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After you’ve read this chapter, you will be able to

 2.1 Outline the events and political motivations that led to the colonies’ split from England.

 2.2 Explain the competing narratives under the Articles of Confederation.

 2.3 Identify the competing narratives, goals, and compromises that shaped the Constitution.

 2.4 Explain the system of separation of powers and checks and balances.

 2.5 Summarize the debate over ratification of the Constitution.

 2.6 Evaluate the narratives told about the founding of the United States.

What’s at Stake . . . in Challenging the Legitimacy of the Government?

Declaring war on the U.S. government is a risky business. Governments depend for their authority on people believing their power is legitimate—when that legitimacy is challenged, so is their authority. Still, the United States is a democracy that guarantees free speech and the right to assemble peacefully, so handling rebellion can be tricky.

That was why the federal government reacted cautiously when Ammon Bundy, leader of a militia group called Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and the son of antigovernment activist Cliven Bundy, responded to what he said was a divine instruction to take over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon on January 2, 2016. Bundy said he was acting to support two ranchers who had been arrested for arson on federal land, though the ranchers disavowed the group. Specifically, Bundy demanded that the wildlife refuge land be given back to the state.

The federal government, which owned the land but was wary of causing a bloody showdown, waited. As various militias came to join the effort, police were able to apprehend Bundy and several of the other leaders traveling in a convoy. Although one person was shot and killed, most surrendered and the siege ended on February 28.¹

The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation reflected a movement that has gained traction in recent years: declaring that the federal government is abusing the power of the Constitution, and that that power must be returned to the people via the action of private citizens. Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people, including 19 children, was the bloodiest incident in the antigovernment movement, but the broadest and strongest expression is the Tea Party movement, some of whose members have become part of the federal government themselves.

The birth of the Tea Party in 2010 might have been 1773 all over again. Antitax and antigovernment, the protesters were angry, and if they didn’t go as far as to empty shiploads of tea into Boston Harbor, they made their displeasure known in other ways. Though their ire was directed at government in general, the Tea Party had found specific targets. In particular, they opposed the George W. Bush administration’s bailouts of big financial institutions through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008 and other measures taken in response to the economic crisis that began that year, including mortgage assistance for people facing foreclosure, the stimulus bill, and the health reform act, all passed by Congress in 2009 and 2010 with the strong backing of President Barack Obama.

The Tea Party movement was a decentralized mix of many groups—mostly simply frustrated Republicans (the major party that most Tea Partiers identify with or lean toward). Ted Cruz from Texas and Marco Rubio from Florida won seats in the U.S. Senate with Tea Party support and went on to run for the presidency in 2016. Tea Party members elected to Congress caused many headaches for Speaker of the House John Boehner, leading to his resignation in 2015.

But other members of the rebellious faction chose less establishment paths. David Barstow of the New York Times wrote in early 2010 that a “significant undercurrent within the Tea Party movement” was less like a part of the Republican Party than it was like “the Patriot movement, a brand of politics historically associated with libertarians, militia groups, anti-immigration advocates and those who argue for the abolition of the Federal Reserve.” He quoted a Tea Party leader so worried about the impending tyranny threatening her country that she could imagine being called to violence in its defense: “I don’t see us being the ones to start it, but I would give up my life for my country. . . . Peaceful means are the best way of going about it. But sometimes you are not given a choice.”²

Like the extreme Tea Partier quoted above, McVeigh and his associates, the Bundys, and other militia group members are everyday men and women who say they are the ideological heirs of the American Revolution. They liken themselves to the colonial Sons of Liberty, who rejected the authority of the British government and took it upon themselves to enforce the laws they thought were just. The Sons of Liberty instigated the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party, historical events that we celebrate as patriotic but that would be considered treason or terrorism if they took place today—and were considered as such by the British back when they occurred.

Today’s so-called Patriot groups claim that the federal government has become as tyrannical as the British government ever was, that it deprives citizens of their liberty and over-regulates their everyday lives. They reject federal laws that do everything from limiting the weapons that individual citizens can own, to imposing taxes on income, to requiring the registration of motor vehicles, to creating the Federal Reserve Bank, to reforming the health care system. The groups base their claim to legitimate existence on the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Members of state militias, and other groups like them, take this amendment literally and absolutely. The web site teaparty.org, though not representative of all Tea Party groups, says “gun ownership is sacred.”³

Some militias go even further. They may blend their quests for individual liberty with white supremacy or anti-Semitism and see conspiracies aimed at reducing the power of white citizens in the government’s actions. In August 2012, with the November election in the offing, a Texas judge, Tom Head, actually called for a tax increase so that police could be prepared for what he anticipated would happen if President Obama were reelected. He said, “He’s going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the UN, and what is going to happen when that happens? . . . I’m thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe.”⁴

Although there are some indications that militia membership had declined after the Oklahoma City bombing, it surged after Obama’s first election, as did arguments that the federal government (or at least the president) was not legitimate.⁵ Donald Trump’s loud support for the birther movement, which argued that Obama was not qualified by birth for the presidency, presaged Trump’s presidential campaign, which seemed to capitalize on the same anger the Tea Party had thrived on. A number of writers, as we will see in Chapter 5, have argued that some of this increased anger is a panicky reaction of a shrinking white majority to demographic change and the presence of a black man in the White House.⁶ In any case it helped propel Donald Trump there in 2016.

