CHAPTER III

OUR REAL ROOTS IN CONFLICT!

Theocrats' false claims:

In fighting for the soul of the Republican Party and the supposed "heart" of conservatism in 1996, Pat Buchanan and "Uncle Tom" Keyes had been hiking hills in New Hampshire, stumping and stumbling through the snows of Pennsylvania, and running across all America saying they wanted to "reestablish" American government on its religious foundation. Our government never was established on a religious foundation. Our government was established by reason, not religion, "on the simple principles of nature,"¹ and on "the will of We the People."

Adams foolishly denied religious foundation could be asserted:

John Adams, when an early federalist (before he became our second President and turned into an extreme Federalist, right wing Fat Cat lackey) wrongly maintained:

It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [the formation of the American constitutions and governments] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise, or agriculture;...²

The true foundation on reason, science and human nature:

Adams claimed our roots were secular, based on reason, science and human nature:

It will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses, as...Boylston practiced inoculation, and Franklin electricity....Neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than as ordinary arts and sciences, only more important..... They determined to consult all other writers of reputation in the art, to compare...the principles of writers, and to consider how far both the principles and models were founded on nature,... Unembarrassed, ...even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that... of holy water.

....Thirteen governments were thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without pretence of miracle or; mystery.... The experiment is made, and it has completely succeeded. It can no longer be called in question whether authority...can be grounded on reason [and] morality...without the monkery of priests...,(emphasis added)³

Need for social peace versus WASPs, WAS and Has Beens:

Our government must remain founded by principles of reason and nature on the will of the people alone instead of on someone, or on an aggregate of religious sect(s). Otherwise, we could end up aping the civil strife of Northern Ireland, the Middle East and the Balkans. Much more than in Adams' day, we are now a multiracial, multiethnic, multi sectarian secular society that must make room for fostering men and women of many diverse ethnic and religious cultures, heritages and languages. We are not a White, Anglo-Saxon (WAS), let alone WASP (WAS Protestant), nation. The moment we were to become one, we, as a unified nation, and our liberties, would become Has Beens.

Melting pot, not melting down, makes good stew:

Each ingredient is allowed to keep its integrity in good stew, otherwise it's tasteless mush:

Can our Constitution, revered and defended by Lincoln and the dynamic Teddy Roosevelt, serve to bring us together without melting us down in heated exchanges, cross burnings, and fires in the night? By getting clear and truthful about our heritage and staying true to our time-tested principles, Constitutionally conservative, moderately progressive Republicans can lead our nation into a brave new world where things may be very different from what they have been in the past, but where people are brought together while maintaining their diversities according to their traditions and our tried and true principles of American fairness.

Supposed Theocratic foundation of Declaration of Independence:

Uncle Tom Keyes claimed that our Declaration of Independence based our nation on a religious foundation. Not so. The Declaration of Independence, written by the ungodly Thomas Jefferson to reflect the Congress' consensus, stated the basis and justification for a revolution to free the colonies to become nation states: the rule of reason and nature. That rule of reason and nature appealed to and was applied by the will of the American people, who many of us respect without pretending they are GOD! Since then, the secular principles underlying the Declaration have enabled our people to fundamentally reform and remake their government at least twice, first as a Confederation, then, when that failed, into the ingenious republican form of democratic federalism that has been evolving on our shores for over two centuries. Our government is constantly being remade by court decisions and Amendments, often not for the best, but always based on the will of We the People who formed the Union, not of the states, but of the people!

Our governments founded on, and by, the will of the people:

The Declaration of Independence said that to secure the self-evident, innate, and inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, people create governments that derive their just powers from the people (not by divine right),laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them [the people] shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate....(emphasis added)

The Declaration of Independence concluded by appeal to Its ultimate foundation:

The Declaration of Independence concluded by appeal to its ultimate foundation, the principles that were its source for setting up sovereign states:

We...do, In the Name, and by Authority of the good People...publish and declare, That, these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States...⁴

Hence, the de facto "United Colonies" which had never existed in English law, became, the United (but still fully independent) States until the Revolution was essentially won. Then they were remade into a union of truly "United (quasi-independent) States, whose name only survived the second American, Constitutional revolution that formed what should be called the United People of America, not the United States.

Right to make and remake governments:

The Declaration of Independence also had noted,

whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those ends [the peoples' rights, safety and happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government....⁵

Rebellion by ballot against government of the Confederation:

Those freed and independent nation states founded on their citizens' wills soon instituted a common government: a Confederation of quasi independent nation states. The Confederation became, by omission of power in, and protection by, in the central government, destructive of the peoples' rights, safety, and happiness. The people led by the early federalists rebelled by ballot to remake what had been a Confederation of semi-sovereign states into a Federal Republic of ALL the sovereign people in what had been the Confederation. They succeeded after overcoming fierce opposition of the leaders of many states that would have to give up sovereignty to the Union of the People. That was the Second American Revolution. We all won. But it was an incomplete and evolutionary revolution. When rebels later tried to re-form a Confederacy by bullets, not ballots, that caused Civil War. That was the Third American Revolution. We all lost.

