WEBVTT

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Here\'s a tale you ought to know about
the Constitution, and a man who thought

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it did reverse the Revolution. Luther
Martin lost the fight, forgotten is his

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glory, drink some coffee sit up straight
we\'re going to tell his story!

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We the people of the United States in
order to form a more perfect union,

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establish justice, ensure domestic
tranquility. You know if you look at the

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preamble; \"ensure domestic tranquility\",
domestic tranquility may mean may sound

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like it means sitting by the fireside in
a tranquil evening. That\'s not what it

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means at all. Ensure domestic tranquility
is a euphemism for put down rebellions.

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Domestic tranquility for whom? So it was
the white American who was supposed to

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have domestic tranquility. There were
three anti-federalists in Western

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Massachusetts who complained about the
Constitution because they said under

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this we will have to march to Virginia
to suppress a slave rebellion and we

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will have to protect the African slave
trade

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♪♪ Free ♪♪

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♪♪ Free ♪♪

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The founding fathers had a deep belief
in the people of the United States. They

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believed that government should exist
only to serve the people..

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..and so the first article of the
Constitution establishes the legislative

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branch of our federal government: the
Congress of the United States.

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What the Federalists wanted is not always
clear. They did want a government with

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substantive taxing powers they
stood you know arm

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linked to arm for the first paragraph of
article 1 section 8 which basically

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gives Congress wall-to-wall taxing power.
The power of taxation is most likely to

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be criticized by the public. Direct
taxation should not be used but in the

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case of absolute necessity; and then the
states will be best judges of the mode

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There\'s nothing denied to Congress and
this is a big argument well there was no

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source of revenue reserved for the
states, why did they want that? Well, they

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wanted it because it would make the
United States more attractive to

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creditors and a respectable country had
to be able to borrow money. I had a

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couple small kids until I compared it to
the cookie jar, that you would never

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leave a jar of cookies on the floor or a
low table where the kids can get it.

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For their own good you take the cookie jar
and you put it on a high shelf and

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that\'s what the Constitution does it
takes the two most important things that

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a government does in peacetime which are
levy taxes to pay for the previous war

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and determining the money supply which
determines whether creditors get to

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defraud debtors or debtors get to
defraud creditors. The money supply is

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absolutely I\'d say the most important
thing a government does besides go to

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war. So you take those two most important
powers of a peacetime government

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taxation and the money supply and you
transfer them from state legislatures

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which were much more amenable to the
people than the federal government is

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and you transfer them to a federal
government where only one branch is

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elected by the people and even a branch
is elected from these huge districts

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where ordinary people can\'t influence
their local representative and where

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they\'re elected for long terms you know
six years per senator\'s life terms for

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Supreme Court justices.
You put that cookie jar way up on the

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shelf where the people can\'t reach it.
That House of Representatives has 65

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representatives in it, the first house.
Now that\'s smaller than most of the

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state legislatures. I mean that\'s
incredible, we have Massachusetts 350

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people most of them numbered in the you
know 200 or more and all of a sudden you

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can have this federal legislature is
going to be 65? I mean that really

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bothered lots of people with good
reason. It\'s still a problem because we

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still have a very small legislature. One
of the people advocating those smaller

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districts as if you have big districts
it\'s like an invisible fence, and the

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result of that is that ordinary people,
when you have these huge congressional

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districts they feel disempowered but
there\'s there\'s no fence to try to bash

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down because it\'s an invisible fence a
large congressional district is an

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invisible fence that that stymies you
but you can\'t see it

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to tear it down and I think you could
take that analogy through to the whole

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federal government that it was a way of
taking power away from ordinary farmers

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that wasn\'t explicit. The authors of the
Constitution, many of them, wanted to have

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a congressional veto of state laws. Hamilton wanted the President to

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serve for life, senators to serve for
life. Had the framers the Constitution

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done that: A) they wouldn\'t have gotten
that ratified but even if they\'d somehow

