Idaho’s Confederacy of Dunces

Political correctness will rot a thinking mind. Case in point, the reaction to the following statement from Id. Rep. Dick Harwood (R-St. Maries):

Promoting his state sovereignty resolution on the floor of the Idaho House of Representatives on Monday, St. Maries Rep. Dick Harwood declared that the United States is really a “confederacy.”

“To be accurate, we’re a confederated republic,” the fifth-term Republican then told the House.

This brought a strong reaction from a local minority right’s activist:

“It’s a very offensive term for minority communities in our country, like African-Americans,” said Tony Stewart, a board member and co-founder of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, and a retired political scientist at North Idaho College. “That whole term refers to the period of slavery.”

So every use of the term confederacy applies to slavery? Not according to my dictionary. The primary meaning is, ” an alliance between persons, parties, states, etc., for some purpose.”

Steve Shaw, an active political science professor at Northwest Nazarene University, while disagreeing with Harwood and suggesting that Harwood needed remedial U.S. History classes, identified Switzerland as a confederacy. I guess this would indicate the Swiss have slaves, if we’re to believe Mr. Stewart.

Was the United States founded as a confederacy? I’m going to do something totally wild and suggest we find out what the Founding Fathers say.

The Federalist Papers were a series of polemics written to argue for the Constitution. I did a search of the Federalist Papers and came up with Federalist #9, where Alexander Hamilton (for my generation, that would be the ten dollar bill guy) makes his argument for a Constitutional Government in opposition to the Anti-Federalists, who argue that the proposed union is too large. This was a time in American history when we were concerned about political philosophy and philosophers. And the arguments of Montesquieu had been used by the anti-federalists (who opposed the Constitution) to make their case. Hamilton began to go through some of the arguments of Montesquieu and wrote:

So far are the suggestions of Montesquieu from standing in opposition to a general Union of the States, that he explicitly treats of a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC as the expedient for extending the sphere of popular government, and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism. (emphasis mine)

Hamilton then proceeds to quote Montesquieu’s arguments for a Confederate Republic at length, “because they contain a luminous abridgment of the principal arguments in favor of the Union, and must effectually remove the false impressions which a misapplication of other parts of the work was calculated to make.” So, it is not Dick Harwood that concluded America is a confederacy. It was Alexander Hamilton, writing the principle argument for the Constitution. And being a confederacy had nothing to do with slavery. How does Hamilton understand a Confederate Republic?

The definition of a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC seems simply to be “an assemblage of societies,” or an association of two or more states into one state. The extent, modifications, and objects of the federal authority are mere matters of discretion. So long as the separate organization of the member states be not abolished; so long as they exist, by a constitutional necessity, for local purposes; though they should be in perfect subordination to the general authority of the union, the union would still be, in fact and in theory, an association of states, or a confederacy.

Now, Rep. Harwood’s usage of confederacy may not be in line with the understanding of modern political scientists, or with people whose political correctness leads them to go racist hunting. But Rep. Harwood’s use of the term confederacy is backed up by the Founding Fathers, and as he described the United States as a confederacy in the context of a bill reaffirming Idaho’s rights under the Tenth Amendment, which was written in the 18th Century, Harwood’s use was totally appropriate.

I would further suggest that, before Professor Shaw prescribes any more remedial classes to Idaho’s legislators, he should brush up on the Federalist papers.