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Posted on 04/04/2002 10:13:48 AM PST by B. A. Conservative
IMHO that is a key issue in determining wheather everything is working like it should according to the Constitution.
Historically, the common meaning of the term "regulate" as used in the 18th century was "to make regular", or "generally to keep in good working order". This is the only definition that makes the phrase "a well regulated militia" found in the Second Amendment sensical.
That meaning has been supplanted with the more recent definition, "to control or exercise authority over" with respect to Article 1 Section 8, and has been used to give Congress a virtual blank check under the Commerce Clause.
By way of analogy, imagine your community having a contractural agreement with the power company, stipulating that they are required to, and will be granted whatever authority they need to insure that the power is regulated - meaning kept within the prescribed limits of voltage and phasing so that everything works like it ought to. It does not mean that the power company can come into your home, and dictate what appliances you may or may not own, when you may use them, or what you may use them for.
I admit I am not real well-versed in the various intramural conservative groupings(e.g., paleo, neo-con, etc). I don't read National Review, and I don't make a habit of paying attention to William Kristol or Podhertz, if that means anything to you. If there is an Op-Ed page most likely to agree with me, it is probably the Wall Street Journal, though I don't read it (or any other daily paper) much anymore.
Top 3 political thinkers? I have never thought about it that way. I am not sure if by thinkers you mean theoreticians, or if you would also include practioners. Theory and practice being different animals, the lists would probably be different. Just throwing it all together, I admire much of James Madison's work. I admire much of Abraham Lincoln's ideas. John Adams did a lot of great work. I admire some of Martin Luther King Jr.'s work, too. None of them was perfect, or even close to it. But they all made contributions which I admire. As for people now living, I like Justice Scalia. And the columnist Mark Steyn is very good.
The government was created to protect our rights, and we have general agreement as to what those rights are.
The government has cease to do perform that roll. However, with the Information Age and the new freedom of movement, is it not fair to say that the 'government' as the forefathers envisioned as its purpose is no longer relevant?
While I admire the last generation of Conservatives who made America, the shining city on a hill, is it really important to preserving our way of life?
There are several remedies for this, any time the people are so inclined.
True enough, but the fact that it needs to be remedied indicates there is something fundamentally wrong with the way the system is working.
That's it. That's the basis for the Constitution. We could have called ourselves the "Mutual Protection Society" instad of the "United" states, but the states considered themsleves sovereign, they insisted on keeping the "s" at the end of "State" for a reason.
The founders argued for YEARS to give us a LIMITED federal government with strictly separated and enumerated powers. EVERYTHING else remained in the hands of the states. Everything.
The federal government could not establish a NATIONAL religion, but the states certainly could establish one for themselves. The vast majority of states had specific religious requirements for their own elected officials.
Even Madison and Hamilton argued that we didn't need a Bill of Rights, both arguing that unless a right to control something had been DELEGATED to the federal government, it was beyond their reach.
And the founders also went out of their way to eliminate the word "perpetual" from the "Constitution". That word was used 5 times in the articles, yet nothing to indicate a permanent relationship was included. Considering that the young country had seceded from Britain and now was seceding from the Articles, it was ludicrous to perpetuate the myth of permanence. Madison just considered this new government another "experiment".
Simple - protection form common enemies - and separate state governments to continue. Consider Article I, section 4"
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.Meet at least once a year, and then - starting in DECEMBER! A whole MONTH to conduct all the necessary business for the federal government. < /sarcasm >
The fixes are built-in. No problem. Except for the millions of people. THAT'S the problem.
We welcome all. Well, Peter Jennings and Ashley Banfield, of course, they need to go back to Flin Flon wit' a quickness. Shania can stay, because she's a GOOD Canadian.
We are the freest, healthiest, most prosperous, secure and elegantly innovative society in World History. Today. Us. Sorry for the uplifiting news.
Do we pay too much to government? Yes. Have we seen in the last 50 years, an increasingly large and onerous central government, governing by regulation, executive fiat and judicial misconduct? Yes. Should we be concerned with the erosion our rights of property, and our 10th Amendment guarantee of State primacy? Yes. Do we need to stem that tide and turn it around? Yes.
It happened politically, the liberals did it incrementally, and that's how we need to reverse it. Fell swoops don't cut it in America, we need to chip away.
Nonetheless, we should thank God each and every day that we are blessed by the serendipity of fate to be born in the United States of America, and to be living large here in the year 2002. It's never been better, across a society, ever. There were a lot of young men who died face down in some god-forsaken swamp to provide this incredible platform of freedom, health and prosperity for us. It doesn't hurt to take a big view sometimes and be thankful.
Nah, she's rolling along like a sweet ride.
