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To: dit_xi
Let us just start with the question:
Do you think that the framers of the Constitution would recognize their handiwork in the current United States? Use information from the selection as well as your own opinion.

To answer this question, we first must know what might be in "information from the selection." The other document necessary to answer this question is the Constitution itself (if different from "the selection"). The framers of the Constitution largely died before the Thirteenth Amendment (abolishing slavery in 1865), so we may consider only the first twelve amendments. (The Twelfth Amendment resulted from the controversial election of 1800 and details how we now select a president and vice-president.) I have no clue what "the selection" might be, so I won't discuss it here.

The Constitution retains its legitimacy as the foundation of American governance today. (Whether the Congress follows it is another matter entirely.) The three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) still form part of the framework of the federal government. Although executive departments exercised discretion in interpreting the acts of Congress from the earliest days of the Republic, the powerful regulatory bureaucracy largely began with the New Deal of the 1930s.

Beyond the amendments to the Constitution, the size and power of the federal government has changed enormously since the time of the framers of the Constitution. Even in the early 1900s, the federal government consumed only a few percent of the economy, less than state and local governments consumed. Today, the federal government regulates or controls most of the American economy, a prospect that the founders considered tyrannical. The United States plays a leading role in world affairs that the framers did not anticipate. Nor could the framers have imagined the particular technologies now commonplace, a dramatic change from the almost entirely agrarian (agricultural) society of their day.

You can expound on these concepts, particularly the size and scope of the federal government. The framers gave the federal government a limited, specified role in the affairs of the young federation (from where we get the term "federal," a government wherein the states, not the national government, largely determine domestic policy, leaving foreign policy for the federal government). Congress no longer sticks to its enumerated powers.

Good luck.

15 posted on 01/12/2010 9:37:36 PM PST by dufekin (Name the leader of our enemy: Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, terrorist dictator)
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To: dufekin

The size of the government, this is perfect! Thank you, sir/ma’am! Good night.


24 posted on 01/12/2010 10:48:50 PM PST by dit_xi
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