Posted on 09/18/2005 9:30:23 PM PDT by betty boop
Freeper Investigation: Original Intent and Constitutional Jurisprudence
by Jean F. Drew
English and Anglo-American law’s core principle is the opposition to abusive power as exercised by the state. As Dan Gifford writes in “The Conceptual Foundations of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in Religion and Reason,”
“The law is not the law regardless if it be good, bad, or indifferent. There is a higher moral law, originating within ancient Jewish law, which requires individual responsibility for opposing evil and promoting goodness. It is from this basic tenet that English law and Anglo-American law embody the following principle: The individual has rights against the state….
“The danger posed by the usual suspects in government for the sake of power is obvious. However, not as obvious is the more insidious danger posed by a list of usual suspects claiming to be [society’s] defenders…. Their attacks on God, traditional Judeo-Christian morals, the Calvinist concept of conscience, republican virtu, and Aristotelian reason or logos — the five essential elements that make our system work — as obstructions to social progress have been devastating….”1
Without doubt, “God, traditional Judeo-Christian morals, the Calvinist concept of conscience, republican virtu, and Aristotelian reason or logos” informed the worldview of the Framers of the Constitution and constitute that document’s spirit, meaning, philosophy — and vitality.
Russell Kirk corroborates this understanding, stating that the roots of American order trace back to four historical cities: (1) Jerusalem, in both the Israelite and Christian developments; (2) Athens, with its classical view of man as a “thinking animal” who possesses reason and soul; Rome, for the idea of “republican virtu” — personal self-restraint and direct participation in the governance and defense of the state; and London, for its concepts regarding the necessity of restraining monarchical power vis-à-vis the subject in the interest of preserving the public good of individual liberty. 2
Thus the Constitution is an extraordinarily “conservative document,” given its “roots in a much older tradition,” writes Stephen Tonsor. “Its world view is Roman or Anglo-Catholic; its political philosophy, Aristotelian and Thomist; its concerns, moral and ethical; its culture, that of Christian humanism.” 3
The “problem with the constitution” nowadays is that these ideas no longer inform the worldview of many Americans, in particular the “cultural elites” who sit on federal and state benches, who man the federal bureaucracies, staff the professoriate, and run the organs of public communications (i.e., the so-called “mainstream media”). All these constituencies, moreover, are effectively unaccountable to the people whom they purport to serve.
In light of breaking events — the recent ruling of a federal court in California that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because of its “under God” language, the recent New London eminent-domain decision of the Supreme Court, and two Supreme Court vacancies (with possibly more to come within the tenure of the Bush presidency) — as well as long-standing public quarrels over the meanings of e.g., the Second, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments, we thought it would be useful to inaugurate a Freeper Research Project into theories of the Constitution, “then” and “now”; i.e., the original intent of the Framers vs. modern “prudential” and ideological constructions. In particular it would be useful to explore the roles of all the players in a constitutional system based on the separation and balance of powers, to see how well that concept is working nowadays.
Or not, as the case may be. And if that is the case, then to ask: Why not? What has “gone wrong” such that, e.g., federal judges routinely feel free to legislate their ideals of social progress from the bench?
I thought I’d get the ball rolling with a piece on the cultural component of such questions. I’m sure my thoughts may prove controversial to some of my Freeper friends; for I intend to show that the single most influential cause of current-day constitutional chaos is the breakdown of a common understanding of God and man and of their mutual relations. It is my view, however — the only view that I can relate, based on my observation, experience, and the indirect sources that further inform the present state of my knowledge — and anyone’s free to disagree with it. I just hope we can all be civil and respectful when/if we do disagree.
The point is, I can’t “do your seeing for you” anymore than you can “do my seeing for me.” Under the circumstances, it seems to me the best course would be to simply “compare notes” and see if we might learn something from one other.