THE CONSTITUTION'S TRAVAILS

The people form a federal union:

Through Constitutional Conventions and adoptions by the people's representatives in conventions or otherwise in each state, the people, in effect, rejected each confederated state's sovereignty and formed a new Federal government, a centralized sovereign nation created directly by "We the Peoples." Representatives of the people in all 13 previously confederated quasi-independent nation states abolished their semi-sovereign Confederate government, and subjected all local and state governments to the will of their new Federal government in most matters. They founded the federal government to rule over them and the states, on the will of the people, not on the will of any God ('though possibly with some gods' blessings) or on the votes of the states' governments. That is why they had ratification by the peoples in each state, rather than by the state.⁶

Fierce opposition from advocates of the Confederation:

Many patriots like Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson opposed the adoption of the Federal Constitution. They wanted to mend but not end the Confederation:

Have they said, We, the States? Have they made a proposal of a compact between states? If they had, this would be a confederation. The question turns, Sir, on that poor little thing--the expression. We, the people, instead of the states, of America?⁷

Scoffed at by states' rights' confederates:

The possibility of creating our single, centralized government that could rule such an extensive variety of lands and peoples without limiting their liberty was scoffed at by the Confederate opponents of our Federal Constitution,⁸ both in the Convention and during the campaign for ratification, and again by states' rights advocates right up through the civil war and, finally, through our struggles for civil rights for all Americans. With Amendments and dynamic interpretations, through growth pains and spasms, that Constitution led us to become one people indivisible "with liberty and Justice for all," by liberating, not enslaving, all diverse factions, by caring for all and protecting all from one another, so diversity could bloom with liberty.⁹

States' rights are not among our roots:

The states' rightists were wrong then, and they are wrong now; neither Republican nor other conservative heritages embraced them. Those were Democrats' democratic roots. Indeed, both Republicans and conservatives consistently fought against siren songs of democratic states' rightists until an unholy alliance of Dixiecrats and multinational corporations gained control of the recent Republican revolutions (Goldwater's, Reagan's, and Gingrich's) which they turned to their advantage (and our misfortune) by getting Dixiecrat states' rightists' and Theocrats' help to limit the Federal government-for the good of the corporations.

Conservative Republicans' opposition:

We dare not overlook or underestimate the ancient, Confederate, or contemporary anti- federalists' or their democratic and theocratic Dixiecrat successors' opposition and threat to our real federal Constitution despite their constant claims that they nor revere it. They, the Theocrats, and the Fat Cats' heirs of the extreme Federalists such as Hamilton and the Adams family, adhere only to false versions and visions of our Constitution. The Dixiecrats imagine a confederate constitution wanted by those who lost by the arguments and votes at the Constitutional and ratification Conventions, and by bullets in the Civil War.

Opponents of the Constitution have been rewriting it:

Opponents of the Constitution have been rewriting it in the Supreme Court:

The appointees to the Supreme Court from the democratic/Dixiecratic/Theocratic and from the extreme Federalists' Fat Cats' traditions have been rewriting the Constitution in their image through interpretations since the death of Chief Justice John Marshall. It's sometimes very hard to recognize the Constitution's original form under the false interpretations based on their false "strict" and "loose" constructions.

The good from the roots of the states' rights threat;

The threat that citizens of a sufficient number of independent states would not endorse the Constitution to constitute the new United People of America was very real. Once opposition in the Convention had been defeated and a compromise Constitution had been agreed upon by that majority, the federalists still had to sell a scheme far removed from the expectation of many people and opposed by many of their representatives, a scheme that really exceeded the authority of the convention to revise the Articles of Confederation of the United States. That was especially difficult among the democratic, states' rights advocates represented by the opponents of the final version of the Constitution, some who, as delegates had finally boycotted the Constitutional Convention. Partly to help meet their objections, federalists agreed to create a Bill of Rights. Its absence from the Constitution had been a particularly sore point particularly among there confederates who viewed the Constitution as a Monarchists' plot. Paranoid states' rightists feared the federalists wished to impose upon them in this Second American Revolution, with their concurrence, the shackles to a King that they had all thrown off in the First American Revolution. Their venom has lasted centuries.

The paranoid opponents of the Second American Revolution:

Many Leaders of the First American Revolution resisted the Second:

Men like Patrick ("Give me liberty, or give me death") Henry, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, Luther Martin, a Pennsylvania gentleman or group published as "Centinel', James Winthrop of Massachusetts and even Thomas Jefferson, opposed with paranoid vengeance, the federal Constitution as originally written. These were men active in the first American Revolution against King George.

