The 1776 Commission that Trump Ordered To Preserve America’s Revolutionary Heritage Is Committed To Crush It

by Stanley Ezrol

[Print version of this article]

Dec. 20—On December 18, the White House released the names of the 18 members of President Donald Trump’s “1776 Commission,” formed to preserve the understanding of our founders’ mission in building our Republic on the foundation of the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. The White House press secretary described the purpose of the commission as follows:

Today, the President was delighted to welcome the great Americans he intends to appoint to the 1776 Commission. As our nation approaches its 250th anniversary of glorious Independence, many of America’s school children are tragically being taught to hate our founding, hate our history, and hate our country. This must stop. The 1776 Commission will help ensure that every American child learns that they live in the greatest and most exceptional nation in the history of the world. That is why it is absolutely vital to teach America’s young people all that is inspiring and unifying in our history. We want our children to become patriots who love their country.

The 1776 Commission will share the story of our nation’s miraculous founding, proclaim the self-evident truths contained in the Declaration of Independence, and explain how these founding principles have helped our people overcome great national challenges throughout our history—and how these principles can guide us to a great American future. All Americans should pay close attention to this work.

Although the President did not personally make a statement regarding the Commission nominees, he has repeatedly attacked the New York Times’ “1619 Project” and its central idea: The United States was founded for the purpose of promoting slavery, as introduced by the British with the first delivery of slaves to North America in 1619, rather than on the principles of the 1776 Declaration and the Constitution. Programs aligned with Project 1619 that insist that racism is part of America’s “genetic” make-up have been introduced by school systems as well as into corporate and governmental employee training throughout the United States.

It might seem odd that this announcement was made at a time when the U.S. establishment, in tandem with the British nobility, whose House of Lords published their intention to prevent a 2020 re-election of Trump at the beginning of his term in 2017, has been engaged in a massive campaign to remove Trump from office that has escalated to the mad extent of insisting on this in the last two weeks of his term.

Unfortunately, the chosen Commission members side with the British Empire against the fundamental principle that separates the United States from it. They are clearly geopolitical “Iagos” (see Shakespeare’s Othello) acting in concert with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others in the enemy cabal that has worked the “inside” track in alliance with the “external” attacks on Trump that began prior to his inauguration. This may seem shocking, but it is totally consistent with well-known British strategy: Run both sides of the conflict.

The General Welfare

The key point of difference between our Republic and the Empire we left is a commitment to “The General Welfare,” cited three times in the Constitution, and referenced as “the public good” in the Declaration. The first item in the list of the Empire’s “long train of abuses and usurpations” that constituted the founders’ case for separation from Britain is “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” As you read the full list, you will realize that “the public good” is not just the first item in the list, it is the central topic of the list as a whole.

The idea of the General Welfare, a commitment to effectively providing for the well-being of humankind with continuous improvements enabled by a total commitment to scientific advances and their application to enhancing our productive powers, was the basis for Alexander Hamilton’s formulation, as first Treasury Secretary, of what is known as the American (definitely not the British) System of economy.

The British System has been one of tyranny, devoted not to the well-being of all humankind, but to a tightly controlled network of private enterprises, notably the British East India Company, dedicated to maintaining subjugation of common people everywhere through abuse including mass murder by war, starvation, the tolerance of disease, torture, and other means. Matthew Ogden’s report, “How a Mass Famine Helped Spark the American Revolution,” in the January 8 EIR, describes how the battle for Independence was spurred on by reports reaching the New World about Britain’s heinous slaughter of unknown millions of (Asian) Indians through war, culminating in the Bengal famine of 1770—and how the General Welfare principle informed U.S. opposition to Britain thereafter.

Contrary to our founding principles, the terms most used by the British-flavored U.S. Wall Street “establishment,” including the 1776 Commission members, to describe the kind of economy they want, are inspired by the British East India Company economist, Adam Smith. Those terms include “Free Enterprise,” “Free Markets,” “Free Trade,” and “capitalism.” Unlike the General Welfare, the Common Good, and the Public Good, these ideas are supported nowhere in our founding documents.

Who Is the 1776 Commission?

