# Where Did Our Republic Go??



## PoliticalChic (Feb 24, 2012)

1. *re·pub·lic*/ri&#712;p&#601;blik/ Noun:	
A state in which supreme *power is held by the people* and their *elected representatives,* and which has an elected or nominated president...

2. "*Woodrow Wilso*n first articulated what would become American government bureaucracy in a 1887 scholarly paper advocating the study of public administration (Wilson 1887).... Although the United States Constitution has been in existence since the beginning of the Union and states enacted their own constitutions modeled after it, very few municipal charters specifically limited or *delegated authority*." 
Ethics of Bureaucracy

a. "The politics-administration dichotomy is a theory which holds that bureaucrats are *experts who should be left alone *to do their job without political interference.  It derives from the Woodrow Wilson days of the "founding" of public administration,..."
Bureaucracy Theory

Unelected technocrats, experts, and bureaucrats?
b. Ludwig von Mises said: "The worst law is better than* bureaucratic tyranny.*"

3. Former NY Senator James L. Buckley said the following:
"Today, this federal law is 1700 pages more than it was prior to the New Deal.  The reason is the creation of* more and more bureaus and agencies endowed with ever broader responsibilities and discretion in defining the rules that govern our activities and our lives.* And these rules have the full force of law! Congress has increased the number of rules whose infractions are criminalized, waiving the common law requirement that one knows he is breaking the law.  Today, one can be jailed for violating a regulation that one had no reason to know even existed! 

a.	While the officials in these agencies are generally good people, they become focused on their particular portfolio of duties, that, often, they cannot see the consequences on other parts of society. Put this together with human nature, and one can see bullying, and misuse of power, especially when *these individuals are immune to penalty, and supported by free and extensive legal representation: they have sovereign immunity in their positions. *

4. C.S. Lewis identified the result of such great delegation of power and authority to these bureaucrats...
"I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." *The greatest evil *is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, *by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.* Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern."   C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

5. Today, another Progressive President uses bureaucracy to eviscerate our republic:
"Behind every powerful health care mandate under Obamacare is a power-hungry woman named Kathleen Sebelius. As the Health and Human Services Secretary, she has *unprecedented power under Obamacare to control health care decisions, the approval of medical products and the national biomedical research agenda. *The Secretary is not only the key player; she is the only one on the field. *"The Secretary shall" is mentioned more than 1000 times *in the new health care law."
The American Spectator : Obama's Nurse Ratched


When did Americans decide to cede their power to a bureaucracy?
When did we lose our republic?


----------



## Mr Natural (Feb 24, 2012)

Still here.

Just under different ownership.


----------



## Dragon (Feb 24, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> 1. *re·pub·lic*/ri&#712;p&#601;blik/ Noun:
> A state in which supreme *power is held by the people* and their *elected representatives,* and which has an elected or nominated president...



Power held by people THROUGH elected representatives is actually a definition of a DEMOCRATIC republic. Republics may or may not be democratic. Nice to see you coming down on the side of democracy, though. I'll remind you of that next time you seem to swing the other way.



> 2. "*Woodrow Wilso*n first articulated what would become American government bureaucracy in a 1887 scholarly paper advocating the study of public administration (Wilson 1887)....



There you go again, claiming something began with Wilson when it obviously didn't. I have no doubt that he wrote that paper, but the U.S. government has always had a bureaucracy appointed by the executive on authority granted by Congress.



> Although the United States Constitution has been in existence since the beginning of the Union



Untrue. The Union began in 1775-76, while the Constitution was not ratified until 1789, so during its first 13-14 years, the United States was not governed by the Constitution but by the prior government, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.



> and states enacted their own constitutions modeled after it, very few municipal charters specifically limited or *delegated authority*.



"Very few"? I'd be surprised if any did. Delegated authority is a feature of a federal system. It establishes the limited range of powers to be exercised by the federal government, leaving all other governmental powers in the hands of the states. Delegated authority or enumerated powers simply isn't a concept that applies to state governments, only at the federal level. A state government can do anything whatsoever that its people through the elected representatives want it to, except for what is expressly forbidden either by the U.S. Constitution or by the state constitution. It is not limited, as the federal government is, only to certain specified powers.



> a. "The politics-administration dichotomy is a theory which holds that bureaucrats are *experts who should be left alone *to do their job without political interference.



I don't know who has advocated this. I do know that, in practice, that's not the way it works.



> 4. C.S. Lewis identified the result of such great delegation of power and authority to these bureaucrats...



Lewis was 1) arguing that nowadays evil is done in different ways than in the past, and 2) expressing a personal dislike. As he said immediately before what you quoted, "I like bats much better than bureaucrats." But he also acknowledged that this idea about the nature of devils (this was from the introduction to _The Screwtape Letters_) was quite likely to be wrong.