My friend YHAOS writes: “The Founders bequeathed to their posterity rather a unique philosophy, not only of government, but of human relationships.” Indeed, YHAOS; the Framers’ view of human relationships was predicated on the understanding that “all men are created equal,” and thus all have dependence on a creator. Further, because they are equally the creations of one Creator, all men share a common humanity that effectively makes them “brothers.” All men are created with possessing reason and free will as a natural birthright, and are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” All men are equal before the law, while constituting the sovereign We the People — connoting one single community — who delegate a very few existential powers (29 by my last count) to the government, and retain all others unto themselves.
YHAOS continues, “It was a philosophy that was greeted with disfavor by all the rulers of the world the moment they were exposed to it, because it left their rule to the sufferance of their subjects, and eliminated their ability to rule as they saw fit. They hated it then, they hate it today. This philosophy, so hated by the rulers and other elites of the world, is found and best expressed in the words of the Founders and of others who were most closely associated with the philosophy of Natural Law and with the events which occasioned the creation of the Declaration of Independence and of The Constitution.”4
Indeed, YHAOS. Those who would rule don’t much care for this sort of thing as a rule….
The “spirit of liberty” that informed the American Founding whereby the role of the state was to be severely delimited and constrained was brilliantly expressed by Trenchard & Gordon in Cato’s Letters (~1720):
All men are born free; Liberty is a Gift which they receive from God; nor can they alienate the same by Consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes….
Liberty is the power which every man has over his own Actions, and the Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labor, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Member of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.
The fruits of a Man’s honest Industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is Sole Lord and Arbiter of his own Private Actions and Property5….
In short, in the early eighteenth century, there was a cultural consensus in England and in the Colonies that it is the God–Man relation from which the just relations of man with his fellow man flows that (not coincidentally) constitutes the limit or check on state power and authority. The Constitution itself epitomizes and expresses this consensus.
So it’s hardly surprising that, as YHAOS continues, “It was a philosophy that was greeted with disfavor by all the rulers of the world the moment they were exposed to it, because it left their rule to the sufferance of their subjects, and eliminated their ability to rule as they saw fit. They hated it then, they hate it today. This philosophy, so hated by the rulers and other elites of the world, is found and best expressed in the words of the Founders and of others who were most closely associated with the philosophy of Natural Law and with the events which occasioned the creation of the Declaration of Independence and of The Constitution.”6
Indeed, YHAOS. Those who would rule don’t much care for this sort of thing as a rule…. And I am particularly intrigued by your notice of “the other elites.”
These “other elites” are informed by other notions that were altogether foreign at the time of the American Founding, and for more than a century thereafter. These notions are a specifically German cultural import — from Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx & Co., a going (and growing) concern since the mid-nineteenth century.
All three men were obsessed by power. Hegel’s model of the ideal state was Prussia, which was authoritarian and repressive. He worshipped Napoleon as a new World Savior. All three men wanted to “kill God.” This last, of course, is required for the free exercise of an unconstrained Will to Power: With God around, plans for constructing Utopia could never come to fruit. So they all decided He needed to be “bumped off” in order to clear the decks for a reconstruction of the world and human history, in order to perfect future history. Thus history as we know it must end.
And as it turns out, history under God becomes a dead letter with His demise. Then — and only then — can self-appointed Great Men assume the divine rule and enterprise with a free hand, “starting over from scratch,” as it were. Hegel and Marx both apparently believed that they could just start from nothing and, by the use of “pure” Reason, construct ever more perfect worlds, correcting all the imperfections that God left in His Creation, which is now to be happily Over, dispensed with. Men — or at least some men — have become “self-divinized.” A New World is a-borning.
We are speaking of the construction of progressivist utopias here.
Now the meaning of “Utopia” — a neologism of Thomas More — means “Nowhere.” Utopia is “a model of a perfect society that cannot be realized because an important sector of reality has been omitted from its construction, but its authors and addicts have suspended their consciousness that it is unrealizable because of the omission.”7 As the greatest English-speaking poet of the twentieth century put it:
They constantly try to escape From the darkness outside and within By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one Will need to be good….
But the man that is will shadow The man that pretends to be. 8
The “omitted sector” of reality is precisely the spiritual sector, constituted by the relations of God and man — the divine-human encounter that orders human souls, and from souls to societies, including political societies. That is to say, the total eclipse of the great Hierarchy of Being: God – Man – Society – World. It seems plain to me that “the murder of God” involves a double homicide, one a parricide, the other a suicide….
