Founding Principles
The Republic was not Kept: Benjamin Franklin’s Constitution Day Prediction
“A republic … if you can keep it” September 17, 1787 – the day the constitution was signed. We all know Benjamin Franklin’s famous line. But he wasn’t warning us about the government. He wasn’t even warning about the constitution....
The Great Bypass: How the Constitution Was Built to Sideline the States
“This Constitution does not attempt to coerce sovereign bodies, states, in their political capacity.” With that one sentence, future Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth identified the single most important and least understood feature of the Constitution. It wasn’t just a...
No Obedience is Due: The Suffolk Resolves of 1774
“No obedience is due from this province to either or any part of the acts above-mentioned, but that they be rejected as the attempts of a wicked administration to enslave America.” Today in history – September 9, 1774 – from the Suffolk Resolves, drafted...
Thomas Paine’s Forgotten Paper Money Takedown
“Money is Money, and Paper is Paper. All the invention of man cannot make them otherwise.” With those words, Thomas Paine went after what he saw as one of the greatest scams in history: governments claiming that paper is money. Through a series of...