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Episode 426: Articles of Confederation · Words & Numbers

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Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony. And this is words and Numbers
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brought to you by the fine people at Khaki Aunt.
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What's new and exciting in your world this week?
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I ran across an interesting article on Facebook talking
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about prisons. This is coming from, and I'm
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sure there are more than one prison in the US like this, but
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this particular 1 is coming from Allendale County in South
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Carolina where they've paired up prisoners with cats.
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And if you are well behaved prisoner, you get a cat, you
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could take care of it. And one of the things that's
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interesting about this is that it's, I guess because it gives
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the prisoner something to think about, something that requires
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their responsibility more than themselves.
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It's causing them to be more peaceful, get along well with
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others, much less strife going on.
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And as I'm looking at this, it's occurring to me a couple things.
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One is I keep hearing stories about how backward our prison
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system is compared to other developed countries.
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And I kind of like to get someone on as a guest who's been
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in the prison system, not a low security, but a serious prison,
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and talk about what's actually going on there.
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So one of my old friends or family members is what?
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Right, exactly. I thought you would know
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somebody, right? But what fascinates me about
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things like this is how sometimes you can encounter a
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large problem for which there's a very simple solution or very
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simple thing that makes the whole business better.
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In here, apparently cats are the thing.
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Yeah, no, it makes you wonder if terrariums would accomplish
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anything right. What else along those lines?
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What else? Right?
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I know you despise cats, so there is also a parallel jail
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dog program. See, now there's something I
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could get behind, but those guys are going to train those dogs to
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fight each other, and there's guards.
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Yes, right, right. That's exactly what's going to
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happen. You can't train a cat to do a
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thing. That's why I don't like them.
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Right. All you are to a cat is a food
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delivery service and if you die in the house and stop delivering
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food, the cat will eat you. This is literally true.
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Now a dog would never behave this way, but a dog would kill a
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prison guard if trained correctly.
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But see, I think you dislike cats because they're
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competition. I mean, basically, that's you.
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You're a cat, you're untrainable.
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And if we cease to feed you, well, you'll just eat us, not
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think twice about it. I do menial tasks.
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I give you what I'm doing right now.
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You do them because you want to do them.
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You are untrainable, James. I don't know that I'm serving my
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own interest sitting here right now.
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There's a couch over there. The NCAA tournament is on my TV,
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and yet I'm sitting here talking to you on about 40 minutes now,
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and we have thus far recorded 3 glorious minutes.
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That's right, because we were experimenting with the new
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technology that failed us completely.
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So after 40 minutes of failure, we turned around and had to
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start all over again. Way to go, Riverside dot FM.
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Not that I'm pointing a finger of blame at anybody in
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particular, you know, except them.
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But here. We are, well, you know, part of
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their web service works. The part that takes my money.
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Well, that's the important part for for them, I'm going to utter
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a sentence that I don't think any human being has ever said
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before. Are you sitting down?
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I am. I think we might be able to
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learn something from Rosie O'Donnell.
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OK, what she got. Well, you might recall Rosie
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shot off what I can only call her big fat mouth before and
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after the election, threatening to move from the country.
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Do you remember all that? Oh yeah, did she?
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There were a raft of celebrities who Robert De Niro among them,
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who said that they were gone if Trump won.
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Well, Rosie O'Donnell made good on her promise and went to
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Ireland. And I kind of feel bad for the
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Irish here. And I guess I encourage Rosie to
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do whatever it is that makes her happy.
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But here's the fascinating part. She claims that she feels
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healthier since leaving the United States because she's not
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thinking about politics every minute of every day.
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Well, I mean, you can do that in the US too.
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This is correct, Aunt. I think we should all take a
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lesson from Rosie O'Donnell. I don't think we should move
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across an ocean. Most of us can't afford that
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kind of thing anyway, and quite frankly, most countries would
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never have any of us. But we already live here, and we
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could go about our daily business without behaving like a
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bunch of thinking about politics every minute of every day,
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letting it define your friendships, your family
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relations, and everything else. Well, yes, I'm with you 100%.
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In fact, I could remember talking about this back in May
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of 2020 because with all the stuff going on with COVID, the
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lockdowns and all of the uncertainty, the politics was
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just becoming unbearable in this country.
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So I stopped reading the news entirely and I felt much better.
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And lo and behold, your life went on pretty much the same as
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it always did. Oh yes, yeah, absolutely none of
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that stuff is necessary. I've taken to having what I
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refer to as holy hour late in the evening before I go to bed.
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I just shut everything off. I don't want to hear it.
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I don't want to be looking at a screen.
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I don't want to be listening to anybody's stupid theories.
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I just want to decompress so I can go to bed.
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It's made a very big difference. Someone's going to come back and
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say, yeah, but you need to be informed.
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No, you don't. You actually don't.
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I mean, if you're going to go out and start voting, you should
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be informed. And most people prove you don't
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need to be informed every single day.
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Right. Or let's say differently, if you
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really want to be informed, the major media is not the place to
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become informed. Yeah, but then we couldn't
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really recommend much of anything in its place.
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Well, I think you could recommend doing a little digging
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into some serious stuff rather than just reading headlines and
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rather than just reading your favored news outlet.
