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.
I would guess he never heard of President Jackson.
The U.S. Constitution is so yesterday.
The Republic is dead and now its champion vs. champion.
I’ll vote for Cruz with a clear conscience and fidelity to the Founders, but I doubt his chances.
Sanders, yes. Trump, no. While you’re looking for purity in your candidate, Trump is packing them in in places like Pensacola abd Oklahoma. We want a winner this time. Trump is no Romney.
It’s terrible that voters (of both parties) rather than party “leaders” may pick the next president. Now that it’s so easy for Diamond and Silk to get their opinions on youtube I’m sure the founders would regret the 1st amendment.
Founders would be disgusted by this. But no doubt the founders would approve of things the party “leaders” have done over the last few decades that got voters to stand up and do something as stupid as voting against the wishes of the elites who know better.
And if the voters are overruled and ignored again I imagine the founders will regret including that stupid 2nd amendment in the Constitution. “Citizens” should not be able to take power back from the elites.
Trump is practically the only one actually talking about paying down our debt and he’s “the founder’s worst nightmare”??
Wow talk about stuck on stupid.
His comment about the Electoral College demonstrates a dearth of any conception of the intended electoral process. His suggestion of the nature of executive power is beyond merely simplistic.
While I was happy with Trump's showing, I had hoped that Ted Cruz would garner more than 12% yesterday in New Hampshire. But I remain pro both candidacies, still recognizing the essential point, that their supporters naturally complement each other; both groups being essential to a true Conservative victory. (Support For Trump & Cruz)
Re: Trump and Sanders
It’s like something out of the Twilight Zone that America might actually have to choose between these two. Looks like all those decades of dumbing down the American people has finally paid off.
Sanders just wants us to be slaves.
That statement flies in the face of Jefferson's preamble in the Declaration Of Independence.
It sounds like something out of the confused images dancing in the brains of confused Neocon theorists.
Why should I care what some recent Korean immigrant thinks about our Founding Fathers?
Since the Constitution has slowly been perverted beyond all recognition over the past 90 years, it will probably take some extraordinary, extra-Constitutional measures to restore it.
What I mean, for example, to get a wall built and universal e-verify would require a conclave at the White House with Congressional leaders. When they balk, they would be presented with a charge sheet for their indictments on corruption charges should they refuse, with cameras ready for the full perp-walk.
The President could then announce a new era in bipartisan agreement to make America work again.
What does the Weekly Standard know about the hope and dreams of our Founders? The Weekly Standard comes across to me like a lukewarm version of the flaming Leftist MSM.
They had a better gut-level understanding, so that any politician proposing the outrageous taxes and regulations now burdening the country would have been tarred and feathered or hanged.
Our wealth has corrupted us by making us indulgent of vices both moral and political, and allowing decisions to be based on hare-brained sentimentality instead of reality.
The Founders were rum runners not Biblical holy men. They would hate Sanders but Trump would have easily fit as one of them.
The process is actually working, people are FREELY voting and the outcome is the outcome.
Sorry but much higher up on the founders nightmare list are:
1. Souter etal. who after the public elected GOP president after GOP president to get a court who would over turn Roe v. Wade, keep undermining representative government by failing to do what needs to be done. This is the type of thing that leads to armed revolution.
2. The entire judiciary that regularly overturns referenda that the people have passed. Again if the people have no redress in the government, .....
3. A Congress that passes books not bills to undermine the veto power of the president.
4. A Congress that never passes a budget.
5. A president that ignores Congress and legislates by executive order.
6. A partisan one party press.
Curiously all of these things the Founders would have viewed as nightmares have led to the candidates this person laments.
The founders thought voters would take the elections seriously and not vote for popularity contests, shysters and communists.
Half the population today probably couldn't even spell the word constitution.
People are taking it seriously. Depends on who people think is a phony or a shyster.
President IS a popularity contenst. The most popular wins. Simple as that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.