The Only Cure for a Corrupted Republic
The only cure for a corrupted republic?
As the man the founders called “the celebrated Montesquieu” told us: “by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles.” “Every other correction,” he warned, “is either useless or a new evil.”
In order to get from where things are today to a real “land of the free,” it’s essential to understand the following top-6 principles that built American Independence. They’ve been forgotten and ignored for generations, but they’re only truly lost if “We the People” refuse to bring them back.
CORRUPTED
In order to restore our lost American principles, the first step is to understand what’s meant by a “corrupted republic.”
Today, the politicians and “experts” across the political spectrum love to treat their power like they’ve been given a “living, breathing constitution” that changes with the times. Of course, they don’t ever mean amending it as spelled out in the text of the document. They mean letting politicians, bureaucrats and judges re-write the rules as they go.
Montesquieu warned us: that is the very definition of a corrupted system.
“A state may alter two different ways; either by the amendment, or by the corruption, of the constitution. If it has preserved its principles, and the constitution changes, this is owing to its amendment; if, upon changing the constitution, its principles are lost, this is because it has been corrupted.”
One of the telltale signs of a system being corrupted from within? It’s littered with special privileges, political favors – an insider class.
“It is a general rule, that great rewards, in monarchies and republics, are a sign of their decline, because they are a proof of their principles being corrupted, and that the idea of honour has no longer the same force in monarchy, nor the title of citizen the same weight in a republic.”
The best way to keep the people from revolting over all that corruption? Follow the money, because the government will gladly hand out loads of it.
Montesquieu exposed this as the political scam that it is. Politicians buy your vote with government programs, “free stuff,” even promises of direct cash payments if you support them. But that’s the ultimate self-own because they’re picking your pocket to buy your vote with your own money.
“We must not be surprised to see their suffrages given for money. It is impossible to give a great deal to the people without squeezing much more out of them.”
If all this sounds familiar, it should. Because you’ve lived under a corrupt system your entire life. And as Montesquieu made clear, the only way out is to remove the corruption – which we can accomplish by restoring the foundational principles of the American Revolution.
NATURAL RIGHTS
First in our top 6 is natural rights, because all the founders understood that rights aren’t gifts from government. They don’t come from documents, either. As John Dickinson wrote, they are part of our humanity, and they exist as rights whether government agrees or not.
“We claim them from a higher source—from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives.”
So what exactly qualifies as a natural right? Notice what’s missing in this list from Samuel Adams – it doesn’t include government programs like free housing, education, healthcare, income or anything remotely close to what many people consider a “right” today.
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.”
This principle was already deeply woven into America’s DNA long before independence was won, or even declared. So the Second Continental Congress could state in the Declaration of Independence what the people already understood.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
VOID
The Declaration is clear. Government exists to secure those natural rights. That’s why the Founders drafted constitutions to serve as a strict rulebook for the various governments. Which brings us to principle number two.
Any “law” that goes beyond the limits of the constitution isn’t law at all.
It’s void.
This was the core argument from day one – the very beginning of the American Revolution. That’s James Otis Jr’s fiery 5 hour speech against the writs of assistance in 1761, where he forcefully asserted that “an act against the constitution is void.”
This wasn’t just rhetoric from the Revolution. As third chief justice Oliver Ellsworth put it, this is the exact same standard under the constitution.
“If they make a law which the Constitution does not authorize, it is void.”
Thomas Jefferson reiterated this same view another decade later, in 1798: every federal act beyond the limits of the constitution hold no legal force.
“Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”
SOVEREIGNTY
You can’t get far talking about natural rights and constitutional limits without addressing the core issue of power. That brings us to lost principle number three: sovereignty, or final authority.
Thomas Paine understood exactly what makes a total tyranny: when government itself holds sovereignty. Because that means it gets to do what it wants.
“In despotic monarchies (such as the British government) power is lodged in a single person, or sovereign. His will is law; which he declares, alters or revokes as he pleases, without being accountable to any power for so doing.”
But the founders rejected that entire framework. They held that this ultimate power stays right where it started: with the people themselves.
“In republics, such as those established in America, the sovereign power, or the power over which there is no control, and which controls all others, remains where nature placed it-in the people; for the people in America are the fountain of power.”
The ultimate expression of this American view of sovereignty arrived in the summer of 1776 when the Declaration of Independence made it clear that government isn’t a master – it’s the servant. And it can be changed or ended as the people see fit.
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
It’s hard to overstate how important this lost principle of the people holding sovereignty truly is, but James Madison may have summed it up best. More than two decades later, he made the case that it was the bedrock foundation of everything else, calling it “the fundamental principle on which our independence itself was declared.”
WHO DECIDES
That leads right to our fourth principle: the people have the final say.