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Well, my favorite news outlet is not the news outlet that mirrors
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my politics. I think maybe that's a better
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way to look at it. And look, when Republicans are
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in office, I go for some leftist media as a rule every day.
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When Democrats are in office, I go to right leaning media, which
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generally means Fox News. There's not as much on the right
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as there is on the left as far as television media goes.
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But I can tell you right now as I look at my monitors, I have
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opened and I could just hear the howls already.
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I have opened the following four tabs every day, all the time,
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through which I get most of my news, the Drudge Report, the
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BBC, Al Jazeera and the AP. Right.
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I'm a plea in Reuters almost exclusively.
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I go to Reuters when I want something specific.
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I might add it to my list of tabs.
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I might not. But for right now, those four
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tabs are generally where I go to find my news, and it does a
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pretty nice job. But you've got to look at the
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news with a critical eye. You've got to be able to look at
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it and say, well, that's not correct for the following
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reasons. And, you know, we've got these
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and I'm going to be charitable and call them morons.
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You could do much worse than this, I think.
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But we've got this pack of morons who just can't help
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themselves on Facebook and on Twitter saying the dumbest
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things. They out themselves as twerps
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and fools every minute of every day.
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And, you know, on the one hand, free speech is absolutely
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necessary. On the other hand, it gives me
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such a headache, but really it allows me to know who's stupid
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and who isn't. Well, I think so much of that
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comes from reading headlines. It's obvious when someone does
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it. I would say 95% of people do it.
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They pass on an article, or they hold it up as evidence of
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whatever their point is, having only read the headline.
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Having only read the tweet from Donald Trump.
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Right. Yeah, forget about doing
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research into AP and Reuters and all that.
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Just read the article that you forwarded and you'll see that
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the text most of the time says something that's very different,
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at the very least nuanced versus what the headline says.
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Well, I mean, here's the perfect example for you, Trump at this
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moment as we record it's up in the air, but a couple of days a
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week ago he was exporting human beings, just throwing them out
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of the country wholesale and claiming the authority to do
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said by virtue of a 1798 act. So, OK, how are you going to
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approach that? Most people just said Trump is
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an idiot or Trump is saving the country.
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Almost nobody went and read the 1798 act.
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I did. And the first thing in the act
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was that this applies during wartime.
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OK, this is not wartime. The end.
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Then what happened? A judge put the kibosh on this
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and people on the right. Now, hear me when I say this,
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Anthony. People on the political right
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referred to that judge as an activist judge.
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No, an activist judge reads what he wants into the law, right?
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That's what Trump's denizens, his minions were doing.
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They're the activists here. Somebody on the left is not an
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activist. The world is upside down.
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I don't know how we got here, but the correct thing for
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everybody to do is go read the ACT, right?
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If you read the ACT, it's 2-3 pages.
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There's nothing to it. If you read the ACT you'll say,
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oh, it doesn't apply at all. Am I correct?
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This is the same act that in high school you learn as the
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Alien and Sedition Act. No, but it's in that same
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cluster of congressional legislation from that period.
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It fits right in 1798. How applicable is it going to
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be? And it's applicable in cases of
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war or invasion. And that, my friend, is why
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Donald Trump has been saying since the campaign we're being
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invaded by gang members and drug dealers.
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I see. You've been planning this the
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whole time, but it's all a bunch of nonsense.
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Which Ant brings us to the foolishness of the week.
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And this is one of those weeks where everything's kind of
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foolish. But this might be the craziest
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thing I've seen in years. I want to read you the headline.
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This is from the National Review, so maybe it's incredibly
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biased and we're all seeing this the wrong way.
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But people have said what they have said, and I think this is a
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pretty fair treatment from the National Review.
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Lake is in the show notes for those of you who want to see it
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for yourselves. Campaign to decolonize.
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We should just stop there because every campaign to
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decolonize is just something stupid at this point.
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You can almost bet that whatever comes next to have nothing to do
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with colonization, but I'll let you decide.
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Campaign to decolonize Shakespeare's hometown exposes
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DE is double standards. Decolonize Shakespeare's
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hometown. I've been to Shakespeare's
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hometown. It's his little village in
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England. What's colonized about it?
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Apparently because Shakespeare comes from there and everybody
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looks up to Shakespeare at the expense of authors of every
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other color and gender. We have to remove the greatness
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from Shakespeare, and we have to do this starting Ant with his
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entire hometown. So in the name of diversity,
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we're going to be erasing Shakespeare.
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This is the point. In the name of diversity, they
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want to remove big batches of Shakespeare's things from the
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Shakespeare Museum so they can include all the other
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marginalized voices that are not Shakespeare.
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I see. And Shakespeare was somehow
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responsible for them being marginalized.
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I guess we don't want to go down.
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There, Aunt, Aunt. Aren't we all responsible?
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Aren't we all? Can I swear just once?
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No, please don't. It causes no end of grief when
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it comes to editing. These people all need to do that
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thing off that I talk. About all the time.
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'Cause this is just ridiculous. I mean, look, there are people
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of goodwill, and I count myself among them, who would like to
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see credit go where it's due and who would like to learn about
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other authors from other cultures that I've maybe never
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heard of. I love landing on something
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brand new to me, and I tend to celebrate it, and lots of people
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of goodwill do. But when you start pulling crap
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like this, we all just want you to go away and we won't listen
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to anything you say from here on out.
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And if I hear the word decolonize apply to anything
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other than colonies, I don't want to hear it.
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Call me crazy. For One Stop shopping for all
13:28
things James and Aunt, visit our website wordsandnumbers.org.
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We give a special shout out to our Patreon sponsors who help us
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keep the lights on. If you'd like to contribute, go
13:40
to patreon.com/words and Numbers.
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What should we talk about, Aunt? I'm getting all agitated.
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I'm getting all agitated here. We've done an episode on the
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What was it? The 17th Amendment, The 25th
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Amendment Always get the numbers wrong. 17th Amendment. 17th
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Amendment. Following that episode, we had
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some listeners write in and ask could we do an episode on the
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Articles of Confederation? And I was looking through our
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notes and yours. I can tell.
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I don't think we've ever done an episode on the Articles of
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Confederation. Yeah, no, we've barely discussed
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the articles at all. For the record, I look askance
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at those listeners. Who asked for this?
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I don't know why they would want this.
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Nobody wants to talk about the Articles from Federation, and
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yet here we are. I think I can pull out at least
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a few things that will be surprising to most people,
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shocking maybe even, and at least interesting as we get
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through this. But, you know, the articles were
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our first Constitution, and we needed one because once the
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Declaration of Independence is signed, well, we're an
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independent nation. Or are we?
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Are we? I'm asking you, what do you
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think? I think you are or are not an
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independent nation, depending on what the most powerful nations
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at the time regard you as. Well, that's right.
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And I think Jefferson agreed because he said, you know, owing
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to a decent respect to the opinions of mankind in this kind
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of nonsense at the opening of the Declaration.
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But I want to get to something more basic.
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Is it the United States singular or the United States plural?
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That's a wide open question at the time.
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And if you look at the declaration, it says at the very
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beginning when in the course of history one people.
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Then if you go all the way to the end, it says done by the
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states. So it splits the difference.
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It's a unified people or it's the states.
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There's no real clear answer. I don't want to spoil the
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ending, but when you get to the United States Constitution, when
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we all know about, they do the exact same thing.
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So they're still trying to split the difference in 1787, but here
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in 1777, the date you'll see on the articles is always 1781.
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That's when they were finally adopted.
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They were written up in 1787 and approved then, but they had to
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get reported out to the States and the states had to decide to
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adopt. And the 9th state adopted in
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1781. So it took 3 1/2 years, only 9
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of 13 to get the states on board for this document.
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And we'll get a, a link in the show notes so you can read it.
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It's not as long as you think. And you should read it 'cause it
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is kind of interesting, but it begins in Article 1 by answering
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the question that I posed. The title of this confederacy
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shall be the United States of America.
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And then in Article 2, each state retains its sovereignty,
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freedom and independence and every power, jurisdiction, and
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right which is not by this confederation expressly
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delegated to the United States in Congress, assembled.
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So right from the very beginning, you know that unless
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what follows is a pretty big land grab by a a federal
17:08
government, this is going to yield a thing that differs
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almost entirely to the states. Right.
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Almost entirely. I mean, you can't see it any
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other way. And ask yourself this, you're
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sitting there in 1777 and you realize, OK, we're going to need
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a constitution of some kind, all right?
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You've got 2 great fears at least, but you've got 2 great
17:32
fears staring you in the face. 1 is that you make a constitution
17:38
that's so powerful it runs roughshod all over the rights of
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the citizenry. The other is that you make a
17:45
government so weak that it can't govern, and the rights of the
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citizenry are not respected in the least.
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It's a loss either way. Right.
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You've got to be strong enough to protect their rights, but not
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so strong that you can squash them.
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That may not be possible. I mean that calculus just might
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not be possible, and you have to admit that at the very best,
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you're threading a very, very fine needle.
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Right. And it's going to be almost
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impossible, if not impossible. So let's at least read these
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things charitably. Did it fail?
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Yes, it did. Was it the best they could have
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done at that moment under those circumstances?
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Yeah, You know, probably was. But it failed very quickly.
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Didn't. It a few years, yeah, a few
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years and we kicked the ball down the road, but we'll get to
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the end of the road later. There's a few things to say
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about the articles. We've been through articles one
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and two already. Article 3 gives us that phrase
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that we often hear the state's enter a firm league of
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friendship with one another. All right, So that kind of gives
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you an idea of what you're looking at, right?
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It's a a league of friendship, but all the members of that
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league of friendship retain all their sovereignty except
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whatever little is going to be stripped from them in order to
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have this kind of political system at all.
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I might be getting ahead of your story.
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Is it fair to say that the states under the Articles
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Confederation were roughly similar to the countries of
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Europe now under the EU? Jeez, no, not under the
19:30
articles. They were far weaker I think
19:32
than in the EU. And I say that for two different
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reasons that we could just talk about.
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Now there is a plan in the articles for a a currency and it
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doesn't emerge, it doesn't work out and there is nothing in the
19:48
articles that regulates trade in any way or allows for the
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federal government to regulate trade in any way.
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It's a non starter. They can't do it.
