His latest entry: The Direct Democracy President
Excellent article.
‘ the constitutional majority considers “the community as made up of different and conflicting interests, as far as the action of the government is concerned.”’
TWB
When it is legal to drive around with your kids riding in the back of your pickup, we will have the “great” america back.
No, I am not kidding. For the above to happen it will take a fundamental change in our government that I do not think will happen voluntarily.
Thank you, Ilana Mercer. Great article.
Calhoun’s “concurrent majority” was a way to avoid having to deal with abolition and other federal ideas. He essentially said to work together on things we agree on, but allow minority political groups (individuals and states) to ignore federal laws they don’t like.
I don’t think that’s a good idea to conflate Trump’s policies with Calhoun’s.
“The Union, next to our liberty, most dear.” —John C Calhoun (1830)
Uh, no. It sounds like that's the opposite of what he's doing.
In A Disquisition on Government, published in 1851, Calhoun developed the profound idea of “two different modes in which the sense of the community may be taken.” The one “regards numbers only.” The other invokes an entirely different quality or dimension, over and above the “numbers.”
“The former of these,” Calhoun termed “the numerical or absolute majority”; the latter “the concurrent or constitutional majority.” The numerical majority “regards numbers only, and considers the whole community as a unit, having but one common interest throughout.”
Conversely, the constitutional majority considers “the community as made up of different and conflicting interests, as far as the action of the government is concerned.”
In other words, Calhoun believed in giving small interest groups a veto over legislation (in practice, though, he had one particular interest in mind).
Trump would seem to be appealing to the overall majority of Americans as Americans, not to Americans as a collection of minority veto groups.