The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution

Breathtaking! Irrefutable! Erudite! The _Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution_ can help remove the shackles of constitution misinterpretation and error from the thoughtful reader! In a mere 221 pages of entertaining and perceptive text, Dr. Gutzman encourages a major reaffirmation of the American constitutional and political tradition. In other words, if you are a student of law, American politics, political theory, or American history, or a concerned citizen, you can overcome the "myth of [constitutional] incomprehensibility" promoted by professors and pundits alike. The problems that result from studying the Constitution by the "case method" are also exposed. As a gifted historian and lawyer, Gutzman allows the reader to uncover the genuine and potentially-viable core of the American constitutional tradition: diffused authority. He traces the core tradition from the Colonial Era, to the Declaration of Independence, to the Articles of Confederation, to the Constitutional Convention and equally vital Ratification Period, and onward, while uncovering the litany of errors and false hagiography of previous scholarship (his treatment of James Madison and John Marshall alone are worth the price of the book!). Most importantly, this book provides a significant critique of just how far we have departed from the American constitutional tradition. Utilizing as many Supreme Court decisions as one would fine in a standard law textbook, but presenting these decisions in a more historically accurate and exceeding readable format, you cannot afford to ignore this book! H. Lee Cheek, Jr., Ph.D. www.drleecheek.com

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution is one of the best concise introductions to the Constitution. Dr. Gutzman, who is an expert on early American politics, has condensed two semesters worth of constitutional history into a brief and lively volume. If you have ever wondered how the Supreme Court reaches its decisions, or what relationship those decisions actually bear to the Constitution as ratified by the Founders, this is the book for you. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in constitutional history and especially those who are considering law school.

I am admittedly far more liberal and "politically correct" than many of the readers this book will initially attract. That should not discourage anyone from engaging with Prof. Gutzman's lively interpretation of the Court and the Constitution. His deep concern about the meaning of law and the ideas which shape this nation make this an outstanding work. I would recommend this to anyone interested in Constitutional history and the debates which inform our understanding of law.

Finally someone has written a book which strikes at the core of the illegitimate (unconstitutional) present form of govnerment in the United States. Many attempts to write a book like this have failed. (Though William Watkin's "Reclaiming the American Revolution" would be a good follow up after reading Dr. Gutzman's book as an introduction). Books written by such authors as Andrew Napolitano advocate using federal judicial power to serve "conservative" ends; such as the national "liberty of contract" doctrine the federal courts conjured during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "Liberty of contract" was complete nonsense from a constitutional standpoint (as Dr. Gutzman makes clear). Napolitano would like to see "substantive due process" (based on the 14th amendment-- "ratified" at gunpoint) used for policy purposes he prefers. In this regard, Napolitano's policy based judicial philosophy is akin to the kind of philosophy which Gutzman shows to have destroyed our federal system of government. To my knowledge this is the first book which clearly rips apart the US Supreme Court's "incorporation doctrine," which turned a shield erected by the states against their agent, the "federal" government, into a weapon the federal courts use against the states, the people, and local self-government. Two key things Dr. Gutzman left out of his "incorporation doctrine" discussion are (i) the preamble to the bill of rights, (ii) a discussion of the 9th amendment, and (iii) the lost history of the 9th amendment. (i) According to the preamble to the federal bill of rights, "THE Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution." So essentially, the bill of rights was put in place "to prevent misconstruction or abuse" of federal power. Though Dr. Gutzman doesn't specifically mention the preamble, he does a masterful job of explaining that the bill of rights is only supposed to protect individual liberties from interference by the federal government by making clear that Congress can only pass laws pursuant to its enumerated delegation of legislative power spelled out in Article I Section VIII. The states wanted to reserve power, not to grant additional power to the fed. As Dr. Gutzman also shows, the 14th Amendment, despite not being ratified pursuant to Article V, did nothing to change the plain meaning of the bill of rights. (ii) Dr. Gutzman focuses plenty on the 10th amendment, which Jefferson considered the "cornerstone" of the Constitution, but he seems to neglect the 9th amendment. The 9th basically says that just because certain rights have been listed in the first 8 amendments does not mean that other rights are not also protected from federal

For what my opinion is worth, this is one of the most important books of the past 25 years. There is absolutely nothing like it, anywhere. This is not another of the toothless and forgettable laments about the death of the Constitution at the hands of activist judges that we read from time to time from the right-wing pundit class, though of course author Kevin Gutzman decries both of these things. This is a far more sweeping, much more fundamentally devastating indictment of the Supreme Court, of the "legal training" that raises up ever more people to perpetuate its record of dishonesty and usurpation, and of the American regime at large -- which rests on the legal fictions Gutzman shreds in his book. To those who weep over the Constitution's neglect these past 50 or 100 years, Gutzman shows that defiance of that document has gone on from the beginning, starting in the 1790s. An expert on colonial and early republican Virginia -- and who has been published in all the major professional journals -- Gutzman knows the Virginia ratifying convention inside and out. He knows the promises made to the people, and the assurances that Virginia's ratifiers inserted into that state's ratification instrument. And he shows that Jefferson and his allies were faithful to those principles and promises, and that the so-called Federalists and their present-day apologists (which includes just about everybody) were not. John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States from 1801 to 1835, comes in for some serious scholarly thrashing as well. Marshall is all too typically held up as an idol before conservatives and even libertarians, and he remains a central icon of early American history. For Gutzman, Marshall is an outright opponent -- and a dishonest one at that -- of the legal principles on which the people of the states were promised their new government would be based. Where else can you find such an iconoclastic portrayal? Gutzman also treats a great many politically incorrect subjects from a constitutional perspective. I won't spoil the surprise by giving everything away, but if you happen to have a thing for being told the truth rather than lies, you'll read and cheer. It's going to be fun to watch the so-called constitutional lawyers try to attack Gutzman's book. Gutzman, who holds a law degree as well as a Ph.D. in history, is uniquely positioned to parry any such attacks: unlike his opponents he actually knows early American history, not just a string of unfounded Supreme Court decisions purporting to be "constitutional law." (This is one reason, Gutzman says, that "legal training should not be confused with an education.") Although I was revisiting much familiar ground as I read this book, even I was shocked at how dishonest the federal courts have been over the years. And Gutzman just eviscerates all of it, slashing and burning everything in sight, and holding up the ludicrous series of fictions that pass for "constitutional law" to hilarious deri