Jeffersonian Democracy - March 09, 2009

We all should know that the principal author of the Declaration of Independence was destine to become our nations third President- Thomas Jefferson

Lately, has anger arises from federal activities (i.e. huge budget, higher taxes, new mandated unfunded programs for states) some of Jefferson’s thoughts have become more poignant.

Jefferson maintained that,

· "[a] democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

· The national government is a dangerous necessity to be instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community; it should be watched closely and circumscribed in its powers.

· The separation between church and state is the best method to keep religion free from intervention by the federal government, government free of religious disputes, and religion free from corruption by government.

· The federal government must not violate the rights of the individual.

· The federal government must not violate the rights of the states.

A key provision of the Kentucky Resolutions was Resolution 2, which denied that Congress had more than a few penal powers:

That the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations, and no other crimes, whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, not prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” therefore the act of Congress, passed on the 14th day of July, 1798, and intituled “An Act in addition to the act intituled An Act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States,” as also the act passed by them on the — day of June, 1798, intituled “An Act to punish frauds committed on the bank of the United States,” (and all their other acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution,) are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory.

Later, Jefferson drafted the language for other resolutions when New England states refused to follow the Embargo Act of 1807 based on the authority of states to stand up to laws deemed by those states to be unconstitutional (though they did not in fact try to nullify the laws). Another embargo passed in 1813 that hurt New England trade was questioned once again by Connecticut and Massachusetts; the supreme courts of both states issued their objections, including this statement from the Massachusetts General Court:

“A power to regulate commerce is abused, when employed to destroy it; and a manifest and voluntary abuse of power sanctions the right of resistance, as much as a direct and palpable usurpation. The sovereignty reserved to the states, was reserved to protect the citizens from acts of violence by the United States, as well as for purposes of domestic regulation. We spurn the idea that the free, sovereign and independent State of Massachusetts is reduced to a mere municipal corporation, without power to protect its people, and to defend them from oppression, from whatever quarter it comes. Whenever the national compact is violated, and the citizens of this State are oppressed by cruel and unauthorized laws, this Legislature is bound to interpose its power, and wrest from the oppressor its victim.”

Later, most notably Andrew Jackson (you know, the guy on the $20 bill), the idea that states could actually invoke their rights was rejected “I consider...the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed." He also denied the right of secession: "The Constitution...forms a government not a league...To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States is not a nation."