Winter series part 8 of 13
 
Oh, dance in the dark of night,
Sing to the morning light.
​
“… Madison was a Virginian.”
“James was Gus.”
“A fighter?”
“With words.”
“Word warrior then.”
“Nice.”
“He wrote the Bill of Rights.”
“And the Virginia Plan,” added Johnny.

​
“What was that?”
​“A way to start the constitutional convention Gus.”
“So it gave George and them something to talk about.”
“It did,” confirmed Reb, “and James helped get George there.”
“He and George were friends?”
“Pretty much so: Madison was the political theorist to Washington’s leadership.”
“I get it.”
“Madison helped make Indiana Gus.”
“How so?”
​“Northwest Ordinance.”

“Guns of the Northwest?”
“A law Yank.”
“Right.”
“The one that made Indiana.”
“Land of the Indians.”
“Is that what it means?”
“That or Indian Land.”
“Madison got Virginia to give up its claim to those lands.”
“So you’re saying I was almost a Virginian Johnny?”
“Almost Gus.”
“And what’s Virginia mean?”
​"The Story of Virginia ..."

*Next Up: The Union 2016 winter series continues Friday 4 March with part 9, The Story of Virginia.
 
Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

Revolutionary notes
 
James Madison was in the US House of Representatives in 1792; he was there on April 9th when the others first voted for the representation usurpation and against the Republic. The pamphlet includes three political essays Madison wrote that year and published in the Philadelphia National Gazette.
 
The essays are easily found online (Facebook for example) and in the excellent collection James Madison Writings, The Library of America, 1999: pages 517-18 and 530-34. Editing notes include the keeping of old spellings (“encreasing” and “chusing” for example) and the addition of a few footnotes.
 
*Next Up: The Union 2016 winter series continues Saturday 27 February with part 8, Virginia and Indiana.
 
Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

​Winter series part 7 of 13
 
 






Gaius Octavius
 
“… Memento mori means ‘Remember death’ or ‘Remember that you are mortal.’”
“Works for me Johnny.”
“Right Gus,” Reb continued, “it was part of an honor Augustus was granted.”
“Which one?”
“The civic crown.”
“His royal side.”
“He had many sides Gus.”
“So many Johnny that he needed a name change.”
“Right.”
“The man known as Gaius Octavius had a reputation for terror.”
“And civil wars.”
“So Gaius Octavius needed a new name.”
“Yes.”

“Thus Augustus.”
“And thus the Roman Empire.”
“There’s the complication.”
“I hear ya Gus.”
“It’s religious too Johnny, as Augustus was the Pope too.”
“Pontifex Maximus.”
“Pope Gus.”
“The Roman Republic combined religion with politics,” noted Johnny, “as the state and religion were shared institutions.”
“People made Pope jokes to me.”
“I would imagine.”
“I’ve heard some good ones.”
“Sure.”
“I won’t repeat’em Johnny.”
“That don’t matter Gus.”
“Roman Catholics told the best ones.”
“No surprise there.”

​




“Divine means other things than God, don’t it Johnny?”
“Yeah.”
“Means like to find out.”
“Discern.”
“Divination too.”
“Might be good for our fable, that what you thinking Yank?”
“I was.”
“Maybe we add some James Madison Republic to the Roman as well.”
“I like the sound of that …”

*Next Up: Usurpation news you won’t find in the Chicago Tribune, the pamphlet Republican In Name Only: James Madison’s Friends, Parties and Liberties, Saturday 20 February.
 
Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

Eagles lay eggs

The US Constitution is an egg-layer.

Two hundred and twenty-eight years ago, on 17 September 1787, our egg-laying Republic was first laid. The founders signed the Constitution and sent it to the thirteen independent states for ratification; once ratified by nine states (the other four also concurred) the egg was hatched and a new government, the US Republic, was a hatchling.

There is nothing like this American egg – and that’s not just talk. As citizens of this republic, We the People were gifted a system that lays a new egg every ten years: the US Census. The reason for a census, what the US Constitution refers to as the enumeration, is to count the people of each state and create (lay) a new egg: representation in the US House of Representatives, a nest for We the People.

The last egg, the 2010 enumeration, is in incubation: the current Congress ignores its duty to the egg. No worries though as our bird is patient; sooner or later We the People will do the math and hatch the eagle’s egg. What we are in now is called a brooding phase, originally meaning, “to nurse (feelings) in the mind.”

Brood our Constitution America ~ and imagine a new eaglet if you will.

War Cry Heal Union: The series (2 of 10)

I came upon today’s story by happenstance ~ much like the citizens who fought and died there.

