Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Antifederalists Were Right
Ludwig von Mises Institute ^ | September 27, 2006 | Gary Galles

Posted on 05/22/2010 3:40:40 AM PDT by RogerFGay

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-75 next last
To: EBH

Always remember - People may die, but ideas live for ever. The philosophies from the Ancient Greeks are still with us and the Marxist(Liberals) prove daily their ideas are not new, but they progressively push their agenda in order to get those old ideas in place.

Study James Madison - he is the one who read and researched the older philophies of John Locke and others. Study John Locke’s writings on Social Contract. My students are taught about all of these men and their ideas.

Most of all, the time has come for the Conservatives to be as “dogmatic” as the Marxist. The question is - “Do we Conservatives believe our ideas and agenda are greater than that of the Marxist”? Are Conservatives willing to do whatever has to be done to win in the end?


21 posted on 05/22/2010 4:49:29 AM PDT by Paige ("All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," Edmund Burke)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: central_va

” restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to an electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. “

While it’s virtually, and morally, impossible to ‘legislate common sense’, it would be possible to mitigate the power of the fools by returning, somehow, (and exactly ‘how’, I must leave to those smarter than I..) to the system which limits, if not eliminates, the ability of the populace to vote largesse for itself from the public coffers....


22 posted on 05/22/2010 4:54:56 AM PDT by Uncle Ike (Rope is cheap, and there are lots of trees...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: Congressman Billybob
Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Convention (Yates, 2008

Secret proceedings and debates of the convention assembled at Philadelphia, in the year 1787, for the purpose of forming the Constitution of the United States of America (United States. Constitutional Convention)
23 posted on 05/22/2010 4:55:44 AM PDT by RogerFGay
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: Thom Pain
If I am not mistaken, these eyes and ears are the only profession actually given specific protection by the Constitution.

I see freedom of the press as protecting a right to publish and not some profession or industry.

24 posted on 05/22/2010 5:13:44 AM PDT by decimon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: RogerFGay
Neither of those are the one for which I wrote the Introduction. My edition was published in 1988 by the Linn-Henley Research Library of Birmingham, Ala. A few copies are available in both hard cover and paperback.

John

25 posted on 05/22/2010 5:34:32 AM PDT by Congressman Billybob (www.TheseAretheTimes.us)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: Congressman Billybob
One must question whether our present state is due to flaws in the Constitution, or the result of the “200 Year Rule”, whereby a republican-based government is successful for about 200 years, plus/minus, until the corruption of the citizen class brings about its demise. If the United States is finally falling as a result of the 200 Year Rule (and the issue is still in doubt, although prospects do not look good), blaming the Federalists for the eventual failure is not realistic. It is the populace that made the Obamanation President, not the dead hand of Madison, Hamilton, Jay or anyone at the Philadelphia Convention.

And extolling the virtues of the Anti-federalist ideas ignores the simple fact that they came up with absolutely nothing. They never produced a document, an “Anti-federalist Constitution”, either before, during, or after the adoption of the Constitution. What prevented them from holding their own Constitutional convention, even after the Constitution actually went into effect and proposing their own, better document?

I'm reminded of Churchill's statement: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

So it is with the Constitution: the worst organizational document, except for all the others proposed. The only other document that was ever come up with was the Articles of Confederation, and its flaws were what led to the Constitution.

In the end there are two types of Anti-federalists:

1) those that have come up with something better,

2) the critics, whiners and complainers.

So far there are no Anti-federalists who qualify for 1).

Perhaps it is long past time for Anti-federalists to actually come up with a document.

26 posted on 05/22/2010 5:46:28 AM PDT by Cheburashka (Stephen Decatur: you want barrels of gunpowder as tribute, you must expect cannonballs with it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: Jacquerie

“The anti-federalists also got a lot wrong.”

Exactly!! The US Constitution is a brilliant document. It works well....when followed.


27 posted on 05/22/2010 5:53:43 AM PDT by SumProVita (Cogito, ergo...Sum Pro Vita. (Modified Decartes))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Uncle Ike

Our decay is spiritual and moral. This is the root of our problems.


28 posted on 05/22/2010 5:56:22 AM PDT by SumProVita (Cogito, ergo...Sum Pro Vita. (Modified Decartes))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: central_va
and the consequence was, that their governments were changed from that of free governments to those of the most tyrannical that ever existed in the world.

Ya see, that's the kind of thinkin' ya get when people actually study real history, instead of "social studies"! Lucky the libs are taking care of that! (I don't really need the /s tag, do I?)

