Book Review: Samuel Adams

I just finished the delightful Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution, by Mark Puls.

The book follows chronologically the life and political career of Samuel Adams. While he saved little, if any, of his letters and writings, we're able to see the man by the piecing together of letters from John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, and his Massachusetts friends and allies such as James Otis and Joseph Warren.

We're left with the image of a man so devoted to his countrymen and their cause that he suffered financial hardships, personal insults, and the wrath of the most powerful empire on earth, all without seeking glory or a simple thank-you. Some favorite parts of the book:

Adams, using the pen-name of Valerius Poplicola ("friend of the people") wrote: "Is it not high time for the people of this country explicitly to declare whether they will be freemen or slaves? It is an important question, which ought to be decided. It concerns us more than anything in this life."

A British Colonel, Fenton, sought out Adams with a discreet message: he would be richly rewarded and receive public advancement if he would cooperate. Fenton gave Adams this frank advice: he should not provoke his majesty any further. Adams replied: "Sir, I trust I have long since made my peace with the king of kings. No personal consideration shall induce me to abandon the righteous cause of my country. Tell Governor Gage it is the advice of Samuel Adams to him no longer to insult the feelings of an exasperated people."

Oh! And this great story:

For several years, James Otis had been under the care of family in Andover, Massachusetts. He would often turn to his sister and say that "I hope when God Almighty in his providence shall take me out of time into eternity, it will be by a flash of lightning!" On May 23, 1783, a fierce thunderstorm characteristic of the early summer season in New England descended to darken the skies. Otis struggled to the door to behold the clashing elements and the exploding thunder, reminiscent of the cannon fire of the revolution. Between loud thunderclaps, a bolt of lightning, which Mercy thought appeared like a darting serpent, struck Otis in the chest. Electricity shot through his body, and he fell to the floor, dying instantly.

Overall, a well-done take on the "Father of the American Revolution." Arguably one of the most important of our founding fathers.

Interview With Dr. Kevin Gutzman

Dr. Kevin Gutzman, author of the recently reviewed Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution, was kind enough to answer some questions I had upon completion of his book.

Dr. Gutzman is associate professor of American history at Western Connecticut State University. He received his Master of Public Affairs from the University of Texas, his J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in American history from the University of Virgina. Dr. Gutzman is the author of Virginia's American Revolution: From Dominion to Republic, 1776-1840 and was a featured expert in the documentary film John Marshall: Citizen, Statesman and Jurist. He as written scores of articles and encyclopedia entries, as well as reviews of books, films, and exhibitions for magazines academic and popular.

The following is the text of our interview via e-mail.

MT: Dr. Gutzman, thanks for agreeing to answer some questions in this format.
KG: You are welcome.

MT: I’d first like to ask you if you think the Judiciary is “broken” in the sense that it isn’t working the way it is supposed to; and if so, what do you see as the leading cause of this?

KG: The problem is not the judiciary, but the tradition of judicial review. Over time, what was originally conceived as the federal judiciary’s role in enforcing the Constitution against Congress – that is, in preventing Congress from legislating in areas intended to have been reserved to the states – has come to be a wide-ranging legislative role. The federal courts rarely act as protector of the states against a Congress rapacious for power, but instead usually join Congress in grabbing power intended to be reserved to the states. The result is that instead of a decentralized government in which the overwhelming majority of policies affecting Americans on a daily basis are made by elected, state legislators, we have come to have a highly centralized government in which many important questions are decided by unelected, unaccountable lawyers: federal judges.

MT: How did this begin? What were the origins of judicial review and the courts siding with Congress against the states?

KG: The power of judicial review, of judges’ deciding whether acts of Congress were consistent with the federal Constitution, was said by Federalists during the ratification debates to be inherent in the Constitution. However, they did not say that it would be exercised against state statutes, as it has been since Fletcher v. Peck (1810). Fletcher involved a completely specious construction of the Contracts Clause of Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution, and ever since then, federal courts have felt increasingly at liberty to strike down state laws on the flimsiest of bases.

