Left-wing bomb-thrower, failed actor, and wannabe comedian Bill Maher recently attacked Tea Partiers and Christians in a rant on his less-than successful HBO television show, the only channel that would air such drivel.

Tea Party viewpoints are “antithetical” to the Founders, according to Maher.  He classifies not the Founders but the “teabaggers” as “a group of exclusively white men who live in a bygone century, have bad teeth and think of blacks as three-fifths of a person.”

His rant continues: “I want you teabaggers out there to understand one thing, while you idolize the Founding Fathers and dress up like them and smell like them, I think its pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would have hated your guts!  And what’s more, you would have hated them.  They were everything you despise.  They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris, and thought the Bible was mostly bullsh*t!”  All to uproarious laughter.

The Founders disagreed on many things, Maher reminds us, but one thing they did agree on was that political power must stay in the hands of the smartest people “and out of the hands of the dumbest loudmouths slowing down the checkout line at Home Depot.”

The Founders were not the common man of their day, Maher proudly exclaims, they were super-smart philosophers and learned men, unlike today’s “teabaggers.”

It’s Maher and his ilk that should be running the country, not us dumb ole commoners.

He also used his episode to bash Christianity, a favorite sport of his.  He attacked the “super religious guy Glenn Beck” for dressing up as Thomas Paine, who Maher points out was “an atheist who said churches were human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind.”

John Adams, he continued, “said this would be ‘the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’  Which is not to say the Founders didn’t have a moral code.  Of course they did.  They just didn’t get it from the Bible.”

But Maher’s leftwing, atheistic views have no basis in historical fact.

Thomas Paine was indeed an atheist, who disliked Christianity.  His pamphlet Common Sense was enormously successful in providing a moral boost to the American cause.  But Paine should not be considered a Founding Father.  A revolutionary, he only came to America from England in 1774 to participate in a revolution that many saw as inevitable.  He was never a member of the Continental Congress, did not sign the Declaration of Independence, nor help form the Constitution.

Maher took Adams’ quote completely out of its context.  Adams had been reading books on different religious viewpoints, and had grown tired of the back-and-forth bickering from the different authors.  He wrote to Thomas Jefferson of his frustration.  “Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, ‘This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!’ But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell.”

So you see, Adams did NOT believe the world could exist without religion, and that it would be Hell on earth if there were none.

The Founders did not think the Bible was “bullsh*t.”  In fact, many of the Founders were Christians and read the Bible religiously, contrary to the teachings in our leftwing schools.

“The Bible contains the most profound Philosophy, the most perfect Morality, and the most refined Policy, that ever was conceived upon earth,” wrote John Adams.  “It is the most Republican Book in the World, and therefore I will still revere it.”

According to David Barton, 34 percent of the more than 3,000 quotes used in all founding documents came from the Bible.  That sacred book was the most widely-used source, not Plato.  And of those quotes, most came from the Book of Deuteronomy, the laws of Moses.

The Ivy League schools, today hotbeds of liberalism and anti-Christian fervor, were all originally created to train missionaries to spread the Gospel.  They were not secular institutions.

Harvard College’s “Rules and Precepts” in 1642 contained the following:

“Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all found knowledge and Learning.”

Such an enunciation would be enough to get one fired from Harvard today!

Most of the Founders themselves were devout followers of Christianity.  They were deeply religious men and were not Deists, an Enlightenment religion consisting of a creator god uninterested in the plight of mankind.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, a very influential Founder, established the first Bible Society in America, the purpose of which was to print Bibles and distribute them.  He also founded the concept of Sunday School in America.

James Wilson, who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, established the first law school in America and required the use of the Bible in the curriculum.

Thomas Jefferson, himself accused of being a deist and an outright atheist, began church services in the U.S. Capitol building in which he personally attended.  He signed all his presidential documents “In the Year of Our Lord Christ.”  He also drew up a list of books for the curriculum in the Washington, D.C. public schools.   On that list was the Bible.

Benjamin Franklin, also accused of being a deist, stopped the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention and called for a prayer to seek guidance.  Not something a deist would have done!

For it was not the smartest people the Founders wanted in public service, but Christians.  John Adams stated in his only Inaugural Address that “A veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service.”

John Jay, an author of the Federalist Papers and the first Chief Justice of the United States, believed that “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”

When a call was made for the Constitutional Convention, Christians dominated its proceedings.  James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, and a Christian, stated that “The best & purest religion, the Christian Religion itself.”

He was not alone in his religious beliefs.

Christian Delegates to the Constitutional Convention

Abraham Baldwin – Congregationalist

Richard Bassett – Methodist

Gunning Bedford – Presbyterian

John Blair – Episcopalian

William Blount – Presbyterian

David Brearly – Episcopalian

Jacob Broom – Lutheran

Pierce Butler – Episcopalian

Daniel Carroll – Catholic

George Clymer – Quaker/Episcopalian

William Richardson Davie – Presbyterian

Jonathan Dayton – Episcopalian

John Dickinson – Quaker/Episcopalian

Oliver Ellsworth – Congregationalist

William Few – Methodist

Thomas FitzSimons – Catholic

Elbridge Gerry – Episcopalian

Nicholas Gilman – Congregationalist

Nathaniel Gorham – Congregationalist

Alexander Hamilton – Episcopalian

William Churchill Houston – Presbyterian

William Houstoun – Episcopalian

Jared Ingersoll – Presbyterian

Daniel Jenifer – Episcopalian

William Samuel Johnson – Anglican

Rufus King – Episcopalian

John Langdon – Congregationalist

John Lansing – Dutch Reformed Church

William Livingston – Presbyterian

James Madison – Episcopalian

Alexander Martin – Episcopalian

Luther Martin – Episcopalian

George Mason – Episcopalian

John McHenry – Presbyterian

John Francis Mercer – Episcopalian

Thomas Mifflin – Quaker/Lutheran

Gouverneur Morris – Episcopalian

Robert Morris – Episcopalian

William Paterson – Presbyterian

William Pierce – Episcopalian

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney – Episcopalian

Charles Pinckney III – Episcopalian

Edmund Jennings Randolph – Episcopalian

George Read – Episcopalian

John Rutledge – Episcopalian

Roger Sherman – Congregationalist

Richard Dobbs Spaight – Episcopalian

Caleb Strong – Congregationalist

George Washington – Episcopalian

Hugh Williamson – Presbyterian

James Wilson – Episcopalian

George Wythe – Episcopalian

Robert Yates – Dutch Reformed Church

Bill Maher holds a history degree from Cornell but he is not using history for its true purposes – the pursuit of fact – only abusing it in order to attempt to destroy that which he despises. When the left can’t find evidence to support their flawed thinking, they simply distort it, ignore it, or make it up.

