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Why Trump?!? The Politics of Passion: A Lesson from The Federalist Papers
Public Discourse ^ | February 25th, 2016 | Nathan Schlueter

Posted on 02/25/2016 4:27:20 AM PST by spirited irish

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To: Byron_the_Aussie

Lol. The slaves be running from the GOP Plantation! Master aint none to pleased. :)
This is Great!
Go Trump
Nice graphic work by the way. Keep it up.


41 posted on 02/25/2016 5:58:18 AM PST by MotorCityBuck ( Keep the change, you filthy animal! ,)
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To: central_va

The country is not a ship though..

While many of us are trying to fix the leak in the ship others are drilling holes.


42 posted on 02/25/2016 6:01:02 AM PST by cableguymn (We need a redneck in the white house....)
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To: spirited irish

We are losing our country due to illegal immigration. That’s why conservatives are backing Trump.
He’ll win because a lot of non-conservatives are backing him too. Some of them for frivolous reasons, but it’s a democracy after all.
Even those who don’t believe much of anything that Trump says, should be able to believe him on the matter of illegal immigration.
That’s the core issue. We’re being overrun and if we don’t fix that we don’t have America.


43 posted on 02/25/2016 6:13:41 AM PST by Buttons12
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To: spirited irish
True statesmen seek to harness passion for the sake of truth, whereas demagogues feed the passions for their own self-aggrandizement. The difficulties of statesmanship and dangers of demagoguery are compounded in an emotivist culture like our own, where every evaluative statement begins with "I feel."Increasingly it is "passionate intensity"rather than reason that dominates our public discourse.

..a powerfully written article...

44 posted on 02/25/2016 6:19:53 AM PST by WalterSkinner ( In Memory of My Father--WWII Vet and Patriot 1926-2007)
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To: spirited irish
The author fails to cite the relevant paper that predicts the rise of Donald Trump.

You should read Madison in Federalist #46 for the expectation of states being the dominant power:


Many considerations, besides those suggested on a former occasion, seem to place it beyond doubt that the first and most natural attachment of the people will be to the governments of their respective States. Into the administration of these a greater number of individuals will expect to rise. From the gift of these a greater number of offices and emoluments will flow.
I don't think is the case anymore. Federal handouts have made people more beholden to the federal government. In fact, liberals are at war with state governments. Take Gay Marriage as an example. They pit one state against another, taking an advantageous result in one state to the federal level to force it upon the rest.


If, therefore, as has been elsewhere remarked, the people should in future become more partial to the federal than to the State governments, the change can only result from such manifest and irresistible proofs of a better administration, as will overcome all their antecedent propensities. And in that case, the people ought not surely to be precluded from giving most of their confidence where they may discover it to be most due; but even in that case the State governments could have little to apprehend, because it is only within a certain sphere that the federal power can, in the nature of things, be advantageously administered.
People have become more partial to the federal government, but not because of better administration. They're being bought by taxpayer monies approved by a Congress that no longer feels beholden to their respective states. The states have much to fear, because of federal encroachment of federal power.


It has been already proved that the members of the federal will be more dependent on the members of the State governments, than the latter will be on the former. It has appeared also, that the prepossessions of the people, on whom both will depend, will be more on the side of the State governments, than of the federal government. So far as the disposition of each towards the other may be influenced by these causes, the State governments must clearly have the advantage. But in a distinct and very important point of view, the advantage will lie on the same side. The prepossessions, which the members themselves will carry into the federal government, will generally be favorable to the States; whilst it will rarely happen, that the members of the State governments will carry into the public councils a bias in favor of the general government. A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress, than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States.
The 17th amendment has upended this assumption. The roles have been reversed.


And if they do not sufficiently enlarge their policy to embrace the collective welfare of their particular State, how can it be imagined that they will make the aggregate prosperity of the Union, and the dignity and respectability of its government, the objects of their affections and consultations?

Because of the 17th amendment and the need for raising campaign funds, Senators are now more interested in the "collective welfare of their particular" party, not their state, because it is the party that drives much of their campaign financing. All of the liberal agenda in Washington was driven by party and national special interest, not state issues. States are pawns, a means to a national agenda end.


