Leahy - Covenant of Liberty

To Courtenay and Honor

Contents

Four Broken Promises: Why the Tea Party Arose

The English Roots of American Liberty

American Constitutionalism and the Formation of the Secular Covenant

Alexander Hamilton and the Broken Promise of Plain Meaning

The Republican Party and the Broken Promise of Free Markets

Woodrow Wilson and the Divine Right of the State

Republicans Fail to Offer an Alternative

Hoover, FDR, and the Broken Promise of the Fiscal Constitution

FDRs Assault on Free Markets and the Constitution

LBJ, Richard Nixon, and the Final Destruction of the Three Promises

The Broken Promise of Deliberative Accountability and the Rise of the Tea Party Movement

Restoring the Secular Covenant: A Tea Party America Based on the Constitution

Four Broken Promises: Why the Tea Party Arose

T he story of civilization can be told in the conflict between the individuals desire for liberty and the states need to establish social order. Every government, once established, seeks to centralize and consolidate its own power at the expense of individual liberty. This is as true for a democratic republic as it is for a constitutional monarchy, an absolute monarchy, an oligarchy, or a dictatorship.

From the moment the citizens of a country bind themselves in a constitutional covenant that guarantees the rights of the individual and defines and limits the powers of the government, the battle lines are drawn between the faithful defenders of that covenant and those who seek to corrupt it.

The Tea Party movement arose in 2009 because the political class of the United Statesin the form of members of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of our governmentbroke four promises found within the Constitution, thereby accelerating the natural tendency to centralize and consolidate power at the expense of individual liberty.

The first promiseto abide by the written words of the Constitutionwas broken before the ink was dry on the last documents that sealed the uniquely American secular covenant contained in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. The second promiseto refrain from interfering in private economic matterswas broken when the modern party that routinely pays homage to free markets first came to power.

The third promiseto honor the customs, traditions, and principles that make up the fiscal constitutionwas broken by Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt 143 years after the Constitution was ratified.

Had not the fourth and final promisethat members of the legislative branch would exercise thoughtful deliberation while giving respectful consideration to the views of their constituentsbeen broken in such a disdainful and audacious manner in January and February 2009, the grassroots activists who came to be known as the Tea Party movement would never have been compelled to action.

But like the proverbial frog that jumps out of a suddenly boiling pot of water when a slow, steady increase of temperature would have left him unaware, the activists were finally alerted to the danger they were in by the rushed passage of the $787 billion stimulus bill during the Obama administrations first thirty days in office.

In this book, I explain why the ideas found in the covenantal promises of the Constitution were held in the minds of Americans at the formation of the republic, how they passed down largely intact from generation to generation, how those promises were broken by a corrupted political class, and how average citizens remained faithful to the covenant and the promises contained within it.

O n my desk is a small old framed black-and-white photograph that provides a vivid reminder of my personal connection to the origins of our secular constitutional covenant. The photo, taken around 1927 outside a modest building that once served as a general store in a small upstate New York community, shows four generations of my family. My grandmother, then around ten years old, displays a bright smile, and holds hands with her mother, who stands next to her grandmother and great-grandmother, the latter a wizened gray-haired woman well past eighty for whom the effort of a smile seems too much to ask. As the four look at the camera, they form a visual link between me, my children, and the founding of the republic.

The old woman is Miranda Scott Dickinson, the great-granddaughter of Captain Andries Bevier, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and the original recipient of the land grant that brought his sons and their children to this small town in upstate New York. The census of 1790, taken before this familial migration occurred, shows Captain Bevier, aged fifty, as the owner of a midsize farm in Wawarsing, thirty miles to the west of Poughkeepsie on the other side of the Hudson River.

Captain Bevier had voted in the 1788 election that picked a delegate to represent Ulster County in the ratification convention for the U.S. Constitution, held in nearby Poughkeepsie that summer. It was there that Alexander Hamilton cynically professed his undying commitment to republican values, turned the tide in favor of ratification in a tight 3027 vote, and along with the other delegates signed a letter confirming that Congress had no implied powers beyond those specifically enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Perhaps, given his prominence in the local community, Captain Bevier had ventured the thirty miles east to sit in the galleries and watch as Mr. Hamilton waxed eloquent. If he did, I wonder if he believed Hamiltons speeches were sincere.

Later, Captain Bevier voted in the election in New Yorks 4th Congressional District that put John Hathorn in the First Congress, which passed the Bill of Rights in September 1789. In 1790 he voted for the members of the state assembly and state senate who voted to ratify the Bill of Rights that year.

Eight generations ago, this ancestor of mine was one of a million or so regular American citizens whose active participation in the ratification debates gave them a share in the title Founding Father.

In what way am I and my fellow citizens bound today by the same secular covenant as my ancestor? The answer lies in the rights guaranteed me in that document. Just as Captain Bevier had the ability to help form that secular covenant, so have I and millions like me exercised that right through direct participation in the political process, and by the knowledge that we can follow the same process to update and amend that covenant.

Whether I choose direct electoral and social engagement, or participation in amendment campaignseither through lobbying Congress or by persuading the state legislatures to hold another Constitutional Conventionthe opportunity to have skin in the game is the social contract by which I remain bound to that original covenant, just as the executive, judicial, and legislative branches are bound, along with the respective state governments.

In the aftermath of what we constitutional conservatives saw as the electoral debacle of 2008, I chose direct engagement. The means of engagement was the formation of an online conservative community called Top Conservatives on Twitter.

The question that intrigued me was thiswere there any conservatives on Twitter? If there were, then perhaps we could form an online community and develop a common strategy. On November 28, 2008, I put together a list of twenty-six conservative people I knew who were on Twitter, placed it on a blog, and sent out a tweet inviting other conservatives to join. Almost immediately, I was hit with an avalanche of requests. In the first twenty-four hours, I received more than five hundred requests from conservative Twitter users around the country to be added.