I like reading Jonathan Turley. He is about as honest as a lawyer can get, no offense to any lawyers on my list. I know a few better than Turley.

He’s sometimes wrong, but so is everyone else, even yours truly at times.

That said, that sometimes happened in a recent column he wrote for Fox News.

Turley thinks the greatest threat to America is “anti-constitutionaism.”

This is boilerplate “conservative” speak.

If we just went back to the Constitution, everything would be alright.

Turley argues that too many Americans on both the left and the right have given up on the document.

This is true, but they’ve given up on it for good reason.

No one has really paid attention to it since 1789. Not the Supreme Court. Not the Congress. And with very few exceptions, not the President.

Some patriots in the States tried, but they were consistently thwarted by the Supreme Court and then finally by bullets.

The Constitution was dead once the First Congress started legislating. See Section 25 of the 1789 Judiciary Act.

I once had an Internet troll jumping up and down in jubilation because he had me “admit” that I think the Constitution is a flawed document, and that it should not have been ratified.

So what? I’ve said it so many times, that isn’t news.

I also suggest that if we followed the Constitution as ratified, we would not have the political problems plaguing the United States today.

But that ship sailed a long time ago.

The federal republic died a slow and painful death. It was finally put down by St. Abraham the Wise and his Republican reptiles in 1861.

St. Patrick shooed the snakes out of Ireland. St. Abraham charmed them into perpetual power.

The rest is unconstitutional history piled on by more unconstitutional history.

Of course, the States still have powers–they have never been fully eliminated–but it will require more people realizing the emperor has no clothes before they can embrace the bedrock of the American political system: federalism.

Turley’s piece made for great Podcast fodder, and a listener sent it my way, so I cover it on Episode 892 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

American foreign policy is a disaster. It has been since the 1860s.

Most people forget that the American empire was not created in the last thirty years.

It began as an extension of the moral self-righteousness of the Republican crusade against the South during the War.

Democracy and American liberty needed to be extended across the globe. So did the dollar, but that didn’t have the same ring to it.

Until 1861, American foreign policy focused on nonintervention. That is not the same as “isolationism” as critics like to contend.

This was a non-partisan consensus.

George Washington warned against American involvement in European politics. John Adams spent his four years in office trying hammer out a treat with France to avoid war, even if Congress was forcing his hand. Thomas Jefferson urged against “entangling alliances” while his successor, James Madison, was forced into war with Great Britain after exhausting what he considered to be all peaceful means to avoid conflict.

James Monroe and his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, crafted the Monroe Doctrine, which specifically stated that the United States would not get involved in foreign wars for foreign interest.

Peace through strength had real meaning, and the strength was American economic muscle.

Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, and Tyler followed this path.

James K. Polk pursued a continental empire with the goal of acquiring Pacific ports, a policy that eventually led to American involvement in Pacific wars, and he was aggressive with Mexico, a point that John C. Calhoun made frequently.

That was the one exception to the rule in the antebellum period. Taylor, Fillmore, Piece, and Buchanan generally pursued a Washingtonian/Jeffersonian foreign policy.

Why? Because it worked and kept American free from foreign wars.

Even John Quincy Adams said while Secretary of State–some historians call him the greatest Secretary of State in American history–that while Americans should sympathize with countries seeking liberty and democracy, they had no role in making that happen.

That changed in 1865 when Republicans and then their progressive offspring went crusading around the world to spread “liberty and democracy.”

The has resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead American soldiers and massive government expenditures, the very thing Washington and Jefferson wanted to avoid.

As politicians in Washington bellow about sending millions or billions of dollars to one foreign country or another, or openly discuss putting boots on the ground in foreign countries, Americans should reflect on what that means for them.

More inflation, more blood, and a less peaceful United States.

I discuss what a truly “American” foreign policy would look like on Episode 885 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Jamelle Bouie is almost always wrong.

But he is the best opinion columnist at The New York Times. Why? Because he at least does some research before he scribbles for the newspaper, and his essays are generally thought provoking.

Take for example a recent column that suggested the Founders make a critical mistake.

I agree, but not for the reasons Bouie suggests.

The Founders make a critical mistake when they ratified the Constitution and then another when they did not provide an enforcement mechanism for the Tenth Amendment.

Once the nationalists had the keys to the car, they ran over their opponents.

It was more like a bulldozer than an automobile.

Bouie thinks the Founders have too many “checks and balances” in the system, particularly when it comes to federalism, the Electoral College, and the rules of the Senate.

You see, these checks and balances tend to thwart progressive programs.

A supermajority doesn’t allow for nightmare leftist government, at least in theory.

Tell that to the federal court system. Bouie doesn’t like that either, unless they are doing exactly what he wants–which would be most of the last one hundred years excluding the current Supreme Court.

Calhoun would agree, but he thought the “supermajority” wasn’t really that super. Consider that these supposed “anti-democratic checks and balances” Bouie worries about have never stopped the unconstitutional expansion of federal power or executive government.

Just take a look at Washington D.C. today, and Calhoun was simply worried about federally funded internal improvements, a central bank, and protective tariffs.

