Richardcyoung.com

The Online Home of Author and Investor, Dick Young

  • Home
  • How We Are Different
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • Your Survival Guy
  • The Great Reset
  • COVID-19
  • My Rifles
  • Dividends and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • The Swiss Way
  • Dick Young
  • Debbie Young
  • Key West
  • Paris
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
  • NNT & Cholesterol
  • Work to Make Money/Invest to Save Money
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool

How Woodrow Wilson Finally Broke the Constitutional Order

January 12, 2023 By Richard C. Young

Woodrow Wilson, May 11, 1914. May 11, 1914 (date created or published later by Bain) Notes: Title from unverified data provided by the Bain News Service on the negatives or caption cards. Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).

You know that I have called Woodrow Wilson “The Worst President in American History.” Wilson was responsible for many of America’s worst deviations from the ideals of its founders, including the income tax, the Federal Reserve, and America’s first foray into globalism, joining World War I. At LewRockwell.com, Judge Andrew Napolitano explains how Wilson damaged the constitutional order of the United States, writing:

I have often thought that after Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson was our worst president. By worst is meant least faithful to the Constitution and most destructive of personal liberty.

With the exception of Lincoln’s dictatorship — during which the federal government used violence to crush the states’ natural right to secede from a compact they had voluntarily joined, and instead brought about the systematic murder of 750,000 persons — America from its founding to the early part of the 20th century more or less enjoyed the James Madison model for the federal government.

Under this model, the federal government could only legislate, regulate, spend and govern in the 16 discrete areas of human behavior that the Constitution delegated to it. All other areas of human behavior were left free to individual choices or governance by the states.

From and after Wilson’s presidency, the Madisonian model was replaced by the Wilsonian one. Under this model, the feds could legislate, regulate, spend and govern in any areas of human behavior for which there was a national political will, except for those areas that are expressly prohibited to them by the Constitution.

It would take another generation before the courts fully caught up to this, during which they gradually permitted Congress basically to write any law, regulate any behavior, spend any money, tax any event and intrude upon any relationship so long as it did not confront an express constitutional prohibition.

The Constitution itself — which Madison designed both to establish the federal government and to limit it — has been a dismal failure as an instrument of limitation. Madison himself wrote that only an external structure — external to the Constitution — could be relied upon to keep the federal government in its place.

He was referring to the power of the states to nullify acts of the federal government that the states determined were outside its constitutional authority. He was also referring to the natural right that individuals and political subdivisions have to leave the government, called secession. Just as the 13 colonies seceded from Great Britain, Madison argued, individuals can reject the government, smaller subdivisions can leave larger ones, and states can leave the feds.

In his masterpiece “Democracy: The God That Failed,” Hans-Hermann Hoppe articulates the truism that one is not truly free if one cannot leave the government. This applies to persons as well as to political subdivisions. The forced retention of persons under the government’s monopolistic jurisdiction is totalitarian.

Without the threat of nullification and secession, there is no effective restraint on the feds.

Now back to Wilson. His governmental sins were many — World War I, the Espionage Act, the federal income tax, the popular election of U.S. Senators, the Federal Reserve and his government by experts, known today as the administrative state.

This last insidious structure is neither fish nor fowl — it is not clearly in any branch of constitutional government. It writes rules, enforces them and interprets them. As an example, the U.S. Tax Code, enacted by Congress, runs to 2,600 pages. It is an indecipherable monstrosity. But the IRS’s own regulations — written by IRS bureaucrats, not by Congress — run to 9,000 pages. And the IRS’s interpretations of its own regulations run to 70,000 pages. This is Wilson’s government by experts.

According to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, this is an unconstitutional delegation of Congress’ legislative powers to entities within the government who are not answerable to the voters. Administrative agency heads are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But the folks who write the rules are permanent bureaucrats who do not change, no matter who is in the White House.

Read more here.

If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for my free weekly email.

Related Posts

  • Trump Restores Constitutional Order
  • Woodrow Wilson: “America’s Most Left-Wing Progressive President”
  • Joe Wilson
  • Going for Broke
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Richard C. Young
Richard C. Young is the editor of Young's World Money Forecast, and a contributing editor to both Richardcyoung.com and Youngresearch.com.
Latest posts by Richard C. Young (see all)
  • Will Western Tanks Be a Game Changer in Ukraine? - January 26, 2023
  • Is Putin’s Meat Grinder Working? - January 26, 2023
  • Pat Buchanan Retires - January 25, 2023

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • To Me There Isn’t a Better Way to Live
  • What Do You Know About Rho-Kinase?
  • Conflict Between Democratic Sovereignty and Transnational Progressivism (Globalism)
  • Does Big Government Create Poverty?
  • Your Survival Guy at Fidelity and Your RMD Compliance
  • U.S. Survival AR-7
  • Sen. Hawley Makes the Case Against U.S.-China Relationship
  • You Need to Seek Some Shelter for When Things Get Ugly
  • The Worst President in American History, Part I
  • What to Do about China?

Our Most Popular Posts

  • Pfizer CEO Terrified of Real Questions About His Vaccines
  • America's Super States and Stocks that Respect YOU
  • Give Me Clean, Efficient Gas
  • How the Biden Administration Is Destroying Our Energy Infrastructure
  • The Rich Seek More from Bank Accounts
  • Artificial Intelligence Is Coming, But It's Not Quite There
  • Is Kevin McCarthy’s GOP Willing to Do What It Takes on Debt?
  • The Sound of Silence
  • Strengthen Your Defenses Against Stroke
  • Forty Years Ago, Jogging a Mile a Day and Still Going

Disclosure

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • 4 Life Changing Words for Your Survival Guy: “You Should Try This”
  • Suddenly, Holding Cash Looks Good Again to Many
  • Anti-Carbon Crusaders in Davos Talk ESG and OPM
  • Is Passive Investing Already Passé?
  • Welcome to Hotel California, Where You Can Never Leave
  • What You’re Telling Me Matters
  • Can Banks Compete with Apple Pay and PayPal?
  • America’s Super States and Stocks that Respect YOU
  • Markets Are Calling the Fed’s Bluff
  • Don’t Let Your Lazy Cash Eat all Your Food

RSS Yoursurvivalguy.com

  • 4 Life Changing Words for Your Survival Guy: “You Should Try This”
  • Anti-Carbon Crusaders in Davos Talk ESG and OPM
  • Welcome to Hotel California, Where You Can Never Leave
  • What You’re Telling Me Matters
  • The Rich Seek More from Bank Accounts
  • California’s Wealth Tax Will Drive Out Remaining Rich Residents
  • Political Establishment Irate over Conservative Challenges to ESG
  • Congratulations Mikaela Shiffrin on 83rd Win
  • America’s Super States and Stocks that Respect YOU
  • NYC Bleeding Revenue as Wealthiest Flee the City

Will Western Tanks Be a Game Changer in Ukraine?

The Power of Words

4 Life Changing Words for Your Survival Guy: “You Should Try This”

Is Putin’s Meat Grinder Working?

California Unions Could Spike the Slowly Recovering Supply Chain

Ukraine Filled with Russian Sympathizers and Collaborators

Copyright © 2023 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives