From Under the Rubble, Episode 10: I Hate the Constitution
In this episode of From Under the Rubble, Dr. Fleming examines the idea of “Hating the Constitution” via the well-known song, “I’m a good ol’ Rebel.” What does it mean to love and worship and protect the Constitution? Is this something that traditionalists and conservatives should be engaged in?
Original Air Date: March 22, 2017
Show Run Time: 37 minutes
Show Guest(s): Dr. Thomas Fleming
Show Host(s): Stephen Heiner
From Under the Rubble℗ is a Production of the Fleming Foundation. Copyright 2017. All Rights are Reserved.
Dr. Fleming, I have always considered every amendment passed subsequent to the War Between the States to be illegitimate. As you mentioned, the 14th amendment was not actually ratified, but all of the Reconstruction Amendments received dubious passage. Then, the rebelling states were forced back into the “union,” saddled with carpet bag governments and forced to rewrite their constitutions. Once a state is forced, at bayonet point, into a union it doesn’t desire and to re-write its constitution, how can anything that happens after that be considered legitimate?
Three generations, according to the Old Testament and human custom, legitimate usurpation and conquest, and that is probably consistent with the realities of human memory and fidelity. Unfortunately, Lincoln’s revolution is a gift that keeps on giving, and every generation there are new usurpations and oppressions.
Hmmm…. Dr. Fleming, is it a coincidence that three generations is generally regarded as the period time necessary to assimilate aliens? Three generations are necessary to wipe clean the slate and accustom citizens to past injustice and three generations are necessary to break the bonds an alien group held with their former nation and accept a new nation?
I guess another way to look at it is, after the war, Southerners became aliens in their own country, and, in theory, it was going to take three generations to “assimilate” them.
Good point!
Regarding assimilation, my mother and her sister and brother were born to Polish and Czechoslovakian immigrants and though they had only eighth-grade educations, all spoke English without an accent. I also had a high school classmate whose parents were Czech immigrants. He also spoke English without an accent. (I likely had other classmates or school mates whose parents were immigrants, but I was not aware of it because they also spoke English without an accent and were totally assimilated into American culture.) No one would have suspected any of them were children of immigrants or were not totally American. They were assimilated from the beginning. My wife’s family had similar experiences. Her father’s parents were immigrants from Italy. He and his brother both spoke English without accents and both served in the armed forces during WWII. None of them married people with the same ethnic background. All of these immigrants came here to become Americans.
Dr. Thomas Fleming, I am approximately fourteen minutes into the podcast and have paused it there to ask this question.
You bring up the mass rapes committed by Union soldiers in the South. Seeing as I am continually debating the War Between the States with San Francisco Bay Area liberals *and* conservatives–naturally–I was hoping that you would be able to point to either one or perhaps multiple definitive accounts of this.
I recently read Kim Murphy’s book, “I Had Rather Die: Rape in the Civil War,” after reading Julie Beck’s question-and-answer article with her in “The Atlantic” (a publication which seems to produce an article worth reading every five years or so).
Would greatly appreciate more sources on this matter. Thank you so very much in advance.
A fine podcast indeed, truly digging to the root of the whole “Constitution problem” as it were.
And yes San Franciscans are reduced to “guardians” of animals, though the two cats living with my mother and father make it unmistakably clear that they are the masters of the house, as is the feline custom.