In a despotism, the government determines the extent of its own power. But as John Dickinson wrote in a free society where the people hold sovereignty, they decide when the government goes beyond the rules given to the government.
“They will always have the same rights, that all free states have, of judging when their privileges are invaded, and of using all prudent measures for preserving them.”
Two years before the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson put that same principle into practice. People exercise their sovereignty by telling government when it’s out of line, not by asking it to review its own actions
“The true ground on which we declare these acts void is, that the British parliament has no right to exercise authority over us.”
This principle didn’t end with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. In 1798, Jefferson applied that same rule under the constitution. The federal government was created by the people of the several states. And the hired help doesn’t get the final say over their own power.
“The Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the constitution, the measure of its powers.”
PRECEDENT
Principle number five is precedent, especially the smallest of steps, because this is how a free republic quietly and slowly transforms into a despotism.
When government gets away with any unconstitutional act, no matter how small, it doesn’t just disappear into history. It becomes a building block for tomorrow’s tyranny.
For generations, Americans have almost totally ignored the small precedents, but the founders understood the nature of power. As Jefferson put it, the longer you wait, the more small steps you ignore, the more difficult, dangerous and even deadly it gets to deal with later.
“The time to guard again?t corruption and tyranny, is before they ?hall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to tru?t to drawing his teeth and talons after he ?hall have entered.”
John Dickinson understood that it’s fatal to ignore a usurpation of power because it seems small today.
“Some persons may think this act of no consequence, because the duties are so small. A fatal error.”
He warned that this is actually the most dangerous situation of them all. The goal isn’t the tiny slice of power they take today. It’s to establish the precedent to take whatever they want in the future.
“That is the very circumstance most alarming to me. For I am convinced, that the authors of this law would never have obtained an act to raise so trifling a sum as it must do, had they not intended by it to establish a precedent for future use.”
Even one tiny unconstitutional precedent today is a trap. If you tolerate it, it’s like cheering for the patriot act because they said it’s “just for the terrorists” and will never be used against you.
“To console ourselves with the smallness of the duties, is to walk deliberately into the snare that is set for us, praising the neatness of the workmanship.”
As James Madison later wrote, recognizing and understanding the danger in even the smallest precedent is the reason Americans were able to win their freedom and independence.
“The people of the U. S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent.”
That’s why George Washington warned us against falling for the trap, the preferred weapon of tyrants – even if we like the short term results.
“If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.”
ZERO TOLERANCE
You can understand things like precedent, natural rights, constitutional limits, and sovereignty all day long. But talking about it won’t save you. Because power hungry politicians don’t care what you know.
They care what you will tolerate.
Which brings us to the final principle, the one that guards the rest: Zero tolerance for arbitrary power.
Power beyond the Constitution is usurpation, stolen power. As even Alexander Hamilton understood in 1775, you have zero moral or legal obligation to obey a thief.
“To grasp at a more extensive power than they are willing to entrust, is to violate that law of nature, which gives every man a right to his personal liberty; and can, therefore, confer no obligation to obedience.”
Today, people assume you’re supposed to comply first, and then try to convince the government to stop doing what the government was never authorized to do in the first place. But for the American Revolutionaries, noncompliance first was the default position. As the First Continental Congress put it, obedience to arbitrary power wasn’t even on the table.
“To these grievous acts and measures Americans cannot submit.”
The founders knew that the most dangerous idea in any society is the belief that compliance with unconstitutional power buys you peace – and somehow gets you to freedom.
It doesn’t.
James Otis, Jr. warned us – it just invites more power grabs, and liberty destroyed – guaranteed.
“There is nothing however will in the end more surely work the destruction of liberty, than a prevailing opinion that it is better tamely to submit than nobly assert and vindicate our priviledges.”
Almost a century later, Lysander Spooner gave us the unvarnished truth: talk is cheap. Politicians don’t care what you know or what you say – as long as you keep bending the knee and complying with all their unconstitutional acts “laws,” rules, regulations and orders.
“Tyrants care nothing for discussions that are to end only in discussion. Discussions, which do not interfere with the enforcement of their laws, are but idle wind to them.”
THE ONLY WAY OUT
The so-called “solutions” that modern politicians and their supporters give us always seem to revolve around the absurd notion that the problem with this corrupted republic, the largest government in history, is just a personnel issue. So if you just support their side, things will get better.
But as Montesquieu so clearly warned us – their approach is making things worse.
“When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the rising evils, but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles: every other correction is either useless or a new evil.”
Although things are far more corrupt than what any of those people would have you believe, St. George Tucker reminded us that no matter how bad it gets, it’s never truly game over.
“The acquiescence of the people of a state under any usurped authority for any length of time, can never deprive them of the right of resuming the sovereign power into their own hands, whenever they think fit, or are able to do so, since that right is perfectly unalienable.”
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