Old Antiquated Constitution is just too hard for Progressive Liberals to Understand

Creating Orwellian Worldview ^ | 12/31/10 | Alaphiah

[Alaphiah123]

Returning to the Constitution, that’s what Republicans want to do in the new Congress. In the last year, the two hundred and twenty-three year old document has been getting a whole lot a lip service so when the One hundred and twelfth Congress is sworn in next week expect to hear a lot more about it because the Constitution is at the center of three coming Congressional battles. —Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts on the daily rundown interviewed Ezra Klein of The Washington Post regarding Republicans who have the majority in the House of Representatives coming in January. They discuss Republicans’ plan to read the Constitution in the House and Republicans’ plan to cite Constitution authority for every bill when 112th Congress reconvenes.

[r9etb]

While this is all very nice, it also misses the point.

First off, like a lot of conservatives, you treat the Constitution as if it were something that it's not. You invoke the Constitution as a magic word -- ascribing to it mystical powers of organizational perfection, as if the Constitution, in itself, holds the power to make us all free, well-behaved, and self-sufficient.

Second, you tacitly assume that everybody basically agrees on the principles embodied in the Constitution, and on how those principles should be applied in real life.

The fact that you wrote this piece at all, should be a big clue that your assumptions are wrong.

It's not just you -- it's a failing common to a lot of conservatives, who apparently do not understand what John Adams meant when he said,

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Adams understood what today's conservatives do not: that the Constitution -- as wonderful as it is -- is nothing more than a formal statement of a pre-existing common agreement on how government and people should co-exist. It was based, further, on an assumption that people are not only "moral," but more importantly that people have a common understanding of what "moral" means.

That common understanding no longer exists (if it ever really did....). It is not possible to "return" to the good old days, unless and until some sort of common agreement can be re-established.

If you want to be effective, you need to start making the case for conservative and moral behavior. Because the alternative -- expecting people to live by principles with which they do not agree -- leads to the use of force to make them live that way.

[DJ MacWoW]

Only liberal commies disagree with the Constitution. And you are still a troll.

[r9etb]

Only liberal commies disagree with the Constitution. And you are still a troll

It would be really wonderful if, some day, you demonstrated the capacity to behave and discuss like an adult.

[DJ MacWoW]

Again, only commies disagree with the Constitution. And I’m never insulted by anything a troll says. You are critical of everything Conservative, including the Tea Party. NS got a trip out the door. Hopefully you will too.

[r9etb]

So, you clearly dislike me.

Do you have anything intelligent to say about my post? Or are you just in typical stomp and pout mode.

NS got a trip out the door. Hopefully you will too.

Oooohhhh, comrade. You want to sic the though police on me? How very Constitutional of you. But thanks for proving my point.

[DJ MacWoW]

You are not a Conservative and have NO idea what the Constitution is.

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." Patrick Henry

[Alaphiah123]

RM, Clearly, the mental disorder is a schizophrenia that George Orwell identified as doublethink as described below by Fred Barnes and then by Orwell as written in this book 1984.

We know something about Barack Obama; he can hold two totally contradictory things in this mind at the same time and claim allegiance to both of them. You know we saw it when the D.C. gun ban was over turned and he said he was all for it when ah...but before he had been against ah…before he’d been in favor of the band and when most of it was turned over he said he was in favor of that too. --Fred Barnes

In George Orwell’s novel 1984 Winston Smith the novel's protagonist, described doublethink in this fashion:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.'

[Retain Mike]

I have only read history since retirement, but my younger son keeps bringing up 1984 in discussions we have and I have not read it since high school. You and my son may soon get me to brake the history habit, if just for a little while.

[r9etb]

You are not a Conservative and have NO idea what the Constitution is.

And you know this ... how? Because your hissy fit tells you so?

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." Patrick Henry

And yet, "the people" have not restrained the government, and in fact have seemed quite willing to let it expand.

Do you have any clue as to how that might have come about?

Perhaps, should you choose (for once) to think rather than to emote, you might go back to what I wrote. You might actually learn something.

[DJ MacWoW]

Because you have no idea what the Constitution is.

[r9etb]

Parrots say the same thing over and over, not knowing what they’re saying. Are you a parrot?

[DJ MacWoW]

And your post 21 is a load of liberal feel good claptrap.

[DJ MacWoW]

Trolls have nothing but insults and feel good nonsense.

"The way to have safe government is not to trust it all to the one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which he is competent....To let the National Government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations..... The State Governments with the Civil Rights, Laws, Police and administration of what concerns the State generally. The Counties with the local concerns, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best." Thomas Jefferson

[DJ MacWoW]

“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform them.” James Madison

[r9etb]

So you don't really have a response. But you, personally, don't like me, and thus you feel free to spout your usual inanities.

Is John Adams' quote really "liberal claptrap," or do you simply refuse to acknowledge his point?

[Alaphiah123]

r9etb, I agree with your point that is why I advocate for conservative values as embodied in the Constitution.

The current disarray in our society and government are the workings of Progressives,Communist and Liberals who have almost destroyed the concept of one nation under God, indivisible...

It was Angela Merkle who declared recently that multiculturalism has 'failed utterly. The fact that this country is falling apart because of multiple opinions brought on by multiculturalism is what Liberalism has fostered in this country.

[DJ MacWoW]

Respond to my posts to you. I have been posting quotes to you to inform you of what the Constitution really is. You have NO response? Just more name calling?

Your post was liberal claptrap and it isn't Adams fault that you dragged him into your feel good nonsense.

"... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334 (C.J. Boyd, Ed., 1950)

[DJ MacWoW]

I’m sorry but I have to sign off and go lay down. My fever isn’t coming down. Later. Maybe.

[r9etb]

The current disarray in our society and government are the workings of Progressives,Communist and Liberals who have almost destroyed the concept of one nation under God, indivisible...

.... taking advantage of people (including us) who have forgotten that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Not only that, but conservatives are just as likely to support expansion of government into those areas that most tickle our fancies -- the military (and military/industrial complex) being an excellent example.

The problem with conservatism is (and has always been) the tendency to assume that people agree with us, and that simply to state some principle or clause of the Constitution is sufficient to win any argument.

But we tend to lack any mechanism by which to educate regular people about conservative ideas, and we definitely lack convincing answers when faced with an actual argument, especially in a situation for which the power of government seems to offer a sensible solution.

[r9etb]

Gee. I wish I had said that. Oh, wait ... I pretty much did say that.