The Ur-text of federal courts siding with Congress against the states is John Marshall’s opinion for the Supreme Court in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). In that case, Marshall was at great pains to “correct” the interpretation of the Constitution offered in oral argument by Luther Martin, counsel for Maryland, who happened to be one of the Constitution’s chief authors; according to Marshall, who was not a Philadelphia Convention delegate, Martin was simply mistaken to think that the powers of Congress were limited to those listed in Article I, Section 8, but extended to various implicit grants of power. When James Madison read Marshall’s opinion, he correctly noted that if people had known that this construction would be given to the Constitution, it never would have been ratified. I provide a detailed account of the most important state’s ratification dispute in Virginia’s American Revolution: From Dominion to Republic, 1776-1840 (Lexington, 2007).

MT: I thought on multiple occasions that your book stood as a pretty strong indictment of our educational system, both primary and the university level. What are your thoughts on this, and on the way a person is educated in the legal profession in the 21st century?

KG: Legal education in America is, when it comes to the Constitution, simply inappropriate. Constitutional law is treated as a common law field, one in which what matters are solely the precedent established by federal courts. What should be taught, however, is what the Constitution meant to the people at the time it was being ratified. It is, after all, what the people ratified, and not what the judges made of it, that is “the supreme law of the land.” At least, that is the theory.

People who study the Constitution below the law school level typically study it in the same way as do prospective lawyers: by reading huge volumes of court precedents. One literally would know more about the Constitution by reading it without reading the typical constitutional law casebook than he would be reading the casebook, so this mode of instruction is highly problematic. Once an error is written into the body of judicial opinions “implementing” the Constitution, it is unlikely ever to be corrected, and so future students are taught the error as if it were accurate. In effect, erroneous opinions operate as constitutional amendments.

MT: What are your thoughts on the provisions for removing judges from office? Are they too high a hurdle? What should constitute “good behavior?”

KG: The problem here is not the Constitution itself, but Senate precedent. Unfortunately, the Senate decided in the impeachment trial of Justice Samuel Chase two centuries ago that “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the grounds for which an impeached federal judge can be removed from office, must be indictable crimes. As the great Raoul Berger demonstrated in his Impeachment, however, the Senate erred: a “high crime” or “high … misdemeanor” was a political offense in the English system from which the phrase was borrowed by the Philadelphia Convention — such as, say, amending the Constitution under the guise of interpreting it. By that standard, federal judges such as Earl Warren or William Brennan heartily deserved impeachment.

MT: What are your thoughts on corrective action for addressing some of the missteps of the Judiciary as you mentioned in your book?

KG: The Constitution provides four mechanisms for correcting the courts’ errant ways: 1) constitutional amendment; 2) restriction of courts’ jurisdiction; 3) the appointment process; and 4) impeachment.

Constitutional amendment is, of course, difficult, but should be used more frequently. It was a grave error for James Madison to counsel Thomas Jefferson after the Revolution of 1800 that there should not be an American tradition of amending the Constitution to correct recent errors, and I think that his advice should be abandoned.

Restriction of courts’ jurisdiction is, by and large, entirely in Congress’s discretion. Since the Constitution does not require that there be any federal courts other than the Supreme Court or that they have original jurisdiction beyond the few types enumerated in Article III, Congress could at will deny federal courts jurisdiction over, say, cases involving the burning of flags or the notification of parents that their children have had abortions. This remedy requires only a majority in each house of Congress.

The Senate has essentially abdicated its responsibility throughout most of American history in relation to the appointment of federal judges. It should play a major role in ensuring that the president appoints not merely able, but also constitutionalist candidates. Few senators seem to believe that this is incumbent upon them.

Finally, I have been on record since 1990 in favor of a campaign of impeachments of lawless federal judges. It would do the country quite a lot of good, go a long way toward restoring the federal Constitution, if Congress undertook to remove the foremost judicial legislators from office. It would also serve, as the French say, pour encourager les autres!

MT: It seems that the other branches of government sometimes act as if upholding the Constitution is the responsibility of the Judiciary alone. What do you think it will take before the other branches of government begin to uphold the Constitution?

KG: We certainly should not leave the impression that the judiciary is the only problem. Presidents feel free to propose unconstitutional laws, to act as if the law did not apply to them, to wage war without involving Congress in the decision-making process, and in various other ways to violate the Constitution. Congress feels free to legislate in any way that comes to mind, regardless of the Tenth Amendment’s reservation of powers to the states. Yet, since they have the power of judicial review, for the courts to be directed into the right path would go a long way toward correcting the other branches’ misbehavior.

