Compacts Aren’t Just For Purses. The Constitution As a Compact, Pt II

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “This particular individual [Mark Levin] is making the claim about James Madison.  He has his army of acolytes out there making the claim [mocking] “What the Tenth Amendment Center, and what Mike Church and Kevin Gutzman and Tom Woods and the rest of these rabblerousing, ill-informed losers is trying to do is undo our union.  They want secession.  They don’t want nullification.  They don’t want Article V.”

(Note: This is pt II of a 2 part series of transcripts from the Mike Church Show. Read Pt I here)

This is from Is Davis a Traitor?  [mocking] “Oh, you’re not gonna read from that book!”  Oh, yes, I am, because it is pertinent to this discussion.  You need to know this and you need to stop being lied to and misled by charlatans who have nothing more than profit as their desire.  Taylor Bledsoe asks the question in Chapter 5 of Is Davis a Traitor?:

[reading]

Was the constitution a compact? Was it a compact between the States, or to which the States were the parties? Was it a compact from which any State might recede at pleasure? These three questions are perfectly distinct, and all the rules of clear thinking require that they should be so held in our minds, instead of being mixed up and confounded in our discussions. Yet Mr. Justice Story, [Mike: He’s talking about Joseph Story, a Supreme Court justice.] in his long chapter on the “Nature of the Constitution,” discusses these questions, not separately and distinctly, but all in one confused mass, to the no little perplexity and distraction of his own mind. He carries them all along together, and in the darkness and confusion occasioned by this mode of proceeding, he is frequently enabled to elude the force of his adversaries’ logic.

Thus, for instance, he sets out with the flat denial of the doctrine that the Constitution is a compact; and yet, when the evidences become too strong for resistance, or a cloud of witnesses rise up to confound him, he turns around, and instead of fairly admitting that the Constitution is a compact, asserts that if it is a compact it is not one between the States. When too hardly pressed on this position, replies, well, if it is a compact between the States it is not such a compact that it may be revoked at the pleasure of the parties. Thus, when he is driven from one position he falls back upon another, and finally rallies to a second, a third, and a fourth denial of the main proposition that the Constitution is a compact. Now, I intend to discuss each one of these questions distinctly and by itself; holding Mr. Justice Story to one and the same precise point, until it is either made good or else demolished. I hope, in this way, to dispel the mists and fogs he has thrown around the subject, and to bring out the truth into a clear and unmistakable light.

The same confusion of thought, and arising from the same source, pervades Mr. Webster’s celebrated speech of Feb. 16, 1833 . . .

[end reading]

Mike:  Then Bledsoe says: Okay, I know there are going to be people who are going to come along afterwards and they’re going to say it’s not a compact, and we know it’s not a compact because James Madison says it’s not.  Bledsoe has an answer for this.  Again, we’re speaking about nullifying the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, the last rampart we have to man, ladies and gentlemen.  Listen up.

[reading]

In the Biographical Memoir of Daniel Webster, prefixed to his works, Mr. Everett says: “The opinion entertained of this speech, (the speech of 1833), by the individual who, of all the people in America, was the best qualified to estimate its value may be seen from the following letter of Mr. Madison, which has never before been published:

Montpelier, March 10th, 1833.

My dear Sir:—I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful speech in the Senate of the United States. It crushes nullification, and must hasten an abandonment of secession.” [Mike: Madison wrote this letter, in other words, to Daniel Webster.]

Now on what ground Mr. Madison could have based this opinion, at least in so far as it relates to secession, it is difficult to conceive. The fundamental premise of Mr. Webster, that “the Constitution is not a compact between sovereign States,” and which is adopted as the title of his speech, was certainly not approved by Mr. Madison; for this premise, beside being direct opposition to the doctrine of his whole life, is denied again in the very letter in which the above compliment is found. Mr. Webster has, indeed, very little to say against secession. His argument is almost exclusively directed against “nullification,” the point then in debate between himself and Mr. Calhoun. But the little he has to say against secession, is based on the idea that the Constitution is not a compact between sovereign States. Every argument, and every assertion, levelled by him against secession (and they are but few in number), have no other than this false foundation. Hence, Mr. Madison could not have approved or applauded the argument of Mr. Webster against secession, because he regarded his premise as sound; for he was most profoundly convinced that it was false. On what ground, then, could Mr. Madison have admired this argument?

If the Constitution is a compact between sovereign States, as Mr. Madison always contended it was, then Mr. Webster admits, as we have seen, that the right of secession follows. [Mike: Folks, you can just replace secession with nullification if you like, or interposition, whatever you want to call it.] Thus, this right is conceded by Mr. Webster to flow from the premise which Mr. Madison always regarded as perfectly and unquestionably true. How, in the face of such a concession, Mr. Madison could have pronounced the opinion, that Mr. Webste’s argument “must hasten the abandonment of secession,” it is exceedingly difficult to conceive. The acknowledgement that the right of secession flows from a position too plain to be denied, would tend, as one would suppose, to hasten its adoption, rather than its abandonment. How then could Mr. Madison have said otherwise?

The truth seems to be, that Mr. Madison was more solicitous to preserve the integrity of the Union, than the coherency of his own thoughts. [Mike: Now we’ll fast forward to the last statement on this.]

Mr. Madison greatly feared that Virginia and New York would, in their ordinances of ratification, expressly reserve the right to secede from the Union. This apprehension is most vividly set forth in his correspondence with Mr. Hamilton, in regard to the proposed conditional ratification of New York; from which it has been most confidently inferred, that neither Virginia nor New York did reserve such right. But what Mr. Madison desired, and what those States did, are two very distinct things. If we really wish to know what those States did, we should, it seems to me look at their recorded acts, rather than at what Mr. Madison desired them to do. The conditional ratification of Virginia was in direct opposition to the wishes of Mr. Madison. His wish, then, however great his influence, could not always control the action of his own State much less that of New York.

[end reading]

Mike:  The point is, folks, the Constitution is a compact.  Let’s go back to nullifying the Affordable Care Act and whether or not the State of North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and the other ones talking about doing it can.  They can.  The facts: the Constitution is a compact.  Because it is, the states, as willing parties to it, with equal power of determining the extent of the compact’s powers, can nullify, interpose, or secede if they choose.  Any other interpretation, ladies and gentlemen, demolishes the Constitution as compact and leaves us as mere children under the care of an abusive papa bear.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

TheKingDude

Host of the Mike Church Show on The Veritas Radio Network's CRUSADE Channel & Founder of the Veritas Radio Network. Formerly, of Sirius/XM's Patriot channel 125. The show began in March of 2003 exclusively on Sirius and remains "the longest running radio talk show in satellite radio history".

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