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And those are the things I think that the EU stakes its claim on.
20:05
Right, right. There's a common currency and
20:08
they regulate all trade. I mean, there are other smaller
20:11
things, but under the articles, those things were not possible.
20:15
And right there, you see, this is probably not going to work
20:18
out. What ended up happening was that
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different states would have different levels of tariffs on
20:23
different products. So where do you dock?
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And if you dock where the tariff is low, can you then get the
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goods over a land border? Who the hell knows, right?
20:33
You see how this is going to be. The United States is largely
20:36
speaking a coastal country, East Coast at the time, and there's
20:41
nothing to touch any of these things.
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So what did they see the federal government doing?
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If there's no currency, it's not regulating trade.
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What's left? I think the cheap, easy answer
20:53
is foreign affairs and war and understand right, They're in a
20:56
Revolutionary War at the time these are written, so that's
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going to be at the front of their minds.
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So it's more like NATO. Yeah, it is more like NATO,
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Sure. I would say that right off the
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top of my head, I'd have to think about it a lot more.
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But yeah, it's a lot more like that than the EU.
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You need a single voice when you're negotiating with foreign
21:18
countries. You can't have 13 different
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states, sovereign or not, sitting at the table.
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All right? If you're in a war, you probably
21:27
need some kind of central authority.
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How much? That's always an open question.
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But without a central authority, you will lose any war you enter
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into with a force that's as superior as you are, or more.
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And the English were far superior, so there you go.
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And what did they say? The articles specifically
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eliminate the possibility of states entering into treaties
21:51
with foreign powers. That is not for states to do
21:55
from this moment forward. And that's just sensible, right?
21:59
You don't want individual states getting into foreign affairs
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when you really need to present a united front.
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They talk about apportionment. Each state gets one vote, but
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each state can have a differing number of representatives.
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It has to be no fewer than two. And what was it?
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No more than 7, I believe. Yeah, no more than 7.
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And they served for three years. OK, you know, no big deal.
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These are just kind of nuts and bolts things, right?
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The important thing here to note is that each state had one vote.
22:35
The states could send differing numbers of people.
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And you could see where some states might want to do that if
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they had very different points of view in the electorate.
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Other states might be more unified in their perspective.
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So there's a mechanism to see to that.
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But OK, by the time you get to Section 6, it's war powers.
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Section 7 is about the military. You see a theme emerging here,
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right? It's very clear by the time you
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get to Article 8, it's a common treasury.
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OK, here's where it gets interesting.
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There's going to be a common national.
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No. So I didn't say federal,
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National Treasury, but no taxation authority whatsoever at
23:23
the national level. Yeah, that's weird.
23:26
The way I was taught is that was the death knell.
23:29
Oh, this is doomed to failure right off the bat.
23:32
You know this because money is necessary, especially at this
23:36
time where we're in the middle of a Revolutionary War, which
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after we prevail, there will be a gigantic war debt.
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And I want to ask you a simple question.
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I've never gotten a good answer to this question.
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It's prior to the US Constitution that we all know,
23:53
but after the Revolutionary Wars concluded, who owes the war
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debt? Is it the United States?
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Something called the United States?
24:05
Because under the articles I don't know what that even is.
24:09
Is it the individual states? If so, how is that that to be
24:13
apportioned? Should the states that saw the
24:18
most fighting pay more or less? I mean, look, the revolution
24:25
happened in New York and Massachusetts.
24:29
Should they pay more because, you know, all the resources
24:32
float in? Or should they pay much, much
24:35
less because the fighting tore them apart?
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What's the answer to this trifling problem?
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I have literally no idea. I don't know what the hell would
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have worked under the articles. Nothing will work because no
24:50
matter who you think owes the money, you have to ask the
24:56
states to collect it. Ask.
24:58
You have to ask. Yeah.
25:00
You have to ask, and yet asking politely might help, but they
25:04
will not do it if they don't want to.
25:07
And when you've got 13 different sovereign political
25:11
subdivisions, what are the odds that they're going to want to
25:15
come to some sort of equitable solution when they could all
25:19
just say, no, I'm not doing it, Take nothing from us.
25:23
This is game theory right down to the core, right?
25:26
This is literally what you study when you study game theory and
25:30
what happens under situations like this.
25:33
People shirk every single. Time nobody pays, yeah.
25:37
Would you? No, I mean why, Particularly if
25:42
I'm a smaller state. Well, I mean, look, I don't care
25:45
which state I am. I'm going to assume that none of
25:48
the others are going to pay up. And if I assume that I'm not
25:52
either, because I'm not putting my people at a material
25:56
disadvantage to all the others. And if the other states do pay
25:59
up, well, there's no need for me to pay up.
26:03
So what do you get? You get one single branch of
26:06
government. You get a legislature.
26:08
There is no executive branch. There is no judicial branch.
26:12
Oh, interesting. Yeah.
26:14
If you've got United States business, it happens in the
26:18
Congress and only in the Congress.
26:21
OK, interesting. And the Congress has no ability
26:27
to enforce any. I mean, it looks a lot like the
26:29
UN. You could pass whatever
26:33
resolution you want. What?
26:34
So what? Sure.