Patrick Henry, we find, held of the new Constitution:

It is radical..., our rights and privileges are endangered, and the sovereignty of the states will be relinquished.....The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty of the press, all your immunities and franchises, all pretensions to human rights and privileges, are rendered insecure,...¹⁰

George Mason was alarmed that:

Mr Chairman,....the present clause clearly discovers that it is a national government, and no longer a confederation. I mean that clause which gives the first hint of the general government laying direct taxes. The assumption of this power...does, of itself, entirely change the confederation of the states into one consolidated government. This power...must carry everything before it. The very idea of converting what was formerly a confederation, to a consolidated government, is totally subversive of every principle which has...governed us. This power is calculated to annihilate totally the state governments. ....¹¹

George Mason saw that:

These two concurrent powers can not exist long together; the one will destroy the other; the General government being paramount to and in every respect more powerful than the state governments, the latter must give way....¹¹

Mason predicted on the basis of such knowledge that:

...there never was a government over a very extensive country, without destroying the liberties of the people. ...[M]onarchy may suit a large territory, and despotic government over so extensive a country, but popular government can only exist in small territories. ... Was there ever an instance of a general national government extending over so extensive a country....where the people retained their liberty?¹²

Mason recognized that with the Constitution federal law would eclipse state laws:

All the laws of the United States are paramount to the laws and constitution of any single state. 'The judicial power shall extend to all cases In law and equity, arising under this constitution.' What objects will not this expression extend to? Such laws may be formed as will go to every object of private property, ...[T]he nature of these courts...their effect and operation will be utterly to destroy state governments. For if your state judiciaries are not to be trusted with the administration of common justice... much lees ought the state governments be trusted with...legislation. The principle goes to the destruction of the legislation of the states....I think it will destroy the state governments,...¹³

That is largely what the federalists intended: that state governments should administer federal law over all citizens, and only make any special laws required for their own localities that did not violate the citizens rights as members of the federal community.

Mason knew that:

...there are many gentlemen who think that we should have one great national consolidated government, and that it was better to bring it about slowly and imperceptibly, rather than all at once. To those...this extensive judicial authority will be agreeable;....¹³

What the federalists had not expected is that their opponents would be so astute as to clearly see the nature and implications of the evolutionary Constitution which had been written and compromised in the telling and the selling so as to pull the wool over their paranoid opponents eyes.

What went wrong with our Federal evolution?

Had the states and federal courts correctly interpreted the Constitution as it was written, instead of as it became popularly accepted to mean, Mr. Mason would and should have been right. Over time, our federal government would have rid itself of these anachronistic and meddling pretenses to sovereignty, But the likes of Mr. Mason and other states' rights democrats took over our government under Jefferson after the excesses of the latter Federalists in the National Bank Bill and the Alien and Sedition Acts. In spite of the Constitutionally conservative, moderately progressive federalist, John Marshall, being Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and his interpreting the Constitution according to his "fair construction," Mr. Mason's predictions, unfortunately, didn't happen. The true, planned and foreseen evolution of our Constitution requires a President and legislature as well as the courts to reach a consummation devoutly to be wished. If the former two do not create federal laws to supercede state laws, the state laws remain.

The federal legislature did not pass many laws to supercede the states' legislation with common, equal laws for all Americans, although Marshall would have acknowledged their right to do so, to give common equal rights and responsibilities to all equal citizens. Consequently, Jefferson's states' rightists retarded and largely prevented the natural evolution of our country into the image of our Constitution as intended and expected by the early federalists who knew they couldn't get that immediately without the people refusing to accept the Constitution. The states have continued their unequal and non common legislating to this day, so that there are few equal common laws or rights of all Americans in all states, but a variety of laws and processes affecting people from one state to the next, making law which should be universal appear arbitrary. Americans traveling through 50 states are affected by as many different sets of laws. Jefferson's democrats got the people as well as the political hack lawyers appointed to the Supreme Court who should have known better to accept the states' rightists' Constitutional myths.

RICHARD HENRY LEE also recognized that:

The plan of government now proposed is calculated totally to change our condition as a people. Instead of being thirteen republics under a federal head, it is clearly designed to make us one consolidated government.¹⁴

Lee's alarm arose from the fact that the federal Constitution as written was, he thought, primarily written by and for the Eastern Establishment Fat Cats of his day:

We shall view the Constitution with proper respect--and...reflect...[and] recollect how the aristocratic [Fat Cat] parts of the community dominated its proceedings.¹⁵

Richard Henry Lee analyzed their intents and purposes:

The party backing the new system of government is composed of a few but dangerous men, with their servile dependents; these avariciously grasp at all power and property; you may discover in all the actions of these men an evident dislike to free and equal government, and they will go systematically to work to change, essentially, the forms of government in this country; they are called aristocrats. This party has taken the political field, and with their dependents, and the tongue and the pen, is endeavoring to establish ...a government or class selfish as the Shayites attempted to set up, but cast in a politer form.¹⁶

The irony is that this statement may be much truer today than it was then. The Fat Cats' politicians are using the very myths Lee propagated about the federal Constitution to try to divide and conquer the American people for their bosses. Now that the Fat Cats' bought and paid for politicians represent vast multinational conglomerates more wealthy and powerful than individual states, they can work their ways with the smaller subdivisions what they could not accomplish with the big enchilada. Many have grown far stronger than any king feared by those who opposed anything that smacked to them of "monarchism."

