Constitutional Law, Society

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JEMMY!

Today is the birthday of our greatest Framer and the genius behind our Constitution: James Madison. He would have been 273 years old. We will be celebrating tonight with a traditional Virginia dinner (with the required Virginia ham), a three-layer cake, and Madison’s favorite dessert of ice cream (I recommend the tripartite Neapolitan).

James Madison, Jr. was born on March 16, 1751 at the Belle Gove Plantation in the colony of Virginia to James Madison Sr. and Nelly Conway Madison.

Despite being only 5’4” and barely above 100 pounds, Madison proved to be an intellectual giant who shaped constitutional theory for generations.

While critics would call him “Little Jemmy,” Jemmy was a nickname used for Madison by others.

As a Madisonian scholar, today is a day of great celebration for the man who is most responsible for our constitutional system, not to mention the Bill of Rights and our 4th President. He was a brilliant writer whose contributions to The Federalist Papers still remain required reading for lawyers and laypersons alike, particularly Federalist No. 10 (on factions) and Federalist 51 (on the separation of powers).

The placement of my book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, is more of an homage than a product placement (Ok, maybe both).  The book explores Madison’s view on free speech as well as other historical figures. However, it is Madison who would become the voice of clarity among the Framers in resisting the erosion of free speech protections and what he called the “monster” of sedition prosecutions. (The book will be out in a few weeks and is available for pre-sale if you are looking for that hard-to-find Madison birthday gift for a loved one).

Madison died of congestive heart failure at Montpelier on the morning of June 28, 1836. He was 85 — an advanced age for the time. My favorite story from his death came from his niece who asked him, “What is the matter, Uncle James?” Madison simply responded “Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear.” He then promptly passed.

So enjoy the day and celebrate in true Madisonian fashion. There is no need to be moderate. Madison understood our failings and inclinations. After all,  “if men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Just  keep your friends checked and balanced.

While I expect Dolley would not be thrilled, here is our annual sultry send off for James Madison at 273 years young today:

Happy Birthday, Jemmy.

42 thoughts on “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JEMMY!”

  1. The consent of the governed can only be legitimately obtained through informed consent — consent obtained through trickery and deceit is vile and repugnant. This People therefore must hold the power to quickly deter and punish campaigns, candidates and govt. officers who push out artful falsehoods for political advantage. The surest check of the aspiring tyrrant is denying him the tool of public frauds.

    1. Biden is the tyrant the founders warned us about, in case you need a reality booster shot.

      1. Lest we forget that it was Biden who used OSHA to try to force over 80 million workers to take the experimental “vaccines” against their will — without informed consent — before he was stopped, yet again, by the Supreme Court. A tyrant indeed.

  3. “The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone. … The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any…”
    – James Madison (1788)

  5. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAMES MADISON – AN IDEOLOGICAL DEITY
    ____________________________________________________________________

    “[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”

    – James Madison
    ____________________

    When you fully grasp James Madison, you understand that the principles of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto are anathematic, antithetical, and unconstitutional and that the entire communistic American welfare state is unconstitutional including, but not limited to, admissions affirmative action, grade-inflation affirmative action, employment affirmative action, quotas, welfare, food stamps, minimum wage, rent control, social services, forced busing, public housing, utility subsidies, WIC, SNAP, TANF, HAMP, HARP, TARP, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, Agriculture, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.Government exists, under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to provide maximal freedom to individuals while government is severely limited and restricted to merely facilitating that maximal freedom of individuals through the provision of only security and infrastructure.

    James Madison’s Article 1, Section 8, provides Congress the power to tax for ONLY debt, defense, and “…general (all, the whole) Welfare…,” omitting and, thereby, excluding any power to tax for individual Welfare, specific Welfare, particular Welfare, favor or charity. His same article enumerates and provides Congress the power to regulate ONLY the Value of money, Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian Tribes, and land and naval Forces.

    Additionally, James Madison’s 5th Amendment right to private property was initially qualified by the Framers and is, therefore, absolute, allowing no further qualification, and allowing ONLY the owner the power to “claim and exercise” dominion over private property.

    James Madison saw to it that government exists, under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to provide maximal freedom to individuals while government itself is severely limited and restricted to merely facilitating that maximal freedom of individuals through the provision of security and infrastructure only.

    America will become America when it assimilates James Madison in his fullness and entirety.

    Thank you, James Madison.

  6. Madison may have been the “master minding” behind the Declaration of Independence, but Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were significant thought leaders. But it doesn’t matter anymore since these new generations of Americans will destroy any statues, monuments, and tributes to their greatness. God bless America.

  7. He’s celebrating by spinning in his grave at the abandonment of the Bill of Rights in America.

  10. I just finished “Peter Lawford: The Man who Kept the Secrets” (1991) by James Spada, earlier this week. “The Brother-in-Lawford” (as Frank Sinatra snidely called him– before Sinatra stopped calling Lawford altogether…) was the one who had introduced “the late Marilyn Monroe” to President Kennedy, that Saturday evening (which was actually ten days before the president’s penultimate birthday of May 29, 1962), as, indeed, Lawford had introduced the two to begin with, during one of Jack Kennedy’s “hunting expeditions” in Hollywood. (Peter Lawford had married Patricia Kennedy in 1954, several months after the junior senator from Massachusetts had married Jacqueline Bouvier.) Marilyn Monroe was found dead (or not…), just eleven weeks later, after threatening to go pubic with her affairs with both the president and his brother, the attorney general, who both had recently jilted her. I was only five years old, at the time, but even my middle-aged parents would have been shocked and appalled by what was going on with and around President Kennedy, during what later came to be euphemized as “Camelot” by his widow (and a sympathetic press corps). Peter Lawford never got over his guilt about the death of his friend Marilyn Monroe, at age 36, nor the rejections by Frank Sinatra, a few months earlier, and the Kennedy family, after the J.F.K. assassination. Lawford essentially spent the last 22+ years of his life committing an excruciatingly slow suicide by drugs and alcohol, turning into an utterly pathetic and detached figure who had fallen a long, long way from his halcyon days as a handsome young movie star at the once-unrivaled Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

