Penn Williams

Questioning everything. No followers ≠ Bot, FWIW.

[Erik Moyer @CarnivoreErik]

THE REPLIES TO "AMERICA'S ORIGINAL SIN" REVEALED MORE THAN THEY ANSWERED

Thank you to everyone who engaged with my article. What stood out was not simply what people argued, but how rarely the core claim was met on its own terms.

Most replies did not rebut the core positive-law claim. They shifted to justification, excuse, or displacement.

Article XIII required unanimous consent of all thirteen state legislatures to alter the Articles of Confederation. In 1787, that rule was bypassed and replaced with a nine-state ratification threshold. Madison acknowledged the departure in Federalist No. 40. That breach is the point at issue.

The evasions were predictable:

1. Ratification cured it. But the defect lay precisely in substituting an unauthorized ratification rule for the lawful one.

2. Rhode Island eventually ratified. After the new government was already operating and under direct economic coercion. That is submission to a fait accompli, not prior lawful consent.

3. Necessity justified it. That does not rebut illegality. It merely tries to excuse it.

4. Popular sovereignty superseded Article XIII. That abandons the legal order actually in force and appeals to an extra-legal authority.

5. The Convention only proposed and others ratified. But the Convention also changed the rule by which ratification would count. That is not incidental. It is the breach.

6. Moral prudence or theology displaced the legal question. That is a category error. The thesis operates on the positive law plane.

7. No court meant no real rule. Enforceability and validity are not the same thing.

8. Duration legitimized the breach. It does not. Duration does not transmute illegality into legitimacy.

A few respondents followed the argument where it led without deflection. They were the exception. The rest reached for the same exits in strikingly similar form without coordination between them.

None of these rebut the point on the positive law plane. They justify, excuse, or evade it.

That pattern is precisely what my second paper documents and explains. It will be published in Culture Wars magazine, April 2026.

America's Original Sin: The 1787 Coup https://t.co/jVo0ieurZb - Published in Culture Wars magazine, March 2026.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

This is a common capitalist-vs-socialist argument: who is actually providing the majority value, the investors and owners, or the line workers?

When the question is asked this way, it becomes impossible to objectively answer. Because "value" is a subjective quality. It means "thing you give a fuck about".

To what this argument really boils down to is one group saying "I care more about line work", and another saying "I care more about investment dollars", which is like arguing about whether or not horsies are pretty.

But if you can't answer a question, what you do is rephrase it properly.

So, instead of "who creates the value", let us ask instead, "Who is the bottleneck?"

In other words, what is the scarcest component that prevents more value from being created?

It is workers? Or investors?

Let's look at SpaceX. SpaceX makes reusable rocket boosters. It is the only entity in the entire known universe that does so. It also, relatedly, provides the majority of Earth's transfer-to-orbit capability.

In doing so, it employs 5,563 engineers, and one Elon Musk.

So, who is the bottleneck? Who is harder to get?

Well, there are lots of groups of 5,563 engineers in the world, but there is only one Elon Musk. And there is only one company making reusable rocket boosters.

That seems pretty telling. But someone on the socialist side of the argument might point out that Elon Musk provided $90 million dollars to found SpaceX. And there are lots of people with that much money in the world, but only one company making...

Well, you get the picture.

But this argument is incomplete. It only shows that Elon Musk isn't the critical component if and only if $90 million is the only value Elon Musk provides.

Which, of course, is baloney.

The value Elon Musk provides is technical leadership.

He selected the team. He organized the team. He provided the team with its mission. And he leads the team in that mission.

That's the unique, irreplaceable component. Elon Musk is the only person who has thus far had the power to build and lead a team to do this.

The significance of him owning the $90 million dollars is only that it had to come from somewhere, and, since it came from him, he had the power to control the company.

The rare component isn't labor OR capital. It's leadership.

This is why capitalism is better than socialism every time.

If the workers own the means of production, how do get inspired, game-changing leadership? You can't have 5,563 leaders. You have to have one. Or at most a handful.

What do you do? Elect them? When has that ever worked in the past?

A guy with $90 million to throw at a project might not be a great leader. There's nothing about having $90M that guarantees technical leadership ability. Hell, Kim Kardashian could easily scrape together $90M to start a rocket company. And it would fail, hard and immediately.

But the thing about a guy with $90M is that while he's not guaranteed to be a great technical leader, there's a chance that he is. Because at least he's competent or well-connected enough to have $90M. And he believed in what he's doing enough to lay down that bet.