Luther Martin feared the "monarchists":

The favorers of monarchy, and those who wished the total abolition of state governments....joined..,with that party who wished a system giving particular states the power and influence over others, procuring...[for] the government great and undefined powers as to its legislative and executive;...they paved the way...for the destruction of state governments, and the introduction of monarchy.¹⁶

The Centinel from Philadelphia blamed the upper classes:

The Centinel too, feared the upper classes had connived the concurrence of an unsuspectingly naive dupe, George Washington, and a dottering old fool, Benjamin Franklin, and wished to demand recompense by getting a Bill of Rights which they proposed to balance the Constitution which they felt was too "federal" and "centralized and powerful."

The wealthy and ambitious [Fat Cats], who In every community think they have a right to lord it over their fellow creatures, have availed...and flattered themselves that they have lulled all distrust and jealousy of their new plan, by gaining the concurrence of the two men in whom America has the highest confidence [George Washington and Benjamin Franklin], and now triumphantly exult in the completion of their long meditated schemes of power and aggrandizement.... [T]he unsuspecting goodness and zeal of the one has been imposed on...; and the weakness and indecision attendant an old age has been practiced on in the other.¹⁹

Centinel was convinced that:

Such a body as the intended Congress...must grasp at omnipotence, and before long, swallow up the legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers of the several states,²⁰

Unfortunately, that was not then, and has yet, to be. However, it seemed to the opponents of the Constitution so clearly inherent in the Constitution, as written, that they would have been the most surprised at the lack of such results even until now. Consequently, Centinel argued, the people must have the protection of a Bill of Rights because, otherwise:

...the general government would necessarily annihilate the particular governments, and the security of the personal rights of the people by the state constitutions is superseded and destroyed; hence results the necessity of such security being provided by a bill of rights to be inserted in the new plan of federal government.²¹

Such paranoid concerns as voiced by Centinel partly led the early federalists to accept the idea of a Bill of Rights authored by Madison for the convention. Ironically, it has been the security of personal rights of the people provided by the federal Constitution and federal laws that have generally been needed to overcome the threats thereto. When those protections have not been provided it has often been precisely because of the nefarious activities and injurious arguments of the states' rights advocates. But many of the paranoid states' rights advocates did not over joyously welcome the expressed willingness of the early federalists to provide a Bill of rights. First, it was a post dated check: Accept the Constitution, and we agree to amend it thereafter. Second, the enemies of the Confederation were likely to be the ones who would write the proposed amendments that were to make up the Bill of Rights.

James Winthrop thus concluded:

The scheme of accepting the report of the Convention, and amending it afterwards, is merely delusive. There is no intention among those who make the proposition of amending it at all. Besides, if they have influence enough to get it accepted in its present form, there is no probability that they will consent to an alteration when possessed of an unlimited revenue.²²

Contradictory claims by opponents of the Constitution:

Those who most vehemently opposed the constitution during its creation, constantly denying that it protected what they considered essential states' and human rights, nonetheless, when it had been accepted by the people over their opposition, claimed just as loudly after its adoption and amendment that it staunchly was intended to, and does, protect exactly the supposed rights which they had most vehemently denied it would protect before it was passed. Later, Jefferson, who had had no hand in the creation of the Constitution, and had opposed it, joined Washington's federalist administration anyhow. There, and later as leader of his democratic party, and as President, he tried to rewrite the Constitution with his own interpretations in his own paranoid image. Finally, Jefferson led some ex-federalists such as Madison over to the anti-Federalist democratic opposition to form a radically democratic party called variously the Republican-Democratic, Democratic-Republican and sometimes, simply, the Democratic Party, as it has come to be known. They were all predecessors of the current Democratic party."²³

Madison finally became a federalist turncoat:

Alter a crisis over creation of a National Bank and the Federal Party's sponsorship of the Alien and Sedition Acts, even Madison eventually had joined states' rightists' anti-federalist demands for a false interpretation called a "strict construction" of the Constitution he had penned for the Convention. He took political refuge under the arm of his friend's democratic party for the sake of eventually becoming President:

It is ...certainly true that the men with whom [Madison] was now acting were the men who, having failed to prevent the adoption of the Constitution, by zealous endeavors for an assumed strict construction, tried to defeat the purposes for which it was framed.²³

So turned the worm right out of the woodwork:

Thus crawled out of the woodwork, alter a metamorphosis from Constitutional opponent to supposed Constitutional champions, "states-rights" proponents. They had lost their argument that the Constitution shouldn't be adopted because it gave up states' rights. Now they were obviously denying the facts on which they previously had insisted, and which they had strenuously resisted, the basis on which they had opposed the Constitution: that the Constitution gave the federal government vast powers over individuals and practically unlimited powers over states, even as Amended by the Bill of Rights.

Strict construction was supposed basis for "Nullification":

Now Jefferson and his states' rights democrats insisted on what they called a "strict construction." That was simply obvious misinterpretation that never would have entered into our national mythology if Adams' and Hamilton's Fat Cats' excesses had not panicked the people, and if it hadn't served the interests of the southern states: their demand to continue to hold slaves. "Strict construction" was the basis for repeated calls for "Nullification" and disunification until, finally, it led to Civil War. Then it was used by Dixiecrat politicians for justification of the Civil War and later to subordinate their black population in an unequal status. It is still the basis for many closet racists to oppose affirmative action as supposedly being "unconstitutional."

