That’s a great article!!! Brutus was certainly right. Thanks for posting!
The framers of the Constitution did not foresee the possibility of an anti-American president who would need to be removed immediately by an impeachment originating from among a majority of the populace, not the House of representatives. Now we see the flaw.
Robert Yates a Yankee I can agree with!
One of the most insightful of the Antifederalists was Robert Yates, a New York judge who, as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, withdrew because the convention was exceeding its instructions. Yates wrote as Brutus in the debates over the Constitution. Given his experience as a judge, his claim that the Supreme Court would become a source of almost unlimited federal over-reaching was particularly insightful.
History furnishes no example of a free republic, anything like the extent of the United States. The Grecian republics were of small extent; so also was that of the Romans. Both of these, it is true, in process of time, extended their conquests over large territories of country; and the consequence was, that their governments were changed from that of free governments to those of the most tyrannical that ever existed in the world.
-- Robert Yates
We have to post the entire Anti-Federalist papers on Free Republic!
Good read thank you for posting.
Anti-Federalist Bump!
Patrick Henry - “The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty of the press, all your immunities and franchises, all pretensions to human rights and privileges, are rendered insecure, if not lost, by this change, so loudly talked of by some, and inconsiderately by others.”
Also, the necessity of a virtuous electorate to the continuance of our republic was widely discussed at the time. An immoral people will elect dirtbags. We've got the government we deserve, not the one designed by our Framers.
Ping!
Also, why do we look to the failed systems of the past to point to the way it should be? And I don't see any suggestion of a better way proposed. 50 independent states without an elected central system is called Europe. Ours has been the most successful system yet, and all it needs is a few patriots with balls to set it right again! It is not irreparable; it is in need of some serious house-cleaning and return to the Founders' guiding intentions.
FReeper Book Club: The Debate over the Constitution, Federalist #21
A Publius/Billthedrill Essay | 20 May 2010 | Publius & Billthedrill
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2517414/posts?page=2
We will post two threads per week, every Monday and Thursday, starting February 1, for 55 weeks. Again, we will use the keyword “freeperbookclub” to mark these threads.
What is old has become new again. It’s time to explore federalism and the philosophy of the Framers. The lessons of 1787 are just as valid today.
The thing that gets me is how the power hungry mobsters can use the Antifederalist criticisms as a plan. The intent was well documented as well as what not to do. We have to contend with the fact that what’s been done wrong was done knowing it to be wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
With all honesty, the Anti-Federalists were correct. When studying the Anti-Federalist while attending Georgetown, their main problem was - “organization”. They were not as organized as Hamilton, Madison ,and Jay -
“The Federalists”.
Rarely are the Anti-Federalist discussed in Constitutional Law classes. Anti- Federalist books should be read time and time again by Conservatives.
In 1988, I was privileged to be asked to write the Introduction to the reprint of Robert Yates' Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Convention to Form the US Constitution. Judge Yates was the leading Anti-Federalist, and sought to defeat the Constitution in Philadelphia, and later in the New York Ratification Convention.
That lengthy Introduction pointed out that the ratification nearly failed in both Virginia and New York. Most importantly, it pointed out that the claims of the Anti-Federalists were coming true not in their time, but in ours.
Though it was written almost a quarter century ago, I stand by every word of that. And, BTW, it was not just the Anti-Federalists who feared an over-reaching federal judiciary. Thomas Jefferson called it "the most dangerous branch," and gave his reasons.
John / Billybob / Ben
bttt
The problem of our having an electorate which allows tyranny because it is capable of electing "liberal" Democrats in general and Barak Obama in particular is, IMHO, the problem of transcending the emotional appeals of Sophists. It should be recalled that the answer to an opponent who claims superior wisdom is not to get into a "he said, she said" contest with them but to adopt the stance of the philosopher. The philosopher does not claim superior wisdom, but claims only to love wisdom. That constitutes a challenge to the sophist to stick to facts and logic.It is common, even on FR, for people to accept the premise that Fox News Channel is conservative and that other journalism is "objective." A recent example, and my response, follows:
Democrats are cowards for refusing to go on Fox. They would be glad to, if they had facts and logic rather than showmanship behind their snake oil, but they don't - so they stay away from the exposure. The trouble with going on Fox is that you will be asked the second question. If you have the facts and logic to back up your case, that's no problem. Conservatives do have facts and logic behind their cases; it is their defining characteristic.and then turn around and call republicans stupid for going on any of the other networks.
