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| The Suprising Vindication of John C. Calhoun |
| 2013-09-29 |
| Erudite explication of the 19th century politicians whose views of government restraints, fiscal and otherwise in response to some silliness written by James Fallows. You should go read the whole thing. I don't always agree with Robert Stacy McCain, but what he says here is compelling. From TFA: Fallows would have us believe that “what is going on” is not a routine exercise in budget brinksmanship — something to which we have become accustomed as a ritual of divided government — but rather an “internal crisis” exclusive to the Republican Party. In other words, Democrats are not responsible for anything, Democrats have no obligation to consider the views of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the duly elected representatives of taxpaying citizens, because . . . well, why, really? Perhaps James Fallows considers the illegitimacy of Republican opposition to ObamaCare self-evident or perhaps, more likely, he expects all his readers to share his partisan Democrat views, and thus also expects them to accept without question the intended putdown of his comparing conservative Republicans to John C. Calhoun. As the cited passage from Calhoun’s Disquisition demonstrates, however, the South Carolinian who served as Secretary of War (1817-1825) Vice President (1825-1832) and Secretary of State (1844-45) was quite a profound political thinker. Lincoln biographer Thomas L. Krannawitter has called Calhoun “a public intellectual of the highest order . . . renowned for his public oratory . . . a remarkable man, and a uniquely gifted American politician.” Calhoun saw in the successive crises of the 19th century evidence of a dangerous tendency toward the centralization of power in Washington, so that control of the national government conveyed to the party in power an authority that was effectively unlimited. Calhoun articulated the doctrine of States’ Rights as a check on this unlimited authority. Calhoun’s doctrine has been disparaged because of its association with slavery and racial segregation, yet we can trace its historical origin to the Founding Fathers themselves, in a context having nothing whatever to do with slavery or race. It was Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who, in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798-99, invoked the authority of the states to declared the Alien and Sedition Acts null and void. If we examine that crisis, we see that supporters of the Adams administration’s pro-British policy in foreign affairs had in essence sought to outlaw dissent — an odious restriction on First Amendment freedoms. The next crisis came during Calhoun’s vice presidency, when the so-called “Tariff of Abominations” was passed. Calhoun authored the “South Carolina Exposition and Protest,” which condemned the tariff act as “ imposing duties on imports — not for revenue, but the protection of one branch of industry at the expense of others,” declaring the measure “unconstitutional, unequal, and oppressive, and calculated to corrupt the public virtue and destroy the liberty of the country.” This was a matter not just of policy, but of philosophy, because Calhoun saw that the protectionist measure involved using federal power in ways not contemplated by the Founders, nor consented to by the states in ratifying the Constitution. By gaining a majority in Washington, certain interests sought to enrich themselves through the exercise of federal tax policy, and this abuse was the result of a centralizing tendency that negated the Constitution’s limitations on federal power, converting it “into a great consolidated government, with unlimited powers.” Well, here we are in 2013, eh? Nearly $17 trillion in debt – $16,955,657,321,974 as of noon today – we have added nearly a trillion dollars a year (more than $1.8 billion per day) to the national debt every year since 2008, and it is this endlessly escalating debt that keeps bringing us to these budget crises. There were no such conflicts during the first two years of Obama’s presidency for the simple reason that he took office when Democrats held an irresistible majority in Congress and could enact whatever policies suited them, including not only ObamaCare, but also a wasteful “stimulus” that added roughly a trillion dollars to the national debt in one fell swoop while doing nothing to restore economic prosperity. America’s problem, as complex as it may sometimes seem, is really quite simple: We have a federal government with too much power, that spends hundreds of billions dollars more per year than it collects in revenue, and which spends that money to support a system of entitlement programs that is bankrupting us, as well as a regulatory bureaucracy that stifles economic growth. An ever-increasing national debt caused by annual federal budget deficits is the result of Democrat policies that favor the endless expansion of entitlements and bureaucracy, even while they refuse (for the sake of political convenience) to enact the taxes that would be necessary to eliminate the deficits at present spending levels. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #5 A peptic ulcer will do that. Hell, Indians, English, damn Yankee Bankers, Factors, English Bankers, English Factors, whorish owners of slave ships, slaves, N######as, ChinaMen, Craven Bastards from Virginia. Hell you name it, he hated it. LOL. My favorite quote is from the Great Big Battle of New Orleans when found out a Kentucky regiment had arrived sans rifles.... : When some Kentucky troops actually showed up without firearms on January 4,1815, Jackson purportedly exclaimed, “I have never seen a Kentuckian without a gun and a pack of cards and a bottle of whiskey in my life.” 3) Christ, I wish he had had nukes, the world would be a much quieter place now. :) AMIRITE? |
| Posted by: Shipman 2013-09-29 13:55 |
| #4 Hell, Jackson despised damn near everyone Glenmore. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2013-09-29 13:48 |
| #3 Well, if Andrew Jackson despised him that much, Calhoun must have been a good guy. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2013-09-29 12:03 |
| #2 "certain interests sought to enrich themselves through the exercise of federal tax policy, and this abuse was the result of a centralizing tendency that negated the Constitution's limitations on federal power, converting it 'into a great consolidated government, with unlimited powers.'" Gee, why does that sound so familiar? >:-( |
| Posted by: Barbara 2013-09-29 10:38 |
| #1 Andrew Jackson: "I have only two regrets: I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't hang John C. Calhoun." |
| Posted by: Shipman 2013-09-29 05:11 |