MT: The contributors and readers of this blog are firm believers in the principles of balanced government. What are your thoughts on the prospects of balanced government as a political movement?

KG: By “balanced government,” I presume that you have in mind a situation in which each branch of the federal government is in the proper relationship to the others? I agree with the great Virginia senator and political theorist John Taylor of Caroline, who said that far more important than checks and balances — some form of separation of powers — within the federal government was the principle of division of powers — the assignment of responsibility in only a few areas to the center, with most reserved to the states — between the states and the federal government. Alas, this most significant of American governmental principles is now largely abandoned. However, one can hope for its resuscitation, and the first step toward that goal is to educate Americans at large about their real constitutional heritage.

Thanks again to Dr. Gutzman. I take full responsibility for any misspellings or other formatting errors as I'm exhausted and posting late; and accidents do happen. Be sure to get your copy of the Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution; it is very well-done and a necessary part of any library.

Book Review: The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution

I learned about this latest installment to the "PIG" series when I heard the author, Dr. Kevin Gutzman, on the Michael Medved show probably three months ago.

The book is very well done and quite accessible. I spent a lot more time with it than I might another book of similar length as I kept referencing the Constitution, the Federalist, and my Heritage Guide to the Constitution (not to mention a couple of biographies of You-Know-Who) whenever I'd read something that I wanted to confirm or verify.

There are more areas where I find agreement with Dr. Gutzman than disagreement; one inevitable and notable exception is the Lincoln legacy. It has been my understanding that while Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, it was in limited situations (namely to protect a supply line into D.C.) and was followed up shortly thereafter by Congressional endorsement. It was an appropriate time to do so (war and/or insurrection was present).

There's of course a larger question of legitimacy at stake here which might need some exploration. I acknowledge that the Union in the first place was a voluntary one and could be undone. The separation of political bonds such as this isn't an act to be taken lightly nor without a valid basis for making such a break; there wasn't a "long train of abuses and usurpations" compelling the insurrection.

Suppose the state of Illinois decided that given the budget crisis, citizens could buy a license for a cool $100,000 to enslave as many illegal aliens as one could. Or suppose that retirees in the state of Oregon have become too much of a drain on the rest of the state, such that the state decides that every person over the age of 60 is henceforth "D-N-R." In each case, the state is depriving a class of persons of one of their inalienable rights; and the deprivation of the right to life is an oppression no more serious than depriving someone of liberty or the fruits of their person. While the issue of jurisdiction appears clear (domestic matters not constitutionally appropriate at the federal level), the obligation of the general government is not.

Having addressed my one area of disagreement, I could spend days posting on the excellent points of this book. My hope is that Dr. Gutzman will instead humor me and the readers here with answers to some questions. I hope to be able to post more along these lines in the not-too-distant future.

In the meantime, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution remains an essential for everyone's library, so if you don't yet have it, run out and get it. Yes, I mean right now.

If Democrats Had Any Brains...

I recently read Ann Coulter's latest effort If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans. This is going to be the AFB's shortest-ever book review.

Ann's book is a collection of quotes, organized by topic, from her prior books, columns and speeches. If you like her stuff, as I do, you'll like the book. There's little or no new ground covered here, but she knows what her fans like, and she delivers the goods.

Book Review: America Alone

Yes, I know this has been out for a while and I'm a little late to the party. Nevertheless, in the event you haven't read Mark Steyn's brilliant America Alone, I recommend it without reservation.

Well, on second thought, maybe with one reservation: the night I first opened the book up and began reading, it so unnerved me that I tossed and turned all that night. And I'm not one to lose sleep over much.

Briefly, and then I'll share my favorite parts, Steyn looks at the Islamist threat from a demographic perspective, something I hadn't heard any other commentator do. The replacement birth rate is 2.1 children per woman, and Steyn educates us on the birth rates of Western nations vs. Muslim nations. It's not pretty. Spain, for example, has a birth rate of 1.1; this means that the population will decrease by half every 35 years, an astounding statistic.

Some favorites...

