Posted on 03/10/2008 9:55:20 AM PDT by Loud Mime
"Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution."
James Madison (Federalist No. 39, 1788)
"The convention have done well, therefore, in so disposing of the power of making treaties, that although the President must, in forming them, act by the advice and consent of the Senate, yet he will be able to manage the business of intelligence in such a manner as prudence may suggest."
John Jay 1788 - Federalist No. 64
"No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity."
James Madison 1787 - Federalist No. 10
"[T]he great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others."
James Madison 1787 - Federalist No. 10
“[I]f industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out.”
James Madison
...and from latter founder Ronald Reagan:
“How can limited government and fiscal restraint be equated with lack of compassion for the poor? How can a tax break that puts a little more money in the weekly paychecks of working people be seen as an attack on the needy? Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes—one rich, one poor—both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?”
Ronald Reagan
ping
However, it is also vague, and that vagueness has come back to haunt us over and over again.
Nowhere in the Constitution does it clearly identify who it applies to. This, of course, is on purpose because when it was ratified it only applied to white propertied males.
The later addition of amendments, rather than clarifying this issue, only made thing murkier allowing for all kinds of nonsense such as affirmative action.
Typical contracts clearly identify who the party of the first part is and who the party of the second part is. We can't even get a consensus on when a person becomes a person and is protected by the Constitution.
Vagueness also allowed people to justify the creation of the welfare agencies, the Interstate Commerce Commission and other legislative atrocities.
We can blame liberal lawyers and constitutional scholars for misinterpreting the Constitution, but it is the Constitution's vagueness that opened the door for such misinterpretations.
Any time anyone suggests amending the Constitution to clarify the terminology, all we get from conservatives is a fear-drenched rant against convening a constitutional convention which could, in some unrealistically nightmare scenario, lead to the complete imposition of a socialist dictatorship.
We need to own up to the fact that we will soon no longer be a Christian nation, that a lot of what went unsaid in the constitution requires the implicit understanding of Christian principles, and that we need to make those principles explicit in new amendments.
Else the "living constitution" will continue to grow more like a weed than the flower our founding fathers intended.
April 12, 1861, ended that idea.
As the influence of the Senators changed from State's rights and freedoms to party power, the enticements of bigger government proved too powerful for the Senators to resist. Their focus was on power. They now WANT to abuse the initial design of our Constitution; they want to have more power under their offices and party.
Even Plato knew that the masses would never run a government to legimate ends. The landowners influence was a smart move on behalf of the founders. Notice the the Senators are responding to the citizens’ cries for more government goodies and services.
We now have greedy people in a symbiotic relationship with greedy politicians.
Still a chance to keep them alive.
Sounds of the death knell of the Republic.
The Constitution is not to blame, we are. We have always gotten the government that we have requested, the law of uninteneded consequences be damned.
We more we resemble the Roman mob, the more our government will resemble Rome’s after the Republic.
The shift began much earlier with the direct election of the President, the 17th amendment was simply the final nail in the Republic’s coffin.
The mob rules.
You telling me Honest Abe Lincoln lied?!!!
I'm working on it from my end. Got to finish this current project...
You echo the views of Plato and Aristotle, reworded by Wil Durant in this book I’m married to (/s).
We get the government we allow. The impeachment of Clinton told us more of this nation that I cared to learn.
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