The Men Who Destroyed the Constitution
• http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.comIn his 1850 Disquisition on Government,
John C. Calhoun argued that a written constitution would never be
sufficient to contain the plundering proclivities of a central
government. Some mechanisms for assuring consensus among the citizens
of the states regarding “federal” laws would be necessary.
Consequently, Calhoun proposed giving citizens of the states veto power
over federal laws that they believed were unconstitutional (the
“concurrent majority”). He also championed the Jeffersonian idea of
nullification. To Calhoun (and Jefferson), states’ rights meant that
the citizens of the states were sovereign over the central government
that they created as their agent, and could only be so if such
mechanisms – including the right of secession – existed.
Without these political mechanisms the forces of nationalism, mercantilism,
and political plunder would relentlessly reshape the Constitution with
their rhetoric, and their efforts would eventually overwhelm the st