Maher should stop accusing Tea Partiers, Christians, and Conservatives of complete ignorance and stupidity, when he himself is guilty of a far more serious offense – outright deception.  But then again, you can’t be a successful liberal without lying!

The Siena College Research Institute, which conducts presidential polls every few years, recently released it 2010 version, an in-depth survey of 238 scholars on the nation’s 43 chief executives.  The results were nothing short of laughable, an attempt by the Left’s pseudo-intellectuals to rewrite history.

Many of the entries seem so silly that one must wonder if the names were simply drawn out of a hat.

The Research Institute at Siena College has conducted five polls since 1982.  In every survey, Franklin D. Roosevelt ranked first.  Abraham Lincoln has generally owned the second spot, but this year’s poll found him in third place and Theodore Roosevelt bumped up to number two.  Rounding out the top ten were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower.

Out of the top ten, I agree with three – Washington, Jefferson, and Monroe.

The bottom five, rankings 39 to 43, were George W. Bush at 39, followed by Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, James Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson.

Of these rankings, I agree with none.

The survey contains many curious selections.  For instance, the frisky Bill Clinton, with no major accomplishments to his credit, is placed at number 13, the socialist Barack Obama, with personal polling at historic lows, is at 15, the crude Lyndon Johnson at 16, the corrupt Ulysses S. Grant at 26, the bumbling Gerald Ford at 28, the disgraced Richard Nixon at 30, and the failed Jimmy Carter at 32.  All of these should rank much lower.

Many pertinent questions must be asked of such a seemingly one-sided poll.

For starters, who were the 238 scholars?  What was their political ideology?  I’m certain there was no effort at bi-partisanship and equality in the survey.

Why does Buchanan get such a low ranking and Lincoln such a high one?  Was it because Buchanan refused to wage war on the South, a campaign of conquest that Lincoln was all-to-ready to conduct?

Why does Martin Van Buren rank as low as he does?  Situated roughly in the middle at number 23, Van Buren faced the Panic of 1837, which hit soon after he became president, the worst depression in American history up to that time.  But he did not allow the federal government to intervene.  He also created a constitutional banking system, perhaps the best in the nation’s history.  Conservative and libertarian scholars place him much higher than the middle but, in his old age, Van Buren opposed Lincoln’s war on the South, a no-no in the eyes of liberal historians.

Who could possibly rank Woodrow Wilson at number 8?  One of the Left’s favorites, the progressive Wilson gave us an income tax, the Federal Reserve, and a war in Europe he promised the nation we would not get into.  His self-righteous conduct at Versailles brought home a peace treaty that guaranteed World War II.  When he left office, the nation was mired in a serious economic depression, with taxes at more than 70 percent and severe unemployment.  And he wanted a third term.

Inheriting that depression was Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, both of whom have been derided by historians.  But within a year of taking office, the economy was humming, eventually producing the greatest decade of growth in the nation’s history, a record that is unmatched.

Harding is always hurt because of the corruption in his administration, coming in at number 41.  But why does Ulysses S. Grant, who also had a corrupt presidency, now rank at number 26 when he was always at the bottom? 

Tom Kelly, a professor of history at Siena who participated in the survey, on Harding’s low score:  “Harding, well, no one appreciates corruption nor accepts ineptitude as an excuse.”  But this statement is truer of Grant than Harding.

Grant presided over rampant dishonesty and refused to do anything about it, reluctantly accepting resignations from his deceitful employees with “deep regret.”  But Harding aggressively, and once violently, confronted the corruption in his administration and never profited from it. 

The economy was also in depression during Grant’s second term after a panic hit in 1873, which many economists, such as Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman, believe remained in a state of depression until at least 1878.  Grant did not solve it.

Bill Clinton also had corruption in his administration but is usually credited with the robust economy of the 1990s, enough to keep him off the bottom.  But historians conveniently forget that conservatives controlled Congress for three-fourths of his presidency.  The economy, though strong, was nothing compared to the 1920s, yet Clinton ranks 13^th and Harding 41^st.  Go figure.

One positive from the survey is that Calvin Coolidge finally got off the bottom rung, rising to the number 29 spot.  But it is curious why he is still rated so low.  Coolidge maintained the robust economy of the 1920s, generated a budget surplus every year and paid down nearly a third of the national debt, all while cutting taxes four times.  The likes of Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama, Ulysses S. Grant, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, and James Garfield (who only served 200 days) all rank ahead of him.  Yet neither of their economic records can come close to matching Coolidge.

And when it comes to depression politics, no discussion is complete without FDR.  How could Franklin Roosevelt rank as the nation’s greatest president when he kept the nation mired in a severe economic depression for over a decade?  Contrary to popular opinion, the nation did not come out of it until after the war, when FDR had already died.  His New Deal efforts were a complete failure.

By contrast, Grover Cleveland received his usual ranking of 20, even though he faced the worst depression of the 19^th century, a severe panic that ended in four years because of his laissez faire policies.

So Van Buren, Cleveland, Harding, and Coolidge, presidents who ended depressions quickly and without government programs, are given low scores, while progressives like FDR and Obama are ranked higher.  Is it because they believe in big government solutions regardless of the economic turmoil they maintained?

What did Truman do besides drop the bombs on Japan?  In domestic politics, he was as liberal as they come.  It was Truman who first suggested a federal role in health care and who seized the nation’s steel plants, before the Supreme Court told him no.  In foreign affairs, he completed FDR’s selling out of Eastern Europe to the Soviets at Potsdam, coddled “Uncle Joe” Stalin, and got us bogged down in Korea, firing the one general who wanted to win it.  When he left office in 1953, his approval rating hovered around 20 percent.

Truman’s successor was Dwight D. Eisenhower.  But what did Eisenhower ever do to deserve a top ten spot?  Many conservatives give him high marks but I do not.  Aside from a morbid desire to play golf every day, Ike really did nothing to warrant such high esteem.  Did he fundamentally change the political culture in D.C. like Jefferson?  Did he face severe challenges and solve them like many other presidents?  I think not.  And remember, it was Ike who gave us the disastrous Earl Warren.

Lyndon Johnson left behind a nation in utter turmoil, with riots in the streets and the most unpopular war in American history raging in Southeast Asia, not to mention massive new entitlement programs that are today tens of trillions in the red, yet he wins a ranking of 16.

Nixon resigns from office in disgrace, increased the size and scope of the government, gave us détente with the Soviets, and receives a ranking of 30?  Should he not rate in the bottom 10?

Ronald Reagan ended the severe recession handed to him by Carter, leading to an economic boom surpassed only by the Roaring Twenties.  He also put in place policies that brought down the Evil Empire.  Should he not rank in the top ten rather than 18^th?

Like many before it, this survey tells us much more about the participants than the presidents they were asked to rate.