29 posted on 05/22/2010 6:01:24 AM PDT by maryz
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Rapscallion

In fact, although they didn’t explicitly mention the possibility that you site, the anti-Federalists DID see the flaw.


30 posted on 05/22/2010 6:13:25 AM PDT by samtheman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Rapscallion

All of the problems originated long before Obama. He is nothing more than a symptom of it...a figurehead.


31 posted on 05/22/2010 6:19:25 AM PDT by thecabal (Destroy Progressivism)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Congressman Billybob
Are Americans Paying Taxes to Organized Crime Syndicates?
32 posted on 05/22/2010 6:19:49 AM PDT by RogerFGay
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: RogerFGay

bttt


33 posted on 05/22/2010 6:30:42 AM PDT by kalee (The offences we give, we write in the dust; Those we take, we engrave in marble. J Huett 1658)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Thom Pain

I agree with your post, except for one part. I don’t think we would be 50 independent countries. I think we would be 13 colonies reconquered by Britain.


34 posted on 05/22/2010 7:15:28 AM PDT by Daveinyork
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: RogerFGay; Congressman Billybob
The problem of our having an electorate which allows tyranny because it is capable of electing "liberal" Democrats in general and Barak Obama in particular is, IMHO, the problem of transcending the emotional appeals of Sophists. It should be recalled that the answer to an opponent who claims superior wisdom is not to get into a "he said, she said" contest with them but to adopt the stance of the philosopher. The philosopher does not claim superior wisdom, but claims only to love wisdom. That constitutes a challenge to the sophist to stick to facts and logic.

It is common, even on FR, for people to accept the premise that Fox News Channel is conservative and that other journalism is "objective." A recent example, and my response, follows:

Personally I’m sick of conservatives who call democrats cowards for refusing to go on FOX
Democrats are cowards for refusing to go on Fox. They would be glad to, if they had facts and logic rather than showmanship behind their snake oil, but they don't - so they stay away from the exposure. The trouble with going on Fox is that you will be asked the second question. If you have the facts and logic to back up your case, that's no problem. Conservatives do have facts and logic behind their cases; it is their defining characteristic.
and then turn around and call republicans stupid for going on any of the other networks.
Journalism as we know it did not exist until the era of the Civil War. Prior to that, newspapers were fractiously independent of each other, and didn't accept claims that competing newspapers' reporters were objective. In fact, the newspapers of the pre-Civil War era were more like National Review than like The New York Times. Most were weeklies, and some had no deadline at all and just went to press when the printer decided he was ready. More than modern "hard news," they were about the opinions of their printers. Presses of that ilk naturally were ordinarily associated with political parties. The whole paper was what we'd now think of as an editorial page - and the printers couldn't and didn't try to make that a secret. That was the milieu when the First Amendment was written and ratified.
What changed that?

The telegraph. The telegraph, and the Associated Press. Suddenly the printer had available to him a font of news stories to which his readership could not be privy before he printed them. A wonderful thing for the printer of a paper! But, at a price. It was expensive in money, and the printer needed to get value out of his AP newswire. How to do that, when the printer didn't employ, didn't even know, the reporters who produced the cornucopia of newswire stories? How to vouch for the veracity of the stories? Simple - you simply launch a propaganda campaign to the effect that all reporters are objective!

Here's a news flash for you: journalists actually aren't objective! How do I know? Well, you can do a lot of ponderous research, such as (A Measure of Media Bias (research shows Drudge/Fox centrist, NYT far liberal) ), to prove it - but you need not expect that journalists will do anything but stonewall the results, no matter how thorough the research might be. Far simpler to just be direct - journalists are not objective because they say that they are objective. Simple - the only way anyone can even attempt to be objective is to start your analysis with an up-front declaration of your own interest in the question you are analyzing. If you are arguing that more roads should be built, you declare up front if your father-in-law would be the one to build them, and you would even declare your ownership of a car which would be more useful if there were more roads. Declaring your own objectivity is the precise opposite of that, so you should take it for granted that journalists who never declare anything but their own "objecitivity" are not merely not objective, they are heavily biased.

What is the inherent bias of journalism? Simple again - journalists are biased in favor of the notion that journalists are heroes. In Mark Steyn's expression, they are cardboard heroes - great at attacking "dastardly villains" such as bankers who actually pose no threat, but impotent and cowardly in the presence of actual villains such as ruthless terrorists who'll behead you for crossing them. Cowards who boast that "you never argue with someone who buys ink by the carload" - and then pick on some poor defenseless schlub precisely because he can't effectively argue back, and wouldn't hurt a fly anyway.