Lots of companies, started under capitalist principles, by rich investors, fail because those investors couldn't provide the right leadership.

This is not a bug of capitalism. It's a feature. Those companies are supposed to fail. Capitalism punishes poor leadership, and rewards good leadership. Doesn't always work that way when there's a government to put its thumb on the scales, but that's what capitalism does.

Theoretically, the owner-workers of a socialist company could elect a good leader, but there's two problems with this.

Number one, they've almost never managed this in practice.

Number two, they still need $90M. Where are they going to get it? A guy with $90M isn't going to throw it into an enterprise controlled by the workers. He expects to own what he pays for, and ownership is meaningless without control.

And sure, the socialist state can fund the company, but then the state expects to control the company, and now your technical leadership is a bunch of bureaucrats. Good luck with that one.

So, no capitalism doesn't guarantee good leadership, or success. It's a toss-up. But it's the only system that possibly can. Everything else is a guaranteed loser.

So, no, billionaires are 100%, full stop, not the reason you are poor. In fact, if more of us were doing better, there would be more billionaires.

[Penn Williams @PennWilliams2]

@CynicalPublius “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” ~ John Adams

[Penn Williams @PennWilliams2]

@dlongenecker1 Thanks for an amazing Easter Vigil, Father! Beautiful! As you said…”a lotta [beautiful] church.”

[Rosaries by Anna @CarmeliteAnna]

Love this

[Penn Williams @PennWilliams2]

@DarrigoMelanie Fun Fact: Stealing 2% of the top 5 wealthiest billionaires would generate more revenue than the entire yearly budget of USAID.

So blasé about stealing from others. What gives anyone the right to their wealth?

[Hunter Ash @ArtemisConsort]

Governments exist to serve their citizens. They should only admit immigrants whose presence will be a net benefit to the people already living here. The benefit to the immigrant is irrelevant.

[Fr. Dwight Longenecker @dlongenecker1]

The significant detail in Die Hard: In an early scene Holly is given a posh Rolex by her boss as thanks for her career woman hard work. At he end, when Hans is gripping her wrist as he dangles out the window, John (her husband) unlatches the watch (the symbol of her careerism and greed) which frees her and which Hans takes with him as he falls.

[Penn Williams @PennWilliams2]

@iowegun @wokal_distance The Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other. - John Adams

[Penn Williams @PennWilliams2]

@elonmusk The Pentagon Wars (1998) irl…

[Jeremy Wayne Tate @JeremyTate41]

“Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation (as has been already admitted) would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape. Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short men might feel him to be tall. Old bucks who are growing stout might consider him insufficiently filled out; old beaux who were growing thin might feel that he expanded beyond the narrow lines of elegance... Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre. Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad— in various ways

[Penn Williams @PennWilliams2]

@stokesmatthew81 Seems like you owe a bunch of Fivers, guy. Pay up.

[Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630]

Something worth noting: you can still be a subby housewife today. Per all data, 50% or more of women prefer this model.

You just don't HAVE to be one, anymore.

[Steak-umm @steak_umm]

don't forget: beneath the presidential question, your ballot lets you vote on local representatives and issues that immediately affect your community

research those too beeflings

[Penn Williams @PennWilliams2]

@patrickwebb The service member must request the ballot themselves. Seriously…get the facts straight.

[Warren Smith @WTSmith17]

The 10 vs One Street Debate...

in the origin story of Peter Boghossian

[Defiant L’s @DefiantLs]

I come back to this video every year so I don't forget what propaganda looks like.

[Salomé Sibonex @SalomeSibonex]

omg I just looove how art lets you see into people's minds.

This is an excellent representation of tribal psychology: individuality and complexity are reserved for the in-group, while the out-group is reduced to the same, undifferentiated threat.

It's exactly why individualism is such a powerful civilizing philosophy—it cuts against the tribal impulse to reject complexity and reduce individuals down to their group affiliation.

[Penn Williams @PennWilliams2]

@CynicalPublius CP…finally someone articulates EXACTLY what I’m feeling. My TDS- afflicted FIL shared a Trump/Hitler pic the day before. I love that man…but I want to slap the stupid out of him after yesterday.

[Penn Williams @PennWilliams2]

@jerkgoonfemboy @llddiiss Prices are high…but he shouldn’t be b!*thing about prices when he bought organic peas, organic pizza, feta, gnocchi, Brazil nut body wash, and oat milk latte. Choices, my man…choices.