In 2011 I visited Marietta Georgia and its National Cemetery. Most of the federal soldiers interned there are from 1864 and Sherman’s campaign to capture Atlanta; many fought in the Kennesaw Mountain battle and, specifically, at Cheatham Hill, also known as “Dead Angle,” and the map indicated a monument to Illinois ~ my home state.

The above photo’s perspective is from the top of Cheatham Hill; on the morning of battle, 27 June 1864, this would have been the Tennessee/Confederate line (the sun is to the northwest ~ an afternoon photo). The Federals were in the forest background with the hill to their front. They were mostly citizen-soldiers from Illinois, Indiana and Ohio in infantry regiments; they would soon rush across that field and up the hill to assault the Tennesseans.

What are a citizen-soldier’s sentiments at such moments? Prayer for sure … and probably shouts of ~ “There’s Hell boys!” or “Here comes Hell boys!” ~ depending on one’s perspective.

At 9:00 a.m. Federal skirmishers and a human wave of blue moved out of the forest and up the hill to assault the Confederate breastworks …

Because we can, let’s pause the assault for a moment and give some thought to the carnage that is about to take place; let’s even ponder such things as: why are citizens from Illinois, Indiana and Ohio assaulting Tennesseans on a Georgia hilltop? Or, more clearly, what part of our Constitution failed: Madison’s theory of representing We the People according to our numbers or the lack thereof?

Since we just paused war for a moment, we might as well keep going and call in a couple of founding spirits ~ Benjamin Franklin (anti-slaver) and James Madison (slaver) ~ for an imagined-yet-real constitutional dialogue:

Ben Franklin: James, they didn’t use the blueprint and representing We the People at the ratio of one Representative for every thirty Thousand.

James Madison: I know Benjamin ~ they got caught-up in slavery and the three-fifths clause.

Franklin: By 1860, the last Census before the Civil War, the representation ratio had risen to 119,000 citizens per Representative [Brickner: Article the First page 100]. Obviously, that is un-representation and not our design for We the people of the United States Republic.

Madison: I know ~ it’s Plato’s Republic …

Franklin: … Which doesn’t work.

Madison: They’ll learn ~ we had too as well.

Yes, We the People still hold the Unrepresented “not yet” card. It’s the Constitution’s Article 1 Section 2 Clause 3: “The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative.”

Okay, back to the assault. If the Illinois, Indiana and Ohio citizens have to charge (orders you know) and the Tennesseans, under the command of Benjamin Franklin Cheatham and Patrick R. Cleburne, have to obey orders and hold the line … you can see what’s about to happen. There’s no room for maneuver ~ nowhere to go. The Illinois citizens want the hill so they can take Atlanta (only 20 miles away) and go back home; the Tennesseans want the hill to save Atlanta and go back to a home.

So the assault happens … now the photo looks different; suddenly it’s a nice picture of a citizen-killing zone. Soldiers often say similar things ~ how peaceful Nature can be and feel … and then Hell breaks out.

On 27 June 1914, the 50th anniversary of the battle, the Illinois Monument was dedicated on Cheatham Hill; it’s on the spot where 15 Illinois Infantry Regiments fought and dug in: they couldn’t dislodge the Tennesseans and they couldn’t retreat down the hill without suffering terrible casualties; “Dig-in” was the command and dig they did. The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain 150th Anniversary group recently highlighted a 100 year-old article from The Marietta Journal and Courier written in preparation for the monument’s unveiling a century ago; the events at Dead Angle are honored:

“Cheatham’s Hill was one of the memorable battles of the war. The Federals and Confederates faced each other there for six days and six nights, their lines being so close that the soldiers were in ordinary speaking distance. They fought from the 27th of June to the 3rd of July, 1864 and on the last day the Confederates withdrew because of a flank movement. It was well they did so, as the Federals had constructed a tunnel far into the hill, had placed explosives under the Confederate position and intended to touch off the mine on the 4th of July.”

The tunnel is still visible today … and war continues its flanking movement.

The day after the monument's dedication, 28 June 1914, the heir to the Austrian throne is assassinated by an “unrepresented” subject of the empire (an anarchist); this singular event, seemingly a world away from Marietta and Cheatham Hill, would lead the European Empires into World War I ~ a war that would soon touch Georgia and all the other states in the Union.

Perhaps stated in terms of We the People of Europe, WW I (like our Civil War) was caused by a failure to represent ~ account for ~ The Unrepresented.

We’ll pick-up there tomorrow with Empires Crumble and Others Build, part 3 in the War Cry Heal Union series.

