After wading through a lot of legalese talk in twelve chapters that outlined how a series of people in the spirit of Hamilton continued to lie and ruin this unique experiment at federation, the last chapter was a breath of fresh air. We all know that the federal government is busted and is in fact a swamp. Most of our state governments have followed suit as they are contaminated with the same parasitic tendencies of HELPING the people, but only enough to keep them dependent so political jobs are secure for decades to come.
"Think locally, act locally" is the only path forward. As a society that has been brainwashed by the "one nation indivisible" myth, we are not one people. However, going back over the past 200 plus years you will see how so many politicians and judicial branch leaders (today, they are one in the same) have emphasized and reemphasized that it was the PEOPLE that wanted this government style and not the STATES.
Ignored along the way include the Treaty of Paris in 1783 which was directed to EACH state from the British Empire. Also ignored was the Electoral College, the Senate and even how a national presidential election is settled in the House of Representatives in voting AS states to resolve. This country was designed to be run as a federation like the cantons of Switzerland, where the general government is ALLOWED certain powers while the rest are reserved to the states/cantons. This CHECK in power is essential to keep a tyrannical federal government at bay, protecting the people of each state from this huge parasite.
This book outlines how the federal nature was eroded from the time of the Articles of Confederation, through what I can the coup d'tat of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 and through the lies of Hamilton before, during and after the convention, the general government's assumption of states debts after the Revolutionary War and a national bank. Finally in 1794 there was a rebellion against this surge in nationalism when many Revolutionary War vets rebelled against the Whiskey Tax. The method in which this was put down would give future presidents (Executive Branch) permission to utilize standing armies to put down "insurrections" WITHOUT obtaining state (canton) permission.
It is all downhill from here as Supreme Court Chief Justice Marshall acted for over three decades as a judicial activist to interpret the Constitution as HE would have it verses how the founders and authors had written it. Like Hamilton before him, Marshall considered the United States to be his country and NOT Virginia. [up until the War of Northern Aggression / War Between the States / The American Civil War (technically incorrect since the South did NOT want the North's territory) a vast majority of people here considered themselves to be citizens of their state first and foremost]
Marshall ushered in the expansion of federal courts throughout the land whereas before, state courts would hear cases involving federal legislation. Beyond this, during Marshall's tenure, judicial review of both federal AND state legislation would fall into the federal court's jurisdiction. Politics had entered the judicial branch of the federal government, never to leave.
Following Marshall was Joseph Story and his three decades on the Supreme Court bench, but his damage was done mainly by his work called "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States" which propelled the myths that Hamilton birthed and Marshall had sparked into a raging inferno of twisted logic toward ensuring a nationalistic bent would forever be at the root of every lawyer's training. No wonder the likes of Barack Obama could be a constitutional law professor and then govern the nation as he did. It was Joseph Story's words that led Abraham Lincoln to truly believe that the UNION preceded the STATES. Lincoln also knew that in order to wage war he could not ever admit that he was fighting STATES but said he was fighting an insurrection .. just like Washington did with the Whiskey Rebellion.
Following Story was Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black who entered the bench in 1937 (former Ku Klux Klan member and very anti-Catholic) and as a progressive used the words in the Fourteenth Amendment to codify what is called Incorporation Doctrine (1947) where the Bill of Rights were expanded to be enforced from the Federal level on everyone in every state in the USA on every state law. This doctrine was used to leverage a 1962 ruling that outlawed prayers or a moment if silence in public schools. This doctrine also places taxpayers on the hook for police mistakes as well as national legalized abortion. This is how everyone now wants the federal government to solve national political problems with national solutions.
So we in the United States have lost the ability to directly confront society's issues at a local level. Whether the subject is education, crime, healthcare, gun ownership, the environment we all want the President or Congress to solve that issue. The problem is that society is not the same in Georgia as it is in New York or California. Only decentralized solutions can offer a stabilizing force to PREVENT conflict and violence. Americans today are either angry (50%) or happy (50%) every 4 or 8 years depending on who is President (i.e or the word Hamilton would have preferred, Monarch or King)
What if it didn't matter who was president or which party was in power in Congress or how the Supreme Court ruled on something? A Jeffersonian approach worked well when the Massachusetts Puritans could not stand the Virginia Cavaliers ... it seems that a tyrannical government actually prefers these violent divisions so it can pretend to be the savior to all people to keep them safe.
Hamilton's Curse is alive and strong here in the 21st century, and the elites love it that way.
