (except, presumably, higher achieving on average Asian children) are by definition oppressed, and all of education must devolve into a churning mass of guilt and resentment.”
Another expert, Frederick Hess, a senior Fellow and Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, weighs in with, “The truth is that “anti-racist” education isn’t interested in anything so small as educational improvement. The aim is cultural revolution in the name of an illiberal doctrine that poses a mortal threat to schools and colleges. Anti-racism’s hostility to reason, rejection of civilizational virtue, and labeling of skepticism as blasphemy represent an assault on the very soul of liberal education.”
One of the high-priests of CASEL, its president and CEO (2014-2021), Karen Niemi, acknowledged in a webinar in June, 2020, that the true intent of the anti-racism aspect of SEL is to, obviously, produce obedient Marxist activists.
The 2020 CASEL webinar presenters designated SEL as a tool to develop community organizers for leftist causes, thereby defining Transformative SEL as an approach that “takes action to fight injustice” (injustice as seen through a leftist lens).
According to Niemi, “social-emotional learning helps students move from anger to agency and then to action,” primarily for the cause of anti-racism. (She announces this within the first minute of the webinar.) All this will come from teaching children to “examine prejudices and biases . . . [and] evaluate social norms and systemic inequities . . . .” This is going well-beyond teaching students to be good citizens—today’s SEL intends to launch them into becoming Antifa and BLM ‘agents of change’. What we saw play-out on America’s streets in 2020 is precisely the outcome intended, I believe. Those kids who tore down statues, killed or injured cops, burned buildings, and looted Macy’s got an A+.
Predictably, the pandemic allowed educrats to put the pedal to the metal in terms of SEL in the classroom, or, Zoom rooms, and to expand it into communities. “Pandemic-related data uncovered life struggles for students, their families, and staff, such as housing insecurity, lack of technology and broadband access, and health concerns,” according to Katari Coleman, project Director for the Education Development Center. To the rescue, more of your money - American Rescue Plan Act funding - to address SEL. “Through tragedy, the pandemic functioned as an incubator for developing innovative activities and resources, and resulted in unprecedented steps forward for making SEL more accessible and comprehensive,” elaborated Coleman. Never let a crisis go to waste.
Oh, there’s more inside the Trojan Horse of T-SEL. Among CASEL’s funding partners is the NoVo Foundation which is “dedicated to . . . moving [society] from, a culture of domination to one of equality and partnership.” NoVo seems to focus on abortion rights, LGBT interests, and anti-capitalist economics. CSE, or, Comprehensive Sex Education, which goes over and beyond what you and I remember in school, is a subsection of T-SEL. It is probably being taught under the radar in a school near you.
Other T-SEL enthusiast groups include the Arcus Foundation, which is all about LGBT, primarily the transgender portion. The Morning Side Center for Teaching Social Responsibility offers resources for using SEL to develop leftist attitudes about topics such as climate change. According to Jane Robbins, “These are the types of outfits churning out T-SEL curricula to shape children’s opinions and behaviors.”
Not to be overlooked, the largest influencer and biggest donor is, you got it, your own federal government (e.g., your money) which expands the tentacles of T-SEL. Under President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2022 budget, CASEL received a $2 billion increase from the 2021 budget to bring more mental health and child development experts in to schools, “to provide comprehensive services and expand evidence-based models that meet the holistic needs of children, families, and communities.” Biden’s budget also contains more money for professional development training for teachers in T-SEL strategies.
As one can see, Social Emotional Learning has grown into a transformative behemoth.
The ancient Greeks taught their children good citizenship. The American colonists educated theirs specifically to have Biblical morals and values and to be learned in academic disciplines. The American pioneer taught academics, responsibility, hard work, freedom, and opportunity which resulted in the most exceptional country in history. Now we find ourselves here, in the midst of an education autocracy taking aim at your children’s psyches, beliefs, and attitudes, while seemingly not that concerned about teaching academics.
Parents, if you find yourselves at a school board meeting concerned about what your child is learning, or not learning, keep in mind that Merrick Garland and his Department of Justice will take note. You may wind-up on a list of “domestic terrorists”. But like American heroes before us, do not let them deter you from standing up and stopping what could cause the fall of our Republic!
---------------------------------------------
Claudia Henneberry is a retired Social Studies teacher, Executive Director of the National Constitution Bee, and Contributor to Potomac Tea Party.
