John Tyler

A republican government can only be supported by virtue; and the end of all our legislation should be to encourage our fellow citizens in its daily practice.

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

"A republican government can only be supported by virtue; and the end of all our legislation should be to encourage our fellow citizens in its daily practice." John Tyler the greatest President in US history.

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@JasonRink Old creepy Joe had the same look on his face while being puppet President

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@ArtieVandelay1 @SenFettermanPA Yeah you're a moron there's a difference between democratic and democracy. The US has democratic aspects to it, but it's not an American "democracy" in the purest sense. Democracy leans towards despotism that's why the founding generation despised democracy.

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@SenTomCotton You believe in a United State not the sovereignty of the States

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@ArtieVandelay1 @SenFettermanPA Democracy, who cares about democracy the Union is not a democracy, it's a federal republic. You people have a hard time reading the founding generation don't you. They bash democracy every day of the week.

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@SenFettermanPA A disaster for US foreign policy, by the way that's the job of the central government to deal with foreign policy not domestic policies of the States.

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@CountryFirstRep I thought he was a civilian and cease to be President the moment he left office.

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@HouseGOP Have you ever read the ten plankets of Communism. I think your party is nailing down in place the boards.

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@WanjiruNjoya @HouseGOP Not bad, it's outright Unconstitutional, I missed where in the a constitution the housing clause. Oops, Oh my bad that falls under the necessary improper clause. I will shut up now.

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@HouseGOP It's this a parody account? Do you even know the definition of socialism? The two parties together have embraced socialism & it's deadly ideas.

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@NJflaggers We need another Statesman like this Great John C Calhoun

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@WhiteHouse No, no, a great Senator or Stateman would be John C Calhoun

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@SenRandPaul Why do we have NATO in the 1st place, which country is going to invade Europe again. It's just a relic of the Cold war.

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@ryanswalters73 That's the problem right there is unconstitutional war and then unconstitutionally ended. Congress is a bunch of derelicts.

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

@RandPaul The save America act is unconstitutional. State's job to control their elections.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

Is America ready for my term limit legislation titled “Three Strokes and You’re Out” ?

[Brion McClanahan @BrionMcClanahan]

Everyone in America has probably heard of the Lincoln/Douglas debate, but I would bet most don't know anything about Stephen Douglas.

They might know some platitudes about Lincoln, but the real Lincoln is still unknown to a good portion of the population. As an aside, I've been asking students for over twenty years to tell me anything "bad" about Abraham Lincoln. Years ago, I had crickets. In the last seven to eight years, however, that has changed. Now, some of my students--mostly black--have some unkind words for the "Great Emancipator," and a few students rattle off some information about Lincoln's abuse of the Constitution. That gives me some hope that we are making progress. Tearing down the Lincoln myth is key to righting the ship.

But I digress. Some Americans might say they've heard of the debates over the Constitution, debates surrounding "Civil Rights," or perhaps a presidential debate or two, but I would bet that almost no one has ever heard of the "Patrick Henry/Onslow" Debate from 1826.

I've asked some colleagues about it--men who should know at least something about it--and they didn't know.

I'll tell you why.

John C. Calhoun was Onslow and he wiped the floor with Patrick Henry, who was probably none other than John Q. Adams. This debate took place in the press when Adams was President and Calhoun Vice-President.

Here's the back story. Calhoun, as President of the Senate, refused to tell John Randolph of Roanoke to take a seat and stop talking during several debates in the Senate following Adams's First Annual Message to Congress. Randolph hurled all kinds of invectives at Adams and Henry Clay, doubled and tripled down on the "corrupt bargain," and generally dragged both of their reputations through the mud. Clay was so incensed that he challenged Randolph to a duel. 

Adams insisted that Calhoun not only had the power but the responsibility to silence men like Randolph. Calhoun disagreed and told Adams to shove it.

But it didn't end there. Calhoun then proceeded  to explain the Constitution to the little man from Massachusetts. It was a real trouncing. Eventually, Adams stopped writing, particularly after Calhoun openly said he wanted the debate to expand into other areas of the Constitution. Adams knew he'd been beat, so he laid that golden fiddle on the ground at Johnny's feet.

Calhoun told him to come on back if he ever wanted to try it again, but he told him once he's the best that's ever been.

He wasn't lying.

But because Calhoun clearly "won" in the press, mainstream historians don't want you to know anything about this. It would make Calhoun appear to be a stronger statesman than the supposed great man in John Quincy Adams.