As for the rest, you're raising, once again, a non-issue through misleading argument, false statements, and the presentation of people's opinions as if it were fact.


----------



## CrusaderFrank (Feb 24, 2012)

My sole consolation will be when Progressives have to kill each other other for the last can of 20 year old government issued cat food rations


----------



## Intense (Feb 24, 2012)

> Progressivism
> 
> &#8220;It is hard to fix a specific starting date for the progressive race to the Great Society,&#8221; writes Jonah Goldberg, &#8220;but a good guess might be 1888, the year [when socialist] Edward Bellamy's novel Looking Backward burst on the American scene.&#8221; Set in the year 2000, this futuristic book depicts a utopian society run with the hierarchical efficiency of a military battalion. All workers in this idealized world belong to a unified &#8220;industrial army&#8221; that labors within the confines of an economy controlled by a coterie of central planners who are deemed to be more capable of fostering prosperity and productivity than is a free marketplace. A preacher in the story lauds the earthly paradise, while the population at large looks back upon the &#8220;age of individualism&#8221; with a blend of amusement and derision.
> 
> ...



Still, I believe it actually started with Hamilton.


----------



## Douger (Feb 24, 2012)

Tr&#432;&#7901;ng h&#7907;p n&#432;&#7899;c c&#7897;ng hòa &#273;ã &#273;i


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 24, 2012)

Intense said:


> > Progressivism
> >
> > It is hard to fix a specific starting date for the progressive race to the Great Society, writes Jonah Goldberg, but a good guess might be 1888, the year [when socialist] Edward Bellamy's novel Looking Backward burst on the American scene. Set in the year 2000, this futuristic book depicts a utopian society run with the hierarchical efficiency of a military battalion. All workers in this idealized world belong to a unified industrial army that labors within the confines of an economy controlled by a coterie of central planners who are deemed to be more capable of fostering prosperity and productivity than is a free marketplace. A preacher in the story lauds the earthly paradise, while the population at large looks back upon the age of individualism with a blend of amusement and derision.
> >
> ...



1. If one sees the hallmark of Progressivism as disrespect for the Constitution, and the idea of unalienable rights, and  supports the primacy of the state over the individual, than the nod must go to  Wilson....

....he suggested that the Constitution could be cast off and thrown away...
...that unalienable rights were mere fiction,...
...but Teddy Roosevelt is in the running, as per 'The New Nationalism' speech.

a. Woodrow Wilson's essay Socialism and Democracy Limitations of public authority must be put aside; the state may cross that boundary at will.The collective is not limited by individual rights."

2. But, I'll give your vote for Hamilton, this:

Both Herbert Croly and TR abhorred Jeffersons legacy of limited government and uncontrolled individualism. Rather, they championed Hamiltons legacy of strong government and elite leadership. Croly wrote that Jefferson understood his fellow-countrymen better and trusted them more than his rival, but was suspicious of any efficient political authority. The problem of the Hamiltonians (or Federalists) was that they came to identify both anti-Federalism and democracy with political disorder and social instability. But they did believe in a fruitful liberty so long as there was an efficient central government to promote the national welfare.

a.	Croly favored Hamiltonianism that saw interference with the natural course of American economic and political business and its regulation and guidance in the national direction. The drawback was in linking the battle against instability and disorder, i.e. against anarchy and disintegration, to the support of well-to-do-people, rather than a broader constituency. The result was that a rising democracy came to distrust the national government. [see The Promise of American Life. by Croly]

3.My view of indicting Wilson is based on the influence of the German philosopher Hegel, who claimed the state as supreme. The source of Progressive ideas was Germany, specifically the philosophy of Hegel, and this euro-thinking placed the ruler above the ruled: Germans have a history of accepting authoritarian rule.

a. Hegel said, The state says  you must obey . The state has rights against the individual; its members have obligations, among them that of obeying without protest (Ralf Dahrendorf, "Society and Democracy in Germany").

b. The German influence reflected the intoxicating effect of the undiluted Hegelian philosophy upon the American mind, as progressive Charles Merriam once put it.


I'm hopeful that the Obama term represents the end of a century of Progressive Rule of our republic, the coda of destructive aria.


----------



## CrusaderFrank (Feb 24, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Intense said:
> 
> 
> > > Progressivism
> ...