26:36
Well, you always want something to look like something else, and
26:39
yeah, I get it. And yeah, it kind of looks like
26:41
the UN, right? It's a big giant.
26:44
Well, not exactly giant, but there's probably 50-60 men
26:49
serving at any given point. It's a debate society.
26:52
Yeah, yeah. Kind of.
26:54
And they might come up with a great idea, but what are they
26:59
going to do about it? They can pass laws, but they're
27:06
not in session all that much. And when they're not in session,
27:09
they have this thing, the committee of the states, that
27:12
stays. And in order for the Committee
27:15
of the states to do anything, 9 of 13 have to agree.
27:21
You think 60% in the Senate right now is a super majority
27:24
that you can never get? Try to get 9 of 13 to agree on
27:28
anything. And even if they did agree, all
27:30
right, fine, You've passed a law.
27:32
The national government at that point has no ability to enforce
27:36
it. Yeah, that's right.
27:38
Just wait a minute, right? Because it's always what you're
27:40
going to be saying at this body. Article 11 is my personal
27:45
favorite. I'm just going to read the
27:47
entire thing to you because I think even you will be shocked.
27:52
I don't know if you know this. Article 11 Canada, acceding to
27:56
this Confederation and joining in the measures of the United
27:59
States shall be admitted into and entitled to all of the
28:03
advantages of this Union, but no other colony shall be admitted
28:07
into the same unless such admission be agreed by 9 states.
28:11
We invited Canada to join us. We did OK, so that was an
28:15
invitation. Canada was never part of the
28:17
original. No, we just thought it would be
28:21
a lovely idea if they came along with us and the Canadians
28:24
thought about it for about 1/2 a second and said no, we don't
28:27
think so, eh? And you know, we tried to invade
28:31
them every now and again. It never really quite worked
28:33
out. They participated against us in
28:35
the War of 1812. Bruising feelings yet again.
28:40
But it's interesting to me that right from the first we invited
28:43
the Canadians to join us, and right from the first they were
28:47
not interested. How interesting, because the
28:51
articles aren't onerous. No, not at.
28:55
All so I wonder why Canada said no.
28:58
Well, I mean, look, what's the difference?
29:00
They didn't want to join. They've had their own identity
29:05
for a long, long time. As long as we have.
29:09
And yeah, we share a border. Yeah.
29:13
The vast majority of their population live within 100 miles
29:17
of that border. They're like a little thin
29:21
shingle on top of the United States.
29:24
And yet their interests are different, Their culture is
29:28
different. They don't see themselves as
29:30
really part of us. And now with Trump making a lot
29:34
of noise that Canada should become the 51st state, they
29:39
really don't want to hear it. I just did an interview with
29:41
some Canadians from our friends Institute for Liberal Studies
29:45
and you know, it was a nice hour long conversation, but the one
29:49
question that they began and ended with is what is going on
29:52
down there? I didn't really know what the
29:55
answer was. But an interesting aside, by the
30:00
time you get to article 13, Article 12 acknowledges that
30:05
debts exist. So they knew they had a debt
30:08
problem, right? They wrote it right in.
30:10
But Article 13 Ant is where they declare that this union is
30:16
perpetual. That's bold.
30:21
It is, but doesn't every constitution claim to be
30:24
perpetual? I'll go further.
30:26
Doesn't every ruling regime claim to be perpetual?
30:30
And it is, until it isn't. That's right.
30:34
And this Constitution failed. We all know that.
30:37
And I can guarantee you that the Constitution we labor under
30:40
right now will one day fail. How do I know Every other
30:44
constitution has failed at some point and I can consider
30:49
evidence and that's just how it is.
30:52
Every regime falls. It's not because there's some
30:58
ideal constitution out there and we just haven't written it yet.
31:02
It's a nature of a changing society.
31:05
Well, I think it's because going back to where we started, I'm
31:08
not sure it's possible to write the correct constitution because
31:12
not only do you have to take into account everything we've
31:15
already talked about, but then you have to take into account
31:18
the cultural, geographic, demographic realities of a
31:21
country. And those things change over
31:23
time. Yeah.
31:25
Well, you're left with an answer there.
31:28
And our younger listeners are thinking, no, no, no,
31:30
everything's relatively permanent.
31:32
Our older listeners remember the fall of the Soviet Union and how
31:37
quickly that happened. It happened one afternoon.
31:42
Yeah, and before it happened, if you'd asked anybody what about
31:46
the Soviet Union falling apart, they'd laugh at you.
31:49
Yeah, the day before it fell apart.
31:51
They would have laughed at you. Do you know the story about how
31:53
it started? It was some error, wasn't it?
31:57
It was essentially an error. They were easing travel between
32:02
east and West from the eastern side.
32:05
So people under the Soviet control of Berlin, right, people
32:09
under Soviet control in Berlin would be able to finally go over
32:14
and visit on the other side. And it had been decades since
32:18
they've been able to do this. And they handed the announcement
32:22
a memo about it to a local politician who was on television
32:27
at that moment, and he read it. And it didn't give a date.
32:32
It didn't give an indication of scale, nothing.
32:36
It just said, we're going to do this.
32:38
And the minute people heard it, they streamed to the wall and
32:42
streamed right on through. And there were so many of them
32:45
that the guards in the eastern side who are ordered to kill
32:47
people who did this didn't know what to do.
