Dave Benner is a historian who contributes articles to The Tenth Amendment Center, Mises Institute, the Abbeville Institute, and other publications. He also produces history-oriented videos and podcasts.
Dave is the author of Thomas Paine: A Lifetime of Radicalism, the definitive account of America’s most notorious political firebrand, Compact of the Republic: The League of States and the Constitution, a narrative that defends the decentralized orientation of America’s intended political system, and The 14th Amendment and the Incorporation Doctrine, a succinct tract that articulates how the 14th Amendment has been perverted to give the federal courts an ahistorical excuse to meddle with the internal affairs of the states.
Dave is an unwavering advocate and defender of the compact view of the Constitution as espoused by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. He recognizes that the Constitution was not ratified by “one people,” but by several distinctly sovereign entities through state ratification, which gave the Constitution legally binding status. Dave actively denies and refutes modern understandings of the Constitution made long after the ratification conventions, which claim that the Constitution is a “living document” that grants the federal government a vast reservoir of “implied” powers.
Dave believes strongly that the Constitution was not written and implemented in a whimsical fashion, but instead through a particularly laborious and exhaustive understanding of the British experience that the founders lived under and observed. That generation recognized the usurpation of power by tyrannical kings through treacherous means, and understood the historical processes used to stop it and constrain a ruling authority. It is only through an avid understanding of approximately 800 years of the British and American experience that we can understand the framework of the United States Constitution.
Dave considers himself as Jeffersonian at heart and teaches about the dangers of an overreaching centralized authority, viewing the states as the “surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies.” Dave is an opponent of perpetual debt, centralized banking, and fiat currency, and uses constitutional arguments in support of these positions.
Dave was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and has lived most of his life in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Dave has a Bachelor’s Degree in History Education from the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. He currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.