Video:
Cheatham Hill

Bryan W. Brickner
Ew Publishing

That’s Augustus Kotka from Indiana – his headstone I mean – acting as flag-bearer in the background. The foreground is the headstone for 9163, Unknown U.S. Soldier, Marietta National Cemetery.

This final resting place for northern citizen-soldiers caught-up in the War Between the States ~ the US Civil War 1861-65, might be considered a long way from home. Not necessarily though, as the flag they carried into battle had the Georgia star (and all other states in rebellion) still on it.

Not far away from Kotka and 9163, maybe a mile or so, is Marietta Confederate Cemetery. Here unknown citizen-soldiers dominate. The Union cemetery feels as if ten percent of the burials are unknown; this one feels like ninety percent.

The above headstone is for five unknown citizen-soldiers caught-up in the same debacle, our uncivil war. Two unknown citizens from Missouri and three fellows from Maryland interned far from what they might have considered home.

The war itself isn’t over if the wounds haven’t healed. We still have some healing to do in order to make a more perfect Union ~ one for all the people of We the People.

War Cry Heal Union
The Series
EwPublishing Summer 2014

Landings
Augustus Kotka gave a war cry on 11 August 1864; he was killed during the siege of Atlanta. It wasn’t a battle day. His death is noted in a diary from his unit, the 99th Indiana Regiment: it parenthetically states, “Augustus Kotka, Company C, killed.”

I found Kotka’s federal marker headstone in Pulaski County, IN; I then went to visit his burial headstone in Marietta National Cemetery.

This series began with the question, “Who killed Kotka?”

To get to that answer we’ll take a look at citizenship and representation; here I mean all citizens, future slaves to be citizens and also the southern citizens. In the series War Cry Heal Union, all the people of We the People are grouped together ~ northern and southern, for example, in the term “The Unrepresented.”

The series is outlined below and runs from 19 June to Constitution Day on 17 September. The ten postings vary in topics (ranging from war to peace to free speech) and build on James Madison’s idea that representing We the People according to our numbers is not only the American way ~ it’s our constitutional way.

This August is the 150th anniversary of Kotka’s final day in Georgia. Here is the opening to the August posting, “Johnny Reb and Gus Kotka Have a Talk” ~ and the full schedule for the series follows:

Johnny Reb: Whatcha’ wanna know Yank?

Augustus Kotka: Who killed me?

Johnny: That’s the same question for 150 years ~ with the same answer ~ you did.

Augustus: No, really, who got me shot?

Johnny: I did then.

Augustus: You always say that ~ this year things are different though …

~
War Cry Heal Union ~ The Series
JUNE
19 June 2014
Slavery is usurpation: usurpation is slavery.

27 June 2014
150th: War cry ~ 27 June 1864.

28 June 2014
100th: Empires crumble and Others build.

JULY
19 July 2014
Willy-Nicky and willy-nilly Emperors.

20 July 2014
150th: A Private, an Officer and a battle flag in Georgia, 20 July 1864.

27 July 2014
Factions heard not silenced: Henry Lee III, the Unrepresented and the First Amendment.

AUGUST
11 August 2014
150th: Johnny Reb and Gus Kotka ~ Georgia, 11 August 1864.

26 August 2014
Silent words: Napoleon, Johann Philipp Palm and 26 August 1806.

SEPTEMBER
16 September 2014
Virginian slavers at Harlem Heights NY: sacrifice and 16 September 1776.

17 September 2014
Constitution Day, Antietam and Heal Union ~ Sharpsburg MD: 17 September 1787, 1862 and 2014.

Happy Memorial Day All!
Bryan W. Brickner

Slavery is the shadow of usurpation (rights taken without right) the way mythology frames America’s beginning: it’s foundational.

Slavery has been edited out of Usurpation Day 2014; it will be duly accorded its role in both Athens and America in June (on the 19th).

Usurpation Day is not a time to be sad; it’s a celebratory day. The usurpation of the representation ratio on 9 April 1792 is our history … it’s not our heritage.

Heritage is ahistorical (timeless) and it is our focus today: specifically, ascending Athenian American heritage. Six greats ~ three from each polis: Plato and Madison, Pericles and Washington, and Athena and Freedom:

Plato
Plato’s contribution to our heritage is The Republic. In the book he outlines the just society and details three groups (factions/divisions) in his republican form of government: rulers, guardians and craftspeople (producers).

Madison
Madison’s contribution to our heritage is the addition of the representation ratio to Plato’s republican ideas. Whereas Plato’s republic has three factions, Madison’s republic has a fourth ~ We the People ~ and utilizes the decennial Census to augment representation in accordance with population growth (something Plato’s republican ideas lack).