32:51
They just sat there and let it happen and the entire Soviet
32:56
Union fell apart, right? And that was the earth changing
33:01
reality of our political memory. I have to stop and think on that
33:07
for a moment because that is just astounding that you would
33:11
take something that, you know, monolithic like that, the Soviet
33:15
Union. And all it takes is for that one
33:18
guy to read that one thing, and then for the people to say, Oh,
33:23
yeah, this is the way it is. Well, it took that and 45 years
33:29
of ritualistic abuse. I guess so that's what caused
33:32
the people to stream for the border at that point, yeah.
33:35
Right. When they tell me I can travel
33:38
to Mexico, I think, yeah, great, yeah, one of these days, right?
33:42
It's not of earth shattering importance, but.
33:45
But getting back to the articles, this was to be
33:47
permanent. To be permanent, and I'm going
33:50
to read it out loud, because it's so insane when you think
33:54
about it. And the Union shall be
33:56
perpetual. Nor shall any alteration at any
34:00
time hereafter be made in any of the articles, unless such
34:05
alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States,
34:09
and afterwards confirmed by the legislators of every State.
34:14
Of every, so it had to be unanimous.
34:16
But it had to be ultra unanimous, right?
34:19
So it's got to get through the Congress, which is going to be
34:22
almost impossible to begin with. And then presumably if you need
34:26
unanimity in the states, you're going to really effectively need
34:30
unanimity in the Congress. So you're going to need that.
34:33
And then all the states have to weigh in and say, yes, we agree,
34:38
chances of that ever happening, 0%.
34:42
So here's what happened when it became clear that this just
34:46
wasn't getting the job done. Most people have heard about
34:49
Shay's Rebellion. If you haven't, go look it up,
34:52
because that was kind of the last straw.
34:54
When people who knew better watched that happen in Western
34:58
Massachusetts, they knew it was going to start to happen
35:01
everywhere else really, really soon.
35:04
So they called a convention to meet where ultimately there's a
35:10
lot of steps between these things that I'm working with,
35:12
some shorthand here. But the convention ends up the
35:15
convention we care about in 1787, Philadelphia in the dead
35:19
of summer. And their express purpose was to
35:25
alter or revise the Articles of Confederation to make them
35:29
workable, which would, of course, after they did that
35:33
require go through the Congress and then get reported out to the
35:36
States. You know, So this is the
35:38
beginning of a very long process.
35:40
The people who we now refer to as the framers got to
35:44
Philadelphia and the very first thing they did was closed all
35:47
the doors and windows at Independence Hall and kicked out
35:50
the press. Now you can know that no good is
35:55
coming, that somebody's up to something.
35:57
When you lock all the press out of the building in 100° heat,
36:02
right? There's no air conditioning in
36:03
Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.
36:06
And the second thing they did was decided that there was
36:10
literally no way to repair the Articles of Confederation and
36:14
they just said throw it out. So the Articles require
36:19
unanimous consent for alteration.
36:22
Getting rid of them is the ultimate alteration.
36:25
They did not have unanimous consent at the Constitutional
36:28
convention at what, 2 1/2 states left immediately.
36:33
Rhode Island was so dysfunctional, their contingent
36:36
didn't even get there. So you literally can't have
36:40
unanimous consent. The delegation from New York,
36:43
two of three, got up and left. Alexander Hamilton stayed, but
36:48
he did not represent a majority of the group that showed up.
36:51
How could he possibly vote for the state of New York?
36:54
And so on and so forth. So the low hanging fruit here,
36:59
the obvious argument to make, the one that nobody ever really
37:01
makes, but the obvious argument to make is that the Constitution
37:05
we now have is illegal. Yes, yeah.
37:08
Because in order for that constitution to be adopted, 9 of
37:12
13 states had to sign on, thereby binding all 13.
37:17
Well, that violates constitution they were living under at the
37:20
time. But the thing was, is that the
37:23
Constitution they were living under couldn't defend itself.
37:27
There was no mechanism for that, right?
37:29
They drew up a Constitution that created federal and national.
37:33
You have to not say federal at times like this.
37:35
A national government that was so weak it couldn't do anything,
37:39
even ward off openly political attack on its very foundations.
37:45
There was no way this was ever going to work.
37:48
You could see all the motivations that led to the
37:51
sorts of things that it included and excluded.
37:55
But, you know, it's never going to work.
37:56
Anybody with a brain in his head is going to look at this and
38:00
say, well, this is going to fall apart on the taxation thing
38:03
alone. We're never going to be able to
38:05
repay the debt. We're going to fight about this
38:07
forever under this sort of arrangement.
38:11
We're going to eventually need something else.
38:14
And we eventually got something else and we got it in violation
38:18
of this. And then, you know, the argument
38:20
at the time, this is the argument coming out of Hamilton,
38:23
is that the new Constitution has to be incredibly strong in the
38:28
objects that it has any authority over, but then to have
38:33
no power whatsoever over anything else.
38:37
This is why when you look at and you and I talk about Article 1,
38:40
Section 8 a lot, because it lays out what Congress can
38:44
legitimately do. OK, Congress does in fact have
38:49
tremendous power over those things, but it's not supposed to
38:53
have any power over anything else at all.
