Posted on 05/30/2012 1:03:10 AM PDT by CharlesThe Hammer
Advocating the adoption of the new Constitution drafted in Philadelphia, the authors of “The Federalist Papers” mocked the “imbecility” of the weak central government created by the Articles of Confederation.
Nearly 225 years later, critics across the spectrum call the American political system dysfunctional, even pathological. What they don’t mention, though, is the role of the Constitution itself in generating the pathology.
(Excerpt) Read more at campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com ...
While we are zapping ammendments, can we get rid of the 16th(income tax) too?
The problem is that We The People want our government to provide “stuff” that cannot be efficiently provided using the Constitution as originally written.
So we have the choice of ignoring what the people want (which won’t stand in a democratic system), ignoring what the Constitution says, or changing the Constitution so it can efficiently provide what the people want.
Unfortunately we have gone with option B. Which has no logical stopping point. If you ignore provisions A thru E of the Constitution, why strictly enforce provisions F thru L?
The Founders, if alive today (besides being totally appalled at what our society has become) would never write the Constitution they did in the 1780s. They tried to produce a system of government adapted to their society. Today’s society is so different it is ludicrous to try to run it the way they did. Working today they would produce a vastly different system.
Personally, I think the answer is federalism. Return the federal government to its original limited role. If the People want a welfare state, let it be provided at the State level. Which actually would not violate the original Constitution, which put remarkably few restrictions on what States could do internally.
Far from violating it, it was part of the original plan that each state would be a " laboratory of democracy"
My Confederate ancestors would agree with you.
Our Constitution is a gift from noble, moral and prescient men. They were romantic idealists believing in the transcendent power of a benevolent God and willingness of humans to seek his approval.
The light of that belief is flickering as is our ability to draw order from our founding documents.
It is no coincidence that as the light of faith and belief in our creator diminishes, chaos emerges. No amount of thoughtful laws and governmental guidance can counter the loss of divine guidance.
If God’s law doesn’t bind us, Man’s law certainly won’t.
If we can ignore the Ten Commandments, we can certainly ignore the Bill of Rights.
In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore and the democrats took the shroud off a nasty secret. They showed the country that our election system is essentially operated on the Honor System" and that anyone who was willing to destroy the nation's faith and confidence in the honor and fairness of our elections could use dishonesty, guile and rule bending to mount an attempt to steal the election.
Without a care for the well being of the nation they displayed for all to see that the honor and integrity of the system was only as strong as the honor and integrity of the political powers engaged in the electoral process. Rules and laws do not make the dishonest honest or the dishonorable honorable.
In the last three years Barack Obama has displayed for us that the same truths apply to the US Constitution: its strength is derived from the honor, reverence and respect accorded to it by citizen and politician. Obama has shown us that he holds the Constitution in contempt, not reverence, and has chosen to violate it many times over.
So we see that the strength and honor of the nation itself is only a reflection of the strength and honor of its citizens and leaders.
Corrupt, dishonorable leadership, supported or enabled by a corrupt, greedy citizenry has brought down the greatest civilizations in history from ancient Egypt to Rome to Germany in the last century. It is sad to watch it happening to the USA right before our eyes.
It is also relevant that in the 1850s the later secessionists demanded significant expansion of federal power in order to protect slavery against opposition by northern states based on their States' Rights.
A corrupt, dishonorable government can only be elected by a corrupt, dishonorable citizenry. And the latter deserve the former.
However, incorrupt, honorable people are neither bound by nor subjects of corrupt, dishonorable governments. That was the essence of our Declaration of Independence, and it holds true today.
the new NYC effete meme is “radical individualism”
should be replaced by “conservative collectivism” with the
progressives “reclaiming” true American history.
There was a nutjob on NPR advocating these new communist meme as a means of supplanting the tea party and bypassing fox news. (as if msnbc or cnn are anything other than communist propaganda)
The NYT wants to make voting meaningless.
They failed with every vote counting since every vote was counted.
They failed with stop the fraud since voter fraud is being attacked.
this is machiavelian to get the tyrany they desire.
(In states where the judges were voted out of office, their progressive/leftist/communist goals were expunged from the law. They hated that. They need tyrany)
Academic simpletons like Levinson will always get a platform in the NY Times to grieve about how “gridlock” is slowing the Democrats from turning America into a communist welfare state. Because of the stinking Constitution, America will never be as great as France or Spain, etc.
Our founders were complete morons in some aspects:
1. They did not forsee what drooling idiots the political class wouldbecome.
2. Knowing 1, they would have published a “Constitution of examples” alongside the constitution that would cite examples of their intent. Like for instance: “The Federal government cannot take away people’s guns or other weapons not because billy bob wants to hunt, but to protect billybob if the local government wants to take away his gun and then round up all of billy bob’s family for extermination because everyone in the state voted an idiot in for govenor” or “The reason we give slaves 3/5 a count in census is to prevent any state that has slavery from overwhelming the House of Represenatives and then passing an amendment to make legal in all the states, not because we actually think that a slave is 3/5ths of a person dag nabbit”
3. They overestimated how good we as a people would be in the future and this led them not to codify some g-ddamed common sense into the constitution because at the time it was “common sense” like a amendment limiting the number of pages and words per page for bills etc. They didn’t forsee all the weasely crap evil people would do to get around the constitution.
4. They didn’t realize how powerful the supreme court would be.
5. They didn’t expect the government to declare war on vague concepts like poverty and drugs which led to all sorts of rights abuses.
I could go on. I think we need a new consitition, but this time one that reinforces the good things about the consitition while limiting goverment EVEN MORE!
See Ann Barnhardt.
What we need is a third branch of Congress whose sole purpose is to repeal laws and regulations. Instead of ranking members by seniority, this branch would rank them by the number of of repeals they sponsored. Also, their pay would be determined by the number of repeals...
In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore and the democrats took the shroud off a nasty secret. They showed the country that our election system is essentially operated on the Honor System” and that anyone who was willing to destroy the nation’s faith and confidence in the honor and fairness of our elections could use dishonesty, guile and rule bending to mount an attempt to steal the election.
Let me reinforce this by pointing to the dishonored Nixon. When presented with incontrovertable proof that the Democrats stole the election from Nixon and gave it to Kennedy by manufacturing votes in Chicago ... Nixon judged that contesting the election would so polarize the nation that it would be better for the country for him to accept the fraud.
History will judge whether he was correct.
That’s better than pretending the constitution would actually allow their “progressive” vision.
I think it was Fritz Hollings (maybe it was Byrd), he was for McPain-Feingold but realized it was against the first amendment and voted no (and proposed an amendment allowing the violation of free speech).
Good point.
After being dragged through the filth, corruption and open law breaking of the Clinton and Obama years the trangressions of Nixon become almost miniscule. The way Clinton and Obama conducted themselves in office make it hard to recall wht people were so upset with Nixon.
But of course, Nixon was a Republican and his era was a time when there was still some expectation that a president would avoid even so much as the appearance of wrongdoing in office.
Unlike Clinton, Nixon revered the office of the presidency and held it in highest regard. He had the class to leave office quietly without putting the country through the trauma of an impeachment trial.
And unlike Obama, Nixon was an American through and through, in mind, in spirit, and in action. He vigorously fought America's enemies - he did not welcome communists, socialists into the White House and give them medals.
I do believe that Nixon will fare well with unbiased historians as time passes.
I better never get a fatal illness, for I would be obliged to visit them and share my opinion.
Directly.
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