Posted on 08/25/2013 2:36:07 PM PDT by Jacquerie
I’ve been deep in this fight to keep us out of the drain for close to 40 years. What have YOU been doing??
Apparently same as you, but without internalizing the despair.
Those are valid suggestions and Mark Levin would likely agree. He purposely didn’t go there in this effort, for tactical reasons. That does not mean that the ideas aren’t valid or worth pursuing.
BTW, I personally don’t rate these where you do, as THE most important issues of our day, but I know many do, and I respect that.
For me survival has to come first.
The tag of federalist became synonymous with those supporting a stronger general government.
The framers drafted a government that was still federal, yet not as federal as under the confederation.
After some reading and research on the 17th Amendment earlier this year, I realized it was inaccurate and misleading to call our government “federal.” It hasn't’t been federal for a hundred years. If any historic term applies, it has become consolidated. Both federalists and anti-federalists agreed that would happen if the states were booted from the federal government.
Without state participation, without the means to secure our 9th & 10th amendment rights, our slide into despotism was so much as predicted by the framers.
I think most Americans nowadays see a direct line between themselves and the U.S. government, and the states are just this puny little thing off to the side that hands out drivers licenses and repairs roads. That is so true. Low information voters don’t know what we’ve lost because they never knew what we had.
And YOUR methods ARE LOSING. The Republicans take both houses and the presidency and merely HOLD THE STATUS QUO!!!! They made absolutely NO HEADWAY in reversing ANY of the bad laws passed by the liberals in the past 80 years. It's what they ALWAYS DO. Bush II even left most of the liberal political appointees in office instead of replacing them, the new Republican leadership in the House and the Senate, in a paroxysm if "bi-partisan" stupidity decided to SHARE leadership positions of major committee with the democrats, and our RINO leadership hasn't a clue about using power when they have it to bargain for anything, and give away the very thing the Democrats want BEFORE they ever get to the bargaining table! That's not EVER going to solve the problem. We can elect good people, but if the "good people" are marginalized by the powerful "old guard, the established "crony system" of tit-for-tat politicians who think it's just a game, who have long ago given up their principles to be "liked by their opponents and the liberal media, those "good people" will NEVER accomplish anything except learning to be just like the "old guard" to get re-elected.
Your way is the way of failure. Keeping on doing the same thing, over and over, and expecting a different result is insanity. Your approach is insane. What does that make you? 40 years. . . No improvement. Losing ground. You will NEVER win with your approach of ceding ground and defending the next line in the sand drawn by the liberals.
Your post harkens back to the Whiggism, the radical republicanism of our founding era. You are in the company of many patriots like John Adams. The Articles of Confederation were consistent with that philosophy.
Recall, however, that the Articles were insufficient, weak and could not bind a union of thirteen independent states. Like the whigs of the 18th century, who thought electing men of virtue was sufficient to secure our rights, today’s conservatives must go beyond the heartfelt belief that electing fellow conservatives alone will restore republican freedom.
Electing only Godly, virtuous people to office is of course the ideal. While no republic can survive a government of crooks, it is unreasonable to expect all angelic politicians any more than our society at large was ever composed entirely of angels either. Our framers knew this, that men at large were neither entirely good nor bad.
Since un-virtuous people will always be among us, yet the foundation of our republic is the people, the great question was how to form a government strong enough to defend the nation, yet designed so that it would not eventually usurp our unalienable rights? James Madison called that question the Great Desideratum.
Not entirely virtuous men gathered in Philadelphia to create a government that, knowingly or not, allowed for a significant proportion of un-virtuous men. The new plan divided necessary powers. First and foremost, it provided a vertical separation of authority, between the near plenary powers of the states, and enumerated powers in the federal government. State participation in one half of the legislative branch was a guarantee that all powers could not drift upward into a national, consolidated government.
The long term beneficial effect was enormous. The freedom enhancing structure of the Constitution set the stage for the transformation of a non-angelic, largely subsistence farming people of 1787 into a wildly prosperous, second tier industrial powerhouse only a hundred years later. As history as shown, we will never elect 100% good and pure, altruistic men and women to govern us. I say our governmental structure must once again provide for this.
Just as the desperate people of 1787 recognized that the structure of government was not conducive to freedom, and boldly took the risk of reorganizing their government into one that did, we must acknowledge in 2013 that we face similar circumstances. As the framers predicted, absent a Senate of the States, ALL power will eventually flow upward. It is way beyond time for us to acknowledge a mistake, the 17th Amendment.
As America did in 1787, we must once again return to transcendent truths, that sending some virtuous men and women to political office is an insufficient safeguard, that undivided power will inevitably result in undivided tyranny. To possibly save what remains of republican freedom, power must once again be divided. The 17th Amendment must go, it will go.
I provided you an object example where the makeup of Congress would have been this close to being able to nullify one of the most important decisions by the Supreme Court in decades. Yet, you brush it off as "not likely". That alone tells me that you are completely tone-deaf.
Of all of Levin's proposed amendments, this is the only one that repliers to this thread have expressed any concern about, and you have responded by belittling them and even accusing one of being a disruptor from DU. If you want to be taken seriously, it's time for you to grow up and find a way to convince people with something beyond schoolyard taunts.
I like a lot of Levin's proposals, particularly the term limits on Supreme Court justices. The average life expectancy at adulthood in the late 1770's was about 40-45 years, and I doubt the authors of the Constitution ever considered that a justice could be appointed to the Court after a long career, and remain on the court for 20-30 years.
But, the proposal for a judicial override is -- frankly -- brain-dead. The founding fathers made the Constitution exceptionally difficult to amend without a broad consensus, and for good reason. It hasn't been foolproof, as we experienced a bad string of 16th, 17th, and 18th amendments. But, making the Constitution easier to amend isn't the answer.
You are beyond reach of reason. Bye.
Well, if you can’t even scare up candidates for public office who will fulfill the most fundamental obligations of their oaths, good luck somehow finding a way to assure that the delegates to this proposed convention have even a scrap of understanding of, or commitment to, the document you are seeking to amend.
Well then, we might as well just give up and accept our new MARXIST masters. As for upholding their oath of office - how is that working with little boy king Barry?
I’m about a third of the way through it. Extremely well documented with compelling arguments.
The beauty of Levine’s concept is that it uses existing Constitutional processes to affect change AND it is initiated by CONSERVATIVES.
I think you got it right...but it really is confusing.
I respectfully and totally disagree. Read the book and you will see that Levin makes very compelling argument as to why your way will never get us back to where we need to be. It is inherent to the current system that your way simply won’t work. Levine provides a Constitutional alternative to the armed revolution that will certainly come if we continue down the road we are on.
This IS using the Constitution we have!
I have two amendments I would like to see: The first would alter the 2nd amenment, spelling out the specific infringements NOT allowed on firearms and ammunition, and to make clear that any weapon the government(fed, state or local)can have, citizens can own. The second amendment would state that the first 10 amendments were absolutely inviolable, that they cannot ever be changed, altered or over ridden in any way what so ever. Also I might throw in an alteration of the 4th to clarify unreasonable search and seizure and another amendment totally outlawing bureaus in government and agencies such as the IRS, EPA etc.
Sorry, Mark, not good enough. There should be NO TAXES ON INCOME OR OWNERSHIP OF PROPERTY!
NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!!! NO foreign giveaways. No welfare. Every dollar taken from a person must be spent on representing that person and not someone else.
What good will it do to amend a Constitution that your representatives refuse to follow anyway? This just isn’t logical.
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