By Claudia Henneberry
June 2022
PERMALINK
By now, you have probably heard of “SEL”, or, Social Emotional Learning. This is perhaps the latest and greatest of the hundreds of fads, gimmicks, and “reforms” that have been used by educrats over the last century to affect the outcome of education of our children in kindergarten through high school. But this is not your grandparents’ Character Education!
Social and Emotional Learning became a thing during the Greek Republic. They knew that education must address not only the traditional academic disciplines, but also morality in order to produce “good citizens”. Fast forward to the 1960s when a Yale researcher, James Comer, produced a pilot called the Comer School Development Program. Comer’s belief was “the contrast between a child’s experiences at home and those in school deeply affects the child’s psychosocial development and that this, in turn, shapes academic achievement.” His test study included a school in New Haven, CT. The school had abysmal attendance, but after the study concluded, the school exceeded the national standard of attendance and student success.
New Haven became the lab for SEL research. Between 1987 and 1992, Yale professor Robert P. Weissberg and a New Haven public school educator, Timothy Shriver, led an effort to devise curriculum for schools through the W. T. Grant Foundation.
Throughout the 1980s, SEL came to the classroom in the form of anti-bullying and good character discussions, which was absolutely acceptable and probably needed for some students. Yet these discussions were limited, otherwise, schools would be overstepping their bounds.
By 1994, the nonprofit, CASEL - the Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning - was born. Then in 1995, CASEL changed its name to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, as if to admit that they had left out the term “Academic”. Their goals, as stated by the formulators, was toensconce “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.” Who can be against helping students develop good attitudes, manage emotions, and make caring decisions, right? But, whose attitudes, emotions, and decisions? And, isn’t that the job of parents?
Fast forward to 2020 and, from stage left, enters “Transformative SEL” onto the education scene. According to CASEL.org, the new and improved “Transformative SEL” is “a process whereby young people and adults build strong, respectful, and lasting, relationships that facilitate co-learning to critically examine root causes of inequity, and to develop collaborative solutions that lead to personal, community, and societal well-being.”
The Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the CDC are intertwined with CASEL to likewise support the implementation of SEL practices in K-12 classrooms, to some extent or another, across the U. S., which begs the question, why is the Department of Education entering into the mental health arena and why would the Centers for Disease Control involve itself in education? Food for thought for another article. There are so many layers to this onion.
Back to the task at hand. Notice in their definition of T-SEL that, among the jargon used, the word “inequity” stands out. That leads us to question why “inequity” and not “inequality”. “Equality” was once considered a great thing, an American thing, but according to SEL compatriots, it’s a really bad thing. Equality means treating people the same; equity, by contrast, means treating some people better than others depending on the level of oppression they can claim for themselves or their ancestors or unrelated people with the same skin color or chromosomal makeup. Today, SEL is all about “anti-racist” education and is using CRT (Critical Race Theory) in its curricula. Therefore, whatever the educrats deem an inequity shall be condemned and the perpetrators punished.
Jane Robbins is an attorney and senior Fellow with the American Principles Project and an expert on the subject of education and SEL. She contends that “the new concept of ‘anti-racism’ has a more sinister meaning,” whereby “white children are by definition oppressors, minority children (except, presumably, higher achieving on average Asian children) are by definition oppressed, and all of education must devolve into a churning mass of guilt and resentment.”
Another expert, Frederick Hess, a senior Fellow and Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, weighs in with, “The truth is that “anti-racist” education isn’t interested in anything so small as educational improvement. The aim is cultural revolution in the name of an illiberal doctrine that poses a mortal threat to schools and colleges. Anti-racism’s hostility to reason, rejection of civilizational virtue, and labeling of skepticism as blasphemy represent an assault on the very soul of liberal education.”
One of the high-priests of CASEL, its president and CEO (2014-2021), Karen Niemi, acknowledged in a webinar in June, 2020, that the true intent of the anti-racism aspect of SEL is to, obviously, produce obedient Marxist activists.
The 2020 CASEL webinar presenters designated SEL as a tool to develop community organizers for leftist causes, thereby defining Transformative SEL as an approach that “takes action to fight injustice” (injustice as seen through a leftist lens).
