Posted on 06/15/2012 8:39:48 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
In Constitutional Government(1908), Woodrow Wilson wrote the following:(pages 169-170)
When the Constitution was framed there were no railways, there was no telegraph, there was no telephone. The Supreme Court has read the power of Congress to establish post-offices and post-roads and to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states to mean that it has jurisdiction over practically ever matter connected with intercourse between the states. Railways are highways; telegraph and telephone lines are new forms of the post. The Constitution was not meant to hold the government back to the time of horses and wagons, the time when postboys carried every communication that passed from merchant to merchant, when trade had few long routes within the nation and did not venture in bulk beyond neighborhood transactions. The United States have clearly from generation to generation been taking on more and more of the characteristics of a community; more and more have their economic interests come to seem common interests; and the courts have rightly endeavored to make the Constitution a suitable instrument of the national life, extending to the things that are now common the rules that it established for similar things that were common at the beginning.
The fact that new technologies have arisen is of course, wholly irrelevant to whether or not the legislative has a check and balance upon the executive. It appears to me as if Wilson is perplexed a bit by the constitution. But being as Wilson himself was a central planner, he can't help it but look at the constitution in that way, as a highly regressive document for planning itself - which it isn't.
In the discourse regarding new technologies, Wilson utterly fails to make the case as to why there needs to be wholly new structures in government. It doesn't surprise me that this argument is of Wilsonian construct. Whole lectures have taken place in regard to this subject, It's been on TV and radio before. These are the voices of modern totalitarianism. So here's what all of us need to get straight: because three former paypal employees invented something called "Youtube", that means we need to give up the house and senate and we need panel after panel after panel of administrators to run our lives for us. See how disconnected the argument is? But that's what any progressive - Wilson included - would ultimately have you believe. Without being so honest and forthcoming, of course. This discourse on technology and the constitution is pure demagoguery. Even worse. Demagogues rely upon weaknesses in order to do what they do. Technology in conjunction with the constitution is not a weakness, but it's been made into one under an entirely false premise.
And this use of the word 'common' in conjunction with 'property' is disingenuous. For millenia, dictators of all stripes have used this ruse of 'common property' in order to rally the serfs. Common property is not government property. Private, government, and common property are three different things. The books I routinely quote from are common property; in the public domain, as are my recordings. The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution is common property. The audiobook recording of the STORM Manifesto is common property. It's one of the tyrant's best sales tactics: "We'll just redistribute a little wealth over here, hold this or that property in common over there", it's all a lie. What's really happening is the concentration of amassed power and wealth in one spot: the dictator's fist.
In some of the most famous words ever written, Lord Acton wrote the following to Mandell Creighton:
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
All of this and more, is exactly what Acton was talking about.
Every progressive and 99% of all dumbocraps show their complete and utter ignorance of the brilliance of the US Constitution every time they bring this up or use their false “case law can modify the constitution” theory.
Any lawyer who believes this should be disbarred due to incompetence.
The US Constitution was designed from the ground up to adjust to the future unknown but ONLY via the Amendment process. Not Case Law.
These lying SOBs can never explain if, as they believe, the US Constitution is a living document which can be change via case law, then why did the founders go to such lengths to create a difficult and deliberate AMENDMENT process for allowing change?
Any elected official be they President, Senator, Rep, or un-elected USSC black robed morons who believe anything but the Amendment process can change the Constitution should immediately be forcibly removed from office for violating their oath to support the Constitution.
Those who believe the Constitution can be changed via case law are too stupid to be allowed to vote. It is fortunate for them, bad for us, that even the criminally stupid are allowed to vote.
Just another perfect example of the damage done to the USA by the public school system and its infestation of communist union teachers completely distorting the very foundation of this country. Too bad they cannot all be sued for fraud.
The "progressive" argument was, and remains, a foolish and provincial argument, revealing either sheer ignorance or an intention to mislead in order to establish tyranny over a free people.
Any who study the ideas and principles underlying the Founders' Constitution must realize with Gladstone, Justice Story, the Founders themselves, and leaders from all over the world that the Constitution is based on enduring truth and principles which, according to Lincoln, are "applicable to all men and all times," which will remain "today, and in all coming days, . . . a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression."
Increase of population and advances in technology do not prevent that Constitution from protecting its "only KEEPERS," "the People," (Story) from coercive power centered in those they elect to serve them.