Strict construction of states' right is basis of new Republicans:

That championing of strict construction today characterizes those heirs of the Dixiecrats who have been taking over the Republican Party since FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) took the blacks into his Democratic coalition after the Republicans had practiced malign neglect for decades. The importance of blacks in and to FDR's and Truman's Democratic Party severed the Dixiecrats from their Democratic roots, and set them adrift. Their parasitic tentacles have reached out to strangle Republicans from our roots. After failing to stop Truman in 1948 as Dixiecrats, and thereby failing to regain power over their Democratic party, states' rightists had rightly had no more place in American politics than they had since they were defeated at the Constitutional Convention, except for their Civil War. Finally, they tried, started and failed to make a resurgence with Goldwater in 1964, and as Wallace's Dixiecrats in 1968. Then they joined Nixon's coalition in which they thrived. States' rightists were not on the right; they were on the left wing of American politics, democratic radicals demanding liberal reforms. They still are. They just don't know It. But they keep raising their ugly heads in various forms because they prey on fear and insecurities anywhere they find them. Only in that regard are they like the right wing Fat Cats doing their monstrous mash of human beings, and seeking to legislate morality.

THE REAL FOUNDATION:

Religion, Reason, and the State:

Checks and balances based on reason:

How did our forefathers and the governments and laws they created relate to, if they weren't founded on, religion? Most of the prominent founders and leaders of our free government's institutions were not religious fanatics but most of them were not atheists. Of course, as politicians they often had to stroke the religiosi. Mostly, our forefathers relied on reason and a sound cynicism, and knowledge of history and government to devise a government based on reason as suggested by Locke's and Hobbes' philosophies.²⁴ Theirs was a government, formed, checked and balanced as a "compact;" or "contract" between free and equal men.²⁵

To avoid sectarian injustice and conflict:

Those checks and balances were partly intended to avoid the sectarian intrusions on freedom and secular life that our forefathers had to contend with all their lives. Now, Mr. Keyes and Buchanan would impose on us, for the sake of votes of Catholics and fundamentalists, their own versions of those sectarian intrusions into secular life: prayer in schools and outlawing all abortion. This is a populist theocracy: religion using a large minority or slight majority to over-rule the rights of, and rule over, all minorities who do not agree with them, as in the case of anti-abortionists.

Founders' religion:

Some of the most important creators of our form of government, such as Tom Paine, Jefferson²⁶ and Franklin²⁷ ranged from atheists and skeptics to moralists and deists, most times In their lives, Others were men of action and conventional faith and political shows of faith, like Washington²⁸ For every "religious" Hamilton²⁹ (whose antidisestablishmentarian, theocratic, as well as Fat Cats' views, were finally rejected by everyone)³⁰, there was a fitfully faithful Adams, who was more concerned with vanity, theology and morality than religion per se. Still, Adams had fully and futilely intended to make the ministry his career. He might have, had he shared his churches' religious beliefs. Nor did he believe he'd helped base government on religion, as easrlier quotations made amply clear.³¹

The most religious:

Perhaps the most religious of our forefathers was not the father (author) of our Declaration of Independence (Jefferson) or the father of our country (Washington), but the rather the father of our Constitution, of our current federal form or government as author of our Federal Constitution and of the first ten Amendments to the Constitution in the Bill of Rights: James Madison.

Temporal versus eternal authorities:

However, Madison was religious enough to know that Christians should follow Jesus' advice to render unto temporal authority, temporal matters, and to eternal authority, matters of one's eternal soul and conscience. As we will see, Madison no more based the government on religion than had the sometimes atheistic, often skeptical, and at other politically useful times, apparently Deistic, Jefferson.

MADISON'S VIEWS OF RELIGIOUS RIGHTS:

Madison's religious background:

Just how religious was Madison? He'd spent an extra year in his education in religion to study Greek so he could read the New Testament in Greek. He'd spent many years in vestry, the local governance of the Episcopal ( formerly, Anglican) Church in Virginia. James Madison was even ordained by Bishops in the (Anglican) Church of England as one of the first three Episcopal Bishops in the United States. If any of our forefathers would have based our government on religion, it should have been Madison.

Madison denounced intolerance:

As a Virginia legislator in 1774, before the Declaration of Independence, Madison had followed the lead of his friend, Jefferson, to denounce religious intolerance and slavery to others' religious views.³³ This, from a man who would be ordained Bishop by the Church of England and elected President:

If the Church of England had been [the] established and general religion in all the Northern colonies, as it has been among us here [in Virginia],..., it is clear to me that slavery and subjection [to its religious views] might and would have been gradually insinuated among us.³⁴

Opposed government support:

While in the Virginia legislature (under the Articles of Confederation which gave no protection against states' support of religion), Madison fought churches' attempts to get a "universal tax 'for the support of teachers of the Christian religion.'"³⁵ In a public protest, Madison said it "would be a 'dangerous abuse of power'" for government to support religion in any way. Madison thought religion "...can be directed only by reason [persuasion] and conviction, not by force or violence."³⁶ He wasn't about to force his faith on others, or to let them force their religious views on himself or anyone else. He knew that was neither good religion, nor good government. He wasn't about to let any church use his state to compete better against the devil or another sect than it could do on its own.

