The Founding Fathers Weren’t Gods, And Neither Are Modern Politicians

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – I wish it were a news flash, but it’s not a news flash that the welfare state has replaced the charity state and the little laboratories of philanthropy and democracy that de Tocqueville saw when he came here back in the 1820s and 1830s and wrote a book about it called Democracy in America.  I think the experiment was doomed to fail as soon as the first bow was breached.  We can wax vainglorious all we want to about the magnanimity and the genius and brilliance of the founding fathers, but the fact of the matter remains that it’s their system that has become corrupted.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Mike in North Carolina, Mike, Mike, Mike, what day is it, Mike?  What day is it?  How you doing?

Caller Mike:  I’m doing good.  How are you today?

Mike:  I am well, sir, thank you.

Caller Mike:  I just wanted to comment and kind of get your opinion on this.  I kind of feel like we’re asking our government to do too much.  Whether it’s Democrat or Republican, but as a society, we kind of push things off on them.  Every time we push something off on them, we’re surrendering a liberty.  Life has its ups and downs.  Sometimes it’s good; sometimes it bad; sometimes it’s easy; sometimes it’s hard.  I kind of feel like we’re asking them to take on these chores that really are something that we should be doing as a society, as a people.  Our founding fathers, they wanted to earn their living off the land and their ability to do what they wanted to do, move where they wanted to move.  We essentially have created a welfare state through anything from subsidies to actual welfare, Medicare, Medicaid.  Although necessary, once we get them, we want more and more and more.  Does that make sense?

Mike:  Well, it’s not something I haven’t heard before, so yeah.  I wish it were a news flash, but it’s not a news flash that the welfare state has replaced the charity state and the little laboratories of philanthropy and democracy that de Tocqueville saw when he came here back in the 1820s and 1830s and wrote a book about it called Democracy in America.  I think the experiment was doomed to fail as soon as the first bow was breached.  We can wax vainglorious all we want to about the magnanimity and the genius and brilliance of the founding fathers, but the fact of the matter remains that it’s their system that has become corrupted.  It was not foolproof.  It wasn’t thought out well enough to prevent abuse.  Let’s just leave it at that.

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Look, it’s the system under the Constitution that has produced this failure.  I am well aware that it has been fallible and mortal men that have denied their oath, that have disobeyed the principles or have wandered from the path of republicanism as was laid out or was advised by the founding generation.  As a matter of fact, I think that’s probably a really good term to use.  The founders basically served as advisors to future generations and said: Hey, we think you guys ought to do this, so we’re going to write this down and you shouldn’t contravene that.  While there was acceptance of and allegiance to that advise, it wasn’t foolproof.  It wasn’t universal.

Just look at the first actions of the very first congresses.  Just look at them.  Let’s establish a national bank.  Excuse me?  Where do you find national bank at in Article I, Section 8?  Well, it’s not in there.  It’s under the necessary and proper clause.  No, it’s not.  Yes, it is.  Who won the battle?  Hamilton with Washington’s assistance.  George freaking Washington assisted in chartering the First National Bank.  He didn’t veto it.  Look at one of the first treaties that was passed and advised by the Washington administration, the treaty negotiated between Great Britain and our ambassador to Great Britain, John Jay.   It was, by most accounts, a travesty, yet it was done under the Constitution.  It was done constitutionally.

What about the acts for alien and sedition?  They passed both houses of Congress.  They were signed by President Adams, a guy that was in the room when the Declaration of Independence was being debated.  As a matter of fact, he was the only one that would stand up and make the case for why the Declaration ought to be adopted, yet there was Adams a mere 22 years later putting quill pen and India ink to parchment and signing his name approving of the act to deal with aliens and for the act to deal with sedition, which caused Jefferson, Taylor and Madison to claim that the states didn’t have to go along if they thought it was unconstitutional, thus we have nullification and interposition.  These things were all done extra-constitutionally.

It’s one of the really intriguing and fascinating things about reading the life and times of someone like John Taylor and those guys that were around him, like James Monroe.  They were best friends until Monroe became governor and then president.  Reading of Taylor and his circle of friends, among them Thomas Ritchie, a newspaper publisher, among them Spencer Roane, a Supreme Court judge from Virginia who was one of the greatest legal minds of his time and certainly a Taylorite strict constructionist.  Guys like William Brockenbrough, another one.  I just pick these names up because I happen to know them from Spirit of ’76 and doing a little research on this.  They were warning about this.  They were screaming and hollering: Look, we’re not going to have a constitutional system if these guys keep doing this.  It’s only going to work if it works like this.

