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All very nice, but it has nothing much to do with Adams’ politics.

Like his father, he seems never to have paid much attention to the federal principle; it was this oversight that was his presidency’s undoing.

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Adams’ administration faced strong congressional opposition from the beginning. The opposition’s leader was Vice President John C. Calhoun, who took advantage of Senate rules to appoint anti-Adams majorities to major Senate committees. One result was the “Onslow-Patrick Henry” debate, a newspaper exchange between Calhoun and an Adams supporter over Calhoun’s actions.

Besides thwarting the goals Adams laid out in his inaugural, Calhoun also cooperated with Martin Van Buren and Thomas Ritchie to create today’s Democratic Party. As envisioned by Van Buren, the Democratic Party was a Jeffersonian party–devoted to limited government, states’ rights, and strict construction. Among other things, it made Adams a one-term president.

Adams, a former Federalist, was essentially a Federalist in constitutionalism, although not when it came to sociology. Neither Federalists nor Democrats of that period can be equated to either of today’s political parties; each bears some resemblance to each of today’s political parties. This subject is worth an entire lecture.

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It’s common to argue that nothing anyone outside the USSR did hastened the end of the USSR, let alone caused it. That end was inevitable, we’re told. One could of course make the same argument concerning Diocletian’s economic policy — which must explain why the Byzantine Empire only endured until 1453.

In short, virtually every society that ever existed had governmental economic policies that were “doomed to fail.” This line of argument strikes me as jejune. I think that in many cases it comes from this direction: nothing that government ever did was worth doing; Reagan’s arms buildup was a government initiative; therefore, Reagan’s arms buildup wasn’t worth doing.

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It’s simply classic post-1929 Keynesianism. Nothing special.

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The most interesting thing about the current use of this term is that while it has come to be associated with today’s “right,” it has nothing conservative about it. The idea underlying it is that America should endeavor to spread its form of government around the world by intervening in other countries’ affairs. Claes Ryn has rightly noted that this is a Jacobinical idea reflecting impulses from the French, not the American, Revolution — one that was universally rejected by the Founding Fathers. Funny how the W administration perverted our language.

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There actually was talk of direct election of the Executive in the Philadelphia Convention. Ultimately, however, small-state delegates (including Connecticut’s) won the current apportionment of the Electoral College. That’s why my vote for president weighs much more than the vote of someone from California: while Connecticut gets 7 electors (for its 5 reps + 2 senators), California only gets 55 electors (53 + 2), so that what for Connecticut is a 40% bonus for its senators is for California less than a 4% bonus for its senators.

How to justify it? Try this: http://www.lewrockwell.com/gutzman/gutzman9.html

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They didn’t actually nullify the A&S Acts. The Virginia & Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Kentucky Resolutions of 1799, and Virginia Report of 1800 laid out the Republicans’ view of the Constitution, including the claim that in case the Federal Government adopted a policy that was unconstitutional and dangerous, the states (and these are the words of Virginia’s third resolution) “have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose.”

What “to interpose” meant in this context remained unclear, although Virginia’s reference to the states’ doing so “within their respective limits” gave a hint. So too did the fact that Virginia in that year also finally concluded several years’ debate over whether to build a new state armory and actually did construct one in Richmond, as well as beginning to heighten training for militia units throughout the state. Some of those militia units, such as the famous Richmond “Republican Blues” cavalry unit, were forthrightly partisan.

One common error concerning the VA & KY Resolutions is to assume that they meant what Madison wanted them to mean, or later said they meant. As I show in _Virginia’s American Revolution_, ch. 4, and _James Madison and the Making of America_, however, the discussions in the Virginia House of Delegates centered on the idea that all unconstitutional federal policies were by definition “null, void, and of no force or effect” — so that removal of that phrase from the final version of the Virginia Resolutions did not negate that claim. Calling federal policies not legitimated by the Constitution’s express provisions “unconstitutional” was censure enough.

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Reagan sympathizers only controlled Congress during the first two years of Reagan’s presidency. Not coincidentally, that was also the only two-year period in my life when domestic discretionary spending declined. Thereafter, Reagan decided that of his three priorities — arms buildup, tax reductions, and spending reductions, the last was the least important. To the shock of his opponents, the buildup led not to a world conflagration, but to the end of the Soviet Union. (Don’t take my word for it: take Alexander Bessmertnykh’s.)

Reagan was also primarily responsible for a serious renaissance in constitutionalism, both in his appointments (including of the attorney general who made “original intent” a common term and of hundreds of judges, among them the best chief justice in history). This is one of Reagan’s chief legacies.

It’s common to comment critically upon Reagan’s administration by assuming that he had the power of an Arab dictator and commenting on everything that the Federal Government did as if Reagan had desired it. This approach is, of course, fallacious.

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You’re welcome. As it happens, my next book is going to be on that subject, so it’s on my mind lately.

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No, Virginia did not ever turn over the paperwork the SCUS had demanded.

The Virginians’ argument was that although the US Constitution required Virginia judges to swear to uphold the Constitution, that requirement did not entail their subordination to the federal courts. So far as they saw it, the two court systems were parallel.

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George Mason called in the Philadelphia Convention for a two-thirds vote to be required to levy a tariff. His contention was that otherwise, the 8-5 northern majority of states would mean that the North could use the tariff power to force the South to pay higher shipping charges. He lost.

As the exporting/importing section, tariffs would fall mostly on the South and have negative repercussions on the export business — which too would hurt the South. As Mason had forecast, this became a major sectional issue virtually from the minute the Constitution was implemented.

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The idea of “dual sovereignty” comes from the confused language of ratification-era Federalists, such as Hamilton and Madison in _The Federalist_, about sovereignty. They say at various points that the Federal Government has some sovereignty, that the states retain some sovereignty, that various institutions, have “sovereign power,” etc. I call this “confused” because sovereignty refers to ultimate authority, and — as John Taylor of Caroline pointed out to John Adams in their late-life correspondence — in America, no government is sovereign; it is the peoples of the states who are.

Yes, state citizenship and American citizenship are discrete.

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