    1. JFK, Monster

      By Timothy Noah

      “I knew that John F. Kennedy was a compulsive, even pathological adulterer, given to taking outlandish risks after he entered the White House. I knew he treated women like whores. And I knew he had more than a few issues with his father about toughness and manliness and all that. But before I read in the newspaper that Mimi Alford’s just-released memoir, Once Upon A Secret: My Affair With President John F. Kennedy And Its Aftermath, described giving Dave Powers a blow job at JFK’s request and in his presence, I didn’t know that Kennedy had an appetite for subjecting those close to him to extreme humiliation.”

  11. “We will be celebrating tonight with a traditional Virginia dinner (with the required Virginia ham), a three-layer cake, and Madison’s favorite dessert of ice cream (I recommend the tripartite Neapolitan).”
    ****************************
    Virginia ham? Oh you Comeheres! It’s a Smithfield (as in Smithfield, Virginia) ham. Dry, fatty salty and the best damn thing you ever wrapped a buttered buttermilk biscuit around and gobbled up like a duck on the season’s first Junebug. Bring on the Surry (as in County of) Peanut Pie (no cake) and some whipped cream a little later. Then and only then you sip your bourbon (I recommned Williamsburg’s “8 Shires”) and listen for “Carry Me Back to Ol’ Virginy” rising in the twilight as the fireflies dance around the covered porch to the cricket serenade. And those crackling booms that keep interrupting the cool night air, why they’re not thunder – they’re cannon fire — to distract you from a sparkling river lit up like a bride’s wedding train by the year’s first full alabaster moon.

    That’s my Virginia.

    2. Your Smithfield ham is the product of a Chinese company. Think about that and you will switch to Colorado lamb.

  12. Actually, Madison was born on March 5. 1751, and was able to celebrate his first birthday on that date before the calendars were changed in the fall of 1752 by adding 11 days to each date, transforming Madison’s “birthdate” into what we today call March 16th.

    And while his favorite desert was indeed ice cream, he often yielded the flavor selection to Dolly, whose favorite was Oyster Ice Cream

    1. Thanks.. ..explains why I had heard that Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday was actually earlier in April, around the 2nd!

  13. Thank you for the notice, Professor Turley, and Happy Birthday, Jemmy!

    May I recommend Madison and Jefferson, by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, History Professors at LSU, giving Jemmy top billing for his role in the nation’s early days, insufficiently known by the general public. The Federalist Papers and other founding documents might be found at Barnes & Noble, in charming historical-retro formats, and possibly at other good, old-fashioned bookstores. (Yes, they still exist; much more fun than websites!)

    And I pre-ordered The Indispensable Right, looking forward to it landing at my front door.

  14. Curious to know if Luna is still barking at the cardboard Madison. If so, is she debating or agreeing?

  15. “Intellectual giant” is an understatement when it comes to James Madison Jr. “Intellectual mega-colossus” or some other inventive hyper-superlative begins to approach his stratospheric acuity and understanding of human nature.

    When I read Madison’s elegant and perceptive prose, it never fails to amaze me how he could reach such insights into the fundamental “4-Fs” of human behavior–feeding, fighting, fearing and sex–in an age when a 200-book library was considered large, and no internet or AI was around to guide (or mis-guide) his scholarship.

    1. ..well said… and we could surely use his presence here to-day to set the delusional Dems straight!!!! Thank Goodness there is another ‘intellectual giant’ advocating for Madison in Prof. Turley……!

  16. My husband and I are listening to a multi-part audio lecture on the back and forth between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists just prior to the ratification of our constitution. We are both on the side of the Anti-Federalists as we can see all of their ominous predictions of a large federal government have come to fruition. Madison is really no friend to our nation if seen in the light of his proposal of a large federal government with overseeing power over the states. We shall not be having a birthday party for him but will, wait to celebrate George Mason’s birthday.

    1. You might be right, Whimsicalmama. At a very minimum, it’s the concentration of government that increasingly worries me. The coercive bureaucracies–the CIA, FBI, DOJ, IRS, and Pentagon–should be split up and scattered to different parts of the country. That way, they’ll face juries of the people they are supposed to serve–not juries of their fellow conspirators in D.C.

      In Madison’s defense, I think if he were alive today, he might admit you have a point. The human condition is such that no matter what kind of government you have, somebody will try to game it.

      Thus, there is no substitute for a wise and vigilant electorate. I think, somewhere along the way, we may have lost that.

      2. Hamilton was the real force behind the Federalist push and he did saw it as essential in order to maintain a strong national defense, but I think he willfully blinded himself to the inherent evil within a strong central government that destroyed the foundation of a federal republic of states that Jefferson and Mason saw as a better way to forestall a large federal over reach of power that would naturally ensue.

      3. Re: bureaucrats, I think T.Jefferson nailed it:
        “If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanages to account; but be glad to obtain our subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.” Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to Samuel Kercheval

    2. The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
      _________________________________________________________________________________________________

      “…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”

      “…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what they forbid.”

      “[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”

      – Alexander Hamilton

  19. As a born and bred Virginian, cousin of Mr. Madison, and even a graduate of James Madison Elementary in Arlington, I say,yea! But you forgot to have peanut soup!

    2. OK, so I just ordered up butter pecan ice cream from Walmart. I paid $5 to get it here within 3 hours. That and a bunch of cat litter.

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