According to Niemi, “social-emotional learning helps students move from anger to agency and then to action,” primarily for the cause of anti-racism. (She announces this within the first minute of the webinar.) All this will come from teaching children to “examine prejudices and biases . . . [and] evaluate social norms and systemic inequities . . . .” This is going well-beyond teaching students to be good citizens—today’s SEL intends to launch them into becoming Antifa and BLM ‘agents of change’. What we saw play-out on America’s streets in 2020 is precisely the outcome intended, I believe. Those kids who tore down statues, killed or injured cops, burned buildings, and looted Macy’s got an A+.
Predictably, the pandemic allowed educrats to put the pedal to the metal in terms of SEL in the classroom, or, Zoom rooms, and to expand it into communities. “Pandemic-related data uncovered life struggles for students, their families, and staff, such as housing insecurity, lack of technology and broadband access, and health concerns,” according to Katari Coleman, project Director for the Education Development Center. To the rescue, more of your money - American Rescue Plan Act funding - to address SEL. “Through tragedy, the pandemic functioned as an incubator for developing innovative activities and resources, and resulted in unprecedented steps forward for making SEL more accessible and comprehensive,” elaborated Coleman. Never let a crisis go to waste.
Oh, there’s more inside the Trojan Horse of T-SEL. Among CASEL’s funding partners is the NoVo Foundation which is “dedicated to . . . moving [society] from, a culture of domination to one of equality and partnership.” NoVo seems to focus on abortion rights, LGBT interests, and anti-capitalist economics. CSE, or, Comprehensive Sex Education, which goes over and beyond what you and I remember in school, is a subsection of T-SEL. It is probably being taught under the radar in a school near you.
Other T-SEL enthusiast groups include the Arcus Foundation, which is all about LGBT, primarily the transgender portion. The Morning Side Center for Teaching Social Responsibility offers resources for using SEL to develop leftist attitudes about topics such as climate change. According to Jane Robbins, “These are the types of outfits churning out T-SEL curricula to shape children’s opinions and behaviors.”
Not to be overlooked, the largest influencer and biggest donor is, you got it, your own federal government (e.g., your money) which expands the tentacles of T-SEL. Under President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2022 budget, CASEL received a $2 billion increase from the 2021 budget to bring more mental health and child development experts in to schools, “to provide comprehensive services and expand evidence-based models that meet the holistic needs of children, families, and communities.” Biden’s budget also contains more money for professional development training for teachers in T-SEL strategies.
As one can see, Social Emotional Learning has grown into a transformative behemoth.
The ancient Greeks taught their children good citizenship. The American colonists educated theirs specifically to have Biblical morals and values and to be learned in academic disciplines. The American pioneer taught academics, responsibility, hard work, freedom, and opportunity which resulted in the most exceptional country in history. Now we find ourselves here, in the midst of an education autocracy taking aim at your children’s psyches, beliefs, and attitudes, while seemingly not that concerned about teaching academics.
Parents, if you find yourselves at a school board meeting concerned about what your child is learning, or not learning, keep in mind that Merrick Garland and his Department of Justice will take note. You may wind-up on a list of “domestic terrorists”. But like American heroes before us, do not let them deter you from standing up and stopping what could cause the fall of our Republic!
---------------------------------------------
Claudia Henneberry is a retired Social Studies teacher, Executive Director of the National Constitution Bee, and Contributor to Potomac Tea Party.
Privilege or Consistency?
by Tracey M. Downey MAH
October 2021
In 2021 the common theme heard in academia is the push to strengthen ideas on critical race theory in the classroom. This is causing a profound dilemma for history teachers trying to teach all aspects of U.S. history, both the good and the bad. A large part of this problem is what our students bring to class daily from the bits and pieces they have picked up from their discussions at home but, more importantly, from social media. USA Today’s Madeline Purdue discusses a study where 1,000 teens were polled which found that “60% of teens say they are getting their news from celebrities, influencers, and personalities.” Students are inundated with biased information daily, and in fact have a far different perception of what the whole conversation is about. The argument they make often is that they would believe someone famous before a news anchor or even some adults. Sadly, this must be met by some argument to bring the conversation back to the discussion at hand, and to direct them to see the Internet and more specifically social media for what they are- there is so much information on the Internet that it is always easy to find an article or story or meme that backs your arguments and personal beliefs.