38:56
In the same way that the Founders ignored the Articles of
39:00
Confederation, today we ignore the Constitution.
39:05
That's right. And it will become our undoing.
39:08
Our rights will all disappear at some point or be under very,
39:14
very significant assault, much more than anybody right now
39:18
who's complaining about their rights being under assault?
39:20
And there are people, I'm among them, making that complaint way
39:25
more than this. This is child's play compared to
39:27
what it will become. The conclusion might be that
39:32
that is the lifespan of constitutions, that good ones
39:36
last a long time, bad ones don't last at all.
39:40
But having said that, am I correct the US Constitution is
39:44
the longest lived constitution in existence?
39:48
It's the longest written constitution right now.
39:51
The British will make the argument, not reasonably so in a
39:54
lot of ways, that they have an unwritten constitution, as
39:57
ridiculous as that is. Right.
39:59
Constitution or definitionally things written on paper.
40:02
But the British will say, no, no, no, we've got this and that
40:05
and this and that. And when taken together, we have
40:08
a constitutional tradition here. And they, you know, they really
40:10
do. But as far as written
40:12
constitutions go, the United States Constitution is the
40:15
oldest in the world, the oldest currently active in the world.
40:19
And, you know, when you realize that the United States is still
40:23
one of the youngest countries in the world, we tend not to think
40:26
of that, right? But we've only been around a
40:28
couple 100 years, and this constitution has been in effect
40:32
almost the entire time. In the same period of time, the
40:35
French have had five. Yeah, and you say something that
40:38
I think is news to a lot of Americans.
40:40
I think we equate the Constitution in the country
40:44
because they both been around. That's for almost our whole
40:46
existence. But that's not the case.
40:48
As you say, Francis had five. And Francis existed through them
40:53
all. You know, Tom Paine and I go to
40:56
Tom Paine a lot. I even did so in our book
40:58
Cooperation and Coercion. Tom Paine said that there is a
41:02
gigantic difference between a society and a government, that
41:07
the society in every case is a blessing.
41:10
The government is at best a necessary evil.
41:14
Notice the government is always evil according to Pain, even at
41:18
the in the best of circumstances.
41:20
So don't conflate the two, he would say.
41:22
So let's suppose at some point you reach a point where we say,
41:25
OK, fine, look, the Constitution is not working.
41:28
We have to do a redo like they did a redo from the Articles of
41:31
Confederation to the current Constitution.
41:34
What happens at that point? I think one possibility, I think
41:39
it's a distinct 1, is that the states remain.
41:42
So you say, fine, we're going to do away with the federal
41:44
government, do away the Constitution, we'll come up with
41:46
something else. But the individual 50 states are
41:48
still there. Yeah, we've talked about this
41:52
before, typically under more drastic circumstances, right
41:55
when we talk, or maybe when I talk.
41:57
I don't want to put words in your mouth when I talk about
41:59
what the United States will look like after the federal
42:02
government falls apart. Yes, the states still exist.
42:05
I don't think we'll have 50. I think New England, for
42:09
example, seems to hang together. New York, New Jersey,
42:12
Pennsylvania, or half of Pennsylvania seems to fit
42:16
together right, the lower Eastern seaboard and so on and
42:19
so forth. And I really do think you'll get
42:21
10 or 12 subdivisions, but it's the same thought.
42:26
But yeah, you're going to have pretty much what you've already
42:29
had. And I think the people will
42:31
generally regard each other more or less how they always have.
42:35
I don't think somebody from New Mexico is going to look at Texas
42:38
and say we got to go to war with those guys.
42:41
Yeah. And interestingly, you do not
42:43
have a Segway into lawlessness because you get rid of the
42:47
federal government, But you still have, for example, I'm in
42:48
Virginia. We have a governor, we have a
42:50
National Guard, we have laws. Virginia, as a political
42:54
governing body, would persist. Hell, I have local government
42:59
here. So do you.
43:00
Yeah. There's no shortage.
43:03
If one were to fall to pieces tomorrow, the obvious questions
43:06
would be, well, what becomes of that gigantic military, all
43:09
those nuclear weapons, the space program, right, these sorts?
43:13
The debt, we're back to the same question that you had at the
43:17
articles. Who owes this?
43:20
You're always at that question, right?
43:22
And, you know, I've been poking around a little bit, and I know
43:25
we're drifting here, but I've been poking around a little bit
43:28
and it's hard to find a nation that doesn't have an unwieldy
43:31
debt. And, you know, if you think this
43:34
isn't going to come back and fall apart on everybody, I don't
43:37
know what to tell you. I mean, the MMT people are
43:39
coming out of the woodwork again, just this time they all
43:43
seem to be Republicans. Isn't that something?
43:47
And they seem not to have lived through 2022.
43:51
Well, Republicans used to refer to the MMT people as like,
43:54
kindergarteners. Now that there's a Republican in
43:57
the White House, now they're correct.
44:00
And, you know, it's hypocrites everywhere I look.
44:05
And, OK, I mean, keep living this way.
44:07
I see what happens in history when people do this.
44:11
It's happened here when people have done this.