With Democrats fully in control of the federal government and ideologically as far to the left as at anytime in history, recent polling indicates that an increasing number of Americans have become apprehensive about the direction the Obama White House and the Pelosi-led Congress are taking the country. A massive economic stimulus priced at nearly $800 billion; the seizure of banks, financial institutions, and businesses like GM; plans to take over the health care industry; the potential destruction of the capitalist system with a “cap and trade” climate bill, politicization of the census, and the intention to silence talk radio are just a few of the agenda items either on the books or on their way to becoming law. This is, without question, the greatest legislative overreach in American history and, what’s more, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

But if history is any indication, their ambitious agenda will only lead to a crushing electoral defeat in the near future.

Using history as a guide, our present situation harkens back to the political circumstances in 1890, when Republicans, the liberal party in those days, over-reached during the 51^st Congress, leading to a landslide by conservative Democrats in two successive elections and full party control of the government for the first time since the 1850s.

For its part, the GOP, after the 1888 election, believed the country was decidedly Republican, giving them a mandate to do as they wished. And they had every reason to think just that. From Lincoln’s election in 1860 until Benjamin Harrison’s defeat of Democratic President Grover Cleveland in 1888, Republicans dominated Washington and were accustomed to setting policy and administering the government on a more progressive basis.

During that time span, as the Civil War nearly destroyed the Democratic Party, the GOP held the White House for 24 of 28 years. The makeup of Congress was almost as one-sided. From the midterm elections in 1858 until 1888, a period of three decades, Democrats, with a strengthening Northern wing, coupled with its steadfast Southern stronghold, managed to control the House for only 12 years; the Senate for only four.

The only real Democratic respite came in 1884, with the election of Grover Cleveland and a Democratic House, a brief period when the nation turned back to the policies of Mr. Jefferson and the government was administered very conservatively.

But the Jeffersonian administration of Cleveland only made liberal Republicans more eager to get their national vision back on track, and after the election of 1888 they had full control of the federal government once again, embarking on an ambitious, far-reaching agenda, seemingly to make up for lost time. The new House Speaker, Thomas “Czar” Reed, summed up the Republican attitude. “The danger in a free country is not that power will be exercised too freely, but that it will be exercised too sparingly.” Such a statement could be the official slogan for the Obama-Pelosi administration.

During the first session of the 51^st Congress, Republicans enacted several major pieces of legislation, which have an eerie similarity with present government actions. Liberals went after corporations, inflated the currency, raised taxes, massively increased spending, and tried to assert federal control over the electoral process.

First, succumbing to pressure from its Western base, Republicans authorized the Sherman Antitrust Act, a strong measure that gave the federal government more control over big business. Authored by Senator John Sherman of Ohio, brother of the famous Civil War general, William T. Sherman, the bill stated in its very first sentence: “Every contract, combination in the form of trust or other- wise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal.” Yet the new law consisted of very vague language, allowing future administrations, namely that of Theodore Roosevelt, to use it in wide-ranging ways. With this bill, the federal government could essentially seize and break up any company it deemed a monopoly.

Second, to provide more inflation in the currency, pressure which also came from the West, Congress passed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which required the government to buy 4.5 million ounces of silver per month, as opposed to just 2 million per month under the old law. Though not all of it was coined and put into circulation, the Sherman Act authorized new Treasury notes to purchase the bullion, greenbacks that could be redeemed for gold at the U.S. Mint. This caused a slow drain on the nation’s gold reserve, which, along with the new element of cheap currency into the economy, led to a severe depression in 1893.

Third, protectionist Republicans wanted higher tariffs, even though rates were already at all-time highs. Ohio Congressman William McKinley, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, authored a new tariff law which raised duties to their highest level in history. By doing so, it was hoped the McKinley Act would keep out most foreign imports, which would also help to alleviate the growing federal budget surplus, ongoing since 1866. With such high rates, imports would fall, thereby diminishing revenue. But despite its intentions, this bill effectively raised taxes on everyone by making products more expensive for consumers.

Fourth, in another effort to get rid of the pesky surplus, Congress passed an extravagant pension bill, the Dependent Pension Act, to provide help to veterans and their dependents. Older, more stringent requirements were loosened tremendously, so that anyone who had served at least 90 days in the Union army and had a disability, regardless of how the handicap occurred, could receive a pension. President Cleveland had vetoed a similar measure in 1887 as a raid on the treasury but the Republican Congress, now with a Republican President, was determined to place it into the law books and reward one of its favored constituent groups with funds from the public trough.

Under Harrison and the Republican Congress, spending on pensions rose from $80 million in 1888 to $160 million by 1893. The pension list also swelled from 489,725 recipients in 1889 to 966,012 in 1893, as the Pension Bureau added 19,000 new pensioners per month, whereas before just 19,000 per year were placed to the rolls.

In addition to the increased spending on pensions, Congress also spent a wealth of money on other schemes, earmarking funds for additional naval vessels and various internal improvements projects, such as river and harbor development.

With all the spending, Democrats quickly dubbed it the “Billion Dollar Congress,” the first Congress in American history to spend a billion dollars. Czar Reed, in his smug, arrogant manner, responded to Democratic epithets by noted that “It’s a billion dollar country!” But Americans weren’t buying it.

Under liberal governance, the nation saw its hard-earned surplus, accumulating in the Treasury at a rate of $100 million per year, vanish with scarcely a return. President Cleveland had watched over it like a mother over her child, and tried on many occasions to return it to the people, but Republicans squandered it with little regard for its rightful owners. Political cartoons routinely depicted Harrison pouring Cleveland’s surplus into a large hole in the ground.

Furthermore, Congress attempted to put the federal government in charge of elections, even on the local level. In shades of the current ACORN scandal, a bill authored by Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts would have given the federal courts jurisdiction over elections and voter registration efforts, presumably to aid disenfranchised blacks in the South. But Democrats feared the measure would enhance the GOP’s hold on power through fraud. Southerners, reminded of the hated days of Reconstruction, were outraged, calling the act the “Force Bill.” It passed the House by a close party-line vote, but later died in the Senate.

This was all too much for the American people. In the midterm elections in 1890, Republicans were trounced, losing 93 seats in the House. Conservative Democrats gained an astonishing 238 of 332 congressional seats. When the 52^nd Congress opened in 1891, only 86 Republicans remained in the U.S. House of Representatives. Among the vanquished – staunch progressive and future presidential candidate Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin, future House Speaker “Uncle Joe” Cannon of Illinois, and Bill McKinley himself, who was punished for his massive tax hike. And though they did not reclaim the Senate, Democrats gained four seats there as well.

Such a midterm landslide is nothing unusual in American political history. A more recent example would be 1994, when Bill Clinton’s overreach caused a Republican congressional sweep that year, but the GOP did not keep up the momentum and fouled up its opportunity to make further gains in 1996, as Clinton held on to the White House.

