ConSource: Good News For People Who Love America & The Constitution

Got an email this morning from a good friend of mine who helped found ConSource, the post-partisan effort to collect and digitize primary source documents related to the creation of the American Constitution. It seems a heretofore unknown/identified early draft of the Constitution has been found by Lorianne Updike-Toler, also a friend of the blog.

(It would be more accurate to say that she's a friend of the blog's author as I have no idea what she thinks of the blog as such.)

Anyway, here's the story:

Researcher Lorianne Updike Toler was intrigued by the centuries-old document at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

On the back of a treasured draft of the U.S. Constitution was a truncated version of the same document, starting with the familiar words: "We The People. . . ."

They had been scribbled upside down by one of the Constitution's framers, James Wilson, in the summer of 1787. The cursive continued, then abruptly stopped, as if pages were missing.

A mystery, Toler thought, until she examined other Wilson papers from the Historical Society's vault in Philadelphia and found what appeared to be the rest of the draft, titled "The Continuation of the Scheme."

[...]

"This was the kind of moment historians dream about," said Toler, 30, a lawyer and founding president of the Constitutional Sources Project (www.ConSource.org), a nonprofit organization, based in Washington, that promotes an understanding of and access to U.S. Constitution documents.

"This was national scripture, a piece of our Constitution's history," she said of her find in November. "It was difficult to keep my hands from trembling."

As other researchers "realized what was happening, there was a sort of hushed awe that settled over the reading room," Toler said. "One of them said the hair on her arms stood on end."

Two drafts of the Constitution in Wilson's hand had been separated from his papers long ago. One of them included the beginning of still another draft and was apparently seen as part of a single working version, instead of a separate draft.

Toler said "The Continuation of the Scheme," including its provisions about the executive and judiciary branches, completes that draft, making it a third.

As always, if you're interested in learning more about or supporting the efforts of ConSource, please click the link.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me atlybberty@gmail.com.

Thankful For Economic Incentives (And Private Property Rights)

I would have posted this one sooner, but I just found it over at Volokh Conspiracy.

American history, economics, & political science--sounds like American Heritage.

Many people believe that after suffering through a severe winter, the Pilgrims’ food shortages were resolved the following spring when the Native Americans taught them to plant corn and a Thanksgiving celebration resulted. In fact, the pilgrims continued to face chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims’ shortages. Bad economic incentives did.

In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on equality and need as determined by Plantation officials. People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. Governor William Bradford, in his 1647 history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote that this system was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. The problem was that young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.

Faced with potential starvation in the spring of 1623, the colony decided to implement a new economic system. Every family was assigned a private parcel of land. They could then keep all they grew for themselves, but now they alone were responsible for feeding themselves. While not a complete private property system, the move away from communal ownership had dramatic results.

This change, Bradford wrote, had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. Giving people economic incentives changed their behavior. Once the new system of property rights was in place, the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability.

Once the Pilgrims in the Plymouth Plantation abandoned their communal economic system and adopted one with greater individual property rights, they never again faced the starvation and food shortages of the first three years. It was only after allowing greater property rights that they could feast without worrying that famine was just around the corner.

Be sure and read the full Volokh post to learn things like, Native Americans understood private property rights before they traded away Manhattan for beads and a few deer skins.


If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Happy Patriot Day

Image link

Nathan Hale

"I only regret that I have but one life to give my country."

Independence Day Must Reads:

Apotheosis of Liberty - Thomas Jefferson
A Day at the Beach - Peggy Noonan
Celebrating and Safeguarding Our Freedom - Fr. Roger J. Landry


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Supreme Court Will Rule In Favour Of 2nd Amendment

From the Financial Times and My Way News, word that the Supreme court has ruled for individual possession of firearms.

Bravo, Supreme Court. Intellectually, historically, legally, there was only one way they could have ruled: in favor of the individual right to bear arms over some amorphous-collective-militia.

Any student (including BYU's American Heritage students, with whom we, as former TA, are well acquainted) of the Constitution knows that the Bill of Rights were written to guarantee the rights of the individual against incursions from the government. The fear when writing the Bill of Rights was that government would assume it could do anything not specifically prohibited by the Bill of Rights.

But some Founders, rather than worrying about the tale (Bill of Rights) wagging the dog (Constitutionally outlined powers), anticipated correctly the exponential growth of government and knew that citizen's individual rights would need to be protected. Thus, the "afterthought" of the first ten Amendments to the Constitution--the Bill of Rights.

So, summary: the Bill of Rights were written to protect the rights of the indivudal--the 2nd Amendment is no different to all the rest. Fortunately, the anti-2nd Amendment judicial activism du jour did not persuade swing-voter Anthony Kennedy.

Score one for Constitutional originalism.

*UPDATE 19 March 1:43am: The Left Fires a Counter-Volley, Meet the NRA's little known, highly influential opponents (subscription required, email us if you'd like to receive a digital copy of the article).


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