A republic, if you can keep it

James Madison was the fourth president of the United States.  He was one of the primary authors of both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and came to be known as the “Father of the Constitution.”

In 1817, Congress sent the Internal Improvements Bill to President Madison.  It called for spending money on roads, canals and making other infrastructure-type improvements.  Madison felt that the bill was unconstitutional, and so he vetoed it.  His explanation for the veto can be found here, but the meat of his opinion is this paragraph:

To refer the power in question to the clause “to provide for common defense and general welfare” would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms “common defense and general welfare” embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust. It would have the effect of subjecting both the Constitution and laws of the several States in all cases not specifically exempted to be superseded by laws of Congress, it being expressly declared “that the Constitution of the United States and laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges of every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” Such a view of the Constitution, finally, would have the effect of excluding the judicial authority of the United States from its participation in guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the General and the State Governments, inasmuch as questions relating to the general welfare, being questions of policy and expediency, are unsusceptible of judicial cognizance and decision.

Just like the enumerated powers of the Constitution didn’t give authority to Congress to spend money on roads then, there is nothing in the Constitution that gives Congress any authority to bailout the financial industry, the American auto industry, or any other industry.

I think it’s safe to say that Madison would have been opposed to these bailouts.  Boy could we use someone like him today.

Since I have decided to name my blog site,  ” A republic, if you can keep it,” I decided that my first post would discuss how we appear to be losing the fight to keep our republic.

Have you ever heard of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, or ISI?  The ISI does many things, but one of their main programs is called the American Civic Literacy Program.  It is an annual test to see how much Americans - specifically college students - actually know about American history and the founding principals of this country.  While the numbers change some from year to year, they continuously tell the same story: Americans do not have even a basic understanding of American history, especially the founding and Civil War eras, nor do they have a grasp of the economic and political principles that are the foundation of this great nation.

The ISI website is here, and there is a lot of good information there, including a test to see how you compare.  Their findings are quite sad really.  For example, 89.2% of all test takers scored a “D” or lower on the test.  What does it say about our society when 21% Americans don’t know where the phrase, “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” and the “separation of church and state” came from?

But unfortunately, there’s still more bad news.  The ISI has found that while most Americans think college should be teaching American history and its institutions, they are not. In fact, here is what the ISI found:

The average score for the college graduates who took ISI’s American civic literacy exam was 57%, an “F.” That was only 13 percentage points higher than the 44% earned by those who hold high school, but not college, diplomas.

There are more findings that you can read through on the ISI site.  While you’re there, take their test and see how you stack up.  Just so you know, I took the test online and only scored an 88%, so I have a bit of work to do myself.

Now, back to the title of this post.  What is so amazing, yet so easy to believe, is that elected office holders score WORSE than most Americans on this test.  I guess it’s no wonder that this country is in the situation it finds itself in today.

But that wasn’t how we started:

[Jefferson and Madison] stated their conviction that the university (of Virginia) would create leaders to preserve liberty: “Nor must we omit to mention, among the benefits of education, the incalculable advantage of training up able counselors to administer the affairs of our country in all its departments—legislative, executive, and judiciary—and to bear their proper share in the councils of our national government; nothing more than education advancing the prosperity, the power, and the happiness of the nation.”

As a nation, we have lost sight of Jefferson & Madison’s goal, and that is tragic.