But after the 1890 elections, conservatives did not stop working. Two years later, in 1892, the conservative tide continued unmolested, as the nation turned once again to the Jeffersonian Grover Cleveland, and Democrats took control of the Senate, while maintaining its majority in the House. Not since the 35^th Congress, from 1857 to 1859, had the Democrats controlled the Senate, the House, and the presidency. A massive, seemingly insurmountable political mountain had been climbed by a party many though dead after the war.

For Obama, Pelosi, Reed, and company, happy days are, indeed, here again! But, though their agenda is far-reaching, even frightening, history can provide real hope for conservatives. Americans have traditionally reacted strongly against any swift move to grow and expand the federal government.

Let us hope for a repeat of 1890, when the American people rose up in righteous indignation against government encroachment and returned our Republic to those who believed in its original purity.

 

This week marks the 140^th anniversary of the completion of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific-Central Pacific, which famously linked up at Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869 with the driving of the ceremonial golden spike. During the late 19^th century, a total of five transcontinental lines were constructed to the West Coast, an amazing feat for the time period.

Most Americans have heard the story of these astonishing engineering exploits but not the real truth behind it. It is a tale of the utter failure of government subsidization of business but also the roaring success of unfettered capitalism, a part of the saga often ignored in history textbooks.

The first discussion of a transcontinental railroad began soon after the United States acquired California, during the Mexican War of 1846-1848. But with the ongoing struggle between North and South, a fight over constitutional principles as much as slavery, neither side could agree on anything concerning funding for a rail line or a path for its construction. However, with the secession of the conservative South, the federal government began financing a railway to the West Coast with passage of the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862.

To construct the first four lines, the government provided hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and freely granted over 150 million acres of land, an area nearly as large as the state of Texas, to various railroad corporations. Many historians and authors, including those charged with writing textbooks for college students, heap praise on the government’s role in providing the necessary capital for these Herculean endeavors.

Stephen Ambrose writes in his book, Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, that “Government aid…took many forms. Without it, the line could not have been built, quite possibly would not have been started.”

In The National Experience, major historians John M. Blum, Edmund S. Morgan, Willie Lee Rose, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Kenneth M. Stampp, and C. Van Woodward, note that “Since such huge sums were far more than private American investors could supply, promoters turned to foreign investors and to local, state, and federal governments.”

Alan Brinkley, in The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People, contends that “Subsidies from federal, state, and local governments (along with foreign loans and investments) were vital to this [railroad] expansion, which required far more capital than private entrepreneurs could raise by themselves.”

And finally, in a two-volume work, The Growth of the American Republic, authors Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager make a similar contention. Of the transcontinental lines the authors write: “Certainly very few of the western railroads could have been built by private capital alone without the generous aid from federal, state, and local governments.” This was possible because Washington took a new view of the Constitution, “having abandoned the embarrassing strict construction theories that bothered an earlier generation.” Such an assertion should come as no surprise, for the bias within this particular book should be readily apparent. Upon examining this work, one finds that a portrait of FDR graces the opening pages, which remains in later versions published years after the president’s death in 1945.

However, each of these statements might possess a certain degree of truth, if it were not for the impressive accomplishment of railroad titan James J. Hill. Hill built the fifth and final transcontinental line of the 19^th century, the Great Northern, which ran from St. Paul, Minnesota to Seattle, Washington. Though it took longer, he constructed his line without any government aid whatsoever. None of these works discuss Hill, or his achievement, in any degree of detail.

Hill was a supreme capitalist and ran his railroad corporation as such. He did not rely on the government to supply him with capital or land. Burton W. Folsom, Jr., in a great little book, The Myth of the Robber Barons, quotes from a letter Hill wrote to one of his rivals. “Our own line in the north was built without any government aid, even the right of way, through hundreds of miles of public lands, being paid for in cash,” the conservative Hill wrote. He also disliked the fact that Congress granted millions in subsidies to his competitors, providing them with an unfair advantage. “The government should not furnish capital to these companies, in addition to their enormous land subsidies, to enable them to conduct their business in competition with enterprises that have received no aid from the public treasury.”

To get his railroad constructed, Hill decided to develop the frontier as he went along. He transported settlers and supplied them with grain, seed, and livestock, all to help them get started and to set the stage for the development of a capitalist economy in the west.

Of this Morison and Commager write that the “day of land grants and federal subsidies was past,” and “Hill saw that the Great Northern Railway…could reach the Pacific only by developing the country as it progressed.” The authors then quote Hill’s explanation of his plan for the Northwest: “We consider ourselves and the people along our lines as co-partners in the prosperity of the country we both occupy and the prosperity of the one should mean the prosperity of both, and their adversity will be quickly followed by ours.”

Though these authors might not admit it, they are actually acknowledging that capitalism worked! Their unintended praise of Hill’s capitalism continued: “Construction costs were low, the financial management was skillful and conservative, and the Great Northern was the one transcontinental line that managed to weather every financial crisis.”

Echoing a similar sentiment, authors Blum, Morgan, Rose, Schlesinger, Jr., Stampp, and Woodward write in The National Experience that “Built more carefully and solidly than its competitor, financed more soundly, and integrated more thoroughly in the economy of the region it served, Hill’s Great Northern was the only transcontinental railroad to pull through the Panic of 1893 and the depression that followed.”

Unlike the other lines, Hill chose the most economical routes, insisted on using only the very finest steel rails, not the cheaper iron, as well as the best timbers. His work was slower, but also less costly and much more efficient, for it was his money he was using, not someone else’s. It is for these reasons that his company survived every panic and depression, while the other lines all went bankrupt, a fact that many historians never bother to inform their students or readers. In fact, many textbooks never mention Hill at all.

However, there are historians and economists who will tell the absolute truth about Hill and his Great Northern. In addition to Folsom, Professor Thomas J. DiLorenzo, in his book How Capitalism Saved America, discusses the transcontinental lines in great detail, pointing out that not only did all the lines but Hill’s go bankrupt, most of them were rife with corruption, culminating in the Credit Mobilier scandal during Grant’s administration. These corrupt railroad corporations were actually bribing members of Congress to keep the government off their backs and continue the subsidies, giving out passes to ride the lines free of charge as well as company stock. Dozens of members of Congress, as well as Grant’s vice president, were tangled up in the scam.

Today, we find ourselves in a serious economic predicament, to which the government has chosen to heavily regulate the economy, engaging in everything from bailing out corporations to taking over businesses and banks. And with the new massive growth of government has also come new allegations of corruption. History teaches us that such massive government undertakings will always end up as a corrupt disaster. The building of the five 19^th century transcontinental railroads provides ample proof that government intervention into the economy will eventually fail and the only success is pure, unbridled capitalism.

As a Yankee, Strong had a decidedly negative view of secession, a notion still held by a surprising number of our citizens. But in reality secession is an integral part of the American political tradition.

