Tag: Institute on the Constitution

According to a post on John Lofton’s Institute on the Constitution blog, journalist H.W. Mencken was right to declare the Confederate side of the Civil War to be fighting for government of the people. Lofton declared the Gettysburg address to be a lie because, in agreement with Mencken, the Union soldiers were fighting against self-determination.
And what did the South want to self-determine?
Mencken says the Confederates went into the battle free. But who was not free? What group of people, living in the South, did not have the right of self-determination?
After spending some time listening to the IOTC material and perusing their website, there can be little doubt that the the position of the IOTC is that the wrong side won the Civil War.  They are not over it.
Here are just a few other articles on point:
Lincoln A Murderous Tyrant Who Lied Repeatedly About Secession
America According to Lincoln
What Might Have Happened if the South Had Won and Lincoln Put on Trial for War Crimes?
Michael Peroutka To Address “League Of The South” In Chattanooga, Tennessee, November 1
President Bush Trails Michael Peroutka by 45 Points! – “You may also tell them that I am proud to be a member of League of the South. I look forward to receiving the support not only from guys with Confederate flags in their trucks, but also those with the Southern Cross in their hearts.” — Michael Peroutka
Fireworks, Gettysburg, and a Bittersweet Fourth of July – In this article, Michael Peroutka says America lost the battle of Gettysburg:

The second sadness comes from the historical proximity of the defeat of our American forces at Gettysburg.
On the fourth of July, 1863, after three days of brutal and desperate fighting to defend and preserve an American way of life, American soldiers retreated in the rain through Frederick, Maryland and slipped back across the Potomac River to the relative safety of Virginia.
I wonder what “Independence Day” thoughts went through the minds of these men as they marched away from that horrific scene where they and their brethren had sacrificed life and limb for the cause of American Independence. What singular faith and courage led them to continue the struggle to defend America from the growing tyrant!
Though most people living in America don’t realize it, the Army of Northern Virginia was the last force capable of countermanding the centralized tyranny that had, more than one hundred forty-two years ago, succeeded in undermining the concept of the Constitutional Republic. When Lee lost at Gettysburg, no earthly force remained that could stand against the Washington leviathan.

Do you see what he did there?  Peroutka refers to the Confederate troops as the “American forces.”  These “American forces” were battling to “preserve an American way of life.” According to Peroutka, the effort to preserve the Union and end slavery was tyranny and the Confederates were fighting for the “cause of American Independence.”
So when the National Religious Broadcasters and Liberty University broadcast the IOTC course, should it be called the American view or the Confederate view?
 

I have been making the case that the Institute on the Constitution defends the Confederate view of the Constitution more so than the American view that has evolved since the founding. This post provides another support for my case. Who one reveres and cites as an authority and who one rejects and denigrates can give some insight. In the case of the IOTC, it is very clear from their website that they believe Abraham Lincoln was a scoundrel and Confederate leaders and thinkers were heroes. On Lincoln, see these articles (here and here).
On the other hand, IOTC exalts R.L. Dabney. Dabney was a Presbyterian minister who fought for the South in the Civil War and was considered to be one of the leading theologians of the day. Dabney promoted the concept of a Christian nation and defended slavery before and after the Civil War. Dabney is cited frequently on the IOTC website. In fact, they cite him favorably in their mission statement.
Dabney is used as a source for IOTC teaching. His treatise on civil government is cited as a reading in their lesson on civil law and the civil magistrate. In this section, Dabney makes a case against the view of government as a social contract and instead proposes biblical law as a basis (as does IOTC). Later in this excerpt, Dabney defends slavery and diminished civil rights for blacks and women:

Men have by nature, a general equality in this; not a specific one. Hence, the general equality of nature will by no means produce a literal and universal equality of civil condition; for the simple reason that the different classes of citizens have very different specific rights; and this grows out of their differences of sex, virtue, intelligence, civilization, etc., and the demands of the common welfare. Thus, if the low grade of intelligence, virtue and civilization of the African in America, disqualified him for being his own guardian, and if his own true welfare (taking the “general run” of cases) and that of the community, would be plainly marred by this freedom; then the law decided correctly, that the African here has no natural right to his self–control, as to his own labour and locomotion. Hence, his natural liberty is only that which remains after that privilege is retrenched. Still he has natural rights, (to marriage, to a livelihood from his own labour, to the Sabbath, and to the service of God, and immortality, etc., &c). Freedom to enjoy all these constitutes his natural liberty, and if the laws violate any of it causelessly, they are unjust.

According to Dabney, a African in America had certain rights but not rights to be “his own guardian.” Elsewhere in his writings, Dabney referred to the righteousness of slavery and to abolitionists as infidels.
While I am not giving an opinion about what IOTC believes about Southern slavery, I am noting that their heroes promote a view of civil government that did not prevail beyond the 1860s. As articulated by the Declaration, Lincoln, and the Constitution as amended, America is dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal before the law; the Confederate view was not dedicated to that proposition.

Yesterday, the Institute on the Constitution reprinted an Orange County Register op-ed which declares Ted Cruz ineligible for the presidency because his father is Cuban. The article was posted by MD League of the South chaplain David Whitney.
Defining the “natural born citizen” clause of the Constitution in terms of parentage, the op-ed writer, Steve Jackson, comes to the the conclusion that Cruz’s father disqualifies the Texas Senator from eligibility.
Jackson writes that the founders got the term “natural born citizen” from a 1787 book by Emmerich de Vattel’s titled The Law of Nations – the Principles of Natural Law Applied to the Conduct and to the Affairs of Nations and of Sovereigns. He cites Book I, Chapter XIX, Section 212 which states: “…The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens…”
Will Obama birthers come out in opposition to Cruz? Will those opposed to a Hispanic president use this as a means to trip up his chances? I don’t know whether the op-ed writer is accurate in his claims but it will be fascinating to see this play out.
For more on the Institute on the Constitution read here.