Posted on 05/31/2015 11:59:54 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
This is an unsupported assertion. All that follows is nonsensical.
Thanks to our God-inspired Constitution the United States of America became the most powerful country on Earth. The USA has drifted away from God and from defending our Constitution. Progress has been in the wrong direction since Carter took office.
We now have rampant corruption and chaos that is not even recognized as such. Some leader has to connect the dots and take corrective action. This will not be easy given the warped, twisted, and self centered thinking of too many of today's voters, IMO.
The pool of low information voters is increasing.
Implicit in that talk is the faulty assumption that the big corporate money comes only from conservatives for conservative causes.
And that unions weren't a major beneficiary of Citizens United.
From “rape fantasy” Sanders
Democracy is four wolves and three sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Wow. So much drivel. So many words. Being such an historic scholarly article, yet misunderstanding completely, totally, and fully, the intent of the Constitution, the intent of the “holy” Founding Fathers... Wow.
The Constitution of The United States of America was indeed the 5,000 year leap forward in the advancement of humankind. No country has ever become so strong, powerful, wealthy, and benevolent in so short a time in human history.
Yet pimple-face here thinks it’s a bad thing.
Betcha this guy is a “Declaration of Independence denier”, too...
Which is, I suppose, the reason they formed a REPUBLIC, instead of a straight-up democracy.
If this guy thinks we’re authoritarian now, he should wait to see just how authoritarian a true democracy (as opposed to a Constitutional Representstive Republic) can be.
Then again, he’s probably ok with that, believing that his side will win.
Something that a lot of people don’t get is that, under a true democracy, during the Red Scare of the 1950s Communists and their sympathizers wouldn’t have been blacklisted; they would have been hung from trees like Xmas ornaments. Legally.
I do think a lot of Progressives actually get this, tho. They know they dodged a huge bullet back then, know what could have happened under a different and more “democratic” governing structure, and perceiving themselves to be on the ascendency want that kind of power to act against their enemies.
Democrats complaining about Democrats. Must not be an election year.
Sanders is in it to make Hillary look reasonable by comparison.
And yet here we are with 27 amendments to the constitution.
Great read. Thank you for posting it.
Morons don’t do predictive thinking, consequences are always a surprise.
Federalist/Anti-Federalist ping. An interesting article from the Hard Left.
Article V ping. A wish list from the Hard Left.
His objection would be a moot point if the left “allowed” states to opt out and not be oppressed by their stupid, destructive, and borderline genocidal ideas.
IE, go ahead and implement your grand schemes in the states that “want” them. We’ll sit over here and point and laugh when they are exposed as the failures they inevitably will be.
That Address may be read, in its entirety, as indicated below, but for those who prefer to read a brief synopsis, consider the following:
John Adams' son, John Quincy, was 9 when the Declaration of Independence was written, 20 when the Constitution was framed, and from his teen years, served in various capacities in both the Legislative and Executive branches of the government, including as President. His words on this subject should be instructive and enlightening, considering the article referenced in this post.In the Year 1839, he was invited by the New York Historical Society to deliver the "Jubilee" Address honoring the 50th Anniversary of the Inauguration of George Washington. He delivered that lengthy discourse, and in it, he traced the history of the development of the ideas underlying and the actions leading to the establishment of the Constitution which structured the United States government.
His 50th-year summation seems to be a better source than those of recent historians and politicians for understanding the kind of government the Framers, in 1787, framed .
He addresses the ideas of "democracy" and "republic" throughout, but here are some of his concluding remarks:
"Every change of a President of the United States, has exhibited some variety of policy from that of his predecessor. In more than one case, the change has extended to political and even to moral principle; but the policy of the country has been fashioned far more by the influences of public opinion, and the prevailing humors in the two Houses of Congress, than by the judgment, the will, or the principles of the President of the United States. The President himself is no more than a representative of public opinion at the time of his election; and as public opinion is subject to great and frequent fluctuations, he must accommodate his policy to them; or the people will speedily give him a successor; or either House of Congress will effectually control his power. It is thus, and in no other sense that the Constitution of the United States is democratic - for the government of our country, instead of a Democracy the most simple, is the most complicated government on the face of the globe. From the immense extent of our territory, the difference of manners, habits, opinions, and above all, the clashing interests of the North, South, East, and West, public opinion formed by the combination of numerous aggregates, becomes itself a problem of compound arithmetic, which nothing but the result of the popular elections can solve.
"It has been my purpose, Fellow-Citizens, in this discourse to show:-
"1. That this Union was formed by a spontaneous movement of the people of thirteen English Colonies; all subjects of the King of Great Britain - bound to him in allegiance, and to the British empire as their country. That the first object of this Union,was united resistance against oppression, and to obtain from the government of their country redress of their wrongs.
"2. That failing in this object, their petitions having been spurned, and the oppressions of which they complained, aggravated beyond endurance, their Delegates in Congress, in their name and by their authority, issued the Declaration of Independence - proclaiming them to the world as one people, absolving them from their ties and oaths of allegiance to their king and country - renouncing that country; declared the UNITED Colonies, Independent States, and announcing that this ONE PEOPLE of thirteen united independent states, by that act, assumed among the powers of the earth, that separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them.