Pericles
His era built the Parthenon. He was an Athenian leader during the Peloponnesian War and his Funeral Oration (speech) is noted in Thucydides’ work. 

Washington
His era built the District of Columbia. Washington was hailed as the first in war and the first in peace. His most famous speech is his Farewell Address. Washington’s library included the Greeks: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Ovid’s Metamorphoses ~ which makes mention of 30,000 spirits who watch over the deeds of humans and bring agricultural bounty.

Athena
The Athenian’s had a statue of Athena inside the Parthenon. She is noted for many things to the Greeks; in particular, the victory at Troy and the homecoming of Odysseus. She was referred to as Promachus: first (foremost) fighter and one who leads in battle. Also, parthenongenesis is asexual reproduction without fertilization  ~ noting Athena’s birth from the head of Zeus.

Freedom
We the People have our own Athena: her name is Freedom and she watches over America from atop our acropolis, the US Capitol. There were three versions of Freedom’s statue. The first looked too much like Athena; the second, too much like Minerva (Rome’s Athena); the third they thought looked just about right I guess … you know, for being born in 1863 in the middle of the US Civil War.

Heritage (not history) is the key to Usurpation Day ~ and keep this in mind: America’s best days are ahead of US.

Let us pick-up there on 19 June … Juneteenth.

Bryan W. Brickner    

*This post continues a theme from January 2013: the under-representation of women in the US House. It’s an updated excerpt from the introduction of my 2006 book, Article the first of the Bill of Rights: Constitutional representation – the forgotten story of We the People. The main update: in 2006 the US House was 16% women – today it’s 18%.

The founders approach to government was scientific. They had many ideas about how to build a new government, but they also had a lot of doubt. This led to debates on how to proceed, as revolutions are never clear.

The founders attempted to build a system that would protect such rights as the (now) famous, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” They also knew, when talking of citizens and representation, that there was no monopoly on how to define those three rights. Freedom is a deep well; it has also been aptly referred to as an abyss. Our revolutionaries certainly knew the abyss. Thirteen colonies do not revolt against their King and fight an eight-year civil war and not come to know the abyss. Those subjects-turned radical revolutionaries who took up arms against their law and the King of England, they had firsthand knowledge of how deep the well of human freedom ran – they lived it and then left us a blueprint: the US Constitution.

The first time I considered constitutional representation a political issue, rather than a historical one, was in graduate school at Purdue University. Before that, when I taught high school US history classes, I recall discussing the representation ratio but dismissing it; frankly, it seemed old.

Then, as a political science graduate student, I was assistanting a professor who was lecturing on the US Constitution, The Federalist Papers, and James Madison. At one point, the third clause in Article I, Section 2 entered the lecture. After class we discussed the size of a constitutional House, one based on the constitutional ratio of “one for every thirty Thousand.” The House would be huge, we agreed, but mostly we thought it impractical.

That was nearly twenty years ago. Since then I began to think of the representation ratio in constitutional, and not congressional, terms. If we were to build a new Congress based on the constitutional ratio of one for every thirty Thousand, we would have a House of Representatives of 10,000 members. This would bring dozens of groups (factions) into the constitutional process and fundamentally change Congress. For example, women won the right to suffrage with the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), but have never received their right to representation according to their numbers. Women are more than 50 percent of We the People, and yet they are represented in the current House, our 113th, with 79 Representatives, or 18 percent of the representation; that is a 32 percent under-representation of women as a group. Such under-representations of We the People create profound political, and constitutional, consequences.

Bryan W. Brickner

Biblically, shall is an imperative: thou shall honor thy parents, for example. Legally, shall is also an imperative, as it conveys obligation.

The absent “shall” from Akhil Reed Amar’s book, America’s Constitution: A biography (hardcover, 2005), is not on page 76. Under the rubric “The Number of Representatives,” Amar’s text leads the reader to a falsehood; when discussing the Constitution’s representation ratio (Article I, Section 2, Clause 3), the key legal word – shall – is absent. Here is Amar’s sentence:

“Although Article I provided that the House should not ‘exceed’ one representative per thirty thousand constituents, its only minimal mandate was that each state have at least one member.”(page 76)

In Amar’s book (where shall is rendered as should), he argues that the US Constitution has no maximum and only a minimum regarding the representation of We the People in Congress; by comparison, here is what Amar is referencing – Article I and its two shalls (in bold) – the first one setting a maximum, the second a minimum for constitutional representation:

“The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative.” (USC Article I, Section 2, Clause 3)

Interesting political theory moment: Amar’s absent shall is a reverse deconstruction – surprisingly, it’s post-modern, like the theories of Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard, though in reverse. Instead of the usual lineup – a presence masking a basic absence – Amar’s absent “shall” is masking a basic reality: the presence of a constitutional mandate for representing We the People at the ratio of one for every thirty Thousand.