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gotten a ratified, everyone would have
looked and said we have a tyrannical

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government and eventually they might
have overthrown it. Instead, the founding

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fathers found a way to make the country
less democratic without seeming less

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democratic. We continue to have these
debates you know the Affordable Care Act

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it was one vote that upheld it and it
was upheld on tax-and-spend not on

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commerce, so there still is a
manifestation of the most fundamental

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founding debate it\'s still present in
American government today, although of

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course things have shifted. Nobody is
arguing for a return to the Articles

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of Confederation, but Luther Martin, to
me, his major contribution from the point

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of view of political and constitutional
thought is to articulate that

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traditional view of federalism. \"...Grasping
in their all-powerful hands the citizens

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of the respective states this government
will by the imposition of a variety of

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taxes imposts, stamps, excises, and other
duties squeeze from them the little

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money they may acquire, the hard earnings
of their industry, as you would squeeze

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the juice from an orange, till not a drop
more can be extracted..\"

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None of us can escape. Big business,

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small business,

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farmers,

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workers.

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In the colonies the spirit of
Independence was abroad long before any

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formal declaration was made from the
beginning before the beginning Americans

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fought for freedom. Long years of warfare
were needed to prove that the

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Declaration of Independence had to be
respected by the world. The one skilled

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in the arts of war, the Americans at last
prevailed the architects of the

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Declaration were now free to expand
their ideas in the constitution.

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Its foundations were so broadly laid as to
provide for the expansion of national

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life and to make it an instrument which
would endure for all time. \"We the people

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of the United States in order to form a
more perfect union, establish justice

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insure domestic tranquility.\" You know if
you look at the preamble, \"ensure domestic

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tranquility\", domestic tranquility may sound like it means sitting by

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the fireside in a tranquil evening,
that\'s not what it means at all. Ensure

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domestic tranquility is a euphemism for
put down rebellions whether they\'re by

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slaves or small farmers or anybody else
and the constitution for the first time

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gives the federal government the power
that it needs to put down farmers

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rebellions. That is, Congress now has for
the first time the money it needs to

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field an army to put down rebellions and
you can see it if you just compare

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rebellions. Shay\'s rebellion in 1786 1787
right before the Constitution, Congress

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tried the Articles of Confederation
Congress tried to send an army to

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suppress Shay\'s rebellion. That army
never took the field because there was

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no money in the Treasury to fund that
army

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and armies move on their stomachs you
got to have a lot of money to put an

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army out there. So compare that failure
on the part of Congress to field an army

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to suppress Shay\'s rebellion to the
tremendous success in 1794 when farmers

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rebelled again this time in Pennsylvania
and who led those troops out there to

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suppress the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794?
The Secretary of the Treasury Alexander

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Hamilton because he was the one who put
up the money to fund that army. You just

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compare these two rebellions before the
Constitution that half the Constitution

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you see the power in that phrase ensure
domestic tranquility.

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Domestic tranquility for whom? So it was the white
American who was supposed to have

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domestic tranquility. When I think about
for example policing, and we realized

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that our modern-day Police Department
even though it\'s taught that it came

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from the bobbies of England, but it was an
amalgam of the bobbies from England in

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the 1800s and the slave catchers of the
South as well as the militias formed to

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put down uprisings of Native Americans.
Our laws especially, criminal laws were

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created to criminalize the behaviors of
people of color and protect you know

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white America whatever white was
considered at that time from those

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people of color. Those people of color
were not supposed to speak up about

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being oppressed, they were not supposed
to rise up, they were not supposed to

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protest, and they were certainly not
supposed to fight back against

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oppression and if those people of color
did any of those things, caused any

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damage, rose up, fought against, took lives
based on the lives that were taking of

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people of color then there were to be
crushed and so the Constitution,

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you know, affirms to the white American
reader of the document that we will

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protect your interests against these
people of color. There were three

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anti-federalists in Western
Massachusetts who complained