P. 45 - Steyn addresses the dynamic in modern societies, particularly Europe: "Somewhere along the way these countries redefined the relationship between government and citizen into something closer to pusher and addict. And once you've done that, it's very hard to persuade the addict to cut back his habit." Sound like a growing problem of ours, as well?

P. 85 - "But Islam's appropriation of the gay lobby's framing of the debate is very artful. It's the most explicit example of how Islam uses politically correct self-indulgent victimology as a cover. You'll recall that most Western media outlets declined to publish those Danish cartoons showing the prophet Mohammed. Thus, even as they were piously warning of a rise in bogus 'Islamophobia' - i.e., entirely justified concerns over Islamic terrorism and related issues - they were themselves suffering from genuine Islamophobia - i.e., a very real fear that, if they published those cartoons, an angry mob would storm their offices. It was a fine example of how the progressive mind's invented psychoses leave it without any words to describe real dangers."

P. 159-160 - Steyn discusses what he calls "defense welfare" as part of the cause of Europe's problems. With no need to spend money on defense, they spent ever more on social programs. Says he: "Like any other form of welfare, defense welfare is a hard habit to break and damaging to the recipient."

P.187 - Steyn discusses the role of the state in failing to "protect" us. "But the only reason 'a box cutter can bring down a tower' is because on September 11 our defenses against such a threat were exclusively the province of the state. If nineteen punks with box cutters had tried to pull some stunt in the parking lot of a sports bar, they'd have been beaten to a pulp." Quite so.

P.193 - the importance of will. "In a culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of 'suttee' - the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: 'You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.'" Non-judgemental multiculturalism, he obviously notes, is a fraud.

Overall, very well-done and both insightful and witty.

AFB Book Review

I just finished Pat Buchanan's relevant and somewhat scary State of Emergency. I'm thankful I read it, although I'll never be the same (read: ignorant, at ease).

Buchanan takes great pains to illustrate the duplicity of the Mexican government and provides a historical context against which to assess the current invasion of illegals: truly, they are trying to take back lands that they have lost.

Some favorite parts...

Buchanan quotes JFK at length in one chapter of the book. As one of the "great" Democrat Presidents, JFK is adored by the Democrats, but his words are an indictment of the current policy of amnesty advocated by the Democrats (and many Republicans). It is worth noting that when people say the same things JFK said, they are labelled racists (p. 238).

He also takes an interesting look at illegal and unchecked immigration: how it hurts the poorest Americans, and wisely illustrates this by quoting Booker T. Washington (p. 230). He also notes that Samuel Gompers (founder of the AFL) was a strong opponent of unchecked immigration, and that this too is an example of how the poorest Americans are harmed by unchecked immigration.

Buchanan offers a number of great ideas, among them a "time-out" on immigration altogether (p. 251). This would give us the necessary time to assimilate the roughly 36 million immigrants in the country today.

Great point I never considered: the elites want illegal and unchecked immigration because it is a means of an enormous transfer of wealth to them.

OK, I've said enough. I recommend the book without reservation. Well, one comment: you'll feel a little like Neo in the first "Matrix" movie - once you go down that rabbit hole, there's no going back.

My new mantra is build the fence; throw out the illegals (no amnesty); time-out on immigration; assimilate those who are here legally; and legislate a common sense annual immigrant allowance (it was 157,000 a year in JFK's day, a far cry from the million and a half a year that is happening today).

AFB Book Review

I just finished Rodney Stark's excellent The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, and I recommend it without reservation.

From the jacket summary: "...Stark advances a revolutionary, controversial, and long overdue idea: that Christianity and its related institutions are, in fact, directly responsible for the most significant intellectual, political, scientific, and economic breakthroughs of the past millennium."

And might I say he does a masterful job of debunking several myths along the way to clearly supporting this theory.

Some of my favorite parts of the book? In assessing the rise of free market economics in the Italian city-states (P. 84), he asserts that "relatively democratic regimes" are a "necessary precondition for the development of capitalism."

He devotes some considerable space to the idea of "religious economy" (P. 198). He describes a "market" of current and potential adherents, organizations seeking to attract or retain adherents and how this dynamic has an economic aspect to it. An interesting historical perspective exists when one considers state churches as "monopolies" and how this affected cultural developments - like any monopoly, firms become lazy and inefficient.