This corruption goes all the way back to the first Congress.  We want to be fixated and live in a fantasy world that it’s all happened since Bill Clinton took the oath or since Nixon took the oath or since Roosevelt took the oath.  Certainly they have exacerbated the process, but there are few of us that are standing and saying we have to turn the clock back.  If you want to live in a republic and live under a republican system, you’re not going to live in the United States.  I hate to break the news to you, it’s just not going to happen here with 311 million people clamoring for the spoils of $3.9 trillion.  We should get that through our freaking thick skulls.  Newsflash: It’s not going to happen!  It is a physical and fiscal impossibility.  You’re never going to get, ever, all the people to surrender all the trillions of dollars that they currently are entrenched and are receiving as a result of someone else’s hard labor.

Now, what is possible is you may actually attempt to and hopefully be successful in and then proceed to returning to practicing self-government, republicanism, reviving the spirit of community, of Christian spirit and charity.  Those things are possible.  One of my radio heroes, Buddy Diliberto, who was a sports guy here in New Orleans for years, he used to say: I gotta call you out.  You’re a squirrel!  Guys that write at magazines want us to deal with reality.  [mocking] “We’re gonna have to raise that flag up.  We’re gonna have to make deals.  We need a seat at the table is what we need.”  You know what?  I want a seat at my own table with citizens of my own choosing.  I don’t want to have to make common cause with, and I don’t see why I should be forced and compelled to make common cause with abortionists in California and New York.

By the bye, there is a historical precedent for this.  Go back and read the proceedings of the Anti-Slavery League.  As a matter of fact, you libs out there, I dare you to go back and read the proceedings of the Anti-Slavery League.  I dare you.  I triple dog dare you.  Matter of fact, you can read some of them in Is Davis a Traitor: Or Was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War of 1861?  We have it in paperback, my edition co-authored and edited by Brion McClanahan.  The Anti-Slavery League would have meetings every year.  Go back and read those proceedings and tell me how [mocking] “It’s always been this way.  It’s indissoluble.  We have to do this.”  That’s not what they said.  Let go of the fantasy.

There’s a third option.  The third option is it’s not so bad to surrender 58 percent of your income in income taxes and have sheriff’s deputies out there pursuing this destructive and suicidal and ill-advised national war on drugs and pulling people over in New Mexico and forcing them to undergo anal probes and procedures because they think they might have some drugs on their person.  I suppose losing 58 percent of your income, having to be subjected to anal probes, using other federal and state laws to be subjected to being strapped to a gurney if you happen to be driving in the wrong place on the wrong evening and come upon a state police or county police road block for DWI.  Go ahead and say: Yeah, I’m not gonna give you my blood.  Like hell you’re not!  You think you live in the United States or something?  We got Judge McGillicuddy right here.  Issue the subpoena, judge.  Let’s strap this heathen to the gurney and get his blood.  He’s probably wasted.  To have your sons and daughters conscripted and sent over into wars in places that most people can’t point to on a map in order to keep up the spending of the military-industrial complex.  Folks, I could make this list forever.

I guess we could just make peace with all that.  Once we’ve made our peace, we’ll work to make it better.  We’ll work to have less of our sons and daughters killed in those wars.  We’ll whittle that tax burden down to 51 percent instead of 58, how about that?  We’ll get some of those civil liberties back.  We’ll still be spied upon.  We won’t get them all back.  We’ll still have the anal probes and the blood sucked out of us, but they’ll have to get two subpoenas before they can actually do it.  Let’s pretend like we’re Monty Hall.  Let’s make a deal, shall we?  You could, I suppose, just give in and say: It’s not so bad.  I’m gonna join Mitchie McConnell and John Cornyn and Bob Corker.  Those are the wise men out there.  I’m gonna get in there and roll my sleeves up with the other kids.  We’re gonna get in there and make this a better world.  We’re gonna make it a better tyranny.  Ri-freaking-diculous.  It sounds ridiculous to me and I’m the one that just said it.  But I’m open to considering it, aren’t you?

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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