We can only imagine what he would think about a central government with virtually unlimited powers, not matter how often Bouie whines about “un-democratic conservatives.”

The fact is, the nationalists orchestrated the greatest coup in American political history, a coup eventually brought the progressives to power on both the left and the right.

Either way, his pieces always make great Podcast fodder. I discuss Bouie and his critique of the Founders on Episode 883 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

According to recent polling, about 20 percent of Americans support secession. It is higher in some areas like Texas and the South, but even among Democrats, support for secession has increased in the last several years.

The establishment can’t figure out why.

The Washington Post recently published a piece trying to figure it out.

They backed into the answer, but were still confused as to why secession is gaining steam.

The Left supports it because they can’t control people in other States. In other words, the political Puritan is worried that people in red States wont do their bidding.

Conservatives support secession because they don’t want to be governed by the blue State freaks.

At the end of the day, the real problem is American abandonment of federalism.

If we had real federalism, people in California could live in their own little socialist Utopia while those in Alabama would be free to from San Francisco third worldism.

The trick is getting leftists to willing give up the dream of controlling everyone else.

It’s also convincing Lincolnian “conservatives” that secession isn’t treason nor is it illegal.

And the answer may not ultimately be individual State secession, but perhaps regionalism or a greater emphasis on what made American great: federalism.

But the fact that more Americans are simply discussion secession and are open to greater decentralization means that our side is starting to win the argument.

Make no mistake, the establishment cannot stand it and would do more to prevent it if they thought secession was a real threat.

If enough people start pushing for decentralization in all forms, the establishment may not have a choice but to embrace it.

I discuss secession on episode 882 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

In case you missed it, last week New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham issued an executive order making it illegal for citizens to carry firearms in public–both open and concealed carry–for 30 days in Albuquerque and the surrounding county.

She called it a response to a “public health” emergency.

The “Constitutional conservatives” went nuts.

How dare she violate the 2nd Amendment!

In fact, a resident of Albuquerque quickly filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the order.

Politicos on both the left and the right called the move unconstitutional, though a few openly admitted they knew it would eventually get thrown out in federal court. This was a matter of principle and an effort to stimulate conversation.

Grisham did indeed violate the Constitution.

But not the U.S. Constitution.

And her edict should never have been challenged in federal court.

Here’s why.

The 2nd Amendment folks don’t understand that the Bill of Rights as ratified only applied to the general or federal government, not the States.

Everyone knew this, even John Marshall who said as much in the majority opinion in Barron v. Baltimore in 1833.

This was the only thing Marshall ever got right.

Madison even proposed an “incorporation amendment” to Congress as part of the proposed Bill of Rights.

It was explicitly rejected.

Very few men in the founding generation wanted a federal negative of State law. John Rutledge said that alone would damn the Constitution in the 1787 Philadelphia Convention.

Every time it was proposed, it failed.

Marshall created one by “judicial review” in 1821, but it was not related to a Bill of Rights issue.

But the nationalists kept pressing,

In 1868, the Republicans illegally ratified the 14th Amendment.

Attempts to insist that it “incorporated” the Bill of Rights, meaning that the first nine amendments applied to the States, were rejected time and again, most explicitly by the Supreme Court in 1873 by a Republican controlled Supreme Court.

That all changed in the 20th century because of Hugo Black, the progressive jurist from Alabama.

Black made a great ahistorical discovery that the founding generation really wanted the Bill of Rights to apply to the States but never got their way.

Black rode to the rescue.

Over the next half century, the first eight amendments to the Constitution would be “incorporated” by the Supreme Court, history be damned.

This is why all of these “Constitutional conservatives” cried foul.

Yet, as Raoul Berger conclusively proved, the 14th Amendment was never designed to incorporate anything. This is a fabrication, and a dangerous one for those who supposedly believe in limited government.

If the States are mere administrative subdivisions of the general government, liberty is gone.

Now, Grisham’s decree is unconstitutional according to the New Mexico State Constitution.

It violates the State Bill of Rights according to the New Mexico Supreme Court.

Grisham correctly pointed out to her leftist colleagues that this was indeed a State rather than federal issue, but she omitted that she did not have the power to issue such an order, particularly when her legal justification was a fifty year old law made for public health emergencies like a viral pandemic.

This law is illegal and unconstitutional.

It would be great if American “conservatives” really believed in federalism. This whole thing could have been thrown out in New Mexico without appealing to our federal overlords.

I discuss the issue on Episode 876 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

About a week ago, a listener sent me an article from National Review that encouraged its readers to declare their independence from Thomas Jefferson.

He was outraged and wanted my thoughts.

I could just call it stupid, but the article provides a teachable moment for Americans interested in anything that resembles the American tradition. We could call these people conservatives or paleo-libertarians. The traditional term “republican” would be best if it had not been hijacked by the Lincolnites.

The article’s author, Akhil Reed Amar, is one of the most prominent leftist progressive scholars in the United States.

Let that sink in for a moment. “Conservative” National Review published a piece on Thomas Jefferson from a dyed-in-the-wool progressive.

