Posted on 01/23/2016 11:18:39 AM PST by MosesKnows
My question is for liberals but of course, anyone with an opinion is welcome to comment.
Did the founders err by limiting the legislative powers of the new government?
The Progressive Movement supports the premise that man's nature has improved since the founder's ratified the Constitution. The improvement means there is no longer a need to limit the powers of the elected.
The founders gave the government just enough power to perform its primary function of protecting the people's rights, and no others.
The Federalist Papers reasoned that limiting legislation powers would limit the possible corruption that an imperfect man could promote.
Who has the Liberals Ping List?
Great bodies of men have seldom judged what they ought to do, by any other rule than what they could do. What nation is there that has not oppressed any other, when the same could be done with advantage and security? What party has ever had regard to the principles which they professed, or ever reformed the errors which they condemned? What company, or particular society of merchants or tradesmen, has ever acted for the interest of general trade, though it always filled their mouths in private conversation?
And yet men, thus formed and qualified, are the materials for government. For the sake of men it is instituted, by the prudence of men it must be conducted; and the art of political mechanism is, to erect a firm building with such crazy and corrupt materials.
—Cato's Letters #61, by John Trenchard & Thomas Gordon.
We're still the same species and human nature is still the same.
We have lawmakers and bureaucrats and courts exercising judicial discretion at interpreting constitutional requirements that are not subject to interpretation, thereby making new law and diluting the intent of our Founders. Those actions should be punishable by law, and assigned the sternest punishment, for they are corruption of our blood.
American Leftists despise the Founders, so their quick answer would be an emphatic, YES.
The days are over of being ablw to shame a Democrat by demonstrating that they are violating the Constitution and the Founders’ intent.
If this is true, and I believe it is, it means the Progressive Movement bases itself on a falsehood.
More importantly, it was through Cato's Letters that colonial Americans learned the lessons of Locke and Sidney.
Thanks to Cato's Letters, by 1776 the philosophical concepts and maxims of the Declaration of Independence were old hat.
You're probably referring to The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.
The English Libertarian Heritage, edited by David Jacobson, contains excerpts from Cato's Letters and their other series The Independent Whig. Free downloads of both (unabridged) are available here:
A two-volume hardcover version of Cato's Letters is also available from the same source. I am not aware of any readable and unabridged modern printed editions of The Independent Whig; but the online version is public domain and can be printed and spiral bound by your local print shop for about what a book would cost.
The Independent Whig is a scathing review of the corruption that organized Christianity had degenerated into in both England and on the Continent. The theme was that religion only works as a means of promoting civic morality when it is not used as a power base.
Yes, its the Liberty Fund Vols I & II that I have.
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