Were it admitted, however, that the Federal government may feel an equal disposition with the State governments to extend its power beyond the due limits, the latter would still have the advantage in the means of defeating such encroachments. If an act of a particular State, though unfriendly to the national government, be generally popular in that State and should not too grossly violate the oaths of the State officers, it is executed immediately and, of course, by means on the spot and depending on the State alone. The opposition of the federal government, or the interposition of federal officers, would but inflame the zeal of all parties on the side of the State, and the evil could not be prevented or repaired, if at all, without the employment of means which must always be resorted to with reluctance and difficulty.

We saw this play out in Arizona over their immigration policy. Holder sued Arizona to prevent them from enforcing state immigration laws that the federal laws already permitted them to do. We saw it again in Nevada with the BLM trying to shut down private cattle grazing, and later in Oregon. They were successful in California closing down a 100 year old oyster farm on the Point Reyes National Seashore.

We saw the call for nationalizing local policing after the Ferguson and Baltimore riots.


On the other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter.

We saw this play out with the federal government shutdown and retaliation of closing national parks in all the states. The militarization of civil police are becoming much more intimidating to the average citizen of a state who is considering civil unrest.

The federal government secretly resettled wave after wave of foreign children in the states, many bringing diseases that one eradicated decades ago. Now states are being threatened to accept Syrian "refugees" who are wreaking havoc across Europe.

Recently, Mitch McConnell's "embarrassments created by legislative devices," such as those regarding Senate votes regarding treaty powers and confirmation votes, have angered many. The actions of John Boehner's retaliations were not far behind.


But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole.

This is exactly what the Article V movement is trying to accomplish. Rally the states around the idea of taking back control of the federal government through exercising their Article V power to propose the amendments of change that Congress is unwilling to.


But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less numerous part. The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in speculation absolutely chimerical. But what would be the contest in the case we are supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the side of the latter.

We would have to see if this plays out. Would the whole of the people align with the states in support of an Article V convention, or would they align with the Congress and the President to maintain the status quo? There's the rub.


The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism.

This reads like a Nostradamus prophecy. It is exactly what has happened over the last decade, most recently accelerated.

This is why Trump is so popular.

-PJ

45 posted on 02/25/2016 6:32:41 AM PST by Political Junkie Too (If you are the Posterity of We the People, then you are a Natural Born Citizen.)
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To: spirited irish

How many different ways can they write articles that all say:

You are a stupid stupidhead for fighting our cheap labor dreams you pathetic stupid American!


46 posted on 02/25/2016 6:32:45 AM PST by The Toll
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To: CondorFlight
Trump is the revolt against the elites. We are having the French Revolution without the guillotine.

..The French Revolution is not a good template to use. It was a bloodbath that eventually gave France a dictator: Napoleon...

47 posted on 02/25/2016 6:36:33 AM PST by WalterSkinner ( In Memory of My Father--WWII Vet and Patriot 1926-2007)
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To: WalterSkinner

Keeping in mind that history repeats itself, the first time in earnest but the second time in jest, and that we are in the jest phase, the French Revolution and the resort to a Napoleon is indeed the template.


48 posted on 02/25/2016 6:44:14 AM PST by jjotto ("Ya could look it up!")
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To: spirited irish

“Yet Trump continues to be the favorite candidate of evangelical voters. “

It’s not because of religion. They think he’s the one who can best straighten out our government.


49 posted on 02/25/2016 7:17:40 AM PST by cymbeline
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To: spirited irish
Meanwhile at home we witness firsthand the unraveling of social and familial bonds, an anemic economy, an unsustainable welfare state, and a class of political and economic elites that seem either incapable of or unwilling to address our deepest problems. Perhaps worst of all, our hard-won political victories seem to have done nothing to slow the decline.

When you start with an incorrect premise, you cannot fix the problem. The political and economic elites are not only unwilling to address the problems, they are the sopurce of them. Even worse, they raise our taxes in order to finance the problems.

The citizenry are not as stupid as the elites seem to believe and we are unwilling to go gently into that good night. We are also aware that everyone in the system is responsible to some degree for this situation, which is why we need a different direction.

