In this episode of the National Security Hour on the America Out Loud Radio Network, Colonel Mike is traveling, and Dr. Mike was very fortunate to have another of the network’s best and most knowledgeable hosts take the Colonel’s usual place. Mr. Paul Engel is a speaker and an author, and also hosts the outstanding Constitutional Study program on America Out Loud. We spoke about several items, ranging from foreign policy to a discussion about the U.S. Constitution.
Ukraine remains a U.S.-made problem long after the authors of the war – Obama, Biden, Kagan, and Pompeo – have thankfully been rendered to the far periphery of importance. We are currently watching the inevitable result of the U.S. Government not doing the necessary in 1991 by withdrawing from NATO, and thereby giving the Europeans a last chance to grow up and behave as adults. Instead, today we find the European members of NATO trying to start a broad, perhaps nuclear war with Russia over a country which today is the chief criminal country in Europe, a status it attained well before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR. Most disturbingly, it could well be that some parts of the Pentagon are still helping Zelensky and his champions amongst NATO’s perpetually adolescent leaders to act in ways that seem sure to bring an all-out war with Russia.
For the rest of this broadcast, we spoke about a number of constitutional issues, which take advantage of Mr. Engel’s great expertise, much to Dr. Mike’s and the program’s benefit.
We first discussed several of the nation’s founding documents: Dr. Franklin’s Albany Plan of Union, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. The first two of those documents included the provision that any colony joining the proposed union created by it would be bound to remain therein in perpetuity. The U.S. Constitution of 1789, however, was silent on that issue. Why? Mr. Engel replied that there is no way to know for sure but it seems safe to say that the Founders – in their silence – avoided such a statement in order in an effort to foreclose the possibility of having one or several states try to use such a provision to bludgeon the other states into agreeing to demands to avoid breaking the Union.
Whenever tinkering with the Constitution is discussed, one ultimately has to deal with the disastrous presidency of Woodrow Wilson. It is Mr. Wilson who, for example, seriously wounded the Founders’ guidance, though soon after he was followed by Franklin Roosevelt, who murdered that advice, saying that a foreign policy of neutrality and non-intervention was the best means to prevent the republic from being engaged in other peoples’ wars. While the foolish and ego-driven decisions used by Wilson to get the republic into a European war that was none of its business are obvious, Wilson’s and his party’s mindless but successful advocacy of the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution – the income tax and the popular election of senators – said, Mr. Engel, “destroyed the republic.”
Finally, on behalf of Colonel Mike and myself, we want to thank Mr. Engel for stepping in this week and helping us to get this episode completed on schedule. Mr. Engel and his work are gifts that America Out Loud makes easily available to all Americans, and the sagacity of Mr. Engel’s advice and analysis on the true meaning of the U.S. Constitution is more than adequate to fill the quiver of all patriots seeking to defend the republic from all enemies foreign and, especially, domestic.