Madison championed freedom of opinion regarding religion:

In place of that bill, Madison got passed "...an act for establishing religious freedom" (previously written by Jefferson). This provided that

...no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religion... whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument maintain, their opinions in matters of religion...,³⁷ (emphasis added)

Madison made Jefferson proud:

Jefferson proudly thanked Madison, especially for the "infinite approbation and enthusiasm" that that act written by Jefferson but promoted by Madison in Virginia while Jefferson was in France had received in Europe as a result of Madison's promotion:

It is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected after so many ages during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by...priests... and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature which had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions (emphasis added)³⁸

Jefferson tried to protect atheists and skeptics; but he "was not always careful to draw the line between religious liberty and irreligious license." according to critics.³⁹

Madison opposed "granting" tolerance:

In framing a Bill of Rights and a Constitution for Virginia's government, as a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention al 1778, Madison objected to the following proposed article's language that "granted" tolerance (since Madison maintained that freedom of religion is a natural right dependent on no other man's or state's will to "grant" or restrain):

All men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience unpunished and unrestrained by Magistrates, unless under color of religion, any man disturb the peace, happiness or safety of society.(emphasis added)⁴⁰

Madison recognized no right to disturb peace, happiness or safety of society for religion:

It might have been expected that Madison would have refused to limit freedom of the religious, even if a sect used religious freedom to disturb the peace, happiness or safety of society in promulgation of its faith. Not so. Madison, unlike anti-abortionists, thought that man's religious freedom extends only until it starts limiting and affecting others'. Then the requirement that you respect other equal citizens' rights kicks in.

Madison knew that absolute and inalienable rights of nature can't be judged or granted:

Madison thought that call for "tolerance" failed to recognize that men innately have religious freedom to say yea or nay as an absolute and inalienable right. Such "tolerance" assumes others have a right to judge and grant one's exercise of conscience. But temporal authority has no jurisdiction over religious opinion and vice versa, except where one man's religious opinion tries to impose itself or its affects or effects on another man's rights. There religion must be stopped. That is the case where Catholic and fundamentalist religious beliefs that the fetus is a spiritually endowed baby with a god given right to exist. It would violate their religious rights to force an abortion upon any one of them. But it would violate the wall of separation of church and state and others' rights to impose what is essentially a religious belief upon others who do not share that belief by forbidding all abortions on those grounds.

But what about the fetus, is its belief that it has a right to life not violated by rejecting its views? It would be if it had such views. For then it would be a functioning human being which is characterized by sufficient rationality individual independent functioning, which is the source of all rights. That requires the ability to at least be aware of and conceptualize oneself in relation to others in one's environment. More on that later.

Similarly with the right to death. To deny a dignified death without pain to a terminally ill patient who wants it with a clear mind is simply a religious belief legislated upon others by religious bigots. That was also true of Slavery (where religious views of Ham led to religious justifications of slavery), Prohibition, Abolition, and many of the other miseries our people have suffered. On the other hand, we must absolutely protect individuals from the imposition of such "final solutions" by others to whose value systems maintaining life is not a priority. Even in the case where an individual has lost all reasonable possibility of returning to rational, independent functioning and can not be said to be more than brain dead, his expressed values should not be violated. Nor should those of his loved one's whose right to the pursuit of happiness might be violated by enforced euthanasia.

Religion cannot be limited in individuals or allowed to intrude on others:

Madison urged that, instead, his Bill of Rights for Virginia should say:

All men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of...the dictates of conscience; and no man, or class of men, ought, on account of religion, to be invested with peculiar emollients or privileges, nor subjected to any penalties or disabilities, unless, under color of religion, the preservation of equal liberty, and the existence of the state be manifestly endangered.⁴¹

No man has equal liberty where a religious tenet can impose others' religious values upon himself where those are not necessary to fulfill the conditions for the compact between them. Whatever violates a man's life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness, as long as his behavior is not actively endangering other citizens' life, liberty or pursuit of happiness, is not allowed by the Constitution, no matter how upset some religious moralist may be about the behavior Just because a thin skinned prude is unhappy over other's behavior doesn't mean the others' behavior is endangering the prudes' happiness. The prude's own religious opinions are doing that!

THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE

Consent of governed forms compacts:

When Madison was called on to write our federal government's Constitution and Bill of Rights, he was quite ready to found our government on reason rather than religion just as Jefferson had in the Declaration of Independence:

That to secure these rights [to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness], Governments are Instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed (emphasis added),

Free contracts or "Might Makes Right" creates law in nature:

Going back to the idea or a state of nature in which there would have been no law, Madison believed that all men naturally, i. e., logically, would have been equally free and independent, or at least would have been under no logical or reasonable obligation to obey one another. The alternative would be to base obligation on power, to believe that might makes right--since law and government was not to be based on religion. That was the only other alternative. It had already been ruled out.

