The first national constitution
The Articles of Confederation were the first national constitution of the United States. According to William Watkins Jr., they were drafted by the Continental Congress, which became the Confederation Congress once the Articles were ratified, and they set forth the relationship between the states and the national government, “to use that term loosely.” The system was state-centered: the states chose the representatives who would go to the seat of government and handle national matters, which at the time meant the war with Great Britain, and the states had great control over those representatives. Congress did not have the power to tax directly; requisitions and money had to come through the states. Watkins describes this as a very decentralized system in which each state expressly retained all its sovereignty and independence that it had sought from Great Britain. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Bob Zadek observes that the Articles said nothing about the relationship between the citizen and his or her government, and regulated only relations among states. In his framing, the Articles were a compact between states, an agreement among states on how they could live together for mutual benefit, while the state constitutions governed the relationship between citizens and their governments. Watkins agrees and adds that under the Articles the Congress did not have the power to act directly upon individuals; the states served as mediating bodies between the people and the government of Congress. Only with the Constitution of 1787 could the national government act directly on individuals. Watkins calls the state’s role as intermediary a great “palladium of liberty.” [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Success measured against its goals
Watkins argues the Articles were a success story when measured against the goals they were supposed to achieve: independence from Great Britain and the preservation of self-government in the individual states. Once Cornwallis surrendered to Washington and the French at Yorktown, the revolution was for all practical purposes over, and peace talks for the Treaty of Paris began right there after. With peace, and under the Articles, the states were free to run their own domestic policies and to experiment with various policies, serving as laboratories of democracy. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Perceived weaknesses and the Philadelphia convention
Zadek notes that Watkins’s enthusiasm for the Articles was not shared by many of the founders, who called a meeting in Philadelphia in 1787 to replace the system. Asked what was perceived to be weak about the Articles, Watkins begins with troubles that he says would have arisen whether or not there was a strong central government: British troops occupying bases and forts in the American Northwest chose not to leave too quickly because of confiscation of loyalist property and other things. The excerpt breaks off there. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Zadek later describes the founders as having realized that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and as having used the unrest—especially Shays’ Rebellion, which he characterizes as a rebellion of debtors against creditors and of agrarian against the more moneyed interest—to move against the Articles. Watkins states that when the founders met in Philadelphia in 1787, the ostensible purpose of the meeting was to fix the Articles of Confederation, but that Madison had a different idea and ran the show, arriving with the outlines of a new government, called the Virginia Plan, to start from scratch. Madison was the most prepared and moderated the discussion, and Watkins says the Articles were basically discarded from the get-go even though amending them was the purpose of the meeting; the delegates then spent five months designing the Constitution. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Amendment process and the courts
In the later part of the episode, Watkins proposes a state-centered amendment process as the reform he would prioritize, alongside general education of the people about history and liberty. He argues that the existing amendment process leaves the national government controlling amendments that could affect its own power. He notes the never-used convention method, under which Congress would call a national constitutional convention, and acknowledges fears of a runaway convention. He also notes that all other amendments have come through Congress sending an amendment to the states, and that outside the early founding era those amendments typically augment the power of the national government in some way. He concludes that the people need to push for a process in which the people in the states can propose amendments and have them ratified in the states without action by Congress, and says it is a great sadness that the amendment process is so nationalistic. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Zadek raises the Supreme Court as the greatest hope for change, arguing that a change of one or two justices toward more liberty-minded justices would produce profound change, and that some of the dramatic movements toward and away from liberty came from the Supreme Court rather than Congress. He calls Neil Gorsuch a step in the right direction. Watkins agrees there is great leverage and says that whatever one thinks of Donald Trump, he did a real solid with the nomination of Gorsuch, who seems to be a strong originalist and could fill the seat of a Justice Scalia. Watkins adds a fundamental problem of his own: he objects to the court serving as a final arbiter of the Constitution and to nine unelected individuals exercising the power they do. He says the court can do much for good and for liberty but can also destroy and undermine liberty, and that he would prefer to see the popular branches, where the people have a say, or the state legislatures accountable to the people, more in the process. [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]
Across episodes
The Articles appear in two episodes on different footing. In the 2017 episode with William Watkins Jr., they are the subject itself: their design, their successes, their perceived weaknesses, and the amendment process that replaced them. In the later episode with Austin Petersen, Zadek invokes them only as analogy, reminding Republican leaders that the country labored under the Articles for about six years, that Madison organized a convention for the purpose of tweaking them, and that the delegates instead tore the Articles up and drafted an entirely new Constitution that was ratified—his lesson being that Republicans should say they will fix Obamacare rather than “repeal and replace,” because once people gather to fix it the fix will be repeal and replace. Petersen agrees that “repeal and replace” is problematic from a public relations standpoint and says he tries to avoid the phrase. The excerpts show no development in the treatment of the Articles themselves between the two episodes; the second uses the first episode’s history as a rhetorical template. Federalism and the Flat Tax: The Austin Petersen Plan (2017)
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe the ratification of the Constitution in detail beyond Zadek’s remark that it was ratified by the requisite nine states after a bitter ratification battle, nor do they set out the specific provisions of the Articles or of the Virginia Plan. The Anti-Federalist and Federalist positions are named as a topic but are not developed in the excerpts, and the exchange on British troops and loyalist property breaks off mid-sentence. Watkins’s book is identified, but the excerpts do not summarize its argument beyond the points he makes in conversation.