How does that bias of journalism play into politics? Simple again - "liberal" politicians are those who cooperate with journalists and essentially exist in symbiosis with them. You can tell that by the way journalists give them positive labels. Americans favored liberalism - which was a word for the advocacy of liberty - so journalists began to call politicians in symbiosis with them "liberals." The meaning of the word "liberal" was inverted in the 1920s, according to Saffire's New Political Dictionary. Journalists also, alternatively, call politicians in symbiosis with them "progressives." What American doesn't favor progress? And as to the label applied to "liberals'" opponents, well, I'll believe that "conservative" is intended as a positive label as soon as you convince me that marketers don't want to label their products New!

Ann Coulter has pointed out that if she goes on a book tour and is put on TV, journalists always "balance" her with one (usually more than one) "liberal" commentator to argue with her. in addition to the "objective journalist" him/herself, who will always attack as well (the usual result is that Ann has to really fight to get a word in edgewise - and as quick-tongued as she is, that's saying something). If a "liberal" goes on a book tour, when have you ever seen him/her "balanced" by a conservative? When have you ever seen him/her attacked by the "objective" journalist?

In reality "objective" journalists are sophists - and, in the original sense of the term, conservative politicians and analysts are philosophers.

Its hypocritical and pathetic.
Not only is there no hypocrisy involved in advocating that conservative politicians go on Fox but keep the "objective" journalist at arm's length, it is IMHO actually pathetic to think that they are obligated to do otherwise.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2518098/posts
A constitutional revival, IMHO, must begin with the recognition - first by the courts, and then by the public - that the government is not a safe repository for the judgement of what is, and what is not, "objectivity." With all that that implies for the authority of "Campaign Finance Reform" and the "Federal Communication Commission."

35 posted on 05/22/2010 7:28:58 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion ( DRAFT PALIN)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: conservatism_IS_compassion
Let me support your thesis with my favorite quote from the early American newspapers. It's from the Aurora Advertiser:

“If ever a man debauched a nation, George Washington debauched the United States.” That’s not journalism. That's opinion, boldly stated. And that's what the early American press largely deal it.

It was as raucous as the supermarket tabloids today. All the surviving early newspapers are available in the Madison Building, across the street from the Jefferson Building, main building of the Library of Congress.

John / Billybob / Ben

36 posted on 05/22/2010 7:38:10 AM PDT by Congressman Billybob (www.TheseAretheTimes.us)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies]

To: Daveinyork

You’re probably right. I am guilty of optimism in my weaker moments. Can’t wait for November so I can assess just how much trouble we are in.


37 posted on 05/22/2010 10:16:23 AM PDT by Thom Pain (Defending the Constitution is CENTRIST; not RIGHT WING! Don't be labeled!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies]

To: RogerFGay
Ping! The thread has been posted.

Earlier threads:

FReeper Book Club: The Debate over the Constitution
5 Oct 1787, Centinel #1
6 Oct 1787, James Wilson’s Speech at the State House
8 Oct 1787, Federal Farmer #1
9 Oct 1787, Federal Farmer #2
18 Oct 1787, Brutus #1
22 Oct 1787, John DeWitt #1
27 Oct 1787, John DeWitt #2
27 Oct 1787, Federalist #1
31 Oct 1787, Federalist #2
3 Nov 1787, Federalist #3
5 Nov 1787, John DeWitt #3
7 Nov 1787, Federalist #4
10 Nov 1787, Federalist #5
14 Nov 1787, Federalist #6
15 Nov 1787, Federalist #7
20 Nov 1787, Federalist #8
21 Nov 1787, Federalist #9
23 Nov 1787, Federalist #10
24 Nov 1787, Federalist #11
27 Nov 1787, Federalist #12
27 Nov 1787, Cato #5
28 Nov 1787, Federalist #13
29 Nov 1787, Brutus #4
30 Nov 1787, Federalist #14
1 Dec 1787, Federalist #15
4 Dec 1787, Federalist #16
5 Dec 1787, Federalist #17
7 Dec 1787, Federalist #18
8 Dec 1787, Federalist #19
11 Dec 1787, Federalist #20
12 Dec 1787, Federalist #21

38 posted on 05/22/2010 10:45:36 AM PDT by Publius (Unless the Constitution is followed, it is simply a piece of paper.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Huck

Over here!


39 posted on 05/22/2010 2:32:03 PM PDT by carton253 (Ask me about Throw Away the Scabbard - a Civil War alternate history.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: central_va; Publius

Publius has a biweekly thread on the Federalist papers.


40 posted on 05/22/2010 5:28:16 PM PDT by TASMANIANRED (Liberals are educated above their level of intelligence.. Thanks Sr. Angelica)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-75 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson