Where is James Madison when you need him? Yesterday, the announcement came that the attorney general of the United States, at the direction of the president of the United States, is filing suit against the state of Arizona because . . . because why? The real reason is because they do not want Arizona to enforce the law with respect to illegal immigrants. The stated reason is that they do not want a state to be seen to usurp federal authority.
First, what about that law? Have you read it? It’s not long. Unlike the legislation coming out of Washington, it doesn’t bludgeon citizens with thousands — yes, thousands — of pages of gobbledygook. It’s an 18-page document whose main burden is to say that the federal immigration law already in place should be enforced. You wouldn’t know that from the liberal hysteria that the bill has sparked. But that is the case: you can find the text of Senate Bill 1070 here: read it and see. As Byron York noted in the Washington Examiner,
Contrary to the talk, it is a reasonable, limited, carefully-crafted measure designed to help law enforcement deal with a serious problem in Arizona. Its authors anticipated criticism and went to great lengths to make sure it is constitutional and will hold up in court. It is the criticism of the law that is over the top, not the law itself.
Jefferson’s tender lament didn’t make it into the Declaration.
The tenderest words in American political history were cut from the document they were to have graced.
It was July 1, 2 ,3 and 4, 1776, in the State House in Philadelphia. America was being born. The Continental Congress was reviewing and editing the language of the proposed Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson, its primary author, was suffering the death of a thousand cuts.
The tensions over slavery had been wrenching, terrible, and were resolved by brute calculation: to damn or outlaw it now would break fragile consensus, halt all momentum, and stop the creation of the United States. References to the slave trade were omitted, but the founders were not stupid men, and surely they knew their young nation would have its date with destiny; surely they heard in their silence the guns of Fort Sumter.
Still, in the end, the Congress would not produce only an act of the most enormous human and political significance, the creation of America, it would provide history with one of the few instances in which a work of true literary genius was produced, in essence, by committee. (The writing of the King James Bible is another.)
The beginning of the Declaration had a calm stateliness that signaled, subtly, that something huge is happening:
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separate.”
As we head into Independence Day weekend, my column today reflects on the other “A” word missing from the immigration debate: Assimilation.
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Assimilation and the Founding Fathers
by Michelle Malkin
In his immigration speech on Thursday, President Obama heralded America as a “nation of immigrants” defined not by blood or birth, but by “fidelity to the shared values that we all hold so dear.” If only it were so. Left-wing academics and activists spurned assimilation as a common goal long ago. Their fidelity lies with bilingualism (a euphemism for native language maintenance over English-first instruction), identity politics, ethnic militancy and a borderless continent.
Obama blames “politics” for the intractable immigration debate. Whose politics? The amnesty mob has taken to ambushing congressional offices this week to scream at lawmakers to choose “reform” (giving a blanket path to citizenship to millions of illegal aliens) or “racism” (their description of any and every legislative measure to stiffen sanctions for and deter the acts of border-jumping, visa-overstaying and deportation-evading).
| Written by John F. McManus |
| Monday, 06 November 2000 |
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This exchange was recorded by Constitution signer James McHenry in a diary entry that was later reproduced in the 1906 American Historical Review. Yet in more recent years, Franklin has occassionally been misquoted as having said, “A democracy, if you can keep it.” The NRA’s Charleton Heston quoted Franklin this way, for example, in a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace that was aired on December 20, 1998. |
The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were held in strict secrecy. Consequently, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended in order to learn what had been produced behind closed doors. The answer was provided immediately. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
The Battle of Springfield was fought during the American Revolutionary War on June 23, 1780. After the Battle of Connecticut Farms, on June 7, 1780, had foiled Lieutenant General Wilhelm, Baron von Knyphausen’s expedition to attack General George Washington’s army at Morristown, New Jersey, Knyphausen and Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton, British commander-in-chief in North America, decided upon a second attempt.
This was one of the last major engagements of the Revolutionary War in the north and effectively put an end to British ambitions in New Jersey. Because the decisive battles of the war moved further south, Springfiield became known as the “forgotten victory.” Washington praised the role of the New Jersey Militia in the battle, writing, “They flew to arms universally and acted with a spirit equal to anything I have seen in the course of the war”.
Battle of Springfield
Oliver Ellsworth (April 29, 1745 – November 26, 1807), an American lawyer and politician, was a revolutionary against British rule, a drafter of the United States Constitution, and third Chief Justice of the United States. On June 20, 1787, while at the Federal Convention, Ellsworth moved to strike the word National from the May 30, 1787 motion made by Edmund Randolph of Virginia, that called for the government to be called a National Government of United States. Ellsworth moved that the government continue to be called the United States Government.
The Battle of Bunker Hill took place on June 17, 1775, mostly on and around Breed’s Hill, during the Siege of Boston early in the American Revolutionary War. The battle is named after the adjacent Bunker Hill, which was peripherally involved in the battle and was the original objective of both colonial and British troops, and is occasionally referred to as the “Battle of Breed’s Hill.”
On June 13, 1775, the leaders of the colonial forces besieging Boston learned that the British generals were planning to send troops out from the city to occupy the unoccupied hills surrounding the city. In response to this intelligence, 1,200 colonial troops under the command of William Prescott stealthily occupied Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill, constructed an earthen redoubt on Breed’s Hill, and built lightly fortified lines across most of the Charlestown Peninsula.
When the British were alerted to the presence of the new position the next day, they mounted an attack against them. After two assaults on the colonial lines were repulsed with significant British casualties, the British finally captured the positions on the third assault, after the defenders in the redoubt ran out of ammunition. The colonial forces retreated to Cambridge over Bunker Hill, suffering their most significant losses on Bunker Hill.
While the result was a victory for the British, they suffered a large amount of losses: over 800 wounded and 226 killed, including a notably large number of officers. The battle is seen as an example of a Pyrrhic victory, as while their immediate objective (the capture of Bunker Hill) was achieved, the loss of nearly a third of their forces did not significantly alter the state of siege. Meanwhile, colonial forces were able to retreat and regroup in good order having suffered few casualties. Furthermore, the battle demonstrated that relatively inexperienced colonial forces were willing and able to stand up to regular army troops in a pitched battle.
When FoxNews.com wrote that a small publishing company put warning labels on copies of the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and other founding documents of the American republic, the immediate response was negative, and viral. The disclaimer on the publisher’s reprints of Common Sense, the Articles of Confederation, and other historical documents reads: “This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today.” The disclaimer goes on to warn parents to discuss the contents with their children before allowing them to read those documents.
Bloggers and website commentators have had a field day in excoriating Wilder’s disclaimer:
Unbelievable. File this one in the “Orwellian story of the day” file. I wonder if we will one day face the day in America where our Founding documents are outlawed…[or considered to be] hate speech?