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the Constitution because they said under
this we will have to march to Virginia

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to suppress a slave rebellion. And we
will have to protect the African slave

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trade. There is a speaker in the New York
ratifying convention it makes the same

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kind of speech saying that I cannot put
my hand to this bloody Constitution

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drenching the bowels of Africa in gore
to support the slave trade

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But even those who were moderate were critical of
the extensiveness of the powers that

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were given to the new federal government
under the Constitution. In particular

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complete power to raise taxes and
complete power to raise armies so they

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were suspicious of the very extended
sphere the large government that we tend

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to take for granted today.

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Martin later told the Maryland
Convention he said it\'s almost

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impossible to imagine people consenting
to allow, you know, the militia of their

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state to go to some, you know, distant
state. I mean, you know, would

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the people of New Hampshire really agree
that their young men should be sent to

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say Georgia to quell some sort of
domestic disturbance? You can imagine

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what he would think of the the National
Guard which is the heir to the militia

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of New Hampshire being sent to to Iraq
or Afghanistan. I mean it\'s in one sense

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he predicted it. He also thought though
that we\'d fight back he thought people

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are not going to accept this. He thought
too much of us I think actually.

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♪♪ I\'m an American warrior ♪♪

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♪♪ a citizen soldier ♪♪

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♪♪ Awww yeah!!! ♪♪

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♪♪ I\'ll never leave another behind ♪♪

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♪♪ I will never accept defeat ♪♪

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♪♪ I\'m a soldier in war ♪♪

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♪♪ civilian in peace ♪♪

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Ready to swell the ranks of our regular
army is the National Guard. The

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present-day descendent of the state
militia of our constitutional planners.

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It is true that the president could order
the state militias to go from one place

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to another as commander-in-chief of the
army, but Congress has to appropriate

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money to arm the state militias. Congress
has to appropriate money to provide

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uniforms for the state militias, to set
rules and regulations for the state

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militias even the highest officers of
the state militias have to be approved.

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I took the sense of the convention on a
proposition by which the Congress should

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not have power in time of peace to keep
embodied more than a certain number of

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regular troops. This proposition was
rejected by a majority, it being their

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determination, that the power of Congress
to keep up a standing army, even in peace,

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should only be restrained by their will
and pleasure.

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To secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity reads the

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preamble. To implement these words to
bring them to life, the Constitution

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continues, the executive power shall be
vested in a president President shall be

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commander in chief of the Army and Navy
of the United States and of the militia

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of the several states when called into
the actual service of the United States.

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What\'s interesting is Washington writes
to Madison in April I think of 1787 you

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know a month or so before the convention
and he\'s probably had some inkling of what

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Madison\'s up to but he says to him oh
what about the executive? And Madison

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replies he says I haven\'t given it much
thought.

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On June 1st when they take up the
executive for the first time and there\'s

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a proposal for a unity, Madison writes a
considerable pause ensued. Now, I like to

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ask my students to think about this, this man is taking notes on everything. There was enough quiet for him

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to write that you know why are they quiet? Oops, what are we talking about? And it\'s only in

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the convention that you get people like
Edmund Randolph who was governor of

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Virginia who proposed the plan, it was
Madison\'s plan. Randolph and Mason they

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argue that unity is the fetus of
monarchy. The executive power of the

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government was placed in one man, the
President of the United States. He would

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be responsible to the people for all
departments of government. Many

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anti-federalists proposed is an
alternative to what they call the

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President General either a plural
executive, which is two or more men

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sharing the office a recipe for what a
sage once called a wise and masterly

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inactivity, or they wanted no executive
at all. Once it\'s decided it\'s going to be

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a single person, then they have, it\'s a
very simple Article two is very simple

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and commander-in-chief and will be the
executive, that is he will execute the

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laws. Well that\'s vague, but what do they
mean by that?