The federal government has reacted strongly to limit the threat presented by state militias and others who believe that its authority is not legitimate. Congress passed an antiterrorism bill signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 that would make it easier for federal agencies to monitor the activities of such groups, and these powers were broadened after September 11, 2001. In June 2014, in reaction to the surging numbers of radicalized people within the country, then–attorney general Eric Holder announced that he would revive the domestic terrorism task force that had been formed after the Oklahoma City bombings but had not met since the attacks of 9/11 turned the nation’s attention to terrorism overseas.

How should the federal government respond to these challenges to its legitimacy? Are these groups, as they claim, the embodiment of revolutionary patriotism? Do they support the Constitution, or sabotage it? And where do we draw the line between a Tea Party member who wants to sound off against elected officials and policies she doesn’t like, and one who advocates resorting to violence to protect his particular reading of the Constitution? Think about these questions as you read this chapter on the founding of the United States. At the end of this chapter we revisit the question of what’s at stake for American politics in a revolutionary challenge to government authority.

SCHOOL children in the United States have had the story of the American founding pounded into their heads. From the moment they start coloring grateful Pilgrims and cutting out construction paper turkeys in grade school, the founding is a recurring focus of their education, and with good reason. Democratic societies, as we saw in Chapter 1, rely on the consent of their citizens to maintain lawful behavior and public order. A commitment to the rules and goals of the American system requires that we feel good about that system. What better way to stir up good feelings and patriotism than by recounting thrilling stories of bravery and derring-do on the part of selfless heroes dedicated to the cause of American liberty? We celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks and parades, displaying publicly our commitment to American values and our belief that our country is special, in the same way that other nations celebrate their origins all over the world. Bastille Day (July 14) in France, May 17 in Norway, October 1 in China, and July 6 in Malawi all are days on which people rally together to celebrate their common past and their hopes for the future.

Of course, people feel real pride in their countries, and many nations, not only our own, do have amazing stories to tell about their earliest days. But since this is a textbook on politics, not patriotism, we need to look beyond the pride and the amazing stories. As political scientists, we must separate myth from reality. For us, the founding of the United States is central not because it inspires warm feelings of patriotism but because it can teach us about American politics—the struggles for power that forged the political system that continues to shape our collective struggles today.

The history of the American founding has been told from many points of view. You are probably most familiar with this narrative: the early colonists escaped from Europe to avoid religious persecution. Having arrived on the shores of the New World, they built communities that allowed them to practice their religions in peace and to govern themselves as free people. When the tyrannical British king made unreasonable demands on the colonists, they had no choice but to protect their liberty by going to war and by establishing a new government of their own.

Sound historical evidence suggests that the story is more complicated, and more interesting, than that. A closer look shows that early Americans were complex beings with economic and political agendas as well as religious and philosophical motives. After much struggle among themselves, the majority of Americans decided that those agendas could be carried out better and more profitably if they broke their ties with England.⁷ Just because a controversial event like the founding is recounted by historians or political scientists one or two hundred years after it happened does not guarantee that there is common agreement on what actually took place. People write history not from a position of absolute truth but from particular points of view. When we read a historical narrative, as critical thinkers we need to ask the same probing questions we ask about contemporary political narratives: Who is telling the story? What point of view is being represented? What values and priorities lie behind it? If I accept this interpretation, what else will I have to accept? (See Don’t Be Fooled by . . . Your Textbook.)

In this chapter we talk a lot about history—the history of the American founding and the creation of the Constitution. Like all authors, we have a particular point of view that affects how we tell the story. True to the basic theme of this book, we are interested in power and citizenship. We want to understand American government in terms of who the winners and losers are likely to be. It makes sense for us to begin by looking at the founding to see who the winners and losers were then. We are also interested in how rules and institutions make it more likely that some people will win and others lose. Certainly an examination of the early debates about rules and institutions will help us understand that. Because we are interested in winners and losers, the who of politics, we are interested in understanding how people come to be defined as players in the system in the first place. It was during the founding that many of the initial decisions were made about who “We, the people” would actually be. Finally, we are interested in the product of all this debate—the Constitution of the United States, the ultimate rule book for who gets what in American politics. Consequently, our discussion of American political history focuses on these issues. Specifically in this chapter we explore the colonial break with England and the Revolution, the initial attempt at American government—the Articles of Confederation, the Constitutional Convention, the Constitution itself, and the ratification of the Constitution.