This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, September 27, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Declaration of Independence promises that when governments become destructive to liberty,

it is within the rights of people to abolish those governments.

So how has that worked out in history?

Anthony Comegna, assistant editor for Intellectual History at Libertarianism.org, discusses one such event in Rhode Island.

The short version, it didn't go well.

The last time we spoke, I mentioned the phrase, Might Makes Right right as sort of embodying this idea that the United States

growing rapidly in the 19th century was becoming more powerful and there were different groups of people who had

different ideas about how that power ought to be used, but the people who thought America is unique,

we have a better culture in a way,

and that when we use our power, it is for good and it's difficult or was difficult I suspect for those people to imagine

that things could go wrong, that that power could be used either mistakenly or maliciously.

Today we're going to talk about one instance where things went very wrong, almost far sickly

wrong, for the the libertarian forces if you will of the day.

In Rhode Island in 1841 the state constitution was the oldest existing constitution in the world.

And it's still one of the oldest, has the record pretty high up there but the state

constitution in Rhode Island had not been changed in any way not a single

word changed since 1663 when it was issued by King Charles the second

right after his return to the throne well not right now what right after he was

welcomed back to the throne

after Parliament had beheaded his father.

...