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Well, we\'ve been filling it in ever since and
now of course you see the president

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seems to have all the prerogative powers
of a king including the power to declare,

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well not the declare war but to go to
war. That\'s not something that they

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really anticipated.

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Despite having the
every day and every man theory that\'s

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out there that in America anyone can be
President I think many people believe

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that that job needs to be won within
the hands of the elite and I think

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that\'s why there\'s praise for the
founding fathers because they were the

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elite in a time period in which the
majority the vast majority of people in

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1787 were uneducated. George Washington
had been elected as a delegate from

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Virginia to the Constitutional
Convention and he had said no I\'m not

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going, but then Shay\'s rebellion happened
and he started getting these incredibly

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alarming letters from his friends
further north who said this is not just

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a farmer\'s revolt, but to use modern
language it\'s a communist revolt that is

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the farmers want to March to Boston and
take the property from the merchants and

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distribute it among themselves. They
didn\'t but, that was the perception that

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arrived at Mount Vernon and that
frightened Washington. He\'s not a guy

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who\'s scared real easily, but that was
enough to scare him into saying okay

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I\'ve got to go to the Constitutional
Convention and so he changed his mind

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after Shay\'s rebellion and said that
Shay\'s rebellion was the main reason

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that he was doing so. And so you might
say to me okay well that\'s just one guy

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out of fifty-five, but the Constitution
is unimaginable without George

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Washington, if he hadn\'t been there then
and hadn\'t endorsed the product there\'s

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no way that the states would have
ratified the Constitution.

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General Washington, honored by Americans above all other men, are now elected president

00:19:29.130 --> 00:19:33.360
of the convention he reminds the
delegates of the need for unity and

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facing their common problems. People did
say

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afterwards, federalists, saying well I
reason I made the presidency so I was

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willing to accept the presidency as
strong as it was is because I thought

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of George Washington, but they don\'t
think you know what happens after

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Washington? They really hadn\'t thought through that. Bill Clinton: \"I did not

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have sexual relations with that woman.\"

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Donald Trump: that was what we, what was originally projected.\"

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♪♪ Slavery it was codified and so were standing armies ♪♪

00:20:11.440 --> 00:20:16.000
♪♪ Bill of Rights would have to wait in a land of milk and honey ♪♪

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♪♪ Luther Martin went to town, Luther Martin tried hard. Anti-federalist could not stop creation of an empire ♪♪

00:20:41.040 --> 00:20:48.230
At last the work is finished. We the
people of the United States in order to

00:20:48.230 --> 00:20:53.450
form a more perfect union, establish
justice, insure domestic tranquility,

00:20:53.450 --> 00:20:59.930
provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare, and secure the

00:20:59.930 --> 00:21:05.600
blessings of liberty to ourselves and
our posterity do ordain and establish

00:21:05.600 --> 00:21:11.780
this constitution for the United States
of America.

00:21:11.780 --> 00:21:16.080
Luther Martin actually left I think
September 4th, a couple of weeks before

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the document was signed, came home from
Philadelphia laiden not with Sylvester

00:21:21.780 --> 00:21:27.510
Stallone souvenirs or larded by
mountains of inedible cheesesteaks

00:21:27.510 --> 00:21:32.640
but loaded for bear. He was gonna spill
the beans he\'s gonna sound the toxin

00:21:32.640 --> 00:21:36.330
about with the conspirators at
Philadelphia had been up to. So, on

00:21:36.330 --> 00:21:43.350
November 29, 1787 he spoke at predictable
posterior shifting length to the

00:21:43.350 --> 00:21:49.559
Maryland House of Delegates in the first
and most powerful probably assault ever

00:21:49.559 --> 00:21:54.750
mounted on the new constitution. This was
later published and under the carnival

00:21:54.750 --> 00:21:59.670
barker-esque title \"The Genuine Information\".
Kind of cheesy but and it was very

00:21:59.670 --> 00:22:04.770
widely read, it was a furious assault on
the Constitution from from the preamble

00:22:04.770 --> 00:22:09.510
you know \'We the People\', to every jot and
tittle, to the office of the presidency,

00:22:09.510 --> 00:22:13.260
to the makeup of Congress, to its powers
and he was active he campaigned in

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taverns throughout Maryland which was
sort of his natural venue.

