Byron York: Why The Founding Fathers Would Want Obama's Plans to Fail

dcexaminer.com ^ | 3/10/09 | Byron York

[kellynla]

James Madison was not specifically contemplating Barack Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, when he wrote Federalist No. 63. But reading the document — one of the seminal arguments in favor of adopting the U.S. Constitution — it’s clear Madison knew their type. And he knew they would come along again and again in American history, if Americans were lucky enough to have a long history. Obama and Pelosi, along with their most ardent supporters, are the types to see a crisis, like our current economic mess, as a “great opportunity,” as the president put it last Saturday. They are the types, after a long period out of power, to attempt to use that “great opportunity” to push through far-reaching changes in national policy that had only a tangential connection, if at all, to the crisis at hand. And they are the types the Founding Fathers wanted to stop.

In the Federalist Papers, written 221 years ago, Madison addressed the need for a Senate to accompany the more populist House of Representatives. An upper body, he wrote, “may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions.”

[MAD-AS-HELL]

founding fathers are just dead white racists to Obama and the constitution is only good to wipe his bisexual ass with. But then again, the Constitution has been trashed for almost a century.

[screaminsunshine]

The founding fathers would do more than just want these plans to fail. They would fight against this tyranny. They envisioned a free republic. Not a socialist democracy.

[stockpirate]

ping

[woweeitsme]

The problem is that Obama thinks he was elected to change anything and everything he could get his hands on. He made it perfectly clear in his campaign that he wanted to change it all, and the sheeple went for it, hook, line, and sinker.

[Le Chien Rouge]

The founding fathers were just dead,SLAVE OWNING,white racists to Obama....

[SunTzuWu]

...Madison addressed the need for a Senate to accompany the more populist House of Representatives. An upper body, he wrote, “may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions.”

The problems started when the choosing of Senate members was taken away from the States legislature and given to the people to elect. This caused the Senate to be just as populist as the House of Representatives. Now we have no "...defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions."

[NavyCanDo]

Benjamin Franklin warned when he wrote, “When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
Samuel Adams

The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.
Samuel Adams

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.
Samuel Adams

[Cboldt]

-- The problem is that ... the sheeple went for it, hook, line, and sinker. --

The vast majority of the voting population has no clue as to the limited form of federal government envisioned by the founders and memorialized in the constitution. IMO, the experiment of self government as styled in that document has been effectively dead since the 1920's. It's clearly dead now.

[Cboldt]

-- The problems started when the choosing of Senate members was taken away from the States legislature and given to the people to elect. --

Started before that, otherwise it would not have been "important" that States weren't reliably sending Senators to Washington. The problem is the tendency on the part of politicians and other despots to centralize power and authority. If the federal government was an appropriate size, it would not be all that important who was president, or who was in Congress. What would be important (and is less so now) is who was in charge at the state and local levels.

Agreed though that the 17th amendment is a problem. I just see it more as a symptom than a cause. Now that it's in place, it enables the status quo of centralized power.

[Cacique]

btt