ICYMI, Chronicles Editor Paul Gottfried was on the great @ThomasEWoods' show last week for a free-ranging discussion about the knee-jerk leftist instincts of the establishment right, and about the storied, must-read @ChroniclesMag (Ahem!). Check it out: https://t.co/uvVYE8YVar
— Chronicles Magazine (@ChroniclesMag) September 7, 2020
In general, the pro-centralization party was dismayed at the democratic and egalitarian consequences of the Revolution. Too many plebeians were getting elected to state legislatures. Instead of a decentralized, democratic federation, the centralizers wanted a quasi-aristocratic “empire of liberty,” led by wealthy men of leisure, authorized to build a state that would rival the empires of Europe. The Constitution, in comparison to the Articles, grants the central government extensive powers to impose taxes, micromanage trade, raise an army and a navy, and otherwise undertake the activities expected of a late-18th century nation aspiring to international greatness.
Viewed this way, the Constitution was an attempt by conservatives to create a fiscal-military state. Our civic religion trumpets the Constitution as a triumph of freedom. In reality, as historian Sheldon Richman argues, “it was a counter-revolution, in many ways a reversal of the radical achievement represented by America’s break with the British Empire.”