Clearly, there was a profound sea-change in the understanding of Reality and of human self-understanding between the time of Locke and the time of Hegel. Rather than present a lengthy and probably tiresome analysis of how this noxious diremption occurred, let me just give you a sampler of how meanings central to the human person and to political society are understood these days under the respective frameworks of the Judeo-Christian/classical (JCC) worldview, and the progressivist (P) worldview.
JCC says: “There is a nature of man, a definite structure of existence that puts limits on perfectability.”9
P replies: “The nature of man can be changed, either through historical evolution or through revolutionary action, so that a perfect realm of freedom can be established in history.”10
JCC says: “Philosophy is the endeavor to advance from opinion (doxa) about the order of man and society to science (episteme)…”11
P replies: “No science in such matters is possible, only opinion; everybody is entitled to his opinions; we have a pluralist society.” 12
JCC says: “Society is man written large.”
P replies: “Man is society written small.” 13
JCC says: “Man lives in erotic [faithfully loving] tension toward the divine ground of his existence.”
P replies: “He doesn’t; for I don’t; and I’m the measure of man.”14
JCC says: “Education is the art of periagoge, or turning around (Plato).” [Essentially, this means that education is the art of transmitting the greatest achievements of human intellect and culture to the next-rising generation, which, as we have already suggested above, include achievements of great antiquity. In the specific Platonic sense, this process requires a “turning to the Light” or alternatively, a “tuning into the God.”]
P replies: “Education is the art of adjusting people so solidly to the climate of opinion prevalent at the time that they do not feel any ‘desire to know.’ Education is the art of preventing people from acquiring the knowledge that would enable them to articulate the questions of existence. Education is the art of pressuring young people into a state of alienation that will result in either quiet despair or aggressive militancy.”15
JCC says: “Through the life of reason (bios theoretikos) man realizes his freedom.”
P replies: “Plato and Aristotle were fascists. The life of reason is a fascist enterprise.”16
JCC says: The process in which the nature of man and the other participants in the great Hierarchy of Being becomes conscious and noetically articulate and luminous to the human mind constitutes the life of reason.
P replies: “Reason is instrumental reason. There is no such thing as a noetic rationality of man.”17
Just in case the foregoing “dialog” comes across as a tad too “abstract,” let me give an example from concrete American historical experience that fully reflects the “tensions” inherent in such “irreconcilable differences,” and get off the soap box. (Then it will be someone else’s turn).
My example concerns the scope and meaning of the Second Amendment.
JCC says:
Surely one of the foundations of American political thought of the [Founding] period was the well-justified concern about political corruption and consequent governmental tyranny. Even the Federalists, fending off their opponents who accused them of foisting an oppressive new scheme upon the American people, were careful to acknowledge the risks of tyranny. James Madison, for example, speaks in Federalist Number Forty-Six of “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.” The advantage in question was not merely the defense of American borders; a standing army might well accomplish that. Rather, an armed public was advantageous in protecting political liberty. It is therefore no surprise that the Federal Farmer, the nom de plume of an anti-federalist critic of the new Constitution and its absence of a Bill of Rights, could write that “to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them....” On this matter, at least, there was no cleavage between the pro-ratification Madison and his opponent.
In his influential Commentaries on the Constitution, Joseph Story, certainly no friend of Anti-Federalism, emphasized the “importance” of the Second Amendment. He went on to describe the militia as “the natural defence of a free country” not only “against sudden foreign invasions” and “domestic insurrections,” with which one might well expect a Federalist to be concerned, but also against “domestic usurpations of power by rulers.” “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered,” Story wrote, “as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
“…the repository of a monopoly of the legitimate means of violence [by the state] — that is so commonly used by political scientists … is a profoundly statist definition, the product of a specifically German tradition of the (strong) state rather than of a strikingly different American political tradition that is fundamentally mistrustful of state power and vigilant about maintaining ultimate power, including the power of arms, in the populace.” 18
P replies (actually, this is Justice William Burger, who “never wrote a word abut the Second Amendment. Yet after retirement, he wrote an article for Parade magazine that is the only extended analysis by any Supreme Court Justice of why the Second Amendment does not guarantee and individual right”).19
“… the Second Amendment is obsolete because we “need” a large standing army, rather than a well-armed citizenry.”20 Plus we all know guns are dangerous things. Dangerous things should not be left in the hands of “innocent” (inept) civilians, especially when there are standing armies and organized police forces to whom we may safely delegate the use of force in our society.
