Moreover you're all for checks and balances when it comes to what others can do, but want absolute sovereignty for yourself. Double standards like that are human and natural, but not justifiable. There have been extreme subjectivist or egotistic philosophies, but I doubt most thinkers would agree with your position.
If you look back at conservative thinkers of the last three centuries, there's long been a distrust of radical Rousseauvian ideas, and an emphasis on natural law and the rule of law rather than cultural relativism or absolute group autonomy or group self-determination above all.
Some times the valuation of procedures and precedents and universal principles may go too far but there were real reasons for emphasizing law and comity rather than sheer will and self-assertion. Those who've taken the path of radical relativism and absolute will have generally come a cropper and caused much pain in the world. I don't know how we can condemn radical Rousseauvian ideas in other parts of the world while we exalt them at home.
Not in American practice. In American constitutional law and history, "the people" are coterminous with the State of whom they are individually constituents, and collectively the Sovereign.
Moreover you're all for checks and balances when it comes to what others can do, but want absolute sovereignty for yourself.
I think you are misrepresenting what I've said. I don't "want" absolute sovereignty for myself, but I insist that it is the fact de jure that the People are absolutely sovereign.
How conservative are these thinkers you are talking about? Who are we talking about -- Hume? Your challenge was interesting, and I had to read a little to understand exactly what you are complaining about, and unless I misunderstand you completely, you are complaining about precisely the concepts that we have been discussing from the Federalist and other Founding sources, in which, quite precisely, the People are identified as the repository of sovereignty, contrary your complaint and quite in agreement with Rousseau.
Where the Framers and Rousseau part company is on the subject of direct participatory democracy and Rousseau's (not altogether unfounded) mistrust of representatives. (We see in the weekend's headlines, for example, that 10 of the people voting to return Vioxx and Celebrex to FDA-approved, merchantable status have been discovered to have been heavily compromised by long-term consulting relationships to the firms whose products were involved. Likewise, in posts above, we discussed the outrageous advocacy for the railroads by a sitting Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in the 1880's. And need I mention the name of Rep. Ozzie Meyers, author of the deathless motto, "money talks and bullshit walks"?)
But the Framers, like the authors of the Articles of Confederation before them, relied on the principle of representative government, as did the Confederacy. So I am at a loss as to why you would bring in Rousseau and offer him as a figurehead of my thinking, as opposed to "all good men who think" (which I've pointed out to you is just your shucking and jiving for your side), unless you mean to say that my posts evince a hostility toward representative government. I will admit that in my misspent youth, it occurred to me that technology had recently made it possible to transcend the narrow boundaries of Greek and "Rousseauvian" direct democracy and allow great use of initiative and referendum through telecommunications; but more recently, it has occurred to me that technology also affords more opportunities for advanced ballot-box tampering, as has been documented as having been perpetrated by Democratic county election officials in Florida in the 1990's and 2000.
All that said, I don't recall having posted any attacks on the idea of Congress or legislatures.
Some times the valuation of procedures and precedents and universal principles may go too far but there were real reasons for emphasizing law and comity rather than sheer will and self-assertion.
That is my current problem with Lincoln and the Abolitionists.
Those who've taken the path of radical relativism and absolute will have generally come a cropper and caused much pain in the world.
I follow you on "absolute will" -- fascism, authoritarianism, absolutism -- but you are going to have to tell my what you are talking about with "radical relativism", which sounds like the kind of stuff they do on Dick Wolf TV series.
I'd also like to know how you see authoritarianism in my posts. The People are sovereign -- and they are at leisure subject to the will of Providence to decide any policy or value that their pleasure listeth. But the Framers believed that too, and agreed with Rousseau, and I agree with all of them. Your side is the party interjecting permissions from other political entities and asserting the right of a military tyrant to modulate the People's will.
I don't know how we can condemn radical Rousseauvian ideas in other parts of the world while we exalt them at home.
You'll have to show me how I exemplify Rousseau's radicalism. You've lost me. You don't mean that "noble savage" stuff? I don't believe that for a minute, I haven't talked about that. As for direct democracy, see above.