Equality is logical necessity:

To form government on any basis other than religion or "might makes right," free and equal citizens would have to establish a contract wherein every man by nature and logical right has an equal share of protection by, and obligation to obey, the laws. Thus all laws must be equal upon all citizens. That is a basic logical necessity to give free men motive to form contracts of governance that are not just subjugation to power.⁴³

Mythical expression in a state of logical nature:

Those mythological expressions or philosophical fictions of a state of nature and a contract establishing laws and government, may now have lost appeal over the ages. However, they are just expressions of the logical requirements for rational justification of a de facto moral and legal contract between free and equal beings whereby they can reasonably accept limited governance one of another as an alternative to presuming either that God or might "makes right" or that there is no basis for law and morality.

Some logically fundamental rights:

Logically, there are certain basic rights each man can not give up and still exist as a free and equal contractee. There are certain innate and inalienable rights that no rational man could or would freely choose to subject to the will of another. That is because it is logically impossible to exist as a free and equal member of the state on the assumption or the negation of those rights. Thus, men must have a logically undeniable right to life (survival), liberty (equality under limited law), and the pursuit of happiness (since it is that pursuit among men otherwise caught up in a miserable war with all others in a state or nature that is assumed as the logical condition or rational justification and rational as well as motive for making the contract). Even the insecurity of those with might in the state of nature, subject to other power group formations, makes their existence more miserable than it will be under contract to lead a free and equal existence.

The early federalist "midwives" of the people's government:

The earliest federalists were the "matchmakers" like Webster and Franklin who were responsible for suggesting to the people involved that they conceive of the Union of the People of America. They and their political progeny taught and/or became the "midwives" of the Constitution. This was a group, including Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, and Madison, who came to be known as federalists whose movement toward our federal Constitution was popularized from their Federalist Letters. They supported the adoption of the federal Constitution to replace the articles of Confederation. Washington and Hamilton, along with Jefferson and Adams, also helped form our first federal government under Washington's presidency.⁴⁴ Jefferson joined that moderate administration to serve as Secretary of State--in spite of his at first having opposed the adoption of the Constitution (along with men like Patrick Henry and James Mason). Men like Noah Webster, Benjamin Franklin and John Marshall as well as the other early federalists (including those mentioned) were federalist "friends of the Constitution" opposed those I call the "confederates" who had sought only, at most, a slight modification of the "Articles of Confederation". Those "friends of the confederation" and their political progeny throughout history have opposed the federalists whether the federalists were in the form of the early federalists, Whigs, or Republicans. Until recently (the last 80 some years or so) those confederate democrats were generally Democrats or Dixiecrat Democrats. Now they are taking over the Republican Party and making a comeback with the new Democrats as well.

NEED FELT FOR A BILL OF RIGHTS

Bill of Rights Recognized as Fundamental to Social Contract:

Other rights protected by Madison's authored Bill of Rights are similarly required as logical conditions for a social contract to underlie law. The insistence on such rights as limits on government is one basic distinction that separates the federalist republican from more purely democratic forms of government. In the Constitutional Convention, the federalist thought that those fundamental rights would be protected by the Constitution as written. Both to sell the Constitution to skeptical confederates, and because they genuinely came to feel that a specification of those basic rights was necessary, they added the Bill of Rights to even more unanimous acclaim. Those and the other checks and balances of the Constitution were also at the heart and soul of our Republican Party's traditional insistence on Constitutional republicanism.⁴⁵

Madison thought structure of Constitution would protect people:

Some of those rights at first were not written expressly in the Federal Constitution, although they were assumed. It was first hoped that the republican structure of checks and balances would protect such rights against minority factions and democratic majorities who might wish to overrun them.⁴⁶

Madison's conversion:

Perhaps in writing The Federalist Letters, such as No. 10, Madison realized the weakness of his arguments that the checks and balances or the structure of the Federal government alone would adequately protect those basic civil and human rights against special interests, democratic excesses and an independent court. He was glad to author the Bill of Rights for the federalists as he had done for Virginia's constitution.

The People's fears:

The fears of people in and representatives of some states that some of those rights could still be violable under the Constitution without their explicit expression and protection made it necessary to promise to amend the Constitution with a Bill or Rights in order to get it adopted. Madison had previously worked on such a Bill of Rights for the constitution of Virginia. Now one was needed in order to get approval by some states.⁴⁷ Those amendments were known as the Bill of Rights. They were drafted by Madison, modified and promoted by a Constitutional Convention and accepted, possibly naively and blindly, by the people of the states after their acceptance of the Constitution.

Opposition to overcome:

Federalists were opposed by those like Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson who wished to continue the Confederation of independent states, or to resume independent nation states. The democratic "states' rights" advocates originally led by Patrick Henry and James Mason felt the Constitution had gone too far in creating a Federal government of "we, the People." The Confederates were dragged, kicking and screaming, under the federal "umbrella." They became the original marginally loyal opposition to what they suspected were lurking monarchists intent on forming a British type monarchy under Washington: Hamilton and the Adams family. Many of them had insisted on the Bill of Rights as minimal protection to get them even give lip service to loyalty to go along with a federal government they feared. Many of them over-interpreted the protections of states' rights in the Bill of Rights. Many of them still resisted even after our Constitution was a fiat accompli. Patrick Henry has to his credit his realization 1ate in life that having lost the argument against the Constitution, all citizens were required to function within it by its rules, Thus, Henry's last political act was a lashing at the nullification theories of Jefferson as expressed in Jefferson's democratic party's harassment of Adams's administration and in the Virginia Assembly's response to the Alien and Sedition Acts and Laws. Henry arose in response to a plea by the early federalist ex-President Washington to help save the Union. His fiery speech probably held back the Jeffersonian democrats' overt rebellion for sixty years before they again reached the unavoidable urge to pass the verge of revolution in their search for confederation.

