Madison I consider a genius and his cause noble, but I have to admit that the anti-federalists were right. Whatever the Constitution is, outline for good government or not, it is not what rules us today. It was not able to prevent an unconstitutional government from taking over, and therefore failed.
To Federalists, we faced impending anarchy, guaranteed to be followed by dissolution or tyranny under the Articles of Confederation. From these near term threats, the Constitution saved us.
To Antis, the Constitution guaranteed near term tyranny.
I think history proved the Federalists correct.
As for our present post-constitutional America, Ben Franklin predicted our Constitution would work well enough for a period of years, but the people would eventually become so corrupted that we would be suited only for despotic government.
A nation can only send so many Sheila Jackson-Lees and Dick Durbins to Congress before it has a detrimental effect. We have only ourselves as a people to blame for the condition of our liberties.
I’m guessing though they didn’t dream of communicating from one end of a state to the other in seconds, let alone transporting cargo across a country in just a few days, to seeing men and women living and working in space. I don’t mean to denigrate them, but there were probably many things beyond their thoughts of what the future would hold for mankind in general, not referring to anything geopolitical.
They probably couldn’t imagine self-righteous dictators slaughtering tens of millions of their own countrymen just because they thought differently. The kings of their time at least had required someone break a law, such as stealing or adultery before a sentence was handing down. But with what the Communists/Socialists did, it didn’t matter. They just destroyed everything they didn’t like.
As such, I imagine they hoped those elected would police themselves and others, and didn’t write enough shackles on the government into the Constitution, such as term limits right away for either the President or members of Congress. They didn’t write anything saying they may not regulate commerce, whether contained in a state or across state borders. I also feel they didn’t put enough emphasis into the right to bear arms (think about it: how much have the Liberals argued over the first clause, “A well regulated militia - etc?”). I feel the 2nd should’ve only read “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.”
I also feel they should’ve made a long, long list specifically stating what the national government could and could not do.
Again, I don’t want anybody to take what I said as me flaming the Founding Fathers. I just feel like more could have been done to prevent the leviathan government we have today.
>>It was not able to prevent an unconstitutional government from taking over, and therefore failed.<<
And yet we fight for it.
The USC provides the framework for the most liberty man can probably hope for.
Today we fight with words and movements. There may come a time soon when we will need more.
So long as one FReeper and/or Tea Partier draws breath, the USC is not “failed.”
A point I make every time the topic comes up. The Anti-Federalists were right.