"3. That in justification of themselves for this act of transcendent power, they proclaimed the principles upon which they held all lawful government upon earth to be founded - which principles were, the natural, unalienable, imprescriptible rights of man, specifying among them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - that the institution of government is to secure to men in society the possession of those rights: that the institution, dissolution, and reinstitution of government, belong exclusively to THE PEOPLE under a moral responsibility to the Supreme Ruler of the universe; and that all the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.
"4. That under this proclamation of principles, the dissolution of allegiance to the British king, and the compatriot connection with the people of the British empire, were accomplished; and the one people of the United States of America, became one separate sovereign independent power, assuming an equal station among the nations of the earth.
"5. That this one people did not immediately institute a government for themselves. But instead of it, their delegates in Congress, by authority from their separate state legislatures, without voice or consultation of the people, instituted a mere confederacy.
"6. That this confederacy totally departed from the principles of the Declaration of independence, and substituted instead of the constituent power of the people, an assumed sovereignty of each separate state, as the source of all its authority.
"7. That as a primitive source of power, this separate state sovereignty,was not only a departure from the principles of the Declaration of Independence, but directly contrary to, and utterly incompatible with them.
"8. That the tree was made known by its fruits. That after five years wasted in its preparation, the confederation dragged out a miserable existence of eight years more, and expired like a candle in the socket, having brought the union itself to the verge of dissolution.
"9. That the Constitution of the United States was a return to the principles of the Declaration of independence, and the exclusive constituent power of the people. That it was the work of the ONE PEOPLE of the United States; and that those United States, though doubled in numbers, still constitute as a nation, but ONE PEOPLE.
"10. That this Constitution, making due allowance for the imperfections and errors incident to all human affairs, has under all the vicissitudes and changes of war and peace, been administered upon those same principles, during a career of fifty years.
"11. That its fruits have been, still making allowance for human imperfection, a more perfect union, established justice, domestic tranquility, provision for the common defence, promotion of the general welfare, and the enjoyment of the blessings of liberty by the constituent people, and their posterity to the present day.
"And now the future is all before us, and Providence our guide."
In an earlier paragraph, he had stated:
"But this institution was republican, and even democratic. And here not to be misunderstood, I mean by democratic, a government, the administration of which must always be rendered comfortable to that predominating public opinion . . . and by republican I mean a government reposing, not upon the virtues or the powers of any one man - not upon that honor, which Montesquieu lays down as the fundamental principle of monarchy - far less upon that fear which he pronounces the basis of despotism; but upon that virtue which he, a noble of aristocratic peerage, and the subject of an absolute monarch, boldly proclaims as a fundamental principle of republican government. The Constitution of the United States was republican and democratic - but the experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived; and it was obvious that if virtue - the virtue of the people, was the foundation of republican government, the stability and duration of the government must depend upon the stability and duration of the virtue by which it is sustained." - Excerpts from John Quincy Adams 1839 "Jubilee" Address
The Constitution is, to the degree that any such thing is possible in the real world, our social contract, that is, a set of rules by which everyone lives that keeps us from killing one another over politics. A society based around this is threatened when one side or the other decides that it may safely be discarded in preference to some sort of utopian scheme grafted onto the body politic by force. The Constitution is "venerated" not because it is holy scripture but because respect for it is respect for one's fellow citizen: it is the glue that holds our society together. Contrary to the author's case, what is curious is the degree of veneration he confers on the abstraction of Democracy which appears to be entirely uncritical and completely irrespective of actual historical results, many of which were cited in some detail in the Federalist Papers. The government is the way it is for a long list of good reasons, one of which is not to maintain control by a rich white property-owning class. Not that Madison and Hamilton, et al, were ignorant of social class, but that class relationships were very different at the time - Hamilton refers repeatedly to "the yeomanry", for heaven's sake. An industrial proletariat was still a gleam in the unborn Marx's eye.
The Constitution says a good deal about who may run for office, but nearly nothing about who may vote. That was to be left to the states, a detail that appears to have escaped the author. Women could vote in New Jersey, for example, if they owned property. Black freemen could vote in four states. And further, how state governments determined their Senatorial representation was up to them. Popular vote, caucus, Ouija board, spin-the-bottle,the Constitution does not say.
Footnotes and a scholarly wrapper do not disguise the pure lack of scholarship and the appalling historical ignorance that informs the author here. Dark imputations that the whole thing was a plot by the usual villains to keep a boot heel on the necks of the working class are by now cant so stale it crumbles at a touch, and a gross insult to the Founders, who took great pains to explain precisely what they had in mind and why.
See my post above.
Nasty diatribes, such as the writer's, should be addressed head on. Our Constitution was dedicated to preserving the Blessings of Liberty to an American posterity, and it is truly a document for the ages.
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