Who Killed the Constitution?: The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama

by Thomas E. Woods Jr. and Kevin R.C. Gutzman

Book Overview

Think it's just judges who are trampling on the Constitution? Think again. The fact is that government officials long ago rejected the idea that the Constitution possesses a fixed meaning limiting the U.S. government's power. Going right to the scenes of the crimes, bestselling authors Thomas E. Woods Jr. and Kevin R. C. Gutzman dissect twelve of the most egregious assaults on the Constitution. In Who Killed the Constitution? Woods and Gutzman- ...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307405761
• ISBN13: 9780307405760
• Release Date: July 2009
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

The Death of the United States Constitution.

Let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. - Thomas Jefferson. _Who Killed the Constitution: The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush_, published in 2008, by Thomas E. Woods Jr. and Kevin R. C. Gutzman is a fascinating and horrifying account of the assaults on the Constitution by the federal government which have ultimately led to the destruction of the ideals embodied in this document by America's Founding Fathers. This account reveals through twelve case studies how systematically the Constitution has been re-interpreted by the federal government so as to give it nearly unlimited power. The authors maintain that at the present time the Constitution is quite literally dead and is all too often simply ignored by government officials who have found ways to go around it. While the Constitution was originally intended by the Founding Fathers to limit the scope of government and to ensure the protection of the rights of the people, the authors maintain that it has ultimately failed in this purpose. Perhaps we can understand this simply by the fact that if it is the federal government doing the interpretation of the Constitution, then it only makes sense that over time it will allot more and more powers to itself. Such arguments were made by the individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner in the period following the Civil War. However, the authors do not deceive the reader with false hope for the restoration of the Constitution, noting that in many ways the project behind it has failed and that what remains to be done next ultimately will be the decision of the American people. This book begins with an Introduction entitled "The Constitution is Dead" which explains how judicial activism has destroyed the Constitution. The authors maintain that while attacks on judicial activism from the political right against the left are well founded, the political right is equally guilty of the same sort of disregard for the Constitution. The authors note how under the presidency of George W. Bush, disregard for the Constitution by the executive branch has reached unprecedented levels. The authors thus maintain that the Constitution is dead and is freely disregarded by the federal government. By presenting twelve separate cases in which federal judges overrode the constraints of the Constitution, the authors will attempt to make their point. The authors also attempt to show why the Constitution matters in that it is an effort to constrain the federal government. The authors present the following cases in chapters entitled: Congress Shall Make No Law (Unless It Really Wants To): Woodrow Wilson and Freedom of Speech - showing the erosion of freedom of speech and civil liberties in time of war beginning with World War I and showing that by use of a false analogy ("yelling fire in a crowded theater" which actually would concern property rights and not "free speec

A Possible Post Mortum of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights

Messers Woods and Gutzman wrote a provocative book that should be read by Americans who actually care about law-and-order plus individual liberties. This reviewer has noticed that the number of Americans who do care is quite small. The book deals "The Dirty Dozen" cases and instances of abuse of government power, and the authors readily admit that this book could have been exponentially larger. This review will not cover all "The Dirty Dozen" examples which would make the review too tedious. However, the general scheme of the book will be examined. The first example cited in this book dealt with the arbitrary laws that violated First Amendment rights of Free Speech and Free Press (1917-1918). U.S. authorities could make arrests and prosecutions for the most innocent remarks that could have been construed as critical of U.S. intervention into W.W. I. What was worse,the authors cited examples of official tattle tales who reported on neighbors'comments. As an aside, Messers Woods and Gutzman demolish the statement alleged by Pres. Woodrow Wilson who supposedly expressed regret for agreeing to the Declaraion of War. The authors clearly that the statement was fabricated by Wilson's sycophants who tried to cover Wilson's blunder. The basic constitutional point made my Messers Woods and Gutzman is that the First Amendment clearly states that Congress shall make no law abridging the rights of Free Speech and Free Press. Yet, power hungry political hacks and unthinking Americans accepted all of this with little protest. One should note that the American people are so poorly read and so ready to believe media accounts that such oppressive laws are no longer necessary. The American media folks have so censored themselves that censorship laws are unnecessary. Too many Americans are too immune to truth and reason to notice. Messers Woods and Gutzman had a good examination of Pres. Truman's attempt to seize American steel mills because labor union leaders wanted more than steel executives were willing to give. Truman's threat was made to curry favor with steel workers and increase wages. The U.S. Supreme Court Justices ruled against the Truman Administration. However, as Messers Woods and Gutzman noted, the ruling was not strong enough. Also they alerted readers that if a President could seize steel mills, he could also seize steel mills or any industry to REDUCE wages. The chapters dealing with the civil rights cases were carefully researched and clear. The authors show that in an attempt to end discrimination, they only made it worse. School authorities were scolded because of the changing demographics. Civil rights laws which forbade assigning students to schools by race were ignored by federal judges who ordered busing to schools based on race. The consistently flawed federal rulings that changed almost overnight resulted in such confusion that court orders for busing had to end. The chapter titled The Great Gold Robbery showed an arbitrary U.S. Gover

This book makes my blood boil!