Today, as our nation endures the most radical, leftist government in our history, thoughts of secession are again on the lips of some Americans, including a few well-known political leaders. Texas Governor Rick Perry recently alluded to secession as a possible solution to an out-of-control government in Washington. For his remarks, he has been slammed as an anti-American radical.

But when Northern liberals discussed secession in the days after Bush’s re-election victory in 2004, I don’t remember much talk on the left of how crazy, or treasonable, the idea was. Only when the South desires to leave are such a notions ridiculed or opposed with force. (Perhaps there is a good reason why the North desires to keep the South in the Union.)

Secession is not anti-American; it is one of the most American of responses to oppressive government. The United States of America was founded on secession, a disunion with the British Empire that is clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas Jefferson penned a great document espousing the rights of man but also proclaimed the rightness of the people to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”

When governments oppress the liberties of its citizens, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The people have a “right” and a “duty,” Mr. Jefferson continued, “to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” Americans endured “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Rather than live under a government they felt was tyrannical, early Americans seceded from the British Empire, declaring “That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.”

The same American spirit of independence found in the Declaration could also be found in most state ratification conventions, when they were asked to approve the new Constitution crafted by the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. Several states placed stipulations on their endorsement of the new compact. The powers given to the federal government were delegated, not surrendered permanently, and New York and Rhode Island made sure it was understood that the states could take them back if they were abused, declaring that “the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness.” The Southern state of Virginia made a similar declaration in its act of ratification.

Under the United States of America, secession movements gathered serious momentum in the Northern states on several occasions. Many Northerners were upset with Jefferson’s election as President in 1800 and his purchase of Louisiana in 1803, to which they believed would eventually constitute a vast region for the spread of slavery. The North also vigorously opposed the War of 1812. In each of these cases, secession was seriously discussed and contemplated.

Facing these secession threats, President Jefferson did not threaten force, but recognized the right of individual states to leave the Union if they so chose. Speaking to the North, he stated in his Inaugural Address: “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”

After the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, President Jefferson wrote to John C. Breckinridge about the new territories and the new states which would soon be created. If New England preferred secession and a second confederacy, or should the new states beyond the Mississippi desire to be free from the Union, then it is their right, if that would make them happier. “God bless them both, & keep them in union, if it be for their good,” Jefferson wrote, “but separate them, if it is better.”

Northerners again seriously contemplated separating from the Union during the War of 1812, being upset with government policy, namely in regards to trade. During the winter of 1814-1815, Northern states held a convention in Harford, Connecticut to discuss the possibility of creating a Northern Confederacy. This was done right in the middle of a war with Britain that the United States was not winning. No vote on secession took place, but the convention did draft a report that upheld the notions of state sovereignty and state’s rights. But the anti-war fervor destroyed the Federalist party, located almost exclusively in the North.

These principles of secession were simply the common belief of the time period, political facts that everyone knew to be the obvious truth, even visiting foreigners. After touring the United States during the Jacksonian period, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a famous book, Democracy In America, in 1835. In it he discussed the notion of secession in the United States. “The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their Nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly, either by force or by right.” Again, Tocqueville was simply writing about what he had learned from everyday Americans.

The South made several secessionist threats throughout the Antebellum period and finally made good on those threats after Lincoln’s election in 1860. Many in the North were content to let them go. Horace Greeley, a Republican abolitionist, editorialized in his New York Tribune that according to the principles of Declaration of Independence, the South had every right to leave the Union. With political issues at a fever pitch, secession would “prevent the shedding of seas of human blood.” If Americans accepted those principles in 1776, asked the Tribune, then “we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.” But Lincoln would not allow the South to determine for itself what kind of government it would live under.

Yet, amazingly, the federal government has recently backed secession movements around the globe, most notably the former republics of the old Soviet Union. Not only did our government support and even encourage those nations to break free, we have assured their independence with war guarantees. Russian has recently tried to take back Georgia with military force, which we condemned, and also has designs on re-taking Ukraine, which we have threatened to protect within NATO.  We do this, and profess to believe in self-determination, but deny the same principles to our own people!

Today, many on the Left, and surprisingly the Right, love to ridicule the principles of secession. Soon after Governor Perry’s comments, Bill Pascoe of CQ Politics wrote a column entitled “Note to the Governor of Texas: You Couldn’t Secede If You Wanted To.” Pascoe tackles the notion that Texas was given special treatment when it entered the Union in 1845 and has some special right to leave if it wants. However, he fails to mention that any state that enters the United States joins as a co-equal with the original thirteen and possesses all the same rights and privileges. But, even if the special circumstance were true, he writes, when Texas joined the Confederacy, took up arms against the United States, and lost the war, “any special dispensation went out the window.”

Furthermore, Pascoe quotes from a proclamation by President Andrew Johnson declaring an end to the war and end to secession, stating “it is the manifest determination of the American people that no State, of its own will, has a right or power to go out of or separate itself from, or be separated from the American Union; and that, therefore, each State ought to remain and constitute an integral part of the United States.”

Funny, I didn’t realize Andrew Johnson was given dictatorial powers but following Lincoln I guess we can see why he thought that! So, no matter how tyrannical Washington becomes, we must remain in the Union. Even if the federal government bans all guns, raises taxes to 95 percent, abolishes private property, seizes all businesses, enforces military conscription, listens to all phone calls, opens everyone’s mail, cancels talk radio, and places conservative “extremists” in concentration camps, we, as individual sovereign states, have no recourse, at least according to Bill Pascoe and his favorite president Andy Johnson!

Such ignorance and stupidity is understandable on the Left but its shocking when so-called conservatives like Pascoe have trouble grasping the simple truths within the Declaration.

A recent column by Ben Shapiro in Human Events supports this fact. While correctly pointing out that “the states, according to the founders, were duty-bound to resist action by the federal government superseding its allotted authority under the Constitution,” he goes on to state that Lincoln’s war on the South was “quick and right,” a conflict that “restored for all time the founding promises of the Declaration of Independence.” This is tortured logic! Lincoln ran roughshod over both the Declaration and the Constitution, holding the Union together at the point of a gun!

I wonder if Mr. Shapiro, who is an attorney in Los Angeles, or Mr. Pascoe, ever heard of the principle of self-determination of peoples? Our Founders certainly did and thank God for it or we would all be speaking the Queen’s English today!

But the question remains: should a state secede from the Union today? Though it has been suggested, this moment might not be the proper time to consider it. But we must never lose our founding principles and our cherished rights! Just because we “lost a war,” to use Pascoe’s words, does not mean the principles of the American Revolution died at Appomattox.

And even if Pascoe is correct, why would anyone join a union, enter into a contract, or any such agreement, that you could not get out of? As the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises wrote in 1919: “No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.”

Amen!

