[KC Burke]

Rather than parse your sentences, I'll offer my thoughts on your paragraphs as they are hung together as you are sincerly trying to make your points. If I disagree, even profoundly, the knowledge that you are my countryman, engaged in discourse about those things that matter makes fully strung together points something to be met with full regard.

Small and locally do have sensible definitions. Only obfuscation or nominalism will make those meanings vanish and the best then be undiscoverable. We are conditioned by our modern liberal education to ignore meaning and to make all things equal and open to individual judgement. Such a virtueless look at the world is a curse of modernity.

You stress "representative democracy" and for me that is a key in where we differ. It, again, is a lie sold to us as modernity substituting for history. The founders never used the word "democracy" in our constitution and the ommission was entirely intentional and providential.

Deliberative Representation is what we have in the bulk of the offices that serve use under our State and Federal Governments. Read Burke's Speech to the Electors at Bristol for a clear understanding of that convention as I mean it. We do not have Pliebisitory Delegates and we darn sure were never meant to have a "democracy". Our Deliberative Representatives were chosen by diverse means, some of which were elective and therefore democratic in process as a broad part of it was participatory. This holds true for appointed roles as well, because the appointor is often elected.

Democracy, especially egalitarian, implies that my desires of the moment are to somehow make their way into the process and there was nothing further from the founders' intent. But, why was that?

It was to keep the tyranny of the majority in check. Sure Numbers matters and deciedes things. But only those Numbers and by those processes framed in the diverse process of our constitutions. Thereby the Majority is kept from (1) violating by whim of the moment, (2) intemperence, (3) the will of demogogues, (4)violating prescriptive principle honored from time immemorial (as opposed to abstract rights), and (5)never being given the ability to announce any One decision, of merely 51%, as the ultimate public will.

While conservatives often believe in an Enduring Moral Order, an Order for the Soul and an Order for the State, Government itself is a narrow tool often negative that is not the perfect vessel for all that Order. Culture and social society itself must carry the bulk of that Order; not the negative and blunt tool of government.

The framework of which you speak is actually meant to be an absence of most authority, not the counterpoint between an all encompassing Process or Authority (or Anarchic lack thereof).

In your second paragraph, you again put Democracy in a primacy where it doesn't belong. But even more, you make the same mistake of utilitarian primacy that Sowell criticizes modern liberals and libertarians for in establishing the greatest good, or abstract rights, as a judge or value to measure by.

In a battle on abstract rights the right of the one always gives way to the rights of the many. Speech or something similar, always trumps property says Sowell ( See A Conflict of Visions). We weren't given a governmental structure to lay on that much control over us.

In your third paragraph, I agree the the citizen must submit to just and proper authority. But he also must resist and fight improper authority of the acquisitive nature of those in authority will overturn his society. So if I agree that Judges Interpret as well as Adjudicate, I will always make that resistance when they Legislate rather than Interpret. So you see that we are once again back to the plain meaning of Words.

When we confuse the Animating Principles of our Revolution with the Constitution, when we get filled with the metaphysical nonsense of what Hayek calls Rationalist Totalitarian Democracy, why then our land is no longer the land of liberty.

And besides, a valued customer and I, discussing a book in my own future book store, can't each smoke our pipes fired with virgina and burley. My countryman, if you wish to give community its proper due, go no further than Nisbet.

[Nuke'm Glowing]

I have enjoyed reading your posts throughout this thread, but I must bring forward the issue of selective enforcement of laws which the liberals in conservative clothing are advocating.

I find it very disturbing the recent action of the NJSC. It is reflective of this discussion as it is a selective interpretation of statutes, which are enforced only the political whim of the party in power. This random application of our nation's laws, along with creative interpretation will be the failing of our Republic. When the Legislative branch creates laws which oppress some individuals or laws which are designed to profit another group (i.e., healthnazis, trial lawyers), then what has been endorsed is a slow dismemberment of our Constitution. It is my belief that by clogging the courts with these lawsuits, while creating oppressive regulation on laissez-faire capitalism, that our Republic could cease to function in less than 50 years.

Unless self-responsibility becomes the precedent again of our legislative structure, we are doomed.

[Whilom]

Well said and persuasive. Nevertheless, in their best efforts to thwart absolutism without surrendering to the excesses of the French Revolution, the Founders settled on republicanism that provided, and provides still, the framework of a representative democracy. While some distrusted, even feared, “democracy” as mob rule, others supported it as an antidote to absolute monarchism, and all knew that they must compromise in order to produce any federation at all. Those compromises produced the Constitution, guarding against absolutism while respecting representative democracy in acknowledging government’s accountability to the people in elections where the majority rules. In practice, representative democracy soon outpaced, as some of the Founders had feared, the restraints against absolutism. Those practices, however, did not -- as feared -- eliminate all restraints against absolutism. Rather, they helped shape the practice of a representative democracy, where there is -- or at least, was -- a generally accepted view that government ought to be limited in ways -- the First Ten Amendments -- regardless of majority rule. In the very act of accomplishing that compromise, they created the tension between the fear of absolutism and the spread of representative democracy that served us well, and still does. To this day our politics is such a compromise between the fear of absolutism and the demand for participation in the political process -- the spread of suffrage. We must return, then, again and again, to a trust that there is a decisive general will against absolutism because, to live in the real world is to understand that the First Ten Amendments always will be searched for practical application which will be determined by the value and force of words. The nub is not whether the “meaning” will change with political currents but the method of arriving at change.

