Dear Commissioner xxx:

Thank you for your service to the community and region. Your efforts for liberty are noble, and your opposition to tyranny is just. I would hence inquire of you regarding certain basic political issues in the context of the USA.

Many books have been written about the period of US history in which the USA’s original constitution, the Articles of Confederation, were replaced by the Federal Constitution, but few have gone into the level of detail of how the constitutional change was effected nor offered such a blunt assessment as Dr. Murray Rothbard’s volume 5 of Conceived in Liberty, published in the last several years. (See https://mises.org/library/conceived-liberty-volume-5-new-republic-1784-1791/html for a free online version.) Here is his blunt assessment:

“Given the urban support, the split among the farmer, and the support from wealthy educated elites, it is not surprising that the nationalist forces were able to execute their truly amazing political coup d’etat which illegally liquidated the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with the Constitution. In short, they were able to destroy the original individualist and decentralized program of the American Revolution.”

I would request your thoughts on this assessment, especially in light of the fact that the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 says that the states arising from the Northwest Territory, like Michigan, are legally pledged to be under the Articles of Confederation and its legal amendments. I would also request your thoughts on Patrick Henry’s assessment of the dangerous ramifications of abandoning the Articles of Confederation and replacing it with the Federal Constitution, such as found online at https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/340/henry.html?fbclid=IwAR2uxADSVBuv_ouLCRUwSqkhUhaeeiYYF3fiEBBXpeNrbBhMXXz6mXYduWM :

“The Confederation, this same despised government, merits, in my opinion, the highest encomium: it carried us through a long and dangerous war; it rendered us victorious in that bloody conflict with a powerful nation; it has secured us a territory greater than any European monarch possesses: and shall a government which has been thus strong and vigorous, be accused of imbecility, and abandoned for want of energy? Consider what you are about to do before you part with the government. Take longer time in reckoning things; revolutions like this have happened in almost every country in Europe; similar examples are to be found in ancient Greece and ancient Romeinstances of the people losing their liberty by their carelessness and the ambition of a few… I acknowledge that licentiousness is dangerous, and that it ought to be provided against; I acknowledge, also, the new form of government may effectually prevent it: yet there is another thing it will as effectually do- it will oppress and ruin the people.“

Finally, I would request your thoughts on Dr. Rothbard’s conclusion, as found at the end of his book:

“With the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the new government was now a fact and the Antifederalists would never again agitate for another constitutional convention to weaken American national power and return to a more decentralized and restrained polity. From now on American liberals [in the classical sense of that word], relying on the Bill of Rights and the Tenth Amendment, would go forth and do battle for Liberty and against Power within the framework of the American Constitution as states’-righters and Constitutionalists. Their battle would be a long and gallant one, but ultimately doomed to fail, for by accepting the Constitution, the liberals would only play with dice loaded implacably against them. The Constitution, with its inherently broad powers and elastic clauses, would increasingly support an ever larger and more powerful central government. In the long run, the liberals, though they could and did run a gallant race, were doomed to lose—and lose indeed they did.“

Sincerely,

J. Parnell McCarter

Jenison, Michigan