 

In my latest column, I discussed the beginnings of a media frenzy regarding Barack Obama and the rush to compare him to Abraham Lincoln. A major cover story appeared in Newsweek and now subsequent articles have appeared in Time. The subject has also been discussed on many nightly news programs. But this is not just a Democrat phenomenon, as the GOP has always maintained an attachment to its first president. Most recently Michael Steele, running to head the RNC, has repeatedly described himself as a “Lincoln Republican.”

Modern-day politicians, for whatever reason, feel a great need to identify with Lincoln. But as I have written many times in the past, comparisons to Lincoln should not fill us with hope but dread.

Most of the “history” of our 16^th president is myth. Many of Lincoln’s most famous sayings and phrases are false. And most of his political stances are, in fact, the opposite of what they have been portrayed.

“Anyone who embarks on a study of Abraham Lincoln,” writes Robert W. Johannsen in Lincoln, the South, and Slavery, “must first come to terms with the Lincoln myth. The effort to penetrate the crust of legend that surrounds Lincoln…is both a formidable and intimidating task. Lincoln…requires special considerations that are denied to other figures of his generation.” Because of this, its very difficult for historians to conduct a genuine study of him, as H. L. Mencken wrote in 1931: “Lincoln has become one of our national deities and a realistic examination of him is thus no longer possible.”

And it is these myths that cause politicians, and the general public, to get a warm feeling about Lincoln and the desire to idolize him. Reading glamorous accounts by adoring scholars have only served to worsen this situation.

The real Lincoln, though, is quite different than the myth that has been depicted in history.

I’ve wrote at length about Lincoln’s war policy and his trampling of the Constitution and individual liberties. But his economic policies were just as damaging and deadly to American freedom. Lincoln considered himself an “old Henry Clay tariff Whig,” strictly following the economic program of Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, which consisted of high protective tariffs, direct taxes, federally-funded internal improvements, direct subsidies to big business, and a national banking system complete with paper money not backed by gold.

We are now in the midst of a great financial crisis. So if he were president today, what would Lincoln do? Sadly, not that much different than has been done thus far, a major boost in government intervention.

In the area of foreign trade, a huge issue for Lincoln, he was, according to Pat Buchanan, the “Great Protectionist.” He believed, passionately, in the benefits of a high protective tariff, saying on one occasion, “Give us a protective tariff and we will have the greatest nation on earth.” So I’m always amazed at how self-described “Lincoln Republicans,” including Michael Steele and Jack Kemp, are always free traders. Lincoln loathed free trade.

It must be noted, however, that the Republican tariffs during this era were sky-high, with an average rate of more than 50 percent, and were imposed for the benefit of the great industrialists of the North, the backbone of the party. They were essentially campaign payoffs, which enriched one section of the country, the North, while impoverishing another, the South. This was a grievance many Southerners held against the North and a major reason for secession.

But this is one area where Republicans could actually learn something of value from Lincoln but choose to ignore, as free trade continues to eat away at our manufacturing base. Though there may not be any consensus that tariffs should be that high today, practicing fair trade would greatly strengthen our economy.

To derive more revenue for his imperialistic war of subjugation against the South, Lincoln’s Republicans adopted the first income tax in American history. It was a progressive tax with a top rate that eventually reached 10 percent on all incomes over $10,000 a year. So someone making that much annually had a tax bill of $1,000. In those days a house could be purchased for a thousand dollars! Those making as little as $600 annually fell in a 3 percent bracket. The new tax law also imposed excise taxes on every conceivable item and created a new federal bureaucracy to collect the funds, a predecessor to the IRS. And though it was imposed to fund the war, and fitted with a sunset provision to expire in 1872, Republicans never voted to end it, even when hostilities ended in 1865.

Lincoln, like Hamilton and Clay before him, also believed in direct government aid to industry and “investing” in the economy. In short, he would have loved all these federal bailouts. Federally-funded internal improvements, as they were labeled in his time, are what we today call earmarks or pork-barrel projects. A great example of this part of Lincolnian economics was the funding of the transcontinental railroads. In 1862 Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act to finally fund the construction of a rail line to the Pacific Ocean. The South had been the major obstacle in previous congressional attempts, mainly because the proposed routes would not pass through the southern states and such an enterprise was unconstitutional. But with the South out of the way, Republicans were free to spend taxpayer dollars anyway they saw fit.

In all, five transcontinental rail lines were completed in the 19^th century. Four received federal government money for every mile of track constructed, but the last of the five, built by James J. Hill, was done with private funding. As a result, according to economist Tom DiLorenzo, Hill’s Great Northern was a “famously efficient and profitable operation” while the government railroads “were so inefficient that they were bankrupt as soon as they were completed.” The subsidized lines were also rife with corruption and produced a major presidential scandal for Ulysses S. Grant, the Credit Mobilier Scandal, where at least a dozen congressmen were bribed by railroad executives. Vice President Schuyler Colfax, a former Speaker of the House, was also implicated and left office in disgrace.

Lincoln also favored central banking and had been a proponent of the old Bank of the United States, which was a forerunner to the federal reserve system we have today. But since Andrew Jackson had killed the Second Bank of the United States in 1836, no national banking system existed in America until Lincoln signed a series of laws creating one in the early 1860s. These nationally-chartered banks also issued paper currency known as “greenbacks” that were not backed by gold. With so much put into circulation, this fiat money was highly inflationary, and by 1864 had lost two-thirds of its value. This caused an unstable monetary supply, something central banking is supposed to prevent. We seem not to have learned any lessons.

So as we can see, Lincoln was, in the words of Professor DiLorenzo, the “Great Centralizer.” He believed that government, not the free market, was the best solution for economic distress and was the best vehicle for economic growth. The only clear reason that conservatives embrace Lincoln is his supposed attachment to racial equality. This is Jack Kemp’s main argument. But this is also a myth. Nothing in Lincoln’s career even suggests he believed in civil rights for blacks. He wasn’t even an abolitionist. Lincoln only moved toward freedom for the slaves when it became militarily expedient to do so. He was adamant on more than one occasion that the war was not being fought to free slaves, ordered commanders to return runaways to their masters, and drafted an Emancipation Proclamation that freed no one.

For conservatives to revere Lincoln is, to borrow from Winston Churchill, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Nothing Lincoln believed is consistent with today’s Republican economic philosophy. Embracing the mantle of Goldwater, Reagan, or even Coolidge would be much more in line with an economic philosophy of free enterprise. We have a party of centralization. Let us now have a party of capitalism.

As a historian I like to know the views of each presidential candidate on American history, which can provide valuable insight into their real thinking. 

For instance, what is their stance on the Constitution?  Do they believe in applying original intent or do they believe it is a living document? 

Another valuable piece of information is who they regard as their favorite president, although this can sometimes be misleading.  But if one chooses Thomas Jefferson or Ronald Reagan you know they believe in smaller government and low taxes, generally speaking.  If they pick someone like FDR, well that tells you quite a bit about their ideas on government’s role in your life.

Both candidates were recently asked by Newsweek about their favorite presidents.

McCain answered, “On the obvious plus side, Lincoln, TR and Reagan are people who are in many respects my role models.”

When asked who he does not want to be like, McCain stated:  “One I was thinking about very recently because of this anti-free-trade, protectionism sentiment that understandably is being bred by our severe economic problems is Herbert Hoover.  In 1930, he signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and there were other actions that the administration and Congress took that sent us from a recession into a deep depression.  And my study of history is that Herbert Hoover was at least acquiescent, if not very active, in taking all the wrong steps, which again not only didn’t help the situation but exacerbated conditions which led to the most severe depression in the history of this nation.”

This is a constant theme with McCain.  He continually thunders against the dangers of protectionism, yet all three of his role models, including Reagan to some degree, were protectionists. 

But it is really Teddy Roosevelt that McCain admires most, as a recent interview in the New York Times indicates.  During the interview he failed to mention any conservative stalwarts, like Reagan or even Barry Goldwater, as role models.  “I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold.”  But TR was no traditional conservative.

In the same interview, McCain also laid out his basic philosophy of government.  “I believe less governance is the best governance, and that government should not do what the free enterprise and private enterprise and individual entrepreneurship and the states can do, but I also believe there is a role for government.  Government should take care of those in America who can not take care of themselves.”  Save for the last section, this sounds more Jeffersonian than Rooseveltian. 

TR believed much different, however, and can not be considered a Jeffersonian conservative.  “I don’t think that any harm comes from the concentration of power in one man’s hands,” he once said.  This statement speaks for itself.

Most of TR’s biographers get so caught up in his outgoing personality and charisma, like the mainstream media does with Obama, that they fail to see, or refuse to see, many faults.  A book by Jim Powell, of the Cato Institute, Bully Boy: The Truth About Theodore Roosevelt’s Legacy, describes the consequences of TR’s presidency and what he really stood for.

The United States, TR believed, should engage in “the proper policing of the world.”  McCain would obviously concur with that sentiment, as he has stated on more than one occasion that “there will be other wars.”  It’s quite obvious that he is more hawkish than President Bush.

TR also greatly increased the power and influence of the presidency.  He issued 1,007 executive orders during his administration, the most ever until the administrations of Woodrow Wilson and FDR.  He believed that Congress should obey the president in all matters. 

But Teddy’s view of the Constitution is downright scary.  The conservative interpretation of the Constitution is that, in addition to being a compact among the states, it is a check on executive power; that the federal government can not act unless specifically authorized to do so.  TR rejected this notion and favored the opposite.  He wrote in his autobiography that “it was not only his [the president’s] right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws.”  That’s a recipe for tyranny.

“Roosevelt failed to recognize the dangers of political power and war,” writes Powell.  He “recklessly intervened in the lives of Americans and in the affairs of other nations, and we have seen the policy backfire.”

This is McCain’s role model?

As for the Constitution, McCain claims to believe in strict construction, the opposite of Roosevelt, and will appoint like-minded judges to the federal bench.  Yet some of the positions he has taken during his years in Congress, like his campaign finance reform bill, a blatant violation of the First Amendment, cause conservatives to wonder.  McCain once told Don Imus that he would rather have a clean government than one where First Amendment rights are respected!

And remember McCain also supported the bill giving the president a line-item veto, which might be a good idea but where I went to school we learned there is a method for amending the Constitution and Congress cannot do it alone.  The Supreme Court wisely struck down the law.  Only a properly enacted amendment can change the Constitution.

By contrast, Obama’s answers to Newsweek were not nearly as in depth as McCain’s, demonstrating that he probably does not possess a vast knowledge of American history.  “When I think about presidents, I start with Lincoln, and not just because I’m from Illinois.  I think he embodies those qualities that are the very best in America:  upward mobility, an embrace of the future and an ability to stand fast on principle while acknowledging the other side of the debate.”  Upward mobility?  But how can Americans achieve upward mobility when Obama’s tax program, if enacted, will crush anyone who ascends up society’s ladder?  The higher you climb under a President Obama, the harder the government will come down on you!

On bad presidents, Obama stated:  “You know, I have to admit that I don’t spend a lot of time reading about failed presidents.  There is a long list of presidents who did not rise to the times – Hoover, Buchanan, Andrew Johnson.  Many of them are people who did not see, for example, the fault lines of slavery, or the dangers of depression.”

But one must wonder if Obama sees the dangers of depression today, for his policies would commit many of the same mistakes as President Herbert Hoover.  Most history classes that cover the Great Depression claim, erroneously, that Hoover was a true laissez faire capitalist who repeatedly stated that economic storms, like natural ones, should be allowed to blow themselves out.  But this is a complete lie.  Hoover greatly increased government spending to fight the Depression.  His major tax increases, moving the top rate to over 60 percent, had a tremendously negative effect on the economy.  Hoover’s intervention was so large that during the 1932 campaign FDR criticized him and promised to balance the federal budget!

Obama has written much more extensively than McCain on issues of history.  In his book The Audacity of Hope he has an entire chapter on the Constitution, which gives us a lot of insight into his thinking on the supreme law of the land.  Boasting in the book, as he has on the campaign trail, that he was once a “professor” of constitutional law at the University of Chicago, Obama, who incidentally never held the title of professor, takes a typical left wing position, with the likes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.  “Professor” Obama wrote that while he was “not unsympathetic to Justice Scalia’s position” of strict construction, it was his belief that the Constitution “is not a static but rather a living document, and must be read in the context of an ever-changing world.”  It’s a rationale for which he spends several pages attempting to defend, unsuccessfully in my opinion.

Why, then, would our Founders bother to write the Constitution down on paper for all to see if it could be changed at the whim of a federal judge or the Supreme Court?  Remember the British constitution was not written down, therefore the King could interpret it as he pleased.  Our Founders were not about to repeat the same mistake.  As Joseph Sobran is fond of saying, the Constitution “is written on paper, not rubber.”

But “Professor” Obama claims this is the way its always been done, that even the Founders disagreed passionately on what they had just written, even before “the ink on the constitutional parchment was dry.”  This is partly true but when you understand the history of the period, and the motivations behind many of those involved, you quickly understand why. 

Many Federalists, like Alexander Hamilton, were nationalists who wanted a strong, central government.  They were not happy with the final product in Philadelphia.  In fact Hamilton had argued for a lifetime appointment for the president, the right of the president to appoint all state governors, and for the national government to have a veto over all state actions it did not agree with.  He and his ilk sought to change the Constitution through various means, including judicial interpretations.  It was the Republicans who stood up to him and finally succeeded in their goal, as Mr. Jefferson said, to “sink Federalism into an abyss from which there shall be no resurrection for it.”  And as a result, Jefferson and Madison saved the Revolution.

