-Caveat Lector-
Toward an American Revolution
Exposing the Constitution
and other Illusions
Jerry Fresia
South End Press
Boston, MA
------------------------------------------------
Copyright � 1988 by Jerry Fresia
Cover design by Dan Spock
Produced by the South End Press collective
Printed in the USA
First edition, first printing
Copyrights are still required for book
production in the United States. However, in our
case it is a disliked necessity. Thus, any
properly footnoted quotation of up to 500
sequential words may be used without permission,
so long as the total number of words quoted does
not exceed 2,000. For longer quotations or for a
greater number of total words, authors should
write for permission to South End Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
Fresia, Gerald John.
Toward and American revolution: exposing the
Constitution and Other illusions by Jerry
Fresia.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and
index.
ISBN 0-89608-298-9: $25.00. ISBN 0-89608-297-0
(pbk.): $10.00
1. Elite (Social sciences)--United
States--History. 2. Social classes--Political
aspects--United States--History. 3. United
STates--Constitutional history. I. Title.
JK1788.F74 1988
306'.2'0973--dc19 8-14784
South End Press, 116 Saint Botolph St., Boston,
MA 02115
------------------------------------------------
In memory of Malcolm X
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1:
Afraid To Reflect
Part I: A Constitution that Disrespects its
People
Chapter 2:
Counterrevolutionay Tendencies
Chapter 3:
The Constitution: Resurrection of an
Imperial System
Part II: A System of Injustice
Chapter 4:
The Lie
Chapter 5:
The Constitution and Secret Government
Part III: A Song Without Knees
Chapter 6:
When Protestors Become Police
Chapter 7:
The Need for Revolutionaries
Appendix A: Constitution of the USA
Appendix B: Federalist Paper #10
Index
------------------------------------------------
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Kenneth M. Dolbeare, Nancy
Netherland, Richard Mansfield, Sandia Siegel,
and Bethany Weidner for their criticisms and
suggestions, and John McGee for his technical
support. I would like to thank the members of
South End Press for their work and their
confidence in me, especially Cynthia Peters
whose editorial support was helpful in many
ways. And finally, I would like to thank my
parents, Armand and Vera, for their long and
unwavering support, their insights, and their
criticism.
------------------------------------------------
Rise and demand; you are a burning
flame
-Montreux
------------------------------------------------
1
------------------------------------------------
Afraid to Reflect
What I relate is the history of the
next two centuries. I describe what is
coming, what can no longer come
differently: the advent of nihilism.
This future speaks even now in a
hundred signs; this destiny announces
itself everywhere...For some time now,
our whole European culture has been
moving as toward a catastrophe, with a
tortured tension that is growing from
decade to decade: restlessly,
violently, headlong like a river that
wants to reach the end, that no longer
reflects, that is afraid to reflect.1
- Frederick Nietzsche, 1888
Consider certain features of the lives of three
men. The first was a very wealthy man. In l787,
many considered him the richest man in all the
thirteen states. His will of l789 revealed that
he owned 35,000 acres in Virginia and 1,119
acres in Maryland. He owned property in
Washington valued (in l799 dollars) at $l9,132,
in Alexandria at $4,000, in Winchester at $400,
and in Bath at $800. He also held $6,246 worth
of U.S. securities, $10,666 worth of shares in
the James River Company, $6,800 worth of stock
in the Bank of Columbia, and $1,000 worth of
stock in the Bank of Alexandria. His livestock
was valued at $15,653. As early as 1773, he had
enslaved 216 human beings who were not
emancipated until after he and his wife had both
died.2
The second man was a lawyer. He often expressed
his admiration of monarchy and, correspondingly,
his disdain and contempt for common people. His
political attitudes were made clear following an
incident which occurred in Boston on March 5,
1770. On that day, a number of ropemakers got
into an argument with British soldiers whose
occupation of Boston had threatened the
ropemakers' jobs. A fight broke out and an angry
crowd developed. The British soldiers responded
by firing into the crowd, killing several. The
event has since become known as the Boston
Massacre. The soldiers involved in the shooting
were later acquitted thanks, in part, to the
skills of the lawyer we have been describing,
who was selected as the defense attorney for the
British. He described the crowd as "a motley
rabble of saucy boys, negroes, and molattoes,
Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs."3
The life of the third man was more complex, more
filled with contradiction than the other two. He
was wealthy. He owned over 10,000 acres and by
1809 he had enslaved 185 human beings. States
one biographer, "He lived with the grace and
elegance of many British lords; his house slaves
alone numbered twenty-five." Yet slavery caused
him great anxiety; he seems to have sincerely
desired the abolition of slavery but was utterly
incapable of acting in a way which was
consistent with his abolitionist sympathies. He
gave his daughter twenty-five slaves as a
wedding present, for example. And when
confronted with his indebtedness of $107,000 at
the end of his life in 1826, he noted that at
least his slaves constituted liquid capital. He
had several children by one of his slaves and
thus found himself in the position of having to
face public ridicule or keep up the elaborate
pretense that his slave children did not exist.
