Freedom Threatened by 'Internal Enemies'; Scholar Warns Harvard GOP Club

Harvard - A Noble History of . Republicanism!

Dr. Tom Palmer of CATO Institute displays a pocket-sized Constitution.

By Geraldine Hawkins February 18, 2003 "Constitutionally limited government is the greatest achievement in history," Dr. Tom Palmer, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, told the Harvard Republican Club (HRC) Feb. 12, because it is "government that exercises just powers, rather than power. That is the exception in history."

Speaking to a large crowd assembled at Eliot Dining Hall on the Harvard campus for the Club's Lincoln Day Dinner, Palmer said that the Constitution speaks of the government "deriving just powers from the consent of the governed - and only just powers. Some powers are unjust, and not legitimately exercised by government.

"This is the crowning glory of the U.S. Constitution: It recognizes that you have more rights than can be put on a list - you have the right to wear a hat or not to wear a hat. You have the right, since you are students, to get up at 10 o'clock in the morning." By contrast, "you can make a list of powers legitimately exercised by government.

"Alexander Hamilton was opposed to passing a Bill of Rights because, he said. 'To every rational purpose, the Constitution is itself a Bill of Rights,'" Palmer told the gathering. "If you enumerate rights, some people will say those are the only rights you have."

The Founders' drew on many sources, especially that of the English legal tradition. Their most important principle, according to Palmer, was the Rule of Law.

"Law is superior to power. It is the people's duty to limit power. This is what the people did to wicked King John on the Field of Runnymeade.

"The idea of 'no taxation without representation' comes from the Magna Carta. So does the right to trial by jury, and due process. The Founders drew on the best of the past, but they added something more." Another wonderful thing about our Constitution is that "every citizen can understand it. Every person of normal intelligence who is not a member of the United States Congress can understand it. "If you read the Constitution, you will have done something most members of Congress have never done," Palmer told the students. "That's setting the bar pretty low.

Josh Mendelsohn, president of Harvard Republican Club, says: "Our ranks will come back to this institution."

"Have you ever seen a copy of the California constitution? If you work out at a gym, you can lift it. It's gigantic," said Palmer, who brought a box of pocket-sized U.S. Constitutions for the students.

Palmer said that familiarity with the Constitution is necessary for "a sense of rational patriotism, not the sort of dumb patriotism that says, 'America - Love it or Leave it.'"

Palmer noted that the Declaration of Independence says that "all men . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Palmer said that the Constitution implies that we cease to be human without these rights, but he stressed the importance of the word "among," with its further implication that there is more to human experience than the three famous rights.

Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution refers to "all powers herein granted." "That implies that some powers are not granted," said Palmer, "but the contemporary interpretation is that government exercises plenary powers. It does not. The Constitution says that the government has the power to levy taxes, to punish counterfeiting, to provide and maintain a navy, etc."

Section 8 of Article 1 says that Congress has power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper." Palmer told his audience that nowadays, "necessary, good, and proper is interpreted to mean convenient, fun, and cool. But government is not authorized to pass improper laws that infringe on the rights of the people."

Palmer referred to the National Endowment for the Arts and the infamous "Piss Christ" - a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine - which was passed off in 1989 as a government-funded work of art.

"Was 'Piss Christ' an authorized expenditure? Do you need to do that in order to establish postal roads, maintain a navy, punish counterfeiting, etc?"

Palmer pointed to Article IV, Section 2, "a very important passage, which is poorly read today: 'The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.' This implies that citizens have privileges and immunities. They are not spelled out."

Palmer enumerated four instances in which he believes that Constitutional rights are currently being violated:

1. A case in which a man in California was arrested for growing marijuana for the use of people who are terminally ill. This is illegal under federal law, but legal under California law. After the defendant was convicted, "jurors raised bloody hell" because they had not been told that the defendant had committed no crime under state law. "These drug laws are unconstitutional at the federal level," says Palmer.

2. "The writ of habeus corpus is one of the most important rights you have," Palmer told the HRC. "You cannot be arrested and held forever on the say so of one person. But the United States Attorney General has said: 'Illegal enemy combatants have no right to due process.' This is wrong." Palmer said that under the Constitution, only Congress could suspend the writ of habeus corpus, that it was not under the jurisdiction of the Attorney General. When freshman Lauren Truesdell asked Palmer what he thought of President Lincoln having suspended habeus corpus, Palmer answered that it happened "during a time of rebellion," and that he thought Congress had decreed this, rather than the President, although he was not sure.

3. America is being suffocated by an "Alphabet Soup - FDA, FCC, OSHA, etc. - which exercises arbitrary powers over American citizens. This violates the principle of the separation of powers."

4. The worst threat to our freedom comes from those whom Palmer calls "the internal enemies of Constitutional order. These are nice people who want government to do good things. They want to bend rules, and when you have no rule, all you have is the exercise of power."

Palmer concluded with a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville in one of his less optimistic moments, to the effect that he feared Americans would eventually be led down a road to "soft tyranny, as timid industrious animals, for whom the government is their shepherd."

Tom Palmer was instrumental after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in propagating classical liberal ideas in the Soviet bloc states and their successors. Before joining Cato, he was a Fellow at Hertford College, Oxford University, and a vice president of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University in Virginia. He received his B.A. in liberal arts from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, his M.A. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and his D. Phil. in politics from Oxford University.

Sidebar:
Harvard - A Noble History of . Republicanism!

"In the 1930s, Harvard was Republican," Josh Mendelsohn, government major and president of the Harvard Republican Club, told those assembled for the Lincoln Day Dinner. From 1860 until the 1940s, it was a matter of course that a Harvard man would be a Republican.

The reason for this?

Abraham Lincoln.

"Harvard produced great Republican thinkers like Theodore Roosevelt," said Mendelsohn. "What happened?"

Mendelsohn says he is not sure that anything really has happened, although things "have gone a little astray."

"We are gathered here because of our belief in this nation. We will work until what we believe is right becomes the law of the land. Our ranks are going to come back to this institution."

It would be hard to estimate how many students, along with a few faculty members, were gathered in Eliot Dining Hall the evening of February 12, but the large, stately hall was packed.

The students in the HRC, like most students, are idealistic. "I am a conservative because I am a fair person who looks at both sides of an argument," says Matt Moon, an undergraduate whose parents emigrated from Korea to Anchorage, Alaska. "I feel the Republicans are more innovative. The Democrats seem to be mostly interested in damage control, but the Republicans always want to make things better," he says, stating the opposite of the stereotype.

"Look at Theodore Roosevelt. He brought up anti-trust laws that now the Democrats support. Richard Nixon was the most environmentally-friendly President of our century.

"Even President Bush in his State of the Union speech talked about natural gas, energy, and AIDS in Africa," Moon tells MassNews. "The Republicans are more creative.

"It was mostly a case of me looking at the facts and saying: 'What makes more sense?' Also, Koreans have a sense of work ethic and a sense of family, and those things are better affirmed by Republicans."

If more students from hardworking families make a decision not to be brainwashed by the militant radicals on campus, Josh Mendelsohn's words may be prophetic, as Republicans do indeed retake the institution they sustained for so much of its admirable history.