Journalism as we know it did not exist until the era of the Civil War. Prior to that, newspapers were fractiously independent of each other, and didn't accept claims that competing newspapers' reporters were objective. In fact, the newspapers of the pre-Civil War era were more like National Review than like The New York Times. Most were weeklies, and some had no deadline at all and just went to press when the printer decided he was ready. More than modern "hard news," they were about the opinions of their printers. Presses of that ilk naturally were ordinarily associated with political parties. The whole paper was what we'd now think of as an editorial page - and the printers couldn't and didn't try to make that a secret. That was the milieu when the First Amendment was written and ratified.Its hypocritical and pathetic.What changed that?The telegraph. The telegraph, and the Associated Press. Suddenly the printer had available to him a font of news stories to which his readership could not be privy before he printed them. A wonderful thing for the printer of a paper! But, at a price. It was expensive in money, and the printer needed to get value out of his AP newswire. How to do that, when the printer didn't employ, didn't even know, the reporters who produced the cornucopia of newswire stories? How to vouch for the veracity of the stories? Simple - you simply launch a propaganda campaign to the effect that all reporters are objective!
Here's a news flash for you: journalists actually aren't objective! How do I know? Well, you can do a lot of ponderous research, such as (A Measure of Media Bias (research shows Drudge/Fox centrist, NYT far liberal) ), to prove it - but you need not expect that journalists will do anything but stonewall the results, no matter how thorough the research might be. Far simpler to just be direct - journalists are not objective because they say that they are objective. Simple - the only way anyone can even attempt to be objective is to start your analysis with an up-front declaration of your own interest in the question you are analyzing. If you are arguing that more roads should be built, you declare up front if your father-in-law would be the one to build them, and you would even declare your ownership of a car which would be more useful if there were more roads. Declaring your own objectivity is the precise opposite of that, so you should take it for granted that journalists who never declare anything but their own "objecitivity" are not merely not objective, they are heavily biased.
What is the inherent bias of journalism? Simple again - journalists are biased in favor of the notion that journalists are heroes. In Mark Steyn's expression, they are cardboard heroes - great at attacking "dastardly villains" such as bankers who actually pose no threat, but impotent and cowardly in the presence of actual villains such as ruthless terrorists who'll behead you for crossing them. Cowards who boast that "you never argue with someone who buys ink by the carload" - and then pick on some poor defenseless schlub precisely because he can't effectively argue back, and wouldn't hurt a fly anyway.
How does that bias of journalism play into politics? Simple again - "liberal" politicians are those who cooperate with journalists and essentially exist in symbiosis with them. You can tell that by the way journalists give them positive labels. Americans favored liberalism - which was a word for the advocacy of liberty - so journalists began to call politicians in symbiosis with them "liberals." The meaning of the word "liberal" was inverted in the 1920s, according to Saffire's New Political Dictionary. Journalists also, alternatively, call politicians in symbiosis with them "progressives." What American doesn't favor progress? And as to the label applied to "liberals'" opponents, well, I'll believe that "conservative" is intended as a positive label as soon as you convince me that marketers don't want to label their products New!
Ann Coulter has pointed out that if she goes on a book tour and is put on TV, journalists always "balance" her with one (usually more than one) "liberal" commentator to argue with her. in addition to the "objective journalist" him/herself, who will always attack as well (the usual result is that Ann has to really fight to get a word in edgewise - and as quick-tongued as she is, that's saying something). If a "liberal" goes on a book tour, when have you ever seen him/her "balanced" by a conservative? When have you ever seen him/her attacked by the "objective" journalist?