It still doesn't sit right with me. By your reasoning, it's perfectly rational that the politicians and judges play word games and engage in creative semantics with regard to the constitution, and it is the responsibility of the electorate to be constantly amending the Constitution and re-wording it to counter that.
Your assertions that everything is as it should be and there is no reason to consider anything "broken", if logically extended, culminates in a determination that until there are no longer enough firearms in the hands of private citizens to take back the government by force, everything is hunky-dory.
I'm not sure I would call it rational, but I would call it predictable, and I believe this behavior was predictable (and practiced) by the Framers themselves, and that they provided the people themselves with ample powers (and checks) to deal with it as they see fit.
and it is the responsibility of the electorate to be constantly amending the Constitution and re-wording it to counter that.
Amending the Constitution is one way to do it. But there are other ways. Ultimately, though, it does take the will of the people, in some form, to make things happen.
Your assertions that everything is as it should be and there is no reason to consider anything "broken",
To say that the system is in good working condition is not the same as saying everything is "as it should be." I don't even pretend to know how things "should" be. But I can see that the system is in working condition.
if logically extended, culminates in a determination that until there are no longer enough firearms in the hands of private citizens to take back the government by force, everything is hunky-dory.
It hasn't been taken away from us. This is it.
That seems to be a rather odd thing to see posted on a forum dedicated to political activism.
The nation's future, the kids, are dumbed down, immoral degenerates who can't even read, much less, appreciate their freedom. Television shows and movies appeal to the lowest common denominator. The institution of marriage and churches have gone down the tubes. I could list more, but what the heck?
So are we broken? Naw, we are just gearing up for the final slide into obscurity and irrelevance.
Yes, I am afraid that when this nation finally hits bottom, it will be something that the world has not seen for a long, long time.
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Last, the electorate was split nationally urban vs rural. No way to separate them out. and it's just a dumb idea.
THE REVOLUTION WAS
There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.
There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, "Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don't watch out." These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had forgotten their Aristotle. More than 2,000 years ago he wrote of what can happen within the form, when "one thing takes the place of another, so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about revolution in the state."
Worse outwitted were those who kept trying to make sense of the New Deal from the point of view of all that was implicit in the American scheme, charging it therefore with contradiction, fallacy, economic ignorance, and general incompetence to govern.
But it could not be so embarrassed and all that line was wasted, because, in the first place, it never intended to make that kind of sense, and secondly, it took off from nothing that was implicit in the American scheme. It took off from a revolutionary base. The design was European. Regarded from the point of view of revolutionary technic it made perfect sense. Its meaning was revolutionary and it had no other. For what it meant to do it was from the beginning consistent in principle, resourceful, intelligent, masterly in workmanship, and it made not one mistake.
The test came in the first one hundred days.
No matter how carefully a revolution may have been planned there is bound to be a crucial time. That comes when the actual seizure of power is taking place. In this case certain steps were necessary. They were difficult and daring steps. But more than that, they had to be taken in a certain sequence, with forethought and precision of timing. One out of place might have been fatal. What happened was that one followed another in exactly the right order, not one out of time or out of place.
Having passed this crisis, the New Deal went on from one problem to another, taking them in the proper order, according to revolutionary technic; and if the handling of one was inconsistent with the handling of another, even to the point of nullity, that was blunder in reverse. The effect was to keep people excited about one thing at a time, and divided, while steadily through all the uproar of outrage and confusion a certain end, held constantly in view, was pursued by main intention.
The end held constantly in view was power.
In a revolutionary situation mistakes and failures are not what they seem. They are scaffolding. Error is not repealed. It is compounded by a longer law, by more decrees and regulations, by further extensions of the administrative hand. As deLawd said in The Green Pastures, that when you have passed a miracle you have to pass another one to take care of it, so it was with the New Deal. Every miracle it passed, whether it went right or wrong, had one result. Executive power over the social and economic life of the nation was increased. Draw a curve to represent the rise of executive power and look there for the mistakes. You will not find them. The curve is consistent.
At the end of the first year, in his annual message to the Congress, January 4, 1934, President Roosevelt said: "It is to the eternal credit of the American people that this tremendous readjustment of our national life is being accomplished peacefully."
Peacefully if possible — of course.
But the revolutionary historian will go much further. Writing at some distance in time he will be much less impressed by the fact that it was peacefully accomplished than by the marvelous technic of bringing it to pass not only within the form but within the word, so that people were all the while fixed in the delusion that they were talking about the same things because they were using the same words. Opposite and violently hostile ideas were represented by the same word signs. This was the American people's first experience with dialectic according to Marx and Lenin.
1938
Read the rest of this 1938 article and you will be able to tell me.
Is it broken?
You tell me.