He chose the latter course and arranged,
discreetly, to have them "run away."4
Who are these three men? We know them well. They
are among our "Founding Fathers," or Framers as
we shall call them. They are the first three
presidents of the United States, George
Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.
The brief sketches of these men are but glimpses
into their personal lives, but some of the
details are significantly revealing. They
suggest that the Framers, far from champions of
the people, were rich and powerful men who
sought to maintain their wealth and status by
figuring out ways to keep common people down.
Moreover, I shall present additional evidence
about the lives of the Framers, the
Constitution, and the period in which it was
written which supports the contention that the
Framers were profoundly anti-democratic and
afraid of the people. Some of the information
may be surprising. In 1782, for example,
Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris believed
that a stronger central government was needed to
"restrain the democratic spirit" in the states.
Eric Foner tells us that Morris's private
correspondence reveals "only contempt for the
common people." 5 Benjamin Rush, "the
distinguished scientist and physician" from
Philadelphia and Framer (although he was not at
the Constitutional Convention), would often
refer to common people as "scum." Alexander
Hamilton called the people "a great beast."6 Not
all the Framers resorted to name calling, but it
is clear that they feared and distrusted the
political participation of common people.
Perhaps even more shocking than the personal
opinions of the Framers, is the process by which
the Constitution was ratified. As described in
more detail in Chapter 3, secrecy, deceit and
even violence played key roles in the
Constitution's passage. These unsavory tactics
were used by the Framers and their allies
because the majority of the people were against
the ratification of the Constitution. What is
striking about this historical fact is its
similarity with public policy and elite
decision-making today. At times, the interests
of elites and the public interest coincides.
When it does not, however, elites tend to go
ahead anyway. And because so much of what
corporate-government elites believe to be in the
national interest violates accepted standards of
decency, many public policies are formulated and
carried out covertly. But the point here is that
covert and anti-democratic measures are not new
developments. They have been the method of
guaranteeing class rule ever since the Framers
decided that they needed the present political
system to protect their power and privilege.
It is contrary to everything we've been taught
about the Framers to hear that they felt
contempt for common people and that their
Constitutional Convention was profoundly
undemocratic. Indeed such accusations sound even
less familiar in the context of the late 1980s
when celebrations of the Constitution's
bicentennial have brought adulation of this
country's political origins to new and even more
mindless heights. In its issue celebrating the
bicentennial, Newsweek gushed, "The educated men
in post-Revolutionary America," (and one must
presume that this includes the Framers),
"embraced the political tradition of
participatory democracy, the social pretense of
virtual classlessness and the economic fact of
absolute equality of opportunity." 7 The
"Founding Fathers" are always the champions of
freedom, justice, and democracy. "Reverence is
due to those men...," states Time magazine in
its special bicentennial issue. The "Founding
Fathers" are always the champions of freedom,
justice, and democracy. "Reverence is due to
those men...," states Time magazine in its
special bicentennial issue. The "Founding
Fathers" are always the champions of freedom,
justice, and democracy. "Reverence is due to
those men...," states Time magazine in its
special bicentennial issue. 8
The implicit answer is,Books and celebrity
television specials packed with familiar myths
and illusions have been churned out by the
dozens. The Constitution itself is "the greatest
single document struck off by the hand and mind
of man" we are told by the the Commission on the
Bicentennial of the the U.S. Constitution. Thus
on the 200th anniversary of the completion of
the Constitution, former chief justice Warren
Burger, on national TV, led the nation's school
children and teachers in a recitation of the
Preamble ("We the people...") and President
Reagan led the country in a recitation of the
Pledge of Allegiance. One of the many books
honoring our Constitution, We The People by
Peter Spier, begins by stating that the "U.S.
Constitution is the oldest and most significant
written document of our history." He goes on to
say that the Constitution "has come to symbolize
freedom, justice, equality, and hope for
American citizens as individuals and as a
collective, democratic nation. For two hundred
years the Constitution has provided its people
with rights, liberties, and a free society that
people of other nations can only dream of." How
familiar Spier's words sound to those of us who
have grown up in the United States. From our
earliest days we are taught to glorify the
Framers and the great American "democracy" that
is their legacy. Even as adults we are still
expected to accept the same grade-school,
cartoon-like version of our founding.
