Although we keep hearing from far-right activists that the Constitution is a Bible-based document that belongs solely to the Tea Party, today WorldNetDaily tells us that the nation’s founders were wrong to replace the Articles of Confederation (1781-1789) with the Constitution. WND columnist Ilana Mercer writes that the anti-Federalists were prophetic and right after all, thanks to Obama.
“Having prophesied that Philadelphia was the beginning of the end of the freedoms won in the American Revolution, our Anti-Federalist philosophical fathers fought to forestall the inevitable,” Mercer laments. “They failed.”
This isn’t the first time a WND columnist has attacked the Constitution: In 2011, WND’s Robert Ringer maintained that the replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution is to blame for Obama’s “communist dictatorship.”
Should the federal constitution be ratified, there would be “no checks, no real balances,” thundered Patrick Henry. Instead, the country would live under a “powerful and mighty empire.” Writing under the assumed name “Agrippa,” yet another Anti-Federalist scoffed at the idea of an enormous “uncompounded republic,” “containing 6 million white inhabitants,” all “reduced to the same standard of morals or habits and of laws.” This “in itself is an absurdity,” mocked “Agrippa.”
The tower of Babel that is 21st century America is home not to 6 but 317 million alienated, antagonistic individuals, diverse to the point of distrust. These modern-day Americans, some of whose ancestors were brought together by a “profound intellectual and emotional attachment to individual liberty,” possess little by way of “social capital” to unify them. Surveys say Americans today avoid one another, hunkering down unhappily in front of the TV, instead. This would have hardly surprised “Agrippa.”
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The Commerce Clause has given us the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. ACA, or Obamacare, forces 21st-century Americans to purchase the federal government’s version of health insurance, or risk punishment. The Clause was the focus of scathing Anti-Federalist critique. “What is meant by ‘the power to regulate’?” they demanded to know. “What, precisely, is ‘commerce’?” The new Constitution, argued the prescient Anti-Federalists, is mum on these matters, providing little by way of precision in definition.
Brilliant too was “Brutus” in his prediction that, if instituted, the “new system of government” would see the federal judiciary “swallow up the State courts.” Back then, “Brutus” saw Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution as vesting the judicial branch with the kind of power that would bring about “the entire subversion of the legislative, executive, and judiciary power of the individual states.”
As the saying goes, “A prophet is not without honor save in his own country.”
To observe Obama (and predecessor) in action is to realize that Massachusetts delegate Elbridge Gerry and New York Anti-Federalist “Cato” were prophets who deserve a lot more honor in their own country. Both forewarned of an imperial presidency in the making. “‘The president,’ wrote ‘Cato,’ has so much power that his office ‘differs very immaterially from the establishment of monarchy in Great Britain.’”
Indeed, President Barack Obama habitually “uses executive orders to circumvent federal legislation.” He exempts his “friends or political cronies” from oppressive laws his subjects must obey. And he orders the suspension of “duly enacted [immigration] law” – even “barring enforcement” – because he does not like the law.
A propagandized population has a hard time choosing worthy heroes. It is high time Americans celebrate the Anti-Federalists, for they were correct in predicting the fate of freedom after Philadelphia.
To deny that the Anti-Federalists were right is to deny reality.
Having prophesied that Philadelphia was the beginning of the end of the freedoms won in the American Revolution, our Anti-Federalist philosophical fathers fought to forestall the inevitable. They failed.
