I know just what you mean. I hate it here too.
Posted on 04/21/2015 1:28:33 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
GOP candidates constantly invoke the Constitution. A Yale Law professor reveals what they all fail to understand.
With the 2016 election cycle having kicked into first-gear already, any American who hasn’t inured themselves to the monotonous (and often ultimately meaningless) repetition of the word “Constitution” is advised to get to self-desensitizing — and quick.
Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have already made a fetishized version of the U.S.’s supreme governing document central to their campaign rhetoric; and even politicians less beloved by the supposedly Constitution-crazy Tea Party, like Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton, are likely to soon follow suit. That’s how American politics functions now, in the era of the NSA, Guantanamo Bay, lethal drone strikes and endless war.
But as that list of questionable policies suggests, there’s an unanswered question lurking behind so much of our happy talk about the Constitution — namely, do we even understand it? As dozens of polls and public surveys will attest, the answer is, not really. And that’s one of the reasons that Yale Law School professor Akhil Reed Amar has decided to write a multi-book series about the Constitution so many Americans claim to love, but so few seem to understand. “The Law of the Land: A Grand Tour of our Constitutional Republic,” released earlier this month, is that project’s latest addition.
Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Amar about the Constitution, his books, and why he sees Abraham Lincoln as perhaps the United States’s real founding father....
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
LOL, that's cold. ;')
You have a time table for things that you think are necessary, desirable, and attainable. Some things seem possible, others impossible. Events may change circumstances and what was once impossible may become possible or even necessary to achieving other goals.
And better to say "America didn't give a hoot about slavery" (in the sense of slavery being morally wrong or something that had to be eliminated). Lincoln was certainly out in front of most of his fellow countrymen on that.
MONEY was always the reason. Free labor=Cheaper textiles!! The South was eating the North’s lunch when it came to manufacturing. MONEY was always the reason. Free labor=Cheaper textiles!! The South was eating the North’s lunch when it came to manufacturing.
That is so wrong, I don't even know where to begin.
No one seems to have the fact on this religion thing, so I’m going to postulate.
He comes from a Moslem background.
“Akhil Reed Amar” does not have an Indian ring to it. I’ve known many Indians in my day, including Sikhs, and this does not mesh.
Could be, but I would doubt it, given what apparently we DO know. India but being in certain parts of MI, as well as the name? Points more to NOT Hindu.
Worthless ‘soy boy’...I could live without giving any exposure to Salon, Slate, Huffington Post, and Daily Beast at this website...
The force of history was trending towards freeing the slaves. The Civil War certainly hastened that trend. But even if there was no CW and the South had managed to defeat the North and establish their own country, there'd now be no slaves in the South. It was an inefficient system, and even a number of prominent Southern soldiers (Robert E. Lee, Patrick Cleburne) favored freeing the slaves.
Okay. I will say certain ethnic groups are going to have to make up their minds whether they want to be Americans or Scandinavian-type leeches. I’d prefer they decide to be Americans.
I think it is more likely, as Whittaker Chambers pointed out in his seminal book Witness that the more likely split is on the question of "Who is God?"
To leftists and statists of all stripes, Man is God.
I know just what you mean. I hate it here too.
I didn’t reread Amar and was just trying to quote him from memory. That’s why I said intimated or stated. You’re right, he didn’t outright state it as much, but he certainly inferred it.
Akhil Reed Amar considers Lincoln the real founding father of the U.S. Let’s suspend habeas corpus for Muslims and see how he likes that.
Maybe, maybe not. I don't see it in the interview snippet.
He praises Lincoln for the reconstruction amendments -- which weren't really Lincoln's doing, but which did go through Congress and the states.
Plus, there's a difference between presidents giving an immediate response in times of crisis and presidents trying to make laws without regard to the Congress or the courts. Conceivably, the Supreme Court could have rule Lincoln's acts -- or those of other presidents -- unconstitutional and put a stop to them.
My “counter-factual reality”?
Bottom line, their entire ideology is based on a fallacy, that more government is good, and that Man (in government) is more important than God.
Everything else with them springs from those false premises, that flawed foundation that they have built their entire edifice on. I stopped listening to them a long time ago. It is all variations on the same theme.
Well, I read the whole thing and he doesn’t actually mention any specifics about what the dreaded Tea Party doesn’t understand about the Constitution. In fact, except to assure us that his perspective is “geographic” it doesn’t say very much at all. If he’s going to teach us all something he’s going to have to say something.
Well said.
Excellent post.
;’)
We’re basically saying the same thing. Leftists have the God-man relationship all messed up.
After I responded, I just made the assumption that I must have completely missed the point he was making. I didn't know where to begin.
He didn’t have to say more. He said “Tea Party will never understand the Constitution” and saw all the little pin-heads nodding in assent and figured his job was done ;’)
I assumed that...:)
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