To which JCC might retort: “Well, who’s policing the police? And what if the standing army comes after US?”
On that happy note, a few last words:
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master! “— George Washington
“All powers granted by the Constitution, are derived from the people of the United States; and may be resumed by them when perverted to their injury or oppression; and … every power not granted remains with them, and at their will; and … no right of any description can be canceled, abridged, restrained or modified by Congress, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the President or any department, or officer of the United States.” — John C. Calhoun
“The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good of them all, in whom the power remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them without a violation of their natural birthright.” — John Milton
_________________________
Notes:
1 In Tennessee Law Review: Second Amendment Symposium, vol. 62, no. 3, 1995: 759, http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Gifford1.htm .
2 Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1991.
3 Retrieved from a collection of aphorisms I’ve been compiling for many years. Unfortunately, at the time I found this one, I was not in the habit of recording the titles of works in which the aporism appears, e.g., in which Tonsor’s remark was given; and now do not remember it. (Mea culpa — So sorry!)
4 YHAOS at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1470264/posts?page=1150#1150
5 John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, Cato’s Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995 [1720]. Trenchard & Gordon were writing about 40 years after England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688, of which John Locke was major mentor and instigator. The Framers were well acquainted with the works of all three men, for Locke and Trenchard & Gordon were quintessential sources of the history of “revolution” in the British historical context; plus the philosophical/sociopolitical movements that they were describing were relatively recent from the Framers’ standpoint.
6 YHAOS op cit.
7 Eric Voegelin, “Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme,” op. cit. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, p.316.
8 T. S. Eliot, Choruses from “The Rock,” as quoted by Voegelin, ibid.
9 Eric Voegelin, op. cit., p. 258
10 ibid.
11 ibid.
12 ibid.
13 ibid.
14 ibid.
15 ibid, p. 260 16 ibid.
17 ibid.
18 Sanford Levinson, “The Embarrassing Second Amendment,” Yale Law Journal. Originally published as 99 Yale L.J. 637–659 (1989).
19 David B. Kopel, “The Supreme Court’s Thirty-five Other Gun Cases: What the Supreme Court Has Said about the Second Amendment,” 2000; http://www.i2iorg/SuptDocs/Crime/35.htm
20 ibid.
Not a problem. I do it all the time, too! Hugs!!!
How many crimes and horrors have been committed in the name of "the People"? In any good government the will, the want, the needs, the opinions of the people are sovereign -- but I draw the line at "all wisdom". This is b/c Nature has distributed wisdom no more fairly, or evenly, than she has brains, beauty or ability.
But, you protest, what if the people become capricious, willful, indifferent, unjust, decadent, careless, profligate, lazy, or neglectful?
There's that mine-field of a phrase again, "the People". Just who are "the People"? Everyone? Everyone?? No difference between the tree that bearth good fruit, and the tree that is rotten? Between the foolish virgins with their flickering lamps, and the wise virgins with their lamps of steady flame?
By lumping us together simply as "the People" individuality is not only taken away, but all but denied to even exist. To say that we -- this lump of humanity -- somehow or other possess "all wisdom" is to imply that,
- a) the people above us (or even ourselves if we are in any such a position and/or degree of power) are less wise [a.k.a. stupider] then we are. Yet is that's the case why are "they" directing us? Shouldn't the order of things be reversed?
- b) Is to assume or imply that the word "wisdom" is set in its definition and somehow is only revealed and understood only by the ever laboring, ever humble, ever ignorant, impoverished, weary, philosophical peasant. Why is that? Whence the assumption that with learning and material improvement of one's socio-economic conditions that "wisdom" -- like honesty, happiness, morals, ethics, etc. -- drop away like leaves from a tree?