As a matter of fact, the Founders, along with early generations, expected that such progress in population and technology would occur when free people acting in their own self-intereste, under laws which limited government from acting arbitrarily pursued "happiness."
In the closing pages of Frothingham's 1882 "History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States," ending on P. 609, appear these words:
"That supreme law [the Constitution] now recognizes only the free and independent man as the unit of free and independent States, while all are associated iu an indissoluble union.
"The unnatural struggle [Civil War] being over, the millions of soldiers, following the example of the armies of the Revolution, returned to their peaceful vocations as citizens. The way was opened for the resumption by the people in insurrection of their relations to the Union.
"The tide of population is bearing a Christian civiliza- tion, as embodied in American institutions, over the vast region between the Mississippi and the Pacitic Coast. The process is simple. Individuals purchase land; they 'from the gift of God were in actual possession of the rights of man;' the law protects them; under its aegis they gather into neighborhoods; on the principle of con tiguity, because they dwell near each other, they form municipalities, and become a territory with a government formed by Congress. On reaching an adequate population, they form a constitution, become a State, and are admitted into the Union on a footing of equality with the original 8tates. Every new State is an additional guaranty for the perpetuity of the Union.
"In this manner the path of progress, like the sun, is from the east to the west.
As,wrote in 1758, Nathaniel Ames, the father of the renowned Fisher Ames, "the celestial light of the gospel was directed here by the finger of Ood, it will doubtless finally drive the long, long night of heathenish darkness from America. So arts and sciences will change the face of nature in their tour from hence over the Appalachian Mountains to the Western Ocean; and, as they march through the vast desert, the residence of wild beasts will be broken up, and their obscene howl cease forever. Instead of which, the stones and trees will dance together at the music of Orpheus, the rocks will disclose their hidden gems, and the inestimable treasures of gold and silver be broken up. Huge mountains of iron ore are already discovered, and vast stores are reserved for future generations. This metal, more useful than gold and silver, will employ millions of hands, not only to form the martial sword and peaceful share, alternately, but an infinity of utensils improved in the exercise of art and handicraft amongst men. Nature through all her works has 8tamped authority on this law; namely that all fit matter shall be improved to its best purposes. Shall not, then, those vast quarries that teem with mechanic stone, those for structure be piled into great cities, and those for sculpture to perpetuate the honor of renowned heroes, even those who shall now save their country?
"Oh,ye unborn inhabitants of America! should this page escape the destined conflagration at the year's end, and these alphabetical letters remain legible, — when your eyes behold the sun after he has rolled the season round for two or three centuries more, you will know that in Anno Domini, 1758, we dreamed of your times."*
*Ames's Almanac, 1758, one of the moHt remarkable prophecies relating to America.
"The Founders of the Republic left it as their dying injunction to cherish the Union. Washington embodied their spirit in his farewell address, in which he presents it as the palladium of political safety and prosperity. Andrew Jackson gave expression to the determined will of the nation, in the terse sentiment spoken at the right time, 'The Federal Union, it must be preserved.' Abraham Lincoln, the martyr-president, said that the thousands who died for their country on the late battle-fields gave their lives 'that the nation might live,' and 'that governments of the people, by the people, and for the people, should not perish from the earth.'"
"In the language of one of these Presidents: 'It is not in a splendid government supported by aristocratic establishments that the people will find happiness or their liberties protection; but in a plain system, void of pomp,
— protecting all and granting favors to none,
— dispensing its blessings like the dews of heaven unseen and unfelt, save in the freshness and beauty they contribute to produce. It is such a government that the genius of our people requires,
— such a one only under which our States may remain for ages to come, united, prosperous, and free.'"
Frothingham's work is footnoted and contains a most thorough exploration of the ideas on which the Republic was formed and was to survive the vicissitudes of time and change.
The Founders of America anticipated, as Jefferson stated in a letter to Tench Coxe, "this ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll round the globe, at least the enlightened part of it, for light & liberty go together. It is our glory that we first put it into motion, & our happiness that being foremost we had no bad examples to follow. What a tremendous obstacle to the future attempts at liberty will be the atrocities of Robespierre!"
Thanks. See my post below.
Oooops - in my post, the quotation from Nathaniel Ames should be corrected - “by the finger of God,” not “Ood,” of course. Sorry!!
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