Studying “Professor” Obama’s grasp of American history, one quickly concludes that he possesses a warped, leftwing view of it.  He incorrectly claims that Jefferson, the great libertarian and foe of governmental power, “helped consolidate the power of the national government even as he claimed to deplore and reject such power.”  How Mr. Jefferson was responsible for this Obama does not bother to say.  He simply takes a shot at a great president who did not believe government was the best solution to our problems, as Senator Obama does.

But as bad as Obama might be with respect to a true understanding of history, McCain can be just as erroneous.  Both men lack true understanding of the nature of our Founding, a continuous mistake that has crippled our republic to the point of destruction.  One problem we face is that we have too many lawyers and not enough statesmen who truly understand our history, our heritage, where we came from, and how we got where we are.  Likewise, many of our people have also forgotten these important lessons.  And now our once great republic is in a state of decline.  Either we return to our proud history of liberty and capitalism, or march into the darkness of socialism and imperialism.

It seems like the question of experience has emerged in virtually every presidential campaign in recent memory.   And this year it is especially important.

But what does that really mean – to have the experience to be president?  What’s the criteria?  When do you know someone has enough?  And what is more important, political experience, executive experience, or legislative experience?  Diplomatic experience or military experience?  How about business experience? 

Or is it judgment and adherence to principle that matter most?

Examining the historical record I find that there is no correlation between so-called “experience” and a successful presidency. 

Presidents with lots of experience have been successful, while those with little experience have also been successful.  But there has also been presidents with a lifetime of experience who failed and those with little experience who also failed.

And even the question of success and failure is open for debate, as one administration might be successful to some but a failure to others. 

So let us take a peek at a few examples from presidential history.

James Monroe, a protégé of Mr. Jefferson, had one of the most impressive political resumes of any American statesman.  Monroe served in the Virginia State House, the Continental Congress, as a delegate to the Virginia Ratifying Convention that debated the U.S. Constitution, as both a U.S. Senator and Governor of Virginia, as ambassador to England, France, and Spain, and finally as James Madison’s secretary of state, an office, at that time, seen as a stepping stone to the presidency. 

Monroe’s administration was largely successful, even though he tends to get lost in the shuffle of the Virginia Dynasty.  He had to preside over the nation after the costly war with Great Britain, as well as manage the nation’s economy after the onset of the Panic of 1819.  He won re-election in 1820 despite the depression, receiving all but one electoral vote.  Monroe was a strict constructionist, who vetoed the Cumberland Road Bill because he said the Constitution did not grant Congress the power to make such an appropriation.  He signed the Missouri Compromise Bill, which cooled the sectional controversy over slavery for 30 years.  In foreign affairs, he gave us the Monroe Doctrine, one of the great foreign policy papers in American history, completely in line with our traditional non-interventionist position.  Historians have ranked him as high as eighth in presidential polls.

James Buchanan also had a distinguished political resume, as impressive as any American president.  He served in the Pennsylvania state legislature, the U.S. House for ten years, where he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the U.S. Senate for two terms, chairing the Committee on Foreign Affairs, served as James K. Polk’s secretary of state, and was also ambassador to both Russia and Great Britain.  He  was even offered an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court but turned it down.  But with all that experience, and prestige, his presidency was a disaster, mainly due to his judgment or lack thereof. 

With the Supreme Court poised to rule on the Dred Scott case soon after his inauguration on March 4, 1857, Buchanan communicated, unethically, with Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, urging him to make a definitive ruling that would end the fight over slavery in the territories.  Rather than handing down a simple ruling that Dred Scott had no standing to sue in federal court, and leaving it at that, Taney, whether he followed the new president’s prodding or not, handed down a decision that caused the sectional crisis to burn red hot.  And with the Southern States leaving the Union one by one after the election of 1860, Buchanan did absolutely nothing, one way or the other.  He did not even evacuate Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, instead leaving that thorny issue for Lincoln, a situation that led to war rather than peaceful negotiations.  In short, Buchanan fiddled while Rome burned and historians have hammered him for it.

By contrast, Buchanan’s successor, Abraham Lincoln, who most Americans as well as academic historians place in the top spot, had almost no experience at all.  He served a few terms in the Illinois state legislature and one term in the U.S. House, which he himself said was a “flat failure.”  But the conventional historical wisdom is that Lincoln, because he preserved the Union and, supposedly, freed the slaves, was a great success.  I would argue, however, that Lincoln essentially shredded the Constitution to accomplish what he did and, because of that, he does not deserve such a high place in American presidential history.  The damage done to our federal republic is still with us today. 

But looking at it from the standpoint that he accomplished what he set out to do, even implementing the old Whig, now Republican, economic program of high tariffs, centralized banking, and federal-funded internal improvements and subsidies to big business, then he can be regarded as successful, to at least a portion of the country.  Yet if you asked most Americans in 1860 if they knew of Abraham Lincoln, the vast majority, because of his lack of experience, would not have had a clue.

Jimmy Carter also had very little experience and his presidency was the biggest failure of all.  Despite attending the U.S. Naval Academy and serving his country in uniform, Carter, when it came to matters of national security, proved pathetically weak and indecisive.  When radical Islamic thugs in Tehran seized the U.S. embassy, after Carter’s bungling led to the overthrow of the America-friendly Shah, the president did nothing but preside over his own embarrassment for 444 days, while citizens of the United States were held against their will by a group of religious thugs.  Even a military rescue attempt ended in disastrous failure.

Carter’s political experience consisted of a single term in the Georgia state senate and one term as governor but despite his service in Georgia, his domestic record is just as derisory as foreign affairs.  Carter proved unable to deal with crippling economic conditions that included a serious energy shortage.  The president followed liberals in Congress nearly over the cliff, as the nation faced inflation, unemployment, and interest rates all in double-digits.  The situation was so bad that Ted Kennedy challenged Carter for the party nomination in 1980.  Kennedy lost but Carter was crushed by Ronald Reagan in the fall.

Barack Obama’s meteoric rise has been nothing short of spectacular but this has led to questions about his experience to hold the office of president of the United States.  This is a major weak point his campaign must address.  But instead of puffing Obama up, they have, instead, engaged in a campaign to tear McCain’s vast experience down.

Wesley Clark recently launched a full frontal assault on national television against McCain.  “He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded — that wasn’t a wartime squadron.  In the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk,  It’s a matter of gauging your opponents and it’s a matter of being held accountable.  John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions.” 

And Barack Obama has?  Tangling with McCain on experience is not a wise strategy for the Obama campaign.  Though I find no correlation, many Americans do.

But instead of focusing on experience, voters should examine the record of every presidential candidate – any votes they have cast in legislative bodies as well as prior policy initiatives and speeches.  Voters can also determine judgment.  Simply look at the decisions he has made, even during the campaign.  But at the end of the day we are not going to know what kind of president any candidate might be until he finally takes office.