Well, if the people are sovereign, then they may do any, or all of these things.But, you might ask, if the people become these things, what will become of us?
Again, the lumping of people into a sort of living blob with no one than one mind, one thought, one action. Still knowing that even identical twins differ from one another in ten thousand ways and more.
...what will become of us?" The answer is: Nothing. There is nothing we can do, for by the above supposition "us" = "the People"
Why, very much the same thing that has happened to many a prince who became capricious, willful, indifferent, unjust, decadent, careless, profligate, lazy, and neglectful.
Ah, but here we are comparing a fish to a feather. The prince is one mind a single drop in a sun lit ocean. We, the people (not "the People") are that ocean.
That's news to me, and it will take more to convince me. Happiness is a religious concept. It cannot be understood without pursuit. It is nothing without freedom. It requires choice and choice is tied to a criterion of excellence. That's religion.
...”the people” seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution ...”the people” protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of the community. .....U.S. Supreme Court, United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez 494 U.S. 259 (1990), Chief Justice Rehnquist writing for the majority.
“Oh, shades of Robespierre, the early Jefferson & Jeffersonians vision of the infant America, the Paris "Communaird" of 1849 and 1871, Lenin's "New Program", Mao's "Great Cultural Revolution: Learn from the peasants" debacle, and on and on and on... “
LOL! a delightful outburst. You forgot the Jacobeans? Probably not. There simply isn’t room to mention them all. But, of all the ones you mentioned, and of many another I’m sure you hadn’t the room, only the Jeffersonians gave a rap about ‘the people,’ or what they think. It’s no different, these days, when the passionate advocates of sensitivity, diversity, and of the ‘poor,’ afflict our lives, like a deadly skin rash, with their incessant yammering.
“How many crimes and horrors have been committed in the name of "the People"?”
I’ve never stopped to count. What would be the point? (yes, I understand your question to be rhetorical - please take my response in the same spirit) How many crimes and horrors have been committed in the name of Jesus Christ? Or, the Proletariat? (which to some, is probably just a more clever way of saying ‘the people’). How many crimes and horrors have been committed in the name of patriotism? Of Lenin? Of Hitler’s thousand year’s Reich? Or by those pathetic 70's creatures who solemnly intoned “power to the people”? Patriotism used to be the last refuge. Anymore, I don’t think it even makes the top ten. It strikes me that scoundrels are constantly in search of a refuge, and aren’t too terribly finicky about where they find it. How ‘bout a deep, abiding love for all of poor suffering mankind? In my opinion, that beats patriotism all hollow for a refuge. Is anyone fooled by these excuses? Well, some are, I suppose.
“In any good government the will, the want, the needs, the opinions of the people are sovereign”
Well then, you’ve caught my drift.
“ -- but I draw the line at "all wisdom". This is b/c Nature has distributed wisdom no more fairly, or evenly, than she has brains, beauty or ability.”
The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. .....James Madison, The Federalist 46
If ‘all wisdom’ does not reside in the people, then why so does ‘the ultimate authority’? And, if all wisdom does not reside in the people, then whom among us shall we choose to pass on those who may constitute ‘the people,’ and who may not? Do you have a nomination? Walter Cronkite, perhaps? I write this in jest, or course, but also to make the point. If the people lack the wisdom to govern themselves, then they certainly have no business selecting the one amongst them who shall rule in their stead. (my choice of where to put ‘govern’ and where to put ‘rule’ is not mere coincidence)
“There's that mine-field of a phrase again, "the People". Just who are "the People"? Everyone? Everyone?? No difference between the tree that bearth good fruit, and the tree that is rotten?”
Who shall distinguish between the good fruit and the rotten? Society does to some extent; felons are often denied the franchise. We all do, individually, when we go to the polls (half decide by failing to go), and it is the summing up of the votes which renders the judgment. Societal judgment, from whatever source, being human in its wisdom, is limited, and overindulgence leads to tyranny. Madison’s ‘auxiliary precautions’ may be an appropriate idea at this juncture. We await the judgment of ultimate wisdom with varying degrees of anxiety. In the meantime, we do the best we can (oh, that we always would merely do the best we can). Life is a minefield; get used to it.
Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law. .....Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, 6 September, 1819
I fail to see where ‘the People’ is any more a minefield than ‘We the People.” Both suffer the slings and arrows of contending concepts. Your understanding of ‘We the People’ would, I suspect, depart considerably from that of Justice Breyer’s. True, the term has a constitutional flavor that, of itself, is appealing, but a reading of the records and documents of the time indicate the prevailing use was simply “the people.” Nonetheless, I respect your preference, just as I am confident you respect mine.
For just who are ‘the people’ see United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez 494 U.S. 259 above. One modern annex to the definition would signify that possession of the franchise defines ‘the people,’ despite the fact that eligibility would seem to require less maturity, and therefore less a sense of responsibility, than the purchase of alcohol. Likewise, we do confer rights on those who are considered legally incompetent for one reason or another. So, the scope of the definition may have shrunk over the decades, as our understanding of the franchise has expanded, but it remains true that the documents and the records of the time discussed in Verdugo-Urquidez make it clear the Founding Fathers’ concept of ‘the people’ was composed of virtually the whole of the community when the context did not indicate a more narrow construction.
“By lumping us together simply as "the People" individuality is not only taken away, but all but denied to even exist.”
PEOPLE, n. [L. populus.] 1. The body of persons who compose a community, town, city or nation. We say, the people of a town; the people of London or Paris; the English people. In this sense, the word is not used in the plural, but it comprehends all classes of inhabitants, considered as a collective body, or any portion of the inhabitants of a city or country. 2. The vulgar; the mass of illiterate persons. The knowing artist may judge better than the people. 3. The commonalty, as distinct from men of rank. Myself shall mount the rostrum in his favor, And strive to gain his pardon from the people. 4. Persons of a particular class; a part of a nation or community; as country people. 5. Persons in general; any persons indefinitely; like on in French, and man in Saxon. People were tempted to lend by great premiums and large interest. 6. A collection or community of animals. The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer. Prov.30. 7. When people signified a separate nation or tribe, it has the plural number. Thou must prophesy again before many peoples. Rev.10. 8. In Scripture, fathers or kindred. Gen.25. 9. The Gentiles. --To him shall the gathering of the people be. Gen.49. . . . . . from a reprint of the original 1828 Webster’s Dictionary, and for another idea of the meaning of ‘the people.’ It doesn’t seem to differ much from that of our Founding Fathers.
Short of naming every person from the relevant jurisdiction, when referring to more than a single individual, I do not know how to satisfy your complaint. I guess I’ll just have to hunker down and take my beating.
To suggest that the concept of ‘the people’ is forever confined to the “ever laboring, ever humble, ever ignorant, impoverished, weary, philosophical peasant” is the equivalent of understanding the Second Amendment to confer upon the people forever the right to keep and bear muskets. To be sure, Jefferson did regard rural America to be the residence of virtue and therefore happiness (it was), and the cities to be centers of miserable impoverishment and disease (they were; and they were also composed of but 5% of the population). Jefferson, therefore, was approximately correct that America was defined by its rural population, and he remained correct throughout the balance of his life. That the precise composition of what comprises ‘the people’ had changed significantly, but not until well over a century after Jefferson’s passing, should not throw us off our stride. Jefferson would have had the mental nimbleness to deal with it. So should we.
“but here we are comparing a fish to a feather. The prince is one mind a single drop in a sun lit ocean. We, the people (not "the People") are that ocean.”
You make too much of a simple point. If the people are to govern, just as the prince once ruled, then they must be faithful to their obligation or, like the prince who was not, they will suffer the same or similar fate, singularly and severally.
In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim - that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people. We should wear it as a breastplate, and buckle it on as our armour. .....George Mason, document written during service on the Fairfax County’s committee of safety, 17-26 April, 1775
Apologies for the tardiness of my response. I can but plead the necessity of pressing affairs.
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