The fact I found the connection made a clear picture of the ideas that support a Republic, if you wish to denounce them be my guest your loss and my gain. But then I looked beyond all the words and into the ideas that results of verification saying actions had been taken to support such ideas.

The alteration of ideas over time is the flaw in Madison and many others by taking words as some Gospel with some idea no alterations where implied.

The truth be told the Constitution will not survive without the support of the very ideas in the Declaration of Independence and you can thank Thomas Jefferson for that recognition and both of these ideas hold full value in the idea of A Republic way of life and in a just people as life.

A recognition so many refuse to view at all.

Call it words or ideas makes no difference, all passed along in time through such symbols while some in life learn to alter their true intent as they were first discovered. History goes much farther than the age of our founders and some of them were willing to look. I figured out some of Thomas Jefferson’s resources and I was able to see what he saw and that picture is very clear and because you are unable to see may say something about you. I am very sure of these pieces and tested them for myself with very interesting results. Why then have so many missed this? Awe yes the masters of deception had practiced a very long time before our Constitution didn’t they? My best proof is the alteration of the Original Declaration of Independence when I discovered the only things that was removed were documented truths. This made me question many things and Thomas Jefferson was a sly dog from what he was able to locate.

I am willing to put these ideas up against yours any day to show a visual difference.

It’s only been in the last year that I can eat stevia…don’t know if something changed in me or the stevia, but I used to think it had a horrible aftertaste. Now I can only taste sweet. Been going crazy making sweets I don’t have to feel guilty about, after having mosty left sweets behind.

As I note in the passage I repeated above, that did not make Madison’s position consistent.  I also note that in the end, Madison had to admit during the Nullification Crisis that one state did have the right in extreme cases to oppose federal enforcement of federal policy.  Again, show me another Madison biography that does that.

Oftentimes, discussions among libertarians remind me of the scene in “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” in which the Judean People’s Front contends with the People’s Front of Judea.  In this instance, I must insist that I am not a “splitter.”

the fact that Tom drew from your sources was one of the reasons that I was so puzzled over your treatment of Madison in this book (I read your papers in question myself). I also read your “Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution” (a superb book), and the picture of Madison I got from it was the one of Madison-flip-flopper and a typical politician, using all kinds of Machiavellian machinations to achieve his political goals. Not the conventional, almost hagiographical picture of a “great statesmen” who made America, that your new book, I am afraid, espouses.

I was exactly referring to Tom’s footnote 62 of the chapter 2 of his book. Yes, he quotes you, but also he quotes Bledsoe’s less than flattering account of Madison’s change of heart on nullification. But, let’s see your statement that Tom quotes:

“One of the Madison’s most notable “tactical adjustments” was his campaign as a retired former president to becloud the events of 1798 by denying they had meant what they plainly had meant”.

You now abandon this explanation and say Madison was “only human” and “likely honest” in this change of heart. Perhaps, but you don’t
offer any argument for this assertion. And you don’t mention neither Bledsoe nor the episode with the word “nullification” in the Kentucky resolves that strongly suggest otherwise.

I don’t think that a reader not familiar with your previous works would have guessed, just by reading your account of the nullification crisis in this new book, that you wanted to criticize Madison for being inconsistent. Most of the discussion is just citing the reasons Madison gave for opposing nullification, with one or two isolated and vague critical comments without any context and follow up (the context that you offer so abundantly in your other works, some of which are only tangentially related to Madison!). Obviously, at least one mainstream historian thus far concluded that you “brilliantly demonstrated” that Madison was consistent and right in rejecting Calhoun’s arguments (instead of pointing out his inconsistency). And he is not some uniformed guy who could not understand what you wanted to say.

One example of this lack of context for the few critical comment you gave: discussing Madison’s behavior during  the Nullification crisis on the page 351, you say that Madison “misrepresented the principles of 1798″. And then you go on for two or three paragraphs quoting Madison and commenting neutrally on his arguments, without actually explaining what he had really “misrepresented” and how. And, then you go on with explanations what an “admirable” person Madison was. No further explanation.

However sales tax is not against the Rule of Law, per se, IF it applies to all equally. (the economic question is entirely different) IE if there is a 5% sales tax on goods, and it applies to everyone. That tax can be in accordance with the Rule of Law. However if black people pay more, or less, or rich people pay more, or less, or Christians pay more, or less, or gay people pay more, or less, by virtue of some arbitrary distinction unrelated to previous criminal activity, then that WOULD be a violation of the Rule of Law.

So yes if you pay the same rate or same flat fee for property tax, as Bill Gates, the rate may be fair or unfair, economically more or less destructive, but so long as the law applies to everyone equally, regardless of some classification, it can be in accordance with the Rule of Law. You wouldn’t pay property tax if you own no property, but they could as well assign a capitation, charging you $100 per year just for being alive. That would be bad, possibly unfair, but not against the Rule of Law, per se, as it applies to everyone.

The Rule of Law is a pretty low bar. It is not the end all, be all of a good government, if we assume there is such a thing. But certainly it is bad when we ignore it, or don’t understand it.

You may want to peruse the notes to Tom’s _Nullification_.  You’ll find there that Tom draws on two of my articles on the subject extensively.

And no, I do not “give Madison a free pass for his behavior during the nullification crisis,” unless you call this “a free pass”:

“Then again, his assertion that a single state could prevent enforcement of federal policy within its territory only in situations in which that seemed appropriate to him was not exactly calculated to win converts.”  (p. 350)

Later, I add that:

“In general, Madison was only human, in that he wanted to have been consistent even when he had not been..  He wanted to have been a Jeffersonian even when at his most nationalist.”  (p. 350)

My article, “A Troublesome Legacy:  James Madison and ‘The Principles of ’98,’” _Journal of the Early Republic_ 15 (1995):  569-89, is the only article in a scholarly journal in our lifetime to say that Madison was inconsistent between 1798 and nullification.  If you want to complain that Madison historians say Madison was consistent between those two episodes, you should take that up with the late Lance Banning, Drew McCoy, Jack Rakove, the late Irving Brant, A. Koch and H. Ammon, and virtually everyone else who has ever written on this subject.  I’m the only one who says he wasn’t.

I think it is strange how the Catholic Santorum can act like Paul is crazy and dangerous for thinking the Iraq war was immoral when the last two Popes agree with him. How can he smile proudly when saying he supported the Iraq war? As a Catholic it is beyond me.

And he absolves Madison from responsibility for every major inconsistency he had. For example, he gives Madison a free pass for his behavior during the nullification crisis. He just gives quotation after quotation from Madison disputing the Nullifiers arguments, without explaining, as you did in your book on Nullification, that it had been revealed that Madison lied about the Virginia resolutions (everyone in 1798 considered them to mean nullification, pure and simple, and Madison defended them as such in his Report of 1800). Further, no mention of the fact that Madison also lied that Jefferson did not use the word “nullification” in the Kentucky resolves (and was forced to retract the lie when presented with the original copy of the text, in Jefferson’s manuscript) No wonder one mainstream historian wrote in his review that Gutzman “brilliantly demonstrated” that Calhoun and Nullifiers did not have a right to invoke the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions for their purposes.