The back story is important because I cover every letter and speech Calhoun made on the issue in my latest class at McClanahan Academy, Reading John C. Calhoun, Part 3.

I also discuss two other important speeches in that class, one of the "Black Tariff" of 1842 and another on an attempt to assume State debts by piling on more government spending.

This is a great class, and from now through July 11, you can grab it for $109.

Use the coupon code CALHOUN3 at checkout or click the link in the comments.

And from now through July 11th, I've cut 40% off every class at McClanahan Academy. This is the best sale I've ever offered at the site.

40% off EVERYTHING. Just use the coupon code 250 at checkout on all classes, including bundles, which are already discounted, and get a real history education.  

This is just too great to pass up. Grab one or ten while you can.

[Ryan S. Walters @ryanswalters73]

Unbeknownst to most of my Southern friends, and quite a shock to me, I do have quite a bit of Puritan/Massachusetts stock in my bloodline. I suppose most Heritage Americans do. One of my grandfathers was part of the Puritan Migration in 1630, one of the 1,000 or so who came to Massachusetts in the “Winthrop Fleet.” In fact, he founded Woburn, Massachusetts. Another grandpa was the founder of Yale. Another was the first Puritan minister ordained in America. And so on. I count as relatives the Adamses, the Roosevelts, and the Kennedys, among others. However, within a few generations my New England folks bailed out and went South to join my many Southern kin, hence why I am where I am.

But I do not possess a “Puritan Mindset” in any way, shape, form, or fashion. And sadly many Americans today, whether North or South, possess that line of thinking.

Puritan = Yankee.

Clyde Wilson defined a “Yankee” as a “peculiar ethnic group descended from New Englanders, who can be easily recognized by their arrogance, hypocrisy, greed, lack of congeniality, and penchant for ordering other people around. Puritans long ago abandoned anything that might be good in their religion but have never given up the notion that they are the chosen saints whose mission is to make America, and the world, into the perfection of their own image.”

So when someone puts down the cause of Southern independence, and praises the Union’s war to defeat it, mere decades after American independence from the British Empire, and without a shred for hypocrisy, then I know they are Yankee/Puritan in their mindset. These are the same people who support every American military action around the world, who have no problem invading a foreign country on the pretense of helping them, spreading democracy in the Middle East and around the globe. As Clyde Wilson has also stated, Yankees are the only race of people who invade someone else’s country and think they ought to be happy about it. Then are shocked when they aren’t.

They believe in self-determination for themselves but deny it to others. That’s as Yankee as it gets.

But perhaps I should let a man from Vermont describe a Puritan, Orestes Brownson:

“The New Englander has excellent points, but is restless in body and mind, always scheming, always in motion, never satisfied with what he has, and always seeking to make all the world like himself, or as uneasy as himself. He is smart, seldom great; educated, but seldom learned; active in mind, but rarely a profound thinker; religious, but thoroughly materialistic: his worship is rendered in a temple founded on Mammon, and he expects to be carried to heaven in a softly-cushioned railway car, with his sins carefully checked and deposited in the baggage crate with his other luggage to be duly delivered when he has reached his destination. He is philanthropic, but makes his philanthropy his excuse for meddling with everybody’s business as if it were his own, and under pretense of promoting religion and morality, he wars against every generous and natural instinct, and aggravates the very evils he seeks to cure.”

Does that not describe many Americans today? Sad but true!

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

Happy Succession Day

[John Tyler @JohnTyler1790]

The media can't either write or proof read. I sure hope the cases get better soon. 🤣 people are infected not cases @https://abc7chicago.com/story/parasite-outbreak-causing-explosive-diarrhea-reported-17-us-states-cdc-warns/19442897/

[Brion McClanahan @BrionMcClanahan]

Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1825 that he intended the Declaration of Independence to be “an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.” Yet, he did not propose the Declaration should “find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of….” The last statement is the clearest articulation of what Jefferson and other members of the founding generation thought of the Declaration. It was a restatement of the rights of Englishmen, modeled in large part by previous works of English and American law. The Declaration was not a radical document or a deviation from accepted constitutional norms, as the famous historian Gordon Wood suggests. But the idea that Jefferson and other founders would be modern liberals persists, and that is why Barack Obama can argue with a straight face that he is following the founding documents of the United States. Such thinking needs a “radical” correction, and a better understanding of the Declaration is the key.

