Posted on 06/07/2011 6:54:23 PM PDT by neverdem
Thanks for the ping.
Be civil. We’re just talking here. I might ask you the same question with regard to your question about my quote of Hamilton. The quotation should have been self-explanatory.
But then, tallyho! we would be off and running with much heat and little light.
Hamilton was a monarchist, which he later denied when he saw our Union was taking a different direction and working better than he expected. He believed (apparently in all sincerity) that the most could be accomplished by a monarch bribing a corrupt legislature with money and position in order to attain desirable ends. Well, he now has his wish (with a president, crony capitalists, unions and advocacy groups, in the stead of a monarch, bribing the legislature).
Wonder how he would have liked it now.
Like the one they were in at the time? Do you think that only a confederacy is safe from the misconstruction of greedy or ambitious men? Or from any of the other misadventures to which every society is subject?
Our Constitution was the best document of fundamental law ever devised by the minds of men. Right up to 1860. Right up even to 1913. Right up even to 1932. And, finally, right up to 1963. Since then it’s been mostly down hill.
None of which (the down hill part) was Madison’s doing. Inconsistent as he occasionally was.
I think the Madison right who wrote The Federalist Papers, and who argued that the Federal Union could not authorize a bank.
“Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.”
. . . . . Thomas Jefferson, letter to Wilson Cary Nicholas, 7 September, 1803
Fine. Cite the instances where Washington came out in opposition to Madison’s 41 and 44; give quotes and state sources.
I agree. My bad. No time now. Will try to continue our discussion later.
Plot the points on a graph and see which way they point. The results are in.
Madison in Fed. 41 is clearly and completely wrong. He’s so wrong it’s comical. And it didn’t take long to get there. He was proven wrong in the First Congress, under the first presidential administration. And he has been confirmed wrong in the 200 plus years since. It’s hard to think of a framer more wrong more often than Madison.
The historical source of a republics fragility comes from the inside, not the outside. Republics are usually so strong externally(politically, militarily and economically) they usually morph into empires.
No, but a confederacy provides safeguards that are impossible in a consolidated mega-state such as ours. The Articles of Confederation, for example, provided for "expressly delegated powers" only, which shuts the door on liberal construction. In fact, there was no judicial branch, which also, imo, is a safeguard. There is no direct taxation, yet another safeguard over the current system. etc.
The requisition system should have been fixed, not replaced. You want a real check on national power? Let all the national taxes come not from individuals, but from member states. Let each state determine for itself how to collect that money from its citizens. THAT would be a check on national spending. As it is, the states have to get in line behind the nationals.
(yea, I made a little time to respond after all.)
"I have sought for some middle ground, which may at once support a due supremacy of the national authority, and not exclude the local authorities wherever they can be subordinately useful."
Letter to G. Washington, New York, April 16 1787
Each of the points on the graph you mention represent major events charting where avarice or ambition overcame the good sense that would have prevented the perversion of the clear meaning of the Constitution.
Show logically where Madison was wrong. Cite logic, not events, in doing so. For in citing events, as you have been doing right along, you confess that the fault for the tragedy our Republic has become, lies not at the feet of a document but at the feet of men’s behavior (more properly, their misbehavior).
It’s difficult to think of anyone who could have been less perspicacious than the Anti-federalists in their belief that they could somehow gain greater freedom for themselves by forcing the Constitution into so narrow a constraint that it could only function to no effect. That’s what the Antifederalists wanted from the beginning.
But they forgot that they enjoyed the degree of freedom they had (and every prospect of an even greater freedom in the future) each in their own little local colonies, because they enjoyed the protection of Great Britain from the threats of the greater world beyond their narrow little horizons. When they threw off the yoke of British oppression, they also removed its protection. Yet, somehow, the Anti-federalists thought they could go on as before. They each needed a pair of Doctor Franklin’s glasses. They could not see past the end of next week.
Very true, my friend. ( ^8 }
It is a mega-state of our own doing. Over a period of 224 years. It wasn’t in the original document and only possible through “construction.” You want to shut out “construction”? Think you can shut out avarice and ambition? Good luck.
“Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.”
. . . . . Thomas Jefferson, letter to Wilson Cary Nicholas, 7 September, 1803
You want “expressly delegated” powers only? Be prepared to write a document that rivals, nay exceeds even, the size of the 0bamacare monstrosity.
“Let all the national taxes come not from individuals, but from member states.”
That’s the reason I mentioned 1913. One of the “points” on your graph. Not a part of Federalist 41 or 44, or Madison’s understanding of implied powers. And, in any context other than this discussion, you would be vigorously protesting the attack on sovereignty represented by a Federal assessment levied on the several states. The reason the national government was conceived to act on individual citizens was because action on the states was considered to be a usurpation of the states’ sovereignty.
The ideological war between the Federalists and the states rights republicans will cause a real civil war, again. The coming conflict will manifest over a backlash against the total domination that FedGov™ seems to have over the will of the people. At some point “we the people” will look to the state houses for relief over open borders, trade protection and sane financial policy. Funny, or not so funny, the physical battle lines resemble that of the last civil war. Just look at a map that shows the right-to-work states. The storm is coming.
It's scientific method. When I read Brutus' writings on implied powers, the power of the judiciary, and the general tendency of the system created by the Constitution, and I couple that with the writings of Hamilton, Madison, and Washington, on their desired outcomes, it's plain to see that the outcomes were predictable.
You see the steady flow of results and treat them as a string of abberations. I see them as the essence of the system in practice.
Why not? Under your system of implied powers, we get reems of laws that are passed by the basic legislative requirements. To add an express power would take an amendment, which presents higher hurdles. Look at our tax code! You want reems of paper? Better to make them explicitly acquire each and every power, by super majorities, including the states, then to let them run willy nilly, which is what the system does now.
We need this great new government power, for your own safety. LOL.
What is the difference? Oh, the pressure of a novelty (head bowed, finger tips to temples).
* It sought to structure an association of sovereign states.
* It did not provide for the establishment of a religion, as did many of the states, and three years into its existence flatly prohibited a religious establishment.
* It provided for the cessation of the slave trade.
* It assumed the debts entered into by the old confederation which had been incurred by the states, but which many of them were unwilling to honor.
But the important novelty was the idea that a central government would concern itself primarily with foreign matters and with relations between the states, and that the states would be concerned with domestic affairs.
“Or as Madison described his vision before the convention:”
And, as we know, the debates of the convention altered Madison’s vision to a significant extent. His vision is found in The Federalist Papers.
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