In a class discussion about civil rights a sidebar came up about race and white privilege this past school year. Many students wanted to have the opportunity to openly discuss their ideas without feeling judged but were shocked by other students’ ideas of what constitutes privilege. The students came to realize that notions of privilege, fed to them their whole lives by the media and others, were mistaken. What they perceived as one race having better opportunities turned out, after discussion, to be better behavioral choices or a push to excel on the part of individuals of that race.
The conversation opened with a student simply saying, ‘I wish I were white like you so I could have privilege.’ I asked the student to clarify what they saw in me that made my life so much better. As the conversation progressed my kids gained a whole new insight as they saw with their own eyes assumptions and differences crashing down around them. Here I must digress to explain that I work in a Title 1 low-income school with a very diverse population, each class having a good mixture of all backgrounds and ethnicities, very much a melting pot of the minds.
One assertation of privileges stated to me was, “I bet you anything you were raised by both parents your whole life and they are probably still married.” This in fact would be a true assessment as my parents have been married fifty-two years, but as I nodded another student chimed in to say that couldn't be a white thing because their parents and grandparents were all still married and she was Hispanic. With that we took a classroom poll and it appeared that long standing marriage crossed all backgrounds and therefore could not be used in the student’s argument of how my life was better.
The next argument was that I probably never had to work more then one job to provide for myself because white people get paid more. Again not a true statement as I had to explain I have held multiple jobs my whole life because I have always wanted more and that “more” came with a larger price tag so I had to have an extra job to give me extra money. I also explained that when I was growing up my family did not have a ton of money but that my dad used to go out before everyone else started their days to deliver newspapers for extra money so that I could stay in dance classes. Was that “privilege” that my dad had to do this instead of just pulling me out of dance? When I explained that there was a time in my life that I lived off macaroni and cheese and only turned my AC on at night while I slept so I could keep costs down and afford rent, my students laughed as they all shared stories of funny things, they have seen their parents do to keep the household going. Once again debunking the idea that money privilege is color based.
The discussion took us through going to college, getting better jobs, not having to always watch your back, but the most shocking of all was the perception that all white people had trust funds as seen on T.V. With every topic the whole class with their myriad of ideas realized that no matter what your background most of us have had very similar experiences if not the same stories. What made the conversation most interesting was when a co -teacher came in to share in the discussion with her class and as she shared her stories the students were stunned to see that she in fact, as a black woman with a master’s degree- raised by both her parents- had more privilege than me growing up as she never had to work in high school.
One thing both of us shared with our students that shocked them was that our parents were very consistent in their rules for us. As much as my parents loved me and hers loved her, they were never our friends. They were our parents first and if they did that job well they would raise children who would become good parents themselves and then maybe have a friendship as equal parents. The students were floored to know that there were curfews that were not to be broken, restrictions on when phones could be used or television could be watched, an absolute law against being with anyone our parents didn't know or already had an amicable relationship with, and zero tolerance for lack of respect to adults and authority. My parents did not sway on punishments for not getting chores done or staying out ten minutes past curfew nor did they ever stand for mediocre grades, or average performance. The parents of both of us were firm that we would be better than they ever had the chance to be and that our best was all we should accept. This did not mean our parents were strict, it simply meant they were striving to make good responsible children who earned their place in life.
As I look at the students’ discussion on privilege, I can see perceptions that are bound to cause confusion among others. Our society makes privilege out to mean someone gets something better than the other because of his or her race or ethnicity. Instead, the students learned that what they saw as “better” equated to working harder or having people that pushed you to excel. This was not a naïve conversation and therefore it lent itself to far harder topics discussed later in the year, but this one ended on a positive with students seeing others around them in a more authentic way. “We accept the reality of the world with which we’ve been presented,” (The Truman Show) this in fact rings true for all my students who freely spoke that day. So many were shocked to see that what they had been told or presumed was not always reality.
October 2021
- A high school teacher has an eye-opening discussion on ‘white privilege’ with students
In 2021 the common theme heard in academia is the push to strengthen ideas on critical race theory in the classroom. This is causing a profound dilemma for history teachers trying to teach all aspects of U.S. history, both the good and the bad. A large part of this problem is what our students bring to class daily from the bits and pieces they have picked up from their discussions at home but, more importantly, from social media. USA Today’s Madeline Purdue discusses a study where 1,000 teens were polled which found that “60% of teens say they are getting their news from celebrities, influencers, and personalities.” Students are inundated with biased information daily, and in fact have a far different perception of what the whole conversation is about. The argument they make often is that they would believe someone famous before a news anchor or even some adults. Sadly, this must be met by some argument to bring the conversation back to the discussion at hand, and to direct them to see the Internet and more specifically social media for what they are- there is so much information on the Internet that it is always easy to find an article or story or meme that backs your arguments and personal beliefs.
In a class discussion about civil rights a sidebar came up about race and white privilege this past school year. Many students wanted to have the opportunity to openly discuss their ideas without feeling judged but were shocked by other students’ ideas of what constitutes privilege. The students came to realize that notions of privilege, fed to them their whole lives by the media and others, were mistaken. What they perceived as one race having better opportunities turned out, after discussion, to be better behavioral choices or a push to excel on the part of individuals of that race.
The conversation opened with a student simply saying, ‘I wish I were white like you so I could have privilege.’ I asked the student to clarify what they saw in me that made my life so much better. As the conversation progressed my kids gained a whole new insight as they saw with their own eyes assumptions and differences crashing down around them. Here I must digress to explain that I work in a Title 1 low-income school with a very diverse population, each class having a good mixture of all backgrounds and ethnicities, very much a melting pot of the minds.
One assertation of privileges stated to me was, “I bet you anything you were raised by both parents your whole life and they are probably still married.” This in fact would be a true assessment as my parents have been married fifty-two years, but as I nodded another student chimed in to say that couldn't be a white thing because their parents and grandparents were all still married and she was Hispanic. With that we took a classroom poll and it appeared that long standing marriage crossed all backgrounds and therefore could not be used in the student’s argument of how my life was better.
The next argument was that I probably never had to work more then one job to provide for myself because white people get paid more. Again not a true statement as I had to explain I have held multiple jobs my whole life because I have always wanted more and that “more” came with a larger price tag so I had to have an extra job to give me extra money. I also explained that when I was growing up my family did not have a ton of money but that my dad used to go out before everyone else started their days to deliver newspapers for extra money so that I could stay in dance classes. Was that “privilege” that my dad had to do this instead of just pulling me out of dance? When I explained that there was a time in my life that I lived off macaroni and cheese and only turned my AC on at night while I slept so I could keep costs down and afford rent, my students laughed as they all shared stories of funny things, they have seen their parents do to keep the household going. Once again debunking the idea that money privilege is color based.
The discussion took us through going to college, getting better jobs, not having to always watch your back, but the most shocking of all was the perception that all white people had trust funds as seen on T.V. With every topic the whole class with their myriad of ideas realized that no matter what your background most of us have had very similar experiences if not the same stories. What made the conversation most interesting was when a co -teacher came in to share in the discussion with her class and as she shared her stories the students were stunned to see that she in fact, as a black woman with a master’s degree- raised by both her parents- had more privilege than me growing up as she never had to work in high school.
One thing both of us shared with our students that shocked them was that our parents were very consistent in their rules for us. As much as my parents loved me and hers loved her, they were never our friends. They were our parents first and if they did that job well they would raise children who would become good parents themselves and then maybe have a friendship as equal parents. The students were floored to know that there were curfews that were not to be broken, restrictions on when phones could be used or television could be watched, an absolute law against being with anyone our parents didn't know or already had an amicable relationship with, and zero tolerance for lack of respect to adults and authority. My parents did not sway on punishments for not getting chores done or staying out ten minutes past curfew nor did they ever stand for mediocre grades, or average performance. The parents of both of us were firm that we would be better than they ever had the chance to be and that our best was all we should accept. This did not mean our parents were strict, it simply meant they were striving to make good responsible children who earned their place in life.
As I look at the students’ discussion on privilege, I can see perceptions that are bound to cause confusion among others. Our society makes privilege out to mean someone gets something better than the other because of his or her race or ethnicity. Instead, the students learned that what they saw as “better” equated to working harder or having people that pushed you to excel. This was not a naïve conversation and therefore it lent itself to far harder topics discussed later in the year, but this one ended on a positive with students seeing others around them in a more authentic way. “We accept the reality of the world with which we’ve been presented,” (The Truman Show) this in fact rings true for all my students who freely spoke that day. So many were shocked to see that what they had been told or presumed was not always reality.