In reality "objective" journalists are sophists - and, in the original sense of the term, conservative politicians and analysts are philosophers.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2518098/postsNot only is there no hypocrisy involved in advocating that conservative politicians go on Fox but keep the "objective" journalist at arm's length, it is IMHO actually pathetic to think that they are obligated to do otherwise.
A constitutional revival, IMHO, must begin with the recognition - first by the courts, and then by the public - that the government is not a safe repository for the judgement of what is, and what is not, "objectivity." With all that that implies for the authority of "Campaign Finance Reform" and the "Federal Communication Commission."
Earlier threads:
FReeper Book Club: The Debate over the Constitution
5 Oct 1787, Centinel #1
6 Oct 1787, James Wilson’s Speech at the State House
8 Oct 1787, Federal Farmer #1
9 Oct 1787, Federal Farmer #2
18 Oct 1787, Brutus #1
22 Oct 1787, John DeWitt #1
27 Oct 1787, John DeWitt #2
27 Oct 1787, Federalist #1
31 Oct 1787, Federalist #2
3 Nov 1787, Federalist #3
5 Nov 1787, John DeWitt #3
7 Nov 1787, Federalist #4
10 Nov 1787, Federalist #5
14 Nov 1787, Federalist #6
15 Nov 1787, Federalist #7
20 Nov 1787, Federalist #8
21 Nov 1787, Federalist #9
23 Nov 1787, Federalist #10
24 Nov 1787, Federalist #11
27 Nov 1787, Federalist #12
27 Nov 1787, Cato #5
28 Nov 1787, Federalist #13
29 Nov 1787, Brutus #4
30 Nov 1787, Federalist #14
1 Dec 1787, Federalist #15
4 Dec 1787, Federalist #16
5 Dec 1787, Federalist #17
7 Dec 1787, Federalist #18
8 Dec 1787, Federalist #19
11 Dec 1787, Federalist #20
12 Dec 1787, Federalist #21
With the nomination of Rand Paul, the neo-confederates are feeling their oats.
Great article.
The antifederalists were certainly right—the central government behemoth we now have is undeniably authoritarian and is supra-constitutional. It has been a slow but inexorable march to tyranny, with occasion periods of sharp racheting up of central government power (e.g., King Lincoln, FDR, LBJ, Ohaha).
May the Lord’s grace preserve our nation and return us to the limited government our forefathers thought they were bequeating us.
In the north, the deadbeats of Shay's rebellion were demanding the state inflate the currency and allow debtors to pay off debts in whatever they had on hand (corn, pigs, whatever).
A corrupt southern aristocracy which had refused to sell off British property in lots even the middle class (what existed of a middle class in the south) could afford were getting out of their debts by running to judges. Everything the colonies had fought for in the Revolution was about to turn into mob rule and a fractious economic race to the bottom as each state positioned itself fight other states.
The Federalists stopped all that from happening...for a while. Delegated powers were not enough to stop centralization but it did postpone it for generations.
The real error, the original sin of the Constitution, was allowing for purposes of representation, slaves to be counted as 3/5ths of a person. That allowed the corrupt aristocracy Jefferson represented which had allied itself with an ignorant underclass and a venal press to wipe out what the federalists had created. Fisher Ames, a Federalist who was critical to the ratification of the constitution and who drafted the first amendment wrote in 1805:
Federalism was therefore manifestly founded upon a mistake, on the supposed existence of sufficient political virtue, and on the permanency and authority of the public morals. The party now in power committed no such mistake. They acted upon what men actually are, not what they ought to be . . .They inflamed the ignorant; they flattered the vain; they offered novelty to the restless; and promised plunder to the base. The envious were assured that the great should fall; and the ambitious that they should become great . . . we are descending from a supposed orderly and stable republican government into a licentious democracy . . .The Federalists weren't the problem. The Jeffersonians were. Look at what Ames wrote. He's describing the Democratic party of today.