The appointed Chairman of the Commission, Larry Arnn, is a loyal British traitor to the United States. His career began as chief researcher for Sir Martin Gilbert’s official biography of Winston Churchill. Arnn has published three books, one titled Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government. He is now the head of Hillsdale College’s “Churchill Project,” as well as President of the college for the last twenty years. Arnn has high praise for Churchill’s relationship with President Harry Truman, including the famous “Iron Curtain” speech that Truman had arranged for him.

The background to this speech is as follows. Franklin Roosevelt was fiercely committed to Hamilton’s idea of the economy, which he studied intensively during his school years. This study was informed by knowledge of his great-great grandfather, Isaac Roosevelt. Isaac was a close associate of Hamilton and a partner with him in founding the Bank of New York. He participated with Hamilton, John Jay, Robert Livingston, and others in the Poughkeepsie Convention of 1788 that decided on New York’s endorsement of the U.S. Constitution. Hamilton and his other close associates among our founding patriots were vigorous promoters of the General Welfare and opponents of slavery.

Having been elected to the Presidency four times—the longest-serving and most popular president in our history—Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. Harry Truman, his Vice President of five weeks’ standing at the time, succeeded him as President. Truman was decidedly not Roosevelt’s choice for the office. The Wall Street establishment, including the Democratic party leadership that had opposed Roosevelt’s candidacy from the beginning in 1932, realized by mid-1944 that Roosevelt had laid the basis for defeating Hitler, and turned against him to block his commitment to enormous advancement for all peoples on the planet. At this time Roosevelt, seriously ill, was not capable of the robust leadership that had characterized his career. He supported Henry Wallace, his Vice-President and closest ally along with his wife Eleanor, but was forced to permit a convention vote on his choice. Wall Street’s champion, Truman, won the Vice Presidency and became President. He celebrated ex-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill—who stubbornly promoted the post-war continuation of the Empire, and whose attitude toward its colonial population was akin to Hitler’s toward the Jews—over Roosevelt’s contrary plans.

Arnn praised Churchill and Truman—Truman had invited Churchill to Fulton and introduced his address—for what they did in reversing Roosevelt’s policies. Churchill, in this, his most famous public statement to the United States, recommended that we rejoin the British Empire, starting by participating in an alliance with the other English-speaking “Commonwealth” nations. He claimed that “God has willed” the arrangement by backing the English-speaking Empire’s acquisition of nuclear weapons secrets, which, Churchill insisted, should absolutely not be shared with the United Nations that Roosevelt had launched.

This allegedly godly “English-speaking” alliance remains today as the “Five Eyes” international intelligence dirty tricksters. Its proponents have consistently opposed the independence of African nations and other victims of European colonization. Many have even opposed self-government for U.S. cities with large Afro-American populations. The Five Eyes has been an essential element of support for the international campaign to sink Trump along with the American Republic.

Churchill called the following “the crux of what I have travelled here [Fulton] to say”:

Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States. This is no time for generalities, and I will venture to be precise.

Fraternal association requires not only the growing friendship and mutual understanding between our two vast but kindred Systems of society, but the continuance of the intimate relationship between our military advisers, leading to common study of potential dangers, the similarity of weapons and manuals of instructions, and to the interchange of officers and cadets at technical colleges. It should carry with it the continuance of the present facilities for mutual security by the joint use of all Naval and Air Force bases in the possession of either country all over the world. This would perhaps double the mobility of the American Navy and Air Force. It would greatly expand that of the British Empire Forces, and it might well lead, if and as the world calms down, to important financial savings. Already we use together a large number of islands; more may well be entrusted to our joint care in the near future.

In short, the academic expert chosen as the chairman of Trump’s 1776 Commission, Mr. Arnn, is committed to reversing the 1776 Declaration of Independence and rejoining the blood-thirsty Empire with its “long train of abuses and usurpations” to impose a nuclear-armed tyranny to lord it over the entire human race—which it is committed to reducing by the billion.

Who Does Arnn Work for?