So, let's talk about structure, which I think if done right will help the people of this nation help themselves. I have always wondered why the constitution did not mandate a constitutional convention every 100 years or so. Although the constitution is a living document, I think it needs to be rewritten even if no changes are made just to reflect the fact that language is not static. I know people will make the lost-in-translation argument, but I think the benefits would outweigh the costs. Of course we can not have the representatives to such a congress be directly elected, they would need to be appointed by the governers of each state, or some other indirect method to avoid ending up with a bunch of modern day Senators shredding the constitution.
This periodical rewriting of the constitution would in effect be just like a code rewrite in the software world. I think this meshes well with JohnGault's argument that our form of gov't is not keeping pace with transitions from the industrial age to the information age to bioinformation age, etc. My belief is that these ages will come and go geometrically faster, so gov't should become more dynamic, but always lag a little behind since we value stability and it's always smart to err on the side of caution. It also needs to take into account that the world is growing smaller and smaller without throwing all our hopes and dreams behind the UN, WTO, etc. I also think that such a convention would serve as a national debate, which would get rid of these crazy write-in state amendments that usually get shot down in court if they are any good.
I don't buy the argument that nothing is broken by evidence that we are the most free and prosperous nation in the world. There is always room for improvement even without fixing things that are not broken. I am more inclined to believe what one of my professors said, probably quoted from someone else: "The United States have a terrible system of government, but the rest of the world has even worse."
So it was that a revolution took place within the form. Like the hagfish, the New Deal entered the old form and devoured its meaning from within. The revolutionaries were inside; the defenders were outside. A government that had been supported by the people and so controlled by the people became one that supported the people and so controlled them. Much of it is irreversible. That is true because habits of dependence are much easier to form than to break. Once the government, on ground of public policy, has assumed the responsibility to provide people with buying power when they are in want of it, or when they are unable to provide themselves with enough of it, according to a minimum proclaimed by government, it will never be the same again.
All of this is said by one who believes that people have an absolute right to any form of government they like, even to an American Welfare state, with status in place of freedom, if that is what they want. The first of all objections to the New Deal is neither political nor economic. It is moral.
Revolution by scientific technic is above morality. It makes no distinction between means that are legal and means that are illegal. There was a legal and honest way to bring about a revolution, even to tear up the Constitution, abolish it, or write a new one in its place. Its own words and promises meant as little to the New Deal as its oath to support the Constitution. In a letter to a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, urging a new law he wanted, the President said: "I hope your committee will not permit doubt as to Constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation." Its cruel and cynical suspicion of any motive but its own was a reflection of something it knew about itself. Its voice was the voice of righteousness; its methods therefore were more dishonest than the simple ways of corruption.
"When we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen... and when we see those timbers joined together, and see that they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, allthe tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few... in such a case we find, it impossible not to believe that... all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow was struck." —Abraham Lincoln, deducing from objective evidence the blueprint of a political plot to save the institution of slavery.
Well, not pretending to have all the answers might be odd, but it's pretty sensible to me. I run across a lot of people who have opinions on all sorts of stuff, nevermind that on at least half the subjects they have no expertise, education, or experience. I have made it a personal goal to avoid that particular human flaw--and it is a flaw.
That's not to say I have no opinions on anything. It's just to say that on some things, say, foreign trade agreements, monetary policy, banking regulations, insurance law, Senate ethics, just to name some off the top of my head, I may not know what I am talking about, or I may be wrong. If that's odd, so be it. In fact, I suspect if folks generally limited their opinions to things on which they have some experience, expertise, or education, we'd all be better off. After all, the Constitution was not drafted by rank amateurs. But hey, what do I know?
No. Not yet. But the political, societal and cultural bonds that connect its people are badly frayed.
Its institutions, its various governments, its perspective, its culture, its framework are in disarray, sickly, broken or under attack.
And perhaps the Constitution has not been preserved and/or kept up as it should have been.
The biggest deficiency is in our leadership-not just the governmental leadership. We've always had leaders who were self-serving or craven or incompetent, but we used to have a sprinkling of leaders who held to a higher standard.
But then again it was never easy or perfect. People remember and long for an idyllic time that never was.
In his "Letter of the President of the Federal Convention, Dated September 17, 1787, to the President of Congress, Transmitting the Constitution.," GEORGE WASHINGTON, as President of the Constitutional Convention wrote:
"It is obviously impracticable in the federal government of these states, to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet provide for the interest and safety of all: Individuals entering into society, must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest. The magnitude of the sacrifice must depend as well on situation and circumstance, as on the object to be obtained. It is at all times difficult to draw with precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered, and those which may be reserved; and on the present occasion this difficulty was increased by a difference among the several states as to their situation, extent, habits, and particular interests." (Note: Giving up a share of liberty to preserve the rest is not one for one the same as giving up liberty for security. It's more like cooperation in common.)
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