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.
The framers most feared a professional, permanent political class.
Obviously off his meds
Well let’s get a stripper in the race then.
not paying people for their work = slavery. Do some research.
Yoo is writing about how things should be in the American Republic. But since the Washington crowd long ago disregarded or tossed out much of what the Founders intended, people who have had enough are resorting to anti-establishment candidates as a corrective. I’d like to ask Yoo what kind of article he would write, from the Founders’ point of view, if Hillary were running unopposed and Jeb were running away with the GOP nomination. Would the Founders be peachy with that matchup?
“The Founders would also be aghast at what some of the American people have become.”
Most profound statement of the day.
(My grandmother would feel the same way.)
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I’m a reasonable person. I can be persuaded with facts and you have none. All you have is one big pile of Trump B.S. Neither you or anybody else can prove that Trump is going to do any of the things he says. However, we do have Trump himself saying in his own words that he going to violate the US Constitution. Trump has an entire life history of progressive politics and not one single real life example of upholding any conservative principals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYuSNE41sX0
Ah, shades of Woody Allen. Real class act your candidate is.
You have a perception in your mind who Trump is. That is your reality.
That it upsets you that others do not share your reality is your problem.
Your comment is incomplete and nonsensical.
“That it upsets you that others do not share your reality is your problem.”
No it doesn’t upset me; it is their problem, which, they will find out soon enough. Nonetheless, mass deception is a sad state of affairs because the cost is so extreme .But that’s the history of the world and it is back.
They would despair over the leviathan that fedgov has become. It is the exact opposite of the system they designed.
Trump’s own words. He doesn’t have a problem with violating the Constitution by abusing eminent.
Yes, that pretty much sums up the recent state of political affairs. Politicians saying what they have to get elected and then doing nothing once elected or worse stabbing the voters in the back.
Why is Cruz anymore trustworthy than Trump or Rubio?
Spoiler alert: he isn't.
The same John Yoo who authored the torture memos?
I will certainly not endorse a one of them, but only hesitate not to endorse Cruz. I do find faults with Cruz, but for me at least, he is the only one still in court. Everyone else I have carefully scrutinized, judged, condemned, and sentenced.
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