Time for the nuclear option.

Time to unleash The Donald.

Enjoy it Washington and Wall Street, you have earned this.
50 posted on 02/25/2016 7:23:12 AM PST by yuleeyahoo ( Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him. - Groucho Marx)
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To: Theo

“It’s not a ‘circular firing squad.’ It’s a firing squad against the pro-eminent domain, pro-Planned Parenthood, pro-touchback amnesty, pro-ethanol, pro-adultery, pro-slander RINO....”

Congress. Put the blame where blame is due.

We the People gave them FULL control of D.C. and not a DAMN thing was done to slow-down, let alone reverse, the course Leftward. We gave them control of Congress and a mandate. STILL nothing. In fact, they LIED to our FACES, voting 180 from their promises not 48hrs. (I might be a few hours +/-) after the election.

NONE of the items you listed were given more than lip-service. Plenty in the field to blame, but Donald hasn’t been in office (yet) for your (misplaced) animosity and disdain.


51 posted on 02/25/2016 8:21:36 AM PST by i_robot73 ("A man chooses. A slave obeys." - Andrew Ryan)
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To: i_robot73

One candidate has a long record of standing for us and standing against the Washington Cartel. That man has my vote.


52 posted on 02/25/2016 8:30:08 AM PST by Theo (Trump = French Revolution. Cruz = American Revolution. Choose wisely.)
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To: Political Junkie Too

“This is exactly what the Article V movement is trying to accomplish. Rally the states around the idea of taking back control of the federal government through exercising their Article V power to propose the amendments of change that Congress is unwilling to.”

...IMO, which does nothing to re-start the current process by the ‘true’ enablers: the Courts.

It doesn’t throw out LIBRARIES of ‘law’, rules/regs, precedent or the like. It doesn’t stop, let alone restore the bastardization the Constitution and the clear, plain reading of the English therein. It doesn’t ‘clear the benches’ and ensures that judges will be re-seated that ONLY read/understand/follow the Constitution?

Great idea, but I haven’t seen any law made SIMPLER to understand and follow by adding *more* legalize.


53 posted on 02/25/2016 8:44:21 AM PST by i_robot73 ("A man chooses. A slave obeys." - Andrew Ryan)
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To: Theo

As is your prerogative. Railing against is dandy but, for me, ‘standing against’ != ‘getting it DONE’. Though, I wouldn’t call TPP & visa increases ‘for us’, let alone in the best interests of We the People...C’est la vie.


54 posted on 02/25/2016 8:49:11 AM PST by i_robot73 ("A man chooses. A slave obeys." - Andrew Ryan)
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To: spirited irish

What a long winded article that completely misses the mark.

There is no doubt Trump has hit an emotional chord, but to try to present his support as simply a bunch of hot heads is silly. This was the line folks fed regarding him last summer and when calmer heads prevailed he would disappear... Yet he hasn’t, because his support is not just some misdirected anger by a few hotheads.

The idea the backers of Trump are impatient or lacking pragmatism is equally silly.

It is patience and pragmatism that had lead this nation to where Trump is not the #1 choice of most evangelicals and most other demographics in the Republican Party as well. Decades of patience as both parties sold their nation out... Patience as a Bush Jr won the presidency on the back of Evangelicals and engaged in domestic and foreign policies that hardly held up to claims.

As to lack of Pragmatism, this is what is at the heart of why Trump is leading. Pragmatic people who have realized both parties have been selling out this nation for decades why they present the smoke and mirrors every 4 years that one side or the other will do anything majorly structurally different. They have come to the pragmatic conclusion that we have to ale out nation back from the kingmakers and stalwarts because if we don’t do that nothing else matters.

That’s why Trump is having the success he is, and to try to spin his support as just hot heads and small thinkers is insulting and repugnant.

America must come first all else is after that.. Even among evangelicals. For it matter if Sharia come and slaughters them here because leftists want to import it because of misplaced “compassion” or because conservative want to import cheap labor??? The end game is the same.


55 posted on 02/25/2016 9:04:26 AM PST by HamiltonJay
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