This book has made me painfully aware of what's really happening to my country. To say the Supreme Court has practiced activist decision making is like calling Einstein someone who dabbled in math. I get so angry/annoyed reading some of their decisions detailed in this book I have to put it down and go for a walk. Specifically, Wickard VS Filburn, brings "inventive logic" to a new level. And, the decision that the government's action is automatically considered "constitutional" and if you want to prove it "unconstitutional" here are the 17 hoops you have to jump throught to prove it (sorry I can't quote the case). "Who Killed The Constitution" is a great eye-opener providing some rarely discussed actions of government officials and entities(Truman, FDR, the Treasury Dept, The Federal Reserve System) which the government, I'm sure, would rather keep us ignorant of. After all, THEY know what's in OUR best interest, don't they? 5 Stars.

Pathologists' report on the Republic

I sometimes think that in an era when "history" means who won last season's American Idol, one of the hardest things to get people to understand is that the assault on the American Constitution didn't begin with George W. Bush. The systematic attempt to expand and centralize State power at the expense of individual liberty goes much farther back in our past ... probably to the very adoption of the Constitution in place of the Articles of Confederation, but at least, as Thomas Woods and Kevin Gutzman argue, to the first world war. Indeed, as I saw someone express it recently, George W. Bush is a pro-bono attorney for the ACLU compared to that true monster, Woodrow Wilson. So that's the first thing about "Who Killed the Constitution?": the authors' well-grounded historical viewpoint. The second is their research and documentation. It would be one thing to disregard them as ideologists if all they were doing was huffing and puffing like a Fox News pundit. But for them to marshal facts and citations and many, many quotations, as they do, makes this not pontificating but important investigative history. Discounting the seriousness of their argument would require ... well, exactly what has been happening for that last century or so ... the bald-faced denial of the evidence of our senses and reason. But if the rational reader can't see through that after a few hours in these pages, then I'm not sure what more we can do. Of course, I'm not entirely sure what we can do anyway. I was all set to write that I wished I shared the authors' belief that Something Can Be Done, that the Republic is salvageable, and what's been lost can be regained. I had even prepared to title my review something like "A great book, heartbreakingly irrelevant." I should have paid more attention to the title. You see, the authors are not asking *whether* the Constitution is dead. They know it is. It was murdered by presidents, legislators, and jurists who sought Constitutional cover to create a veil of legitimacy around what they had already planned to do. Once they've come up with the arguments in which to clothe their intentions (the Constitution's "capacity for adaptation is indefinitely flexible," Justice George Sutherland wrote in 1919 [p. 162]), they lift the Constitution into the air like a shamanistic totem and the rest of us fall into line, hand over heart, like they knew we would. Imperial ipsedixitism triumphs again. So then what's left for the remnant? To their credit, the authors are more skilled than I at avoiding resignation. They write in their final paragraph that it's up to the American people to decide what to do with the information here presented. As I asked in my review of Woods' 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask, what if they're right? Whether this great book does in fact turn out to be heart-breakingly irrelevant is one, I suppose, that will only be answered in hindsight.

Constitution Revived!

The Constitution has certainly been ignored by our elected officials. It can't be denied that the federal government is totally off the rails, doing whatever it wants to do despite the Constitution. It was probably human nature, the drive for more and more power, that killed it. Perhaps the document wasn't written and designed well enough to secure its main purpose: to bind the federal government to an assignment of expressly granted powers. Whatever happened, it certainly can be said that we are now living under a system which we never agreed to live under. Here, Woods and Gutzman explore a series of constitutional subjects from WWI to the present. From presidents and congresses bound only by their own will, to federal judges legislating policy based only on personal preferences, the authors show just how much (dis)respect officials in Washington have for the Constitution. The chapter on gold was a new subject for me, and was truly scary. From John Taylor of Caroline, to Raoul Berger, to Kevin Gutzman and Thomas Woods, there have always been true patriots exposing the total disjunct between what the federal government does and what the American people have actually agreed to let it do in the Constitution. The authors have revived the Constitution to a detectable pulse. Gutzman and Woods have given the American people the tools and knowledge to totally revive the Constitution, a revival that can bring back for ourselves self-government and the control of our own destiny.