In 1100, King Henry I of England agreed to restrictions on his power through the Charter of Liberties. The English barons rejected absolute authority and sought to preserve traditional decentralized “government.” Just over one hundred years later, King John was forced again by the English nobles to sign the Magna Charta. The “Great Charter,” as it is known in English, declared that the king was not above the law—making him essentially equal to the nobles—and it resisted the trend toward centralization in England. Though on the books, the Magna Charta was often ignored by more powerful English monarchs, but several of its provisions became the basis of English common law, most notably the writ of habeas corpus.

When England erupted in civil war in the seventeenth century, the Parliament asserted its authority, and by 1688 had become the driving force behind English law and policy. When King James II was expelled from England in 1688, the Parliament forced the incoming monarch, William of Orange, to sign the English Bill of Rights. It condemned James II for violating the rights of Englishmen, what the Parliament called the “laws and liberties of this kingdom,” and placed restrictions on the powers of the monarch. Jefferson essentially copied the form of the English Bill of Rights in writing the Declaration. Thus, Jefferson’s indictment of King George III was not a radical departure from accepted English practices. He was following English tradition, which in turn he adapted to American circumstances. This formed the American tradition, a conservative rather than radical tradition.

Additionally, Jefferson borrowed language from George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Resolves in drafting the Declaration. Mason asserted that “all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights…namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and maintaining happiness and safety.” Jefferson altered this in his original draft to “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” By “equal,” Jefferson meant that all citizens or freeholders are, as Mason wrote, born “equally free and independent” under the law. The barons of England asserted their legal equality with the king in 1100 and 1215. Jefferson was not stating anything new. And Jefferson simply shortened Mason’s language—which he borrowed from John Locke’s 1689 publication Two Treatises on Civil Government¬—to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Everyone understood that Jefferson equated “happiness” with property and safety.

Another famous historian, Joseph Ellis, contends that Jefferson viewed government as an “alien force.” But Jefferson never used that term. He argued that the colonists had suffered patiently under “a long train of abuses and usurpations” and an “absolute Despotism.” Thus, it was their “right” and “duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their future security.” This had been done countless times in human history, and as recently as 1689 in England. Jefferson did not think the English system of government was tyrannical, and in particular did not denounce Virginia colonial government, only the “present King of Great Britain,” George III, deserved condemnation. Government had an obligation, in his words, to protect the “safety and happiness” of the people. That is not an anti-government view, but of course, Jefferson believed there should be limits on government power and, most importantly, the size and scope of government.

The Declaration of Independence did not “create” the “United States.” Jefferson called it the “united States,” or simply the States united. Virginia and Maryland both separately declared their independence from Great Britain, with Virginia doing so over a month before the Declaration was ratified in the Continental Congress. The colonies became “FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES.” Jefferson made a conscious decision to choose the word State. A State, in the 18th century, was a sovereign political entity. In the same document, Jefferson called Great Britain a “State.” Thus, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, or any other American State, were equal to the mother country. They were not shires, parishes, counties, or provinces subservient to a “united States” government. The Declaration, then, is a decentralizing document, and the first governing document of the United States, the Articles of Confederation, reaffirmed that fact.

Most people mistake centralization as a “conservative” tendency. Human history proves otherwise. Centralization, whether political, cultural, or religious, does not conserve anything but the imperial traits of the centralizers, whether Marxists, theocratic zealots, or something else. Religions, cultures, customs, conventions, constitutions, economies, etc. are often ruined by the centralizers, and thus, centralization is always a “progressive” trend, not a conservative one, and typically the reaction to centralization is a conservative reaction, a push to preserve the culture, customs, or traditions of a particular people or place. Likewise, all empires have broken under the strain of conservative resistance to the imperial order. Jefferson and the men of the founding generation declared their independence to preserve English liberties. It was a decentralized, conservative movement.

Thinking of the Declaration and the War for Independence this way sheds light on who Americans are as a people. They are a naturally conservative group who love liberty and who are also inclined to preserve the traditions, customs, and cultures of their communities and families. Most men in the founding generation viewed “provincialism” as a badge of honor. They were Virginians, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians, Massachusettians, and Marylanders first and foremost and Americans second. They defended the rights of their sister States, but did not want another State, foreign or domestic, interfering in the concerns of their local community. In the rush to force “our” will on other Americans (or on the world), we forget this lesson. The American tradition, as exemplified by the Declaration of Independence and the founding generation, favors limited, decentralized government that has as its only charge the protection of life, liberty, and property, and the maintenance of the cultures, customs, conventions, and constitutions of the States and local communities. The Declaration did not “create” new rights, it simply re-affirmed the old, and it is America’s conservative document.