DISINTEGRATION OF FEDERALISM

Regional interests, fears and jealousies:

Regional interests, fears and jealousies all too soon rent asunder the federalist unity that temporarily brought together aristocratic right wing North easterners like Hamilton, Adams and Gov. Morris with a practically anarchical left wing democrat like Jefferson, under the unifying moderation of the presidency of Washington, under the Constitution written by the then moderate Madison, and under the moral persuasion of Benjamin Franklin.⁴⁸

Fears of monarchists' plots forms basis for Democratic Party:

Eventually, Jefferson and Madison feared what they considered "monarchist" excesses by Hamilton and Adam's right wing Fat Cats' in the Federalist party, such as Hamilton's plan for a national bank and Adams' plan for an anti-sedition law to clip the wings of licentious free speech. Both of the former bent increasingly toward more "democratic" and more "states' rights" extremes. Their democratic position and heritage became the basis for their more left-wing Democratic-Republican (soon to be called, Democratic) party. They insisted on states' rights and citizens' rights limits to the centralized federal government to appease their Confederate constituents.⁴⁹

Demise of the Federalists, the rise of their successors:

Jefferson and Madison's extreme nemesis, the right wing Hamilton/Adams Federal Party, eventually lost credibility because of an extreme anti-democratic bias which early federalists and true republicans reject. Their aristocratic and oligarchic bias toward plutocracy passed out of influence and took the Federal Party out or existence and our government into the "Era of Good Feeling" under President Monroe's Democratic-Republicans. It was also the era of good fooling of the people. "Strict Construction" states' rightists started getting their foot in the door to limiting Constitutional powers and protections. And on the other hand, servants of aristocratic Fat Cats have constantly tried to rise from the grave as right wing Democrats, Whigs and/or Republicans.

Early federalists were forefathers of Whigs and Republicans:

Reincarnations of the early federalists were the moderate right wing of the Democratic party during the first quarter century after the death or the Federal Party as a national force. These cross-breed inheritors of the early federalists, followed Washington's and Marshall's Constitutional conservatism as much as politically possible in a world where Jefferson's democracy had won the temporary day. They admitted more limits on states' rights and more power to the federal government than did their democratic, states' rights opposition. They had somewhat cleansed themselves of the extreme right-wing, Fat Cats' excesses of the later Hamilton and Adams family. Eventually, political progeny of the early federalists such as Webster, Clay and even Quincy Adams (whose real father, President Adams, had become a Federalist right wing reactionary extremist), freed themselves from the states' rights restraints of Jefferson's democratic political progeny and from Jackson's radical mobocracy to form the Constitutionally conservative, moderately progressive heart of the Whig predecessors of our Republican party. But Federalist right wing reactionary extremists also reincarnated as the Fat Cats' and the Theocratic right wings of the Whigs emerging from their cocoons. The Constitutionally conservative, moderately progressive federalists' progeny later created the Republican Party. Later, the Federalist right wing extremist Fat Cats and Theocrats sought out the Republican Party where they became the cancerous right wing that took over the whole party after Teddy Roosevelt led the Bull Moose heart of the Republican party out into the political wilderness.

Whig's opposition to states' rights Democrats:

The Whigs reacted to democratic excesses of the likes of "Pitchfork Andy" Jackson's mobocracy, and other radical democratic successors of Patrick Henry and Jefferson. Our Constitutionally conservative, moderately progressive progenitors continued to champion their political progenitors' more centralized authority of a "fairly constructed" Federal Constitution limited by a fair interpretation of the Bill of Rights and allowing only more limited states' rights. They fought against the "strict construction" of the Democrats and other turncoats.

Republicans' vision:

Republicans inherit the vision of a Federal government formed directly on the will of the people but limited by a Constitution of checks and balances that recognizes certain inalienable, basic rights of individual citizens (but not corporations or other fictional entities) and which defines and limits what those rights are, what powers are allowed to the federal government, the states, and protected for the people. We agree with Chief Justice John Marshall that the Constitution grants the federal government sufficient authority and power to achieve the six goals of our government listed in the Preamble. That includes recognizing the wisdom of a Constitution that allows the federal government to do whatever is for the common good and general welfare of the people according to Article I, Section 8, clause 3, but which does not allow the violation of our specific civil rights recognized in the Bill of Rights. Ours is a government which supercedes and is sovereign over the states (which have little special province except as reserved to themselves by the people from their federal government). This is in direct opposition to those Fat Cat right wingers who took over our party after Lincoln and Johnson, and again repeatedly after Teddy Roosevelt, the Depression, WWII, Ike, Barry Goldwater and during the administrations of Nixon, Reagan and Bush.