U.S. Constitution

U.S. CONSTITUTION
1. The Secret Constitution and the Need for Constitutional Change, Professor Arthur S. Miller.
2. John Hancock’s Big Toe and the Constitution, Gary North.
3. The Revolution Was, Garet Garrett.
4. No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, Lysander Spooner.
5. Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May-September, 1787, Catherine Drinker Bowen.
6. The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution, Kevin R. C. Gutzman. Claims that the Constitution is a dead letter?
7. Democracy: The God That Failed, Hans Hermann-Hoppe.
8. Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of the 21st Century, Bill Bonner. Makes a brief case for monarchy over democracy.
9. The Constitution as Covenant. Adam broke the covenant. Christ re-established it. This is the central theme of all Calvinism. This is why it is called covenant theology. It was the theology that underlay all of the American colonies. Its secularization led to the Constitution. This is well known among secular historians and has been for 70 years. The historical literature on this is immense.

Almost 30 years ago, Professor Arthur S. Miller wrote a book: The Secret Constitution and the Need for Constitutional Change (Greenwood, 1987). This book received little attention at the time, and it is very difficult to locate today. Miller argued that there are essentially two constitutions. One of them is the one we all know about, the one we are required to study, or at least used to be required to study, in high school civics classes. It is the one for show. The other Constitution is the operational Constitution, as enforced by the courts and by federal bureaucracies. It is a completely separate Constitution. It favors the ruling class, which is the group described above.

The first people to warn about this were the anti-Federalists. They understood it in 1787. Patrick Henry understood it. Sam Adams understood it. Adams was persuaded to withdraw his criticisms by the promise made by Madison of the first 10 amendments, which we call the Bill of Rights. But the Bill of Rights came under assault as soon as the Constitution was ratified. Alexander Hamilton began the great centralization of the federal government. He used the now-familiar dual tactic of expanding federal debt and creating a central bank owned by private investors. He got both of these into operation in 1791.

The only significant 19th-century rollbacks in power took place under Andrew Jackson’s presidency: his veto of the bill that would have extended the charter of the Second Bank of the United States beyond 1836, and his one-year reduction of the United States government’s debt to zero. That never happened again. The only other major rollback was the 21st amendment in 1933, which was the repeal of Prohibition. The broad sweep of American constitutional history has been one story, namely, the expansion of federal power at the expense of individual liberties.
10. New Nation: A History of the United States During the Confederation, 1781-1789, Merrill Jensen, 1966.
11. Liberty, Order, & Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional Principles of American Government, James McClellan, 2000.
12. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, Charles A. Beard.

13. The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government, Mike Lofgren, 2016.

The Forward to Dr. North’s Conspiracy in Philadelphia ends this way:

Modern man believes that he can safely avoid identifying the God of the Bible as the incorporating agent. Modern man identifies, either explicitly or implicitly, other gods of incorporation: Man, the People, the Volk, or the Proletariat. Each of these gods has his day in the sun. But the sun eventually sets.

The thirteen colonies in 1775 had charters or constitutions. Only Rhode Island’s charter allowed men of no trinitarian confession to be elected to civil office, i.e., to serve as part of the voice of civil authority. Therefore, only Rhode Island refused to identify the God of the Bible as the sovereign incorporating agent of the colony. The Articles of Confederation (1781) served as a halfway national covenant. They identified “the Great Governor of the World” as the sovereign incorporating agent (Article XIII). The United States Constitution (1788) identifies “We the People” as the sovereign incorporating agent. This book is the story of this covenantal transition: new covenant, new god.

13. The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress, Jack N. Rakove, 1988.
14. Recent Changes in American Constitutional Theory, John W. Burgess, 1923. From World Cat.
15. Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787 to 1788, Pauline Maeir, 2011. Gary North says that “It is the ONLY book on ratification based on actual documents. Everyone basically says: “She cornered the market. We give up.” You start with her book or else forget about the topic.”
16. Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention, 1787, Robert Yates and John Lansing,
17. Constitution Owner’s Manual: The Real Constitution That Politicians Don’t Want You to Know About, Michael Maharrey, 2020. “The Bill of Rights is a limit on the federal government and it wasn’t ever intended to apply to the states.” Robert Bork, “Nobody knows what the 9th Amendment means.” 9th Amendment was added to make sure that –the federal government can only do those things that it is enumerated to do, and it can’t do anything more than that. 9th & 10th Amendment are rules of construction that tell us to read the constitution that way.”
18. The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, James W. Ely, Jr., 1997. Thanks to Don Beaudreaux, who wrote,

Defense of economic rights figured prominently during the American Revolution and at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The founding generation stressed the significance of property ownership as a safeguard for political liberty against arbitrary government as well as the economic utility of private property.

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14th AMENDMENT
1. The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights, Raoul Berger, 1989.
2. Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment, Raoul Berger, 1977.

Government by Judiciary is a 1977 book by constitutional scholar and law professor Raoul Berger which argues that the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution contrary to the original intent of the framers of this Amendment and that the U.S. Supreme Court has thus usurped the authority of the American people to govern themselves and decide their own destiny.^[1] Berger argues that the U.S. Supreme Court is not actually empowered to rewrite the U.S. Constitution–including under the guise of interpretation–and that thus the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently overstepped its designated authority when it used its powers of interpretation to de facto rewrite the U.S. Constitution in order to reshape it more to its own liking.

This might come in handy.

Thanks to Tom Woods, of course, but a generous thank you to Steve Bartin who posted this in his site that reads,

Today is July 9, the day the 14th Amendment was ratified. But, was it really ever ratified legally? In 1957, U.S. News and World Report said no… To understand the magnitude of the constitutional change. read this book from the late Harvard Law Professor Raoul Berger. You’ll also want to watch historian Tom Woods’ important lecture on the subject. Sadly, many lawyers don’t know what’s in Tom Woods lecture.
Did you ever feel that state and local governments have become just branch offices of the federal government with Supreme Court justices unaccountable?

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4th AMENDMENT
Brits used writs of assistance, open-ended warrants that allowed soldiers to search for anything, anywhere, unended. Emphasizes the right of privacy. Surveillance is one of the most grievous overreaches of the federal gov’t. And technology gives them more power. Maharrey references this talk by Glen Greenwald from 2014.

Greenwald references Jeremy Bentham and his panopticon, the construction of an enormous tower in the middle of the institution. He also mentions the CNET article on Eric Schmidt. Mass surveillance creates a prison in the mind, creating compliance much more effective than brute force could ever accomplish.