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♪♪ Luther Martin he went home, worried about a nation. Took a pen and wrote in down in \"The Genuine Information\" ♪♪

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Martin told the Maryland legislature in that November speech

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quote \"by the principles of the American
Revolution arbitrary power may and ought

00:22:36.540 --> 00:22:40.860
to be resisted even by arms if necessary
the time may come when it shall be the

00:22:40.860 --> 00:22:43.770
duty of a state in order to preserve
itself from the oppression of the

00:22:43.770 --> 00:22:47.520
general government to have recourse to
the sword.\" End quote. that certainly

00:22:47.520 --> 00:22:50.280
would have made Luther a person of
interest to the Department of Homeland

00:22:50.280 --> 00:22:56.670
Security today. Luther Martin was
different than many of those who failed

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to sign the Constitution. There were
three delegates who lasted to the end of

00:23:02.220 --> 00:23:06.600
the convention and refused to sign that is
Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts and both

00:23:06.600 --> 00:23:12.960
Edmund Randolph and George Mason of
Virginia. They thought the constitution was

00:23:12.960 --> 00:23:16.740
basically good but needed some
amendments. Martin\'s position was

00:23:16.740 --> 00:23:21.660
entirely different. He thought the whole
of the idea of radically changing the

00:23:21.660 --> 00:23:24.840
government was a mistake. It\'s
conventional wisdom

00:23:24.840 --> 00:23:29.100
made famous by Montesquieu that
republics can exist only in small

00:23:29.100 --> 00:23:34.080
territories, and this is something that\'s
pertinent even today. Authoritarian

00:23:34.080 --> 00:23:38.100
governments are necessary to rule a
corrupt people, corrupt being people who

00:23:38.100 --> 00:23:41.790
are self-interested,
selfish, doing their own thing, how are

00:23:41.790 --> 00:23:45.720
you going to hold them together? Well, you
have to have a strong standing army, have

00:23:45.720 --> 00:23:49.680
to have establishment, religious
establishment you have to have patronage,

00:23:49.680 --> 00:23:54.270
you have to power coming from the top
down in an authoritarian manner. So, the

00:23:54.270 --> 00:23:58.890
idea is that a republic has to come it\'s
consensus has to be built from the

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bottom up. People have to be willing to
surrender their private interests for

00:24:03.270 --> 00:24:07.740
the sake of the whole and therefore they
can\'t have many diverse interests.

00:24:07.740 --> 00:24:11.370
So the anti federalists said well look what
we\'re too big, people from Georgia and people

00:24:11.370 --> 00:24:14.640
from New Hampshire are too different they
can\'t they\'ll never be able to hold

00:24:14.640 --> 00:24:19.200
together this thing can\'t work, and
that\'s a major argument that Madison and

00:24:19.200 --> 00:24:24.060
the reason Madison is considered such a
brilliant intellectual is he offers

00:24:24.060 --> 00:24:30.210
an answer to that in Federalist 10 and
also in 51 in which he says no no the

00:24:30.210 --> 00:24:34.440
opposite is true, we\'ll let all these
diverse interests fool around with one

00:24:34.440 --> 00:24:38.430
another, negate one another and it
will allow they\'ll neutralize one

00:24:38.430 --> 00:24:43.860
another so to speak and this will allow
an enlightened elite to promote the

00:24:43.860 --> 00:24:48.030
public good, and that\'s Madison\'s
answer to this, but the anti federalists

00:24:48.030 --> 00:24:52.590
really suspicious of that kind of
argument with good reason because

00:24:52.590 --> 00:24:55.760
there\'s never quite worked out that way.