44:14
So you should probably take a deep breath and understand that
44:18
these stakes are very high. And when the Constitutional
44:22
Convention, the convention of 1787 occurred, the guys in that
44:27
room knew that that was the last chance they were going to get.
44:31
They had one bite at the apple. It failed.
44:34
They were maybe, if they were lucky, going to get one more.
44:39
Well, OK, if we allow the current constitution to fail,
44:44
are we going to get another one? I think probably not.
44:48
You think so? I think the entirety of the
44:51
United States falls to pieces and stays that way.
44:56
I'm OK with that. I think it's probably better.
45:01
I'm thinking that you can't possibly be right.
45:04
I'm thinking back to my view of the Soviet Union just a month
45:10
prior to it falling apart, and I'd say the same thing.
45:13
No, you can't possibly be right. I think I am only because I know
45:19
that no regime lasts forever. It has literally never been the
45:24
case and we're pretty far into the life cycle of regimes.
45:29
We're talking about the Constitution.
45:31
From time to time, people ask me the same question.
45:35
If you could change one thing in the Constitution to make it
45:39
better to change things, what would you change?
45:41
For many years, I would think about it.
45:43
I would have this answer or that answer, whatever.
45:45
And I've recently come to a completely different answer.
45:48
And the completely different answer is it doesn't matter what
45:51
you changed. I was going to ask you to tell
45:54
me what your thing before this was.
45:57
Oh, before this it was. Remove the Commerce Clause.
46:01
We have. The Commerce Clause has proven
46:03
to be a disaster. Your present answer, it doesn't
46:07
make a difference, is a nod towards that sort of thing,
46:10
Right? Because if you take the Commerce
46:12
Clause away, somebody's just going to come up with some other
46:15
idiotic thing that makes no sense whatsoever and ram it on
46:20
through. To say that, look, there's some
46:22
change you could make to the Constitution to change how
46:25
people behave suggests that they're reading it and obeying
46:28
it, which they aren't. So I can make whatever change I
46:31
want, they're still going to not read it and not obey it.
46:34
Yeah, it's very confusing. I'll, I'll give the answer I
46:36
often give when Clark starts poking at me.
46:42
Actually, do I really want to get into this?
46:44
I'm going to save it for another time, but I will say this, I was
46:49
going to say something, but my 58 year old brain doesn't
46:52
remember what it was. It was actually pretty important
46:56
too. Words.
46:58
And what was that other thing? Numbers or some such, I don't
47:02
know. Words and other words.
47:07
What was it? Clark Neely was poking you, No.
47:11
No, that's something completely different.
47:13
We'll get to that. Oh, I remember.
47:15
If I could change just one thing in the Constitution, I would
47:20
make sure that there was a provision inside for a balanced
47:24
budget. But understanding that, you
47:28
know, there's always going to be exigent circumstances and
47:33
they're always going to write exigent circumstances into
47:36
anything and then everything will become exigent
47:38
circumstances. So one of the people on
47:41
Backstage is saying a variation of this, and I'm sorry, I don't
47:44
remember who it was exactly. He was saying we should do this.
47:47
And then it might have even been you.
47:49
Every legislator who's sitting at the time they don't balance a
47:52
budget is out. Right.
47:56
Interesting, right? I wanted to go a step further
47:59
and put them all in jail. I think if you're in and there's
48:04
a balanced budget provision in the Constitution and you for
48:08
whatever reason, put forth an unbalanced budget, you go to
48:12
prison. Now, if you really in your heart
48:17
thought it had to be done, you would do it.
48:22
If it was an existential threat against the United States, you
48:26
would say, you know what, I don't really want to go to
48:28
prison, but OK, right? But that's what it would take,
48:34
right? And I think it would have to be
48:36
something like that or it would never work.
48:39
And even there, I could tell you what would happen pretty quickly
48:43
is that they'd redefine what budget means.
48:48
No, I don't think so. I think what they would do is
48:50
exercise that pardon power. Right.
48:55
Pretty significantly, anyway. This has been a carefree romp
48:59
through America's failed Constitution.
49:01
I hope it's been at least interesting.
49:03
You know, most people don't ever literally never think about this
49:06
in their entire lives. So OK, this one little half hour
49:11
of our lives spent together thinking about.
49:13
It's been kind of fun for me. If you want anything more like
49:17
this, let us know at the Backstage group on Facebook,
49:21
which you're all free to join any or.
49:23
Just send us e-mail. Or send aunt e-mail and we'll
49:27
get to it. The thing, you know, aunt,
49:29
everybody sends us e-mail and they say, I know James isn't
49:32
going to see this, but I know. I got one recently that said I'm
49:36
saying this to you privately because it's going to make James
49:38
mad. Yeah, I know, I got it too.
49:41
So I do see them. But what I also get are about
49:45
150 spam messages a day forwarded to me from
49:49
wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com. And I don't want 150 spam emails
49:57
sent every day from that because I have two other e-mail
50:00
addresses and I get 150 spam emails at each of them as well.
50:03
It just goes to you. I don't get spam, I just get
50:06
nice listeners. I'm going to start sending it to
50:10
you, and then you could experience the spam all by
50:12
yourself. On that happy note, take care,
50:16
be well and be nice to each other, even if I'm providing a
50:20
very poor example.