What Patrick Henry Warned Us About Before the Constitution Was Ratified

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – All this fiscal cliff garbage, all this depressing talk about tax increases and all this, this is all preordained.  It matters not the size and scope of our debts and deficits and what we owe and what our children are going to have to owe and the tax slavery you’ll live under to repay it.  It is not going to change one iota, not one punctuation mark between now and the passage or lack of passage of the so-called fiscal cliff.  All these deliberations, this is all about them.  It’s not about you; it’s about them. Check out the rest in today’s transcript…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I was wondering if there was anything in the ratification debates that would shed some light on what it was that Mr. Henry and company thought about members of the Senate, and what they may or may not do if the Constitution was ratified.  I find this from the first day of debate over ratifying the Constitution.  Patrick Henry basically vaults.  He leaps out of his chair to oppose ratification and to begin to give the reasons why.  He has to be calmed down because in the Virginia Convention, including James Madison, there are men saying: Wait, you guys agreed to the rules.  The rule is we’re going to discuss the Constitution as a new plan of government line by line.  You can’t just jump up and start haranguing against it writ large.  Henry says: All right, you’re right.  Then another guy gets up, George Nicolas, speaks for a little while.  As soon as Nicolas is done, Henry vaults out of his chair again and controls the floor for the rest of the day.  He talks right through lunch all the way till they adjourn at 4 o’clock.  This is part of what he said, and this has something to do with the Senate and the corruption we see today, why and how this was all going to play out.

[reading]

The honorable member then observed, that nations will expend millions for commercial advantages; that is, that they will deprive you of every advantage if they can. Apply this another way. Their cheaper way, instead of laying out millions in making war upon you, will be to corrupt your senators. I know that, if they be not above all price, they may make a sacrifice of our commercial interests. [Mike: In other words, senators would take bribes and would make treaties that would benefit foreign nations if it were to the benefit of the senator. Gee, that would never happen, Patrick. Why would you say such a thing?] They may advise your President to make a treaty that will not only sacrifice all your commercial interests, but throw prostrate your bill of rights. Does he fear that their ships will outnumber ours on the ocean, or that nations whose interest comes in contact with ours, in the progress of their guilt, will perpetrate the vilest expedients to exclude us from a participation in commercial advantages? Does he advise us, in order to avoid this evil, to adopt a Constitution, which will enable such nations to obtain their ends by the more easy mode of contaminating the principles of our senators? Sir, if our senators will not be corrupted, it will be because they will be good men, and not because the Constitution provides against corruption; for there is no real check secured in it, and the most abandoned and profligate acts may with impunity be committed by them.

[end reading]

Mike:  In other words, it would be easy for people to get their — he was talking about foreign nations.  He didn’t even get into the corporation aspect, which is now what has happened.  It would be far easier than by making war on the United States to invade it and corrupt it from within by owning members of the United States Senate is what he was saying there.  Why would a nation have to make war on us anymore?  No one would invade us.  No one would make war on us when they can just buy a couple senators and have treaties made to their advantage.  The exact same thing has happened with corporations.  Corporations don’t have to compete for business in the United States anymore.  All they have to do is bribe or lobby the right member of Congress and they get their way through legislative acts that accrue an advantage to them and then throw a disadvantage to their competitors.

That’s why nothing can get done and that’s why nothing is going to change.  All this fiscal cliff garbage, all this depressing talk about tax increases and all this, this is all preordained.  It matters not the size and scope of our debts and deficits and what we owe and what our children are going to have to owe and the tax slavery you’ll live under to repay it.  It is not going to change one iota, not one punctuation mark between now and the passage or lack of passage of the so-called fiscal cliff.  All these deliberations, this is all about them.  It’s not about you; it’s about them.  Notice that the focus is on what is Harry going to do?  Who’s at fault here?  Is it Johnny’s fault or Barry’s fault?  It’s not anything to do with you.  It’s not anything to do with me.  It’s not anything to do with economic prosperity.  All the while, just one week ago today, we were all fixated on madmen roaming the countryside looking for the next school to barge into and begin to take human life.  But today we obsess over who it is who’s going to be speaker of the house.  Isn’t there some guy’s birthday we’re supposed to be celebrating this time of year?  What’s that dude’s name?  I know, some about Christmas.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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