Posted on 02/10/2016 8:48:08 AM PST by conservativejoy
Our Framers would despair about the winners of the nation's first presidential primaries in New Hampshire. Though polar opposites with very different ideological starting points, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders would have set the Framers' hair - or wigs - on fire. They designed the Constitution to moderate the people at home while preparing a president to act quickly to counter emergencies, crises, and war abroad. Instead, the Republicans have a demagogue and the Democrats have an economic radical who promise swift, extreme change.
The men who met in Philadelphia in 1787 to write a new constitution designed it to prevent someone like Donald Trump from ever becoming president. One of their great fears was of a populist demagogue who would promise the people everything and respect nothing. As Alexander Hamilton, the key theorist of executive power during the Founding, warned in Federalist 67: "Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honours of a single state."
Talents for low intrigue. Little arts of popularity. The founder of this newspaper may not have known Trump, but he clearly knew men like him. Insulting braggadocio and self-aggrandizement are not the 21st Century exclusives of reality show hosts and cable news guests.
To prevent mindless populism from seizing the White House, the Founders rejected nationwide election of the president. Instead, they created the Electoral College. States choose electors (equal to the number of their members of the House and Senate), who meet and send their votes to Congress. If there is no majority, then the House votes by state delegation to choose the chief executive.
While the Electoral College today seems Rube Goldberg-esque, it served the important purpose of weeding out emotional passions and popular, but poor, candidates. "The choice of several, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community, with any extraordinary or violent movements," Hamilton wrote, "than the choice of one, who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes." He also praised the separate meeting of electors and the Congress as another brake on rash populism. "This detached and divided situation will expose [electors] much less to heats and ferments, that might be communicated from them to the people," he observed.
The Framers would also be aghast at Bernie Sanders. His calls for a political revolution, fomenting of class hatreds, and desires for a socialist economy also run directly contrary to the Framers design. The Framers believed our Constitution and our government should not view or think of people as economic classes or special interests. They were not naïve - they knew that what they called "factions" were an inevitable product of democracy. "Liberty is to faction what what air is to fire, an ailment, without which it instantly expires," James Madison wrote in Federalist 10. "But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air."
Our Constitution did not address the specter of factions by creating a government so strong that, in the hands of a crusading populist, it could crush special interests. Instead, it creates a decentralized government too difficult for one party to take over. It divides the national government between president, Congress, and the Judiciary. It further keeps federal power narrow and reserves authority over most of daily life to the 50 states. America would never suffer Sanders' political revolution or his wish to transfer the "means of production" (for those who have forgotten their Karl Marx since the fall of the Soviet Union, he is referring to private property and financial and intellectual capital) from private hands to the public. Ask the communist nations of Europe and Asia, with millions of lives lost and millions more oppressed from the 1930s-1980s, how that experiment turned out.
As many European and American intellectuals have lamented, no serious socialist or communist party has ever succeeded in the United States. There is a reason why Bernie Sanders comes from a tiny state and represents a caucus of one. Our Constitution's separation of powers and federalism raises too many barriers for any movement to take over all of the levers of government and impose an ideology on the United States. Even if they get too carried away by the latest intellectual fad or passionate anger, the American people have the handbrake of the Constitution to stop them from making a catastrophic mistake. It is time for them to pull it on Trump and Sanders.
Well both certainly are the GOPe and DNCe’s worst nightmares.
And they both have the honor of being 0bama 2.0.
At least Trump or Sanders don’t own slaves.
I feel your pain Yoo. Imagine what they would have thought of Bill Clinton, Barf Obama, and the possibility that Hillary might win. Yikes!
joyless not taking a day off.
The Founders would also be aghast at what some of the American people have become.
Apparently, the voters do not think so. The founders wanted the people to decide. Not pundits, donors and political hacks.
John Yoo confounds the founders with the GOPe and DNC (no e necessary with DNC, it is implied).
John Yoo has a basic confusion that is Yoouge.
Think the founders worst nightmare would have been debt obligations of 19 Trillion. Of course they could not even fathom such a high number back then. It is time to retire the establishment. They have failed us miserably.
Yoo who?
The Founders worst fears was a Government of “Faction and Moneyed interests” like what currently dominates the DC Political/Media/Business class. The Founders would see in Trump and Carson the ideal of the citizen politician and utterly abhor the professional politicians like Clinton/Cruz/Sander/Rubio/Bush et al.
This article could be about Clinton or Obama or any democrat since FDR. The author is a little late.
The Founders' worst nightmare was a massive government that intruded into every aspect of society, with massive social-engineering power, fed by unbacked currency and massive debt. They KNEW that such a government would be corrupt, overtly political, and eventually would be used to oppress people.
With limited government, and clear, simple rules on roles for each part of government, they tried to ensure no tyrant could take over.
Just cancelled my subscription.... had enough.
What? If either win they will have a whole nation of slaves.
Actually, Trump is exactly what the founders envisioned.
The founders built in remedies to keep the country on course or to get it back on course but here is no way they could anticipate how far we have drifted. The Constitution was written based upon honorable people doing honorable things but it is facing 47% populace that is willing to vote for anyone with a “D” behind their name and a complicit media that is a willing participant to that end.
I'm sorta thinking their worst nightmare was Lincoln.
You must be a Cruz supporter so I understand your saltiness this morning.
That said, your comment is delusional.
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