Trying to prevent all change is pointless. Some of it happens anyway, despite our efforts against it. But, it seems to me, we can prevent fundamental alternation of our chosen method of change -- that is, change through the constitutional process. That’s the core, around which all else orbits. To accept, then, an individual’s “right” to interpret the Constitution in his own way is to accept a blow that tilts the core and throws out of course all the other orbits.

I agree entirely that “small” and “locally” do have sensible definitions -- sensible at least to me. But they are by no means universally-accepted definitions and political disputes about them ought to be resolved by the political method we have chosen, not by fiat or by some self-selected “individualist-objectivist.” For me, “small” and “locally” are perhaps the most injured of all concepts in our politics. Without expecting a return to a nation of small farmers and shopkeepers, it seems to me that we could have arrived at better compromises than those which produced Enron and the Department of Education.

I stress representative democracy because that’s the way we practice politics in this Republic. We are a Republic created by our Constitution. That same Constitution created the framework and institutions of our representative democracy. The descriptions are not mutually exclusive nor in dubious battle. A Republic is “a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.” That describes representative democracy.

You write: Democracy, especially egalitarian, implies that my desires of the moment are to somehow make their way into the process and there was nothing further from the founders' intent. But, why was that? It was to keep the tyranny of the majority in check. Sure Numbers matters and deciedes things. But only those Numbers and by those processes framed in the diverse process of our constitutions. Thereby the Majority is kept from (1) violating by whim of the moment, (2) intemperence, (3) the will of demogogues, (4)violating prescriptive principle honored from time immemorial (as opposed to abstract rights), and (5)never being given the ability to announce any One decision, of merely 51%, as the ultimate public will.

We can’t have “numbers don’t matter and don’t decide things” and “sure numbers matter and decide things.” Unless we insert “sometimes,” the conflict boggles our mind’s effort to grasp the whole. Besides, neither statement is precisely true when applied to the Constitution. Numbers -- and other things -- matter even with the sacred Bill of Rights. These were intended to be rights that government was prohibited from contravening for any reason. Still, the Constitution itself provides ways to contravene them. Numbers decide, for example, who gets elected to the Senate and the presidency and, therefore, who gets appointed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court can decide that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms only as part of the militia; in other words, the judges decide what the Constitution means. Further, the Constitution provides a way for the Constitution itself to be changed by amendment. A constitutional amendment through the elected (where numbers count) Congress and a vote of 3/4 of the states or through a Constitutional Convention (membership appointed by the state legislatures, where numbers count) could remove the Second Amendment and replace it with “no citizen has the right to keep or bear arms.” That would be devastating, but it still would be “legal” and within our constitutional process. That can happen but it hasn’t. Why? From the Founders onward the citizenry have generally favored a middle course between extremes, sometimes going off impulsively in one direction, then reestablishing equilibrium by returning toward the middle reaches of painful compromise. If and when this habit fails, the method of change we have chosen may fail as well. To have a system that may fail does not mean it must inevitably fail. This is part of the risk and tension of our representative democracy.

The framework is neither absence nor counterpoint. It is a method, a process, through which disputes about “meaning,” “good,” “conduct” and others can be resolved in a manner approved by most of the participants. Sowell may criticize “utilitarian primacy” but he’ll get no argument from me. After all “utilitarian primacy” describes monarchy, socialism, autocracy or any other method of organizing a community. The Constitution does not establish “the greatest good” or “abstract rights.” It establishes the process through which disputes over what constitutes “the greatest good” or “abstract rights” can be resolved without resort to arms. Even then, it failed at least once in our national experience, when passions overwhelmed respect for the constitutional process.

You write: In your third paragraph, I agree the citizen must submit to just and proper authority. But he also must resist and fight improper authority of the acquisitive nature of those in authority will overturn his society. So if I agree that Judges Interpret as well as Adjudicate, I will always make that resistance when they Legislate rather than Interpret. So you see that we are once again back to the plain meaning of Words.

In the “plain meaning of words,” what is “just and proper authority”? What is “improper authority”? It is because these phrases are not self-evident in all places and cases and times that they are so frequently disputed. The Constitution does not explain them; instead, it gives the citizen a process for resolving the disputes in ways that are applicable in his daily life and business. The judicial system is part of that process. When a judge goes beyond interpreting and legislates, as I think some do, what is the process for determining that the judge “legislated” and,therefore, his judgment is null? Right answer: The process provided by the Constitution. Wrong answer: Each person will decide for himself.

About smoking your pipe in your (future) bookstore. As we say in Abilene, go ahead on. If it’s against the law, however, and you claim the “constitutional” right to do it anyway, you may be punished according to the law. Meanwhile, I’ll claim the “constitutional” right not to be saddled with your smoking-related illnesses. And we’ll let the constitutional process resolve it. Fair enough?