As citizens we are supposed to be like the
nation's school children who are given no choice
but to stand by their desks and mindlessly
recite a pledge of allegiance to a flag, a
pledge that was introduced into schools at the
turn of the century to counter the influence of
ideas that immigrant school children had
received from their parents and from distant
lands. The fundamental purpose of bicentennial
ideology, then, is to encourage us not to
explore competing ways of thinking or to ask
hard questions about our heritage. We are not
encouraged to think because it is understood
that thinking sometimes leads to disagreement,
or worse, to the challenging of some sacred
text. Instead we are encouraged to believe.
Efforts to transform thinking citizens into
believing citizens, we should point out, really
began at just about the time that the Framers
were planning the Constitutional Convention.
Disturbing symptoms that common people were
ignoring customs of social deference and were
beginning to think for themselves led some
Framers such as John Dickinson to urge that
political instruments be devised to protect "the
worthy against the licentious." Benjamin Rush,
in a proposal entitled "The Mode of Education
Proper in a Republic," stated: "I consider it
possible to convert men into republican
machines. This must be done, if we expect them
to perform their parts properly, in the great
machine of the government of the state." And so
it must be done today, if people are to "perform
their parts properly." The aim of the
ideological manager is, in effect, the creation
of millions of "republican machines."9
Common sense tells us that people who spend a
good deal of time either acquiring or protecting
a vast personal empire or defending a king's
soldiers against the dispossessed would also
have believed that the possession of enormous
privilege was just and that protection of that
privilege ought to be sought and maintained at
considerable cost. Common sense should further
compel us to wonder whether such people could
write a constitution that would effectively
transfer power from their few hands into the
hands of the many, that is, into the hands of
the poor, the debtors and people without
property. Brian Price, an American historian who
has spent countless hours studying early
American elites' rise to power, asks a similar
question: "Is it possible for a class which
exterminates the native peoples of the Americas,
replaces them by raping Africa for humans it
then denigrates and dehumanizes as slaves, while
cheapening and degrading its own working class -
is it possible for such a class to create
democracy, equality, and to advance the cause of
human freedom?" The implicit answer is, "No. Of
course not."
There is a more specific purpose to all of this,
however. If we do accept the illusion - the
Constitution as sacred, a "shrine up in the
higher stretches of American reverence" as Time
magazine put it, then the serious problems that
we face today would have to be aberrations, or
deviations from the sacred text. The fundamental
principles embedded within the Constitution,
because it is "the greatest single document
struck off by the hand and mind of man [sic]"
and probably ordained by God at that, are
intrinsically good. Only the sins of inept
bureaucrats and politicians or the zealotry of
ideologues ever get us into serious trouble. It
follows from this mythology that there are no
fundamental connections between the Constitution
and the current crisis. Solving our problems
always means going back to the Constitution and,
not coincidentally, to the power relationships
and privilege in the private sphere (or economy)
which the Framers sought to protect.
For example, as Constitutional celebrations were
unfolding in the summer of 1987, so too was the
tale of government drug-running, assassination,
secret government, and private control of
foreign policy known as the Iran-Contra affair.
A documentary produced for the public
broadcasting system, "The Secret Government: The
Constitution in Crisis," and which aired in the
fall of 1987, broke new ground by revealing to a
mass audience some of the facts regarding the
role that the federal government has played in
assassinating foreign leaders and in
over-throwing democratically elected
governments. Yet the documentary was quite
explicit in stating that this "secret
government," rather than possibly having its
roots in the distrust and fear of common people
expressed by the Framers or in their protection
and elevation of private power, is a violation
of Constitutional principles. Of course, the
Constitution was never critically examined.
Instead, the sense of empowered citizenship was
invoked as the hallowed words "We the People"
were dragged slowly and dramatically across the
screen, patriotic music provided the backdrop of
sanctification, and Bill Moyers intoned, "Our
nation was born in rebellion against tyranny. We
are the fortunate heirs of those who fought for
America's freedom and then drew up a remarkable
charter to protect it against arbitrary power.
The Constitution begins with the words `We the
People.' The government gathers its authority
from the people and the governors are as
obligated to uphold the law as the governed."