According to Arnn’s biography posted on the Hillsdale College website, his prior career included spending 1985-2000 as President of the Claremont Institute. This is a think-tank connected to Claremont College which, like Hillsdale, is one of the centers of Free Market subversion in the United States. Harry Jaffa, the long-lived ghost behind Claremont’s outlook, was a disciple of the German-American philosopher, Leo Strauss. Briefly, Strauss was a champion of the view that society’s elites must present two different “truths”: One for “esoteric” (internal) and another for “exoteric” (public) discussion. Claremont routinely sponsors debates with the leading “Austrian School” organization in America, the Ludwig von Mises Society, another center of the “Free Market” disease.

The fact that they debate does not mean they are not allied. Their debate is between Claremont’s reliance on its interpretation of the Declaration of Independence and other “American” sources for the poison, while von Mises looks back to Aristotle and other European sources.

Removing General Welfare from the Constitution

Here is the best known statement of the “General Welfare” in the Constitution’s Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. general welfare.

This is Larry Arnn’s idea of what “General Welfare” means as reported on Hillsdale’s “Constitution Minute” webpage.

The great Preamble of our Constitution states that the purpose of the document is, in part, to promote the general welfare. Contrary to the modern understanding of that term, the Founders understood welfare to mean public good or happiness. This was understood, in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Such happiness is contingent on securing to each citizen his natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Because this requires the government to be limited, the powers of the federal government were enumerated, and local matters were reserved to State authority. This was precisely intended to secure these inalienable rights and, in turn, promote the general welfare. [Emphasis added.]

This is consistent with the idea that the General Welfare is not something that the government of the United States must be committed to promoting with real action. It is a view widely promoted in Arnn’s Claremont/Hillsdale circles. It is a lie. He refers to the “public good” and “happiness” as meaning the same thing as “General Welfare” and claims that the government must be “limited,” and can do nothing about it. Why would the drafters of the Constitution open the document with its Preamble, recognized as one of the most cherished statements of governmental responsibility in world history, by describing as its main purpose things that the Constitution prohibits the government they are founding, from doing? Perhaps the 1776 Commission can, for the first time, answer this question.

The actual Declaration seems to take these ideas more seriously than Arnn. The first item in the listed “train of abuses and usurpations” presented by the Declaration as the evidence for the need of Independence is, “He [King George] has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”

It is not only the first line. Read it with those that follow, and it is clear that opposition to the “public good” is meant to be the feature that summarizes and unites the entire list of complaints against the King’s tyranny. Nowhere does either the Declaration or the Constitution state that the General Welfare or the Public Good is a “local matter reserved to State authority.” “States’ rights,” is invoked by Arnn and his co-thinkers to prevent U.S. Government action in support of General Welfare. It is also widely used by apologists of the defeated Confederate States of America (CSA) slave “nation” to explain that, though they now recognize the “problems” with slavery, the Confederacy must still be honored for its contribution in supporting “States Rights.” As we will see, the Confederacy was no champion of “States’ Rights” either. It may be claimed that the CSA graciously allowed the right to own and abuse slaves, but since it allowed no freedom for its states or territories not to do so, it’s unclear that that is a genuine “right.”

Of course, there is no grand theory of “states’ rights” in the U.S. Constitution. The only support for the idea there is the 10th Amendment. That amendment simply says that the states can make laws about leftovers: the things not the responsibility of the Federal government. Clearly, the statement of the government’s purpose in the Preamble—“to promote the General Welfare”—cannot be among these left-over ideas.

As EIR has thoroughly documented, the British-led globalist attack against Trump is designed to take over the U.S. government for their side. The list of supporters of the global “Great Reset” among the incoming Biden Cabinet and other appointments, makes it clear that his administration will be one of, by, and for the financial elites and their plans to shrink energy usage, modern agriculture, industry, health care, and sanitation, to inflict suffering well beyond that imposed by the Bengal Famine of 1770 upon a new global slave-state.

Opposing General Welfare Is Linked to Supporting Slavery

Much has been written by the Claremont, Hillsdale, von Mises brotherhood of liars concerning their view of the General Welfare. Like Arnn, one of these, Claremont graduate and Constitutional law expert, John C. Eastman, has recently been attached to Trump as an attorney on his election law cases. Eastman published a detailed attack on the General Welfare in 2001. In that article, Eastman presented the claimed proof that, contrary to Hamilton and those like Lincoln, who followed his path, “the General Welfare,” pronounced in the Preamble to the Constitution and elsewhere, really meant “no General Welfare.” He cited the views of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Buchanan—who were, minimally, tolerant of slavery—in contrast to those of anti-slavery, pro-General Welfare Alexander Hamilton. Eastman equates the term General Welfare to “internal improvements” but does not explain what he means.

It is not true that they are the same, but providing for the General Welfare does require constant improvement of the abilities of our nation and its people. This means doing the things that, when we are Great, we are really good at: scientific discovery, new inventions, increasingly improved transportation, energy, water, sanitation, health, other infrastructures, building an economic and financial system to support that for all, not just for the top fraction of the 1%. Clearly, these things that made us great cannot be created without crossing state boundaries, but must be, as the Preamble states, a responsibility of the national government.

Eastman has nothing to say about whether internal improvements help or harm, but merely presents his crowd’s interpretation of ideas including States’ Rights, and “enumerated powers.” The view that Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution limits the powers of the federal government is one of the great lies Eastman shares with his co-thinkers. The last of Section 8’s list of Congress’ powers kills their fantasy:

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

How is the Preamble not included in “this Constitution”? Why have supporters of this decimation of Constitutional authority been permitted to hold office or practice law in the United States? Or to be appointed to Presidential Commissions to determine how the Constitution is to be taught in our schools?

It is no accident that the ideas Eastman, Arnn, and their colleagues reject—the General Welfare and Freedom from Slavery—are also those the CSA rejected, as do its present day nostalgics. Eastman rejects the policies of Alexander Hamilton’s “American System.” The following few policies of the CSA Constitution form a model document for opponents of the General Welfare:

On internal improvements:

Art. 1, Sec. 8, Para. 1: “but no bounties shall be granted from the Treasury; nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry;”

Art. 1, Sec. 8, Para. 3: “neither this, nor any other clause contained in the Constitution, shall ever be construed to delegate the power to Congress to appropriate money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce; except for [aids to navigation that must be paid for by those helped by those aids].”

On Slavery and States’ Rights:

Art. 1, Sec. 9, Para. 1: “The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden;”

Art. 1, Sec. 9, Para. 2: “Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy.” [Note: This is not to prevent slavery, but to prevent competition with foreign slave trade.]

Art 1, Sec 9, Para. 4: “No … denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”

Art. 4, Sec. 2, Para. 1: “The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States … with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.”

Art. 4, Sec. 2, Para. 3: “No slave … [from] any State or Territory of the Confederate States … escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs; or to whom such service or labor may be due.”

Art. 4, Sec. 3, Para. 3: “In all such territory [of the CSA] the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government.”

By imposing the baseless view that “the general welfare” must not be promoted, we are forced to ask whether Arnn and company support its opposite, as promoted by their cherished empire: general tyranny. The other organizations Arnn serves and the affiliations of other commissioners are of the same treasonous ideology. These include The Heritage Foundation, the Henry Salvatori Center of Claremont McKenna College, the Philadelphia Society, the Mont Pelerin Society, The International Churchill Society, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

What Is To Be Done?

Given that Donald Trump will be leaving the Presidency on or before January 20, it is not clear whether the 1776 Commission will actually develop. What has been made clear is that the Iagos surrounding Trump who claim to oppose the cascade of attacks against the Revolution and Constitution, are committed to ensuring that those they label as defenders of our heritage, are as committed to crushing it as those who are tearing down statues of Washington, Franklin, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and other heroes of republican government committed to the General Welfare.

Clearly, there is a Trump movement afoot. Deadly force is being applied to misdirect and deform that movement, as we witnessed on January 6. Our job, especially those of us nourished on the brightly focused power of Lyndon LaRouche, is to restore the eternal lamp of freedom and to plant within our people’s hearts and minds the true drinking gourd guiding our path to the rebirth and victory of the common aims of humankind.