There happens to be lots of post-modern moments in Amar’s Constitution, so let’s bring James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton into the discussion next time. Amar notes the three founders (the book is over 600 pages), though he doesn’t on page 76 as required of a dissertation; instead, Amar quotes a dissenter, Patrick Henry, a founder who refused to attend the 1787 convention, and not a founder who was present in Philadelphia – like Madison, Jay or Hamilton. So we’ll do that next time – as we look to the founders and compare Amar’s theories to those in The Federalist Papers.

Bryan W. Brickner

There’s no Blue Ox in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), though there does seem to be about everything else.

The book is an English Christian classic for its allegorical portrayal of a pilgrim’s pilgrimage. In Bunyan’s tale, “Christian” is both a metaphor (one who accepts Jesus as Christ) and the name of the Pilgrim who takes a life changing journey from the City of Destruction to Mount Zion and the Celestial City. Christian’s trip reads like Alice in Wonderland dosed with Voltaire’s Candide and highway-tested with Zarathustra-like problem solving. For example, after seeing the cross, dropping his burden and watching it fall into the mouth of a sepulchre (burial pit), Christian meets three Shining Ones (angels) who bless him with gifts; he then breaks into song:

Who’s this? the Pilgrim. How! ‘tis very true,
Old things are passed away, all’s become new.
Strange! He’s another man, upon my word.
They be fine feathers that make a fine bird.

Then Christian gave three leaps for joy, and went on, singing:

Thus far did I come laden with my sin;
Nor could aught ease the grief that I was in
Till I came hither: What a place is this!
Must here be the beginning of my bliss?
Must here the burden fall from off my back?
Must here the strings that bound it to me crack?
Blest cross! blest sepulchre! blest rather be
The Man that there was put to shame for me![i]

John Bunyan (1628-1688) was a “tinker” by trade (he fixed pots and pans and traveled Gypsy-like) and an earthy-type of preacher (imagine a swearing Puritan). He was jailed twelve years for preaching Protestantism (basically, he wanted to preach his way – the way he felt the Good Lord); they would have let him out if only he’d stop the preaching – but he kept saying he’d preach his word of God as soon as he was out the prison gates. Bunyan began The Pilgrim’s Progress while jailed (he wrote lots of books) and the Quakers helped secure his unconditional release through petition to the English Crown.

How famous was John Bunyan? Ben Franklin wrote in his Autobiography (1791) that The Pilgrim’s Progress was the second most popular book in colonial America (Bible first); he also said, as a noted book collector, that Bunyan’s works were his first complete collection.

Obviously, Bunyan and the Protestants didn’t invent the Pilgrim: there have been and will be Jewish pilgrims, Catholic pilgrims and even Nothing-in-Particular pilgrims. In the US though, our founding and what we celebrate on Thanksgiving Day are rooted in a Protestant-Puritan Pilgrim Age.

This problem, that there are no Protestants on the US Supreme Court (the last one was in 2010, Justice John Paul Stevens), is not a religious problem; Article VI of the US Constitution is clear on that question, as it states: “but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” No, this is about representation and twelve words in Article I of the US Constitution: “The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand.” Unambiguously, this is not religious: it’s representational and about representing We the People in Congress according to our birthright – George Washington’s number, 30,000.

The US Congress sets the number of justices on the Court and a constitutional House of 10,000 Representatives would certainly add judges; to wit, as things are, five judges decide the fate of a law for a nation of over 300 million citizens: that’s one justice for every 60 million people.

Here’s a just bid: add a nine before the nine to make it 99.

Yeah, 99 Supremes instead of nine. That alone would add Protestants (51% of Americans according to Pew Research), Nothing-in-Particulars (12%), Mormons (1.7%), Atheists (1.6%), Buddhists (0.7%), and Muslims (0.6%) to the six Catholics (24%) and three Jewish (1.7%) justices on the Court. While we are on the topic, let’s think of adding citizens like a truck driver judge (approximately 0.5%), you know, people familiar with life on the road, journeying like a pilgrim across this land of ours – yeah that sounds supreme as well.

In The Pilgrim’s Progress, after encountering the Shining Ones, Christian’s dreamscape takes him to three men in iron fetters – Simple, Sloth and Presumption – reminding all of us in the 21st century (and perhaps even this weekend) that maybe things haven’t changed that much.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone ~ Peace Up!
Bryan W. Brickner

[i] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (New York: Washington Square Press [1678] 1961), 37.