Lastly, he quotes a book by David Aikman (P. 235) to illustrate "that Christianity remains an essential element in the globalization of modernity." The conclusion itself delivers this message powerfully in the words of a leading Chinese scholar who spent years studying the West: it is our religion that is the heart and soul of our culture, and the foundation of our success.

Amen to that.

Book Review: Journey of the Jihadist

Although I promised not long ago (see my post entitled "Pro-Family" under August archives) that I wouldn't make movie reviews a part of this blog, I never made any such promise when it comes to books. I'm a voracious reader and since I'm free to post pretty much whatever I want, you're stuck with book reviews when they're worth mentioning.

I just finished Fawaz Gerges' book, Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy and I can unequivocally draw the following conclusion: as with biographies, if you're looking for the truth about a topic, one must seek out source materials to avoid individual biases.

Jihadist was an effort by Gerges to interview key figures of Muslim militancy, and he used his Lebanese background to gain access to people that an otherwise Christian Western journalist might not achieve. It is a pity that his conclusions are colored by his early experiences in Lebanon.

Gerges recounts growing up in Lebanon and how idyllic his youth was, until things began to change in the 1970s. Gerges takes great pains to illustrate for us that Islam is not an inherently violent religion, using first-person accounts with Muslims as his evidence of that theory. The problem with using personal experience to make a generalization is one of sample size; I am certain that there were many good Germans who helped Jews escape or hide in Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and yet, this doesn't negate the evil of the Nazi regime nor the complicity of most Germans. Likewise, there are accounts of white Southerners who assisted in freeing black slaves in the United States during the Civil War; this doesn't invalidate the proper generalization that the South was engaged in the vile and despicable institution of slavery.

There are a couple of points worthy of sharing... and commentary. First, as I mentioned to Samuel one day, Gerges completely missed the date on The Battle of Mogadishu (which he places in August 1993; in fact it was October of that year).

Let's go to the text, shall we? Regarding the Beruit bombing in 1983 that killed our Marines (page 87): "Telephone calls by an unknown group called Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility: 'We are the soldiers of God,' said a voice in classical Arabic on behalf of the mysterious group. 'We are neither Iranians, Syrians, nor Palestinians, but Muslims who follow the precepts of the Qur'an.'" (emphasis mine)

Is Jihad a personal duty of every Muslim? According to a militant named Abu-Jandal who fought in Bosnia (page 115-116): "By the time he departed from Bosnia a few months later, he viewed jihad as a permanent and personal duty, a pillar of Islam: 'There is a dilemma and a misunderstanding that most Muslims face. It can be summed up in that jihad has become merely a matter of thought for them, and they forgot that jihad is something that God has prescribed to us as a religious duty, like prayers, fasting, alms-giving, and pilgrimages.'" (emphasis mine) Got that? Jihad is as necessary as praying, according to God.

Later (page 126) Abu-Jandal recounts how they would offer condolences to friends who got married, because they couldn't run off and fight any more. Says Gerges: "The context of this notion is the Qur'anic verse in which Allah says that one cannot be a true Muslim unless one holds Allah and his messenger Mohammed in higher esteem than one's loved ones and one's material possessions." Which sounds a little bit like "Thou shall love the Lord your God above all" except Christians and Jews generally don't use this verse as justification for killing others.

In all, Gerges paints an almost schizophrenic analysis of militant Islam. He closes the book on a low note - after the invasion of Iraq, we've reached a low point of relations between Islam and the West, and he recounts this for us in his conversation with a militant named Kamal, who was very active in the early years of militancy in Egypt. According to Kamal (page 236): "Muslims feel they are facing an existential threat, a 'new Christian crusade allied with Jewish fundamentalism' whose goal is to neutralize Islam by discrediting 'positive Islamic values like jihad, fighting, martyrdom, and the idea that all Muslims belong to one ummah. The new crusade is targeting traditional Islam,' he said." (emphasis mine again)

Jihadist is an interesting, if just a fairly well-thought out book, whose inability to decisively summarize the nature of the conflict betrays a certain moral confusion of the author. Sadly, rather than focus on the problems inherent in Islam, most of the book portrays militancy as merely an effect of Western foreign policy.

But there's a good lesson to take away. We must look at the world as it is, and not as we remember it, or as we wish it to be.