00:25:04.240 --> 00:25:10.050
This country has never really figured
out how it can be economically viable

00:25:10.050 --> 00:25:16.300
without oppressing people, and that\'s not
a system of government, that\'s a

00:25:16.300 --> 00:25:22.300
mentality and that American mentality is
one that we\'ve been wrestling with, but

00:25:22.300 --> 00:25:26.590
not wrestling hard. We\'re not working up
a sweat in wrestling with this issue of

00:25:26.590 --> 00:25:30.820
oppression. We think about it every now
and then when horrible things happen and

00:25:30.820 --> 00:25:40.360
then we let it fade away. It leads to
oppression it leads to all these

00:25:40.360 --> 00:25:44.470
horribles that this country has
expressed and going back to the fact

00:25:44.470 --> 00:25:48.310
that when you look at the old films you
don\'t see anything about slavery,

00:25:48.310 --> 00:25:52.930
or every now and then if you see an
enslaved person they\'re happy after

00:25:52.930 --> 00:25:59.500
slavery, they\'re diabolical into the Jim
Crow era there\'s this criminality now

00:25:59.500 --> 00:26:04.300
that\'s connected with people of African
descent, it\'s this whole mechanism to

00:26:04.300 --> 00:26:10.930
make the other always seem to be someone
deserving of harm. So that this country

00:26:10.930 --> 00:26:16.320
can grow rich off their oppression so
all the states made concessions on

00:26:16.320 --> 00:26:23.560
tariffs, currency, on all the problems
that concern them as states. The large

00:26:23.560 --> 00:26:28.690
ones agreed that all states should have
equal powers. The small states agreed

00:26:28.690 --> 00:26:33.790
that representation should be according
to population. In fact the states deeded

00:26:33.790 --> 00:26:37.090
their Western lands to the new
government and surrendered other

00:26:37.090 --> 00:26:43.299
privileges in favor of a strong Union.
Their final draft was hammered out after

00:26:43.299 --> 00:26:47.529
many weeks. The delegates were to take
the plan back to see if their states

00:26:47.529 --> 00:26:50.240
would ratify it.

00:28:29.760 --> 00:28:40.950
Next time on Confounding Father... There is
still a fundamental question about where

00:28:40.950 --> 00:28:47.099
is the problem. Is the problem that
ordinary voters want to be freeloaders

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and get free stuff from the government?
Or is the problem that there are wealthy

00:28:51.269 --> 00:28:56.999
interests who have too much power in
Washington? And that\'s the same battle

00:28:56.999 --> 00:29:01.679
that there was between the Federalists
the Anti-Federalists. We the people of the

00:29:01.679 --> 00:29:08.129
United States in order to form a more
perfect union.. Is there a need to

00:29:08.129 --> 00:29:12.029
re-examine the structure of government?
Well I think

00:29:12.029 --> 00:29:15.959
there are enormous problems with the
structure the American government.

00:29:15.959 --> 00:29:20.729
I don\'t know that a constitutional
convention would be the way to solve it

00:29:20.729 --> 00:29:26.489
one could only imagine what kind of
circus that could become today.

00:29:26.489 --> 00:29:30.809
This is earth this is not heaven and on earth, there will always be battles and as long

00:29:30.809 --> 00:29:35.249
as people know that this is a battle and
that they\'re ready to come in with a

00:29:35.249 --> 00:29:41.099
value system that\'s not based in
rhetoric of this American Dream and the

00:29:41.099 --> 00:29:47.700
praise of the founding fathers, just for
their existence, but looking at this from

00:29:47.700 --> 00:29:53.309
a very practical standpoint. The Anti-Federalists lost decisively and their

00:29:53.309 --> 00:29:59.369
heirs had been losing decisively for 225
years and yet there are American

00:29:59.369 --> 00:30:03.659
political movements that I think have
the anti-federalist as a kind of

00:30:03.680 --> 00:30:05.800
wellspring or source.