Posted on 05/09/2007 7:18:18 AM PDT by malibu2008
I find it constantly amusing how many meanings people imbue the word "Republic" with. My eye muscles are permanently sore from rolling my eyes every time someone trots out the old "the US is a republic, not a democracy" nonsense.
Republic is derived from the latin "res publica" -- a "public thing." In common American usage it means a representative democracy, but that's not its meaning in other places and hasn't been in other times.
What you describe -- two levels of government with defined and separate areas of responsibility -- is not inherent in the word "republic." It's called federalism. Aside from the US, other federal democracies include Germany, Switzerland and Russia. Britain is not federal -- its local authorities derive their powers from the national government.
If you want to get technical about it, the US is a constitutional democratic federal presidential republic. Let's take that a word at a time.
Constitutional means that there is a founding document that lays out and limits the powers of the government,
Democratic means that the powers of the government are derived, directly or indirectly, from the votes of the people.
Federal is defined above.
Presidential means that the chief executive is elected completely independently of the legislature. That is also the case in France and Russia, but not in most democracies, which follow the Westminster model -- where the head of government and the heads of the executive departments are chosen by the legislature from among members of the legislative majority (or majority coalition). The Brits never once voted Tony Blair prime minister -- but they knew that would be the result when they voted Labour.
Republic means ... well, ask ten people and you might get twelve answers. The Republic of France doesn't have the kind of federalism you describe. Nor does the People's Republic of China.
Can our constitutional republic continue to exist if those limits are ignored? Can the republic that document lays out remain viable - does it still exist - if that document ceases to become the standard by which our government operates?
It’s not a “cute theory”, it’s a fact. If you can’t offer a legal opinion to the opposite, then you shouldn’t argue legal theory. Peoople who understand law understand the difference between “required” and “pro forma”.
A wiser man than I said, “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.”
I think it’s that he isn’t George W. Bush.
Then show me a constitutional scholar, a court, or anyone with credentials in American jurisprudence who says the United States of America declared war on Iraq in 2003.
Benjamin Franklin wrote that "Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Leaving out those qualifiers distorts the message. Giving up some measure of freedom in exchange for some measure of safety -- e.g. "I won't take your stuff if you won't take my stuff" -- is the cornerstone of the social contract. And the key element in a little thing that we like to call civilization.
To a degree, yes. No group of mortal men has yet created a body of law that can cover every eventuality. Our Founders crafted a Constitution that can bend a long way without breaking. To use a computer metaphor I like a lot, France is on version 5.02, while the USA is on version 1.27.
In the many cases where the Constitution is vague, open to interpretation, it is deliberately so. It is designed to bend to the wind rather than break, to sway in the wind like a tall yellow pine rather than be smashed and uprooted like an ancient oak. .
Many times over the last couple centuries, our government has slipped away from the Constitution. But none has dared repudiate or reject it. It remains, rock-bottomed and copper-sheathed, for us to come back to. It can bend without breaking, and that is its tensile strength -- few sane people are calling for a wholly new Constitution.
I've read all that I can find written by the founders, and their contemporaries like Joseph Story on the Commerce Clause. This is way outside of anything that was intended to be done by the federal government as an exercise in regulating interstate commerce. Clarence Thomas was right. The substantial effects test is no test at all. It is a blank check. It needs to be called out for the fraud that it is.
FDR seemed to found the Constitution a wonderfully malleable document, subject to all sorts of innovative interpretation. There is a substantial body of historical data available indicating that the Founders did not share this view, or intend that such liberties be taken with it.
If by "this" you mean HR1592, I whole-heartedly agree.
It is. Wickard v Filburn wasn’t what they had in mind, either.
The Founders left a lot of the Constitution vague — some by design, and some by necessity, because they could not agree on more precise terms and compromised. Because when you’re trying to build a foundation, you don’t want to get tied up bickering over the color of the drapes.
Phrases like “unreasonable search and seizure,” “cruel and unusual punishment,” “excessive fines and bails,” and even “due process of law” were, I believe, intentionally left for others to interpret.And re-inteprpret as times and mores changed.
The Founders didn’t contemplate anything like the New Deal, but they also didn’t contemplate anything like the Great Depression.
In the early years of the USA, there were two competing schools of constitutional thought — Hamilton had the wider view of what powers were implied by the explicitly-granted powers, and Jefferson was inclined to read those powers more narrowly.
The clearest expression of Hamiton’s vision came from — wait for it — Jefferson. When he bought the western 3/4 of this continent from France. There was no explicit power in the Constitution that allowed the Louisiana Purchase, but there was nothing that explicitly prohibited it, and the Founders always balanced their idealism and pragmatism.
They did contemplate the likelihood of unanticipated events and circumstances. Hence the provisions for amendment. The New Deal Commerce Clause has enabled a major shift in power from the States to the general government, based on nothing more than creative semantics, and as we see here seems to have virtually no objectively discernible limit.
The Founders didn't have in mind that Nebraska wheat harvested today could be bread on Chicago store shelves by morning. There's only so much wisdom you can glean from trying to figure out how modern political problems would have been addressed by men who had never seen an automobile, a train, an airplane, a telephone, a television, a telegraph or a photograph.
The Founders were great men, They created, to my mind, the most important single document in human history. But in the end, they were still just men. If you're asking yourself whether Tom Jefferson would fly first class or coach, you might want to consider that your answer has more to do with your beliefs than with his.
We seem to be having the classic “living document” vs “enduring document” debate. I’m in the “enduring document” camp, and am not likely to be persuaded to abandon that position. You are welcome to try if you wish.
Thanks for the flags.
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