So what is missing? Moyers said not a word about
corporate power, which the Framers chose to
insulate from popular accountability and which
has since grown and become concentrated and
arbitrary in ways unimaginable to elites of the
eighteenth century. The failure of the
Constitution to provide checks against corporate
(private) power can be directly linked to the
private control of foreign policy. This defect,
so obviously undemocratic, has become
increasingly exposed. Moyer's revelations divert
our attention away from this essential flaw and
thus serve as a quite sophisticated, albeit
ineffective, cover-up. Nor did Moyers tell us
that some government officials such as the
Director of Central Intelligence, who may spend
money "without regard to the provisions of law
and regulations relating to the expenditure of
government funds," are not obligated to uphold
certain laws as are the governed. Could it be
that by design the Constitution requires that a
few "considerate and virtuous" citizens check
and balance the "interested and overbearing"
majority? Perhaps, but such subtleties tend to
complicate, if not contradict, what must be
among the greatest stories ever told, namely
that the Constitution begins with the words, "We
the People." Stop there, we are told. Do not go
any further. For to go beyond the grade-school
version of our founding is to raise the
possibility that the Constitution might be
defective in some fundamental way. Viewers might
conclude that U.S.-sponsored terrorism may not
be a deviation from Constitutional principles
but rather the logical consequence of a system
which protects the freedom of a handful of
Americans to control a good deal of the earth's
resources and, correspondingly, the lives of
millions of people scattered around the globe.
Similar connections between our founding ideas
and the virulent racism that now exists, the
subordination of women, the massive inequality
that marks our society, and what some are
pointing to as irreversible environmental
degradation could also be made. To move beyond
the history constructed for us, then, would be
to admit the possibility that one could expose
and call into question the legitimacy of the
Framers and the system of elite rule they
established through the Constitution. It would
be permitting citizens of today to become more
intimately familiar and identified with the
lives and values of the people - a majority -
one must emphasize, who opposed the Constitution
at the time it was given to the states for
ratification. Of course, if the ideological
managers were to permit an honest reassessment
of who the Framers really were and what they
really did, nothing might come of it. But it is
the very intensity itself of the ideological
stranglehold over our own history which suggests
that it is ruling elites, not you or I, who are
afraid that if a candid assessment of the
Framers and the Constitution were to become
common knowledge, it would help citizens to
explain their sense of political powerlessness
and invite the kind of self-discovery that
underlies effective radical politics. "The
monopoly of truth, including historical truth,"
states Daniel Singer, "is implied in the
monopoly of power."
Three Obstacles to Effective Radical Politics
The central theme of this book can be summarized
as follows: We live in an undemocratic system
that is a major source of terror and repression,
both at home and around the world. In large
measure this is due to the tremendous
concentration of unchecked corporate power. Our
responsibility, as citizens and as a people, is
to challenge the structure of power within our
society, particularly the private power of the
corporate-banking community. The Constitution
prohibits this. In fact, the Constitution was
intended to ensure that only a few people would
run the government and that they would be the
few who would run the economy. The crisis
confronting us, in other words, demands
effective radical politics and a departure from
many Constitutional values, assumptions, and
principles. Effective radical politics, however,
is inhibited by our acceptance and glorification
of the Constitution and the Framers who
engineered its ratification. It is as if we
believe the IBM ad which stated, "The
Constitution is a political work of
art...and...It's also the most important
contract of your life." We shouldn't have to
depend upon or live by IBM's conception of
justice today anymore than we should have to
depend upon or live by the conception of justice
articulated by rich and powerful white men, many
of them slaveowners, who lived 200 years ago.
Our values are not their values. The government
of the United States does not, in its policies,
express the decency of its people. It lacks
legitimacy. And we need to confront that fact.
Ideologically, then, there are three obstacles
to effective radical politics. They are 1)
respect for the Constitution as a fair and
equitable and democratic document; 2) the
underlying belief that the U.S. government is
fair, acts justly, or would under ordinary
circumstances; and 3) a reluctance on the part
of most citizens whose values are at odds with
those expressed by corporate and state policy to
engage in confrontation. In Chapters 2 through
4, I discuss why the Constitution is not a fair
and equitable document, why it impedes rather
than encourages democracy, and why it is,
ultimately, a constitution that disrespects its
people. In Chapters 4 and 5, I explain why I
believe that the government of the United
States, in order to meet its obligation of
protecting the private empire of corporate
elites, cannot meet its obligation to promote
the common interest of the majority of its
people and cannot, therefore, act justly under
ordinary circumstances. I argue in this section
that we live in a system of injustice. Finally,
in Chapters 6 and 7, I argue that each of us as
citizens must develop a sense of self-respect
and self-confidence that necessarily challenges
the role set for us by the Framers as obedient
and dependent "republican machines." We need, as
I explain below, to learn a "song without
knees." Before moving on, let us discuss each of
these obstacles a bit further and then briefly
review the lives of the "founding fathers" so
that we get a better sense of just who they
were.
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