That should be exhibit one guadrillion that mainstream “conservatives” are no better than the leftist progressive they seem to despise.

The piece is loaded with typical leftist talking points about the beauty of democracy and equality (thank Harry Jaffa for “conservative” embrace of that concept) and free education. Those are the “positives” about Jefferson’s life according to Amar.

The negatives were laughable.

Jefferson should be forgotten because he favored nullification and secession. You read that correctly. This is straight out of the progressive playbook. These things are bad because…SLAVERY!

I wish conservatives and “conservative” publications weren’t this stupid, but they are.

Jefferson also had 50 kids with slaves and was a evil man because he never freed his slaves even though he spoke a great game.

If you’re shocked that this was published in National Review, don’t be.

The editorial board liked it, I’m sure, because Amar insisted that we shouldn’t dump all of the Founding Fathers.

Washington, Hamilton, Adams, and Franklin deserve our praise.

And then we should add Lincoln, Douglass, Stanton, and other great “second founders” to that list as well.

I’m not making this up.

The sad part? This could have been written by any West Coast Straussian or the dopes that produced the 1776 Commission Report for the Trump administration.

They say the same things.

South bad, North good. Lincoln GREAT!

You see, R.L. Dabney correctly pointed out in the late 19th century that modern (Northern) conservatism was little more than the discarded intellectual trash of the left.

National Review has long been intellectual trash, but this takes it to another level.

But understand that both the modern left and the modern right, particularly the establishment jerks, have the same heroes, worship the same Lincolnian “United State”, and believe that the root of all evil in America was, and still is, the South.

Their bogeymen are John C. Calhoun, Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson Davis (whom Amar cites in his idiotic polemic), and anyone who really believed in a real federal republic.

If only they could persuade all of those hicks below the Mason Dixon and their rebel flag waiving drones in the rest of the United States that they need re-education, a baptism in the Holy Water of the Lincoln Spirit, we would be saved.

Sherman, Sheridan, and Wilson tried a baptism by fire. They–both progressive leftists and progressive conservatives–are just angry it didn’t work.

I discuss Amar’s joke of an article on Episode 873 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

The Federalist Papers are the most overrated series of essays in American history.

That’s not a hot take. It’s a fact.

They hold more weight because of the stature of the authors: Hamilton, Madison, and Jay.

But that doesn’t make them any more important or useful than other commentaries on the Constitution written at the same time.

In fact, they persuaded very few people and were rarely published outside of New York.

Washington wanted a copy, and because they were quickly published in book form, they found a receptive audience, but that was after the Constitution was ratified.

As Aaron Coleman points out in this excellent essay, they are a useful and important historical set of documents, but their contemporary significance and lofty stature as a work of “political philosophy” are questionable.

They have contributed in no small part to Madison’s stature as the “Father of the Constitution,” a misnomer in itself. John Dickinson, Roger Sherman, or even Gouverneur Morris could be included in that list.

Madison didn’t get the Constitution he wanted.

Hamilton never liked the document no matter how hard he pleaded for its ratification. John Lansing knew it and called him out as a liar. They almost went to pistols.

I am partial to Tench Coxe’s essays in favor of ratification along with those penned by Dickinson. James Wilson’s “State House Yard” speech was considered to be the most important in 1787 and 1788.

In other words, there is more to ratification than Hamilton and Madison.

And if you are looking for original American political philosophy, skip Madison and read Calhoun.

But Coleman’s essay made for great Podcast fodder. I cover it on Episode 869 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

The good news? Progressives admit we’ve won.

The bad news? Progressives have changed the game, the field, and the rules.

What do I mean by this?

You see, progressives have decided that our side was correct about the founding, the Constitution, federalism, secession, the nature of the Union. All of it.

But it doesn’t matter. Originalism–real originalism–is dead, and has been replaced by “14th Amendment Originalism.”

The original Constitution was overthrown during the second American revolution of 1868.

This isn’t new, of course. The progressive historians Charles and Mary Beard suggested that the United States underwent a revolution in 1861. Southerners said the same thing for years.

Progressives on both the left and the right, and that includes West Coast Straussians, have decided this is fantastic.

That old worn out Constitution was replaced by the Lincolnian revolutionaries and the 14th Amendment which gave us “equality” as a “conservative” principle.

When the left and the right are saying the same thing, like this Jamelle Bouie piece at the New York Times, what are the Lincolnians really conserving?

To Bouie and the “14th Amendment Originalists,” its the Lincolnian proposition nation, a position that Gary Wills said “revolutionized the Revolution.”

Even by that statement, Wills admits that Lincoln made up history in 1863, the same thing that the “proposition nation” people have been doing since the 18th century, for as Bouie points out, there were those that considered the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration to be the most important statement in the document.

Not to virtually everyone in the real founding generation, which does not include some unknown abolitionists who decided to reinvent the meaning of the Declaration. Lump Lincoln into that group by the War.

What does this mean? If you start with Lincoln, you get 19th century leftistism, the same thing “conservatives” are now trying to “conserve.”

I discuss these issues on Episode 867 of The Brion McClanahn Show.