You may like this book; I did!
Posted on 11/17/2008 10:44:04 AM PST by Loud Mime
Ping
Please let me know if you would like to be on our Founders’ Quotes ping list
That’s funny, I just posted asking for this kind of stuff, and this shows up.
Thanks, and please add me to the list.
Ping, please add me to your list.
Thank You.
This post very adequately addresses a subject currently in the forefront of our news cycles and needs nothing to be added by me!
Thanks!
Please add my nom de plume. Many thanks.
Li’l Jemmy ping!
For a like reason, I made no reference to the "power to regulate commerce among the several States." I always foresaw that difficulties might be started in relation to that power which could not be fully explained without recurring to views of it, which, however just, might give birth to specious though unsound objections. Being in the same terms with the power over foreign commerce, the same extent, if taken literally, would belong to it.
Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_3_commerces19.html
I’d like to be on your list.
Thanks.
On another thread I was trying to quote from Franlin’s speech to “The Federal Convention” of 1787 but my link to it through patriotpost.com doesn’t work because they are redoing their site. Do you have a link?
There’s another Madison quote about ‘widows and orphans’ from the Revolutionary War. Wonder if you have a link to that one. iirc, Davey Crockett invoked the quote after the War between the States, for the same reason.
Please add me to the list. Thanks.
President Madison was quite the prophet was he not?
This is the kind of material that attracted me to FR back in 2000. Then we elected a Republican president and limited government became passe. Maybe it will become in vogue again.
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Mr. President
I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. Steele a Protestant in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain french lady, who in a dispute with her sister, said "I don't know how it happens, Sister but I meet with no body but myself, that's always in the right — Il n'y a que moi qui a toujours raison."
In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every one of us in returning to our Constituents were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partizans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects & great advantages resulting naturally in our favor among foreign Nations as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity. Much of the strength & efficiency of any Government in procuring and securing happiness to the people, depends, on opinion, on the general opinion of the goodness of the Government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its Governors. I hope therefore that for our own sakes as a part of the people, and for the sake of posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously in recommending this Constitution (if approved by Congress & confirmed by the Conventions) wherever our influence may extend, and turn our future thoughts & endeavors to the means of having it well administred.
On the whole, Sir, I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.
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Conscience is the most sacred of all property.
-- James Madison, National Gazette, March 29, 1792,
In 1794, during debate on a bill that would appropriate $15,000 for French refugees from San Domingo, James Madison, then a representative from Virginia said:
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
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In January 1800, the entire House went to the state legislature of Virginia. Both Virginia and Kentucky had petitioned the new federal government that the recent Alien and Sedition Act was unconstitutional. Madison wrote the report James Madison, Report on the Virginia Resolutions
it was constantly justified and recommended on the ground that the powers not given to the government were withheld from it; and that, if any doubt could have existed on this subject, under the original text of the Constitution, it is removed, as far as words could remove it, by the 12th amendment, now a part of the Constitution, which expressly declares, "that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
(snip)
However true, therefore, it may be, that the judicial department is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms of the Constitution, to decide in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial, as well as the other departments, hold their delegated trusts. On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve.
You may like this book; I did!
But you know that a contrarian(Progressive Democrat) will read the exact same words and come to the contrary opinion, diametrically opposed to how I read it.
I have seen two sides use the exact same scripture to argue two sides of an issue.
Keep on educating us.
Regards
Bonehead
I was reading one such argument earlier today. I have fun when discussing these points with these sophists. But, there is one thing that I have learned; never do it on the internet. Do it in person.
Madison had a foundation to all his writings, that he believed in God. Therefore, government should be limited. Those who do not believe in God see government as their god, therefore wish to give it all powers possible, including its educating children about their god.
A question I pose to liberals is this: What is the highest form of authority you recognize? That answer is their religion.
Madison was a small man with a small voice, yet possessed the knowledge of many and the virtue of a man of true aim.
Because of the presentation, he would never become popular in today’s celebrity politics. Looks and presentation account for more than content and virtue. We have inverted our search criteria.
Please pardon my rant. I have no intelligent comment to make, just a prediction. In one hundred and twenty days, after 0bama is sworn in, the Founding Fathers will be spinning in their graves.
I hate making these kinds of predictions, but it is now written...I hope I am wrong.
5.56mm
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