Unfortunately only 2 Republicans would actually try to roll back the Progressive Jihad: Palin and Paul; she's not running and the RNC would never let him win


----------



## Intense (Feb 24, 2012)

Hamilton held little regard for the Individual. He Trumped Enumerated Powers with the General Welfare Clause, which he viewed without limit. He Elevated the Role of the Court. He fought Madison and Jefferson Tooth and Nail. He was the cause of the Whiskey Rebellion, the Alien and Sedition Acts. He advocated both Monopolies and the Federal or National control over them. He was more into Empire, than Balance of Power. For Hamilton, Federalism was nothing more than a Stepping Stone to Statism, a Phase, nothing more. *Translation : He was an Elitist SOB. *


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 24, 2012)

Intense said:


> Hamilton held little regard for the Individual. He Trumped Enumerated Powers with the General Welfare Clause, which he viewed without limit. He Elevated the Role of the Court. He fought Madison and Jefferson Tooth and Nail. He was the cause of the Whiskey Rebellion, the Alien and Sedition Acts. He advocated both Monopolies and the Federal or National control over them. He was more into Empire, than Balance of Power. For Hamilton, Federalism was nothing more than a Stepping Stone to Statism, a Phase, nothing more. *Translation : He was an Elitist SOB. *



1. I'll give you Hamilton as a hero of Progressives, but it was the influence of the German schools that so many of the early Progressives attended, or were tutored by professors who did attend same, that propelled the ideology.

2. Progressivism as an idea had arisen in the 1880s, when America was transforming from a largely agricultural country into a burgeoning urban one. But many Americans who had emigrated prior to the Civil War retained a certain moral nostalgia for their American past. While they enjoyed modernization, and wanted to share in the profits  of industrial American, and the benefits of city life, they, somewhat paradoxically, yearned for the albeit mythological decency of a rural America.

a.	The Progressive movement at first was made up of consumers and taxpayers who were challenging the accumulated wealth and power of the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Morgans, etc. But by 1912, it had become largely farmers and industrial workers seeking relief from the onerous power of the great monopolies.  James Chace, 1912, p.100

b. So, had there not been the necessity for reform, there could not have been a Progressive push. There had to be the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few who benefited from industrialization to produce the milieu.


----------



## uscitizen (Feb 24, 2012)

Where Did Our Republic Go??


Republican.
Or more accurately stated as corporate controlled.
And we are willing participants.
We have been programmed well.  So well that the vast majority do not even realize that they have been programmed.
Media programmed behavior modification on a grand scale.


----------



## Dragon (Feb 24, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> 1. If one sees the hallmark of Progressivism as disrespect for the Constitution, and the idea of unalienable rights, and  supports the primacy of the state over the individual, than the nod must go to  Wilson....



Well, if you insist on seeing progressivism as something it absolutely and demonstrably isn't, then you start out by ignoring reality and can set the starting point at any arbitrary time and with any arbitrary person you wish, and just make shit up in support as you go along. If that's what you want, have fun.

EDIT: "Hamilton as a hero of progressives"-- LOL. I rest my case.


----------



## uscitizen (Feb 24, 2012)

As energy prices rise politicians (and their trained puppets) will tout the resulting rise in the GDP as a good thing even though it is coming out of our pockets at the pumps/electric meter and for most other products we consume.

Any negative effects on us will be the other party or religious groups fault.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 24, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > 1. If one sees the hallmark of Progressivism as disrespect for the Constitution, and the idea of unalienable rights, and  supports the primacy of the state over the individual, than the nod must go to  Wilson....
> ...



I make nothing up.
"...the hallmark of Progressivism as disrespect for the Constitution, and the idea of unalienable rights, and  supports the primacy of the state over the individual, than the nod must go to  Wilson...."


----------



## Intense (Feb 24, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > 1. If one sees the hallmark of Progressivism as disrespect for the Constitution, and the idea of unalienable rights, and  supports the primacy of the state over the individual, than the nod must go to  Wilson....
> ...



Concerning Centralization of Power. Yes. Concerning the Elevated Status of The Court. Yes. Concerning Statism. Yes. You cannot Sacrifice Individual Liberty for the Hive and be Pro Individual Liberty. Hamilton liked the Monopolies because they were easier to both control and tap. Despotism by any name is still despotism. Like it makes a difference between which gun the bullet shot at you or I came from? Watch out for drones.  If you see it, it's already too late.


----------



## regent (Feb 25, 2012)

Madison and the founders were aware of political parties but made no reference to them in the Constitution, rather they believed, maybe hoped, that the factions would blunt each other and we'd get away scot free. But America had tremendous natural resources  and an economic system that allowed those resources to be taken over by corporations. With the gains from those resources the corporations had the means to control much of the public's votes. When some Americans became aware they made an attempt to stop the takeover. Were the Progressives successful? Who controls America today?


----------



## Greenbeard (Feb 25, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> 5. Today, another Progressive President uses bureaucracy to eviscerate our republic:
> "Behind every powerful health care mandate under Obamacare is a power-hungry woman named Kathleen Sebelius. As the Health and Human Services Secretary, she has *unprecedented power under Obamacare to control health care decisions, the approval of medical products and the national biomedical research agenda. *The Secretary is not only the key player; she is the only one on the field. *"The Secretary shall&#8230;" is mentioned more than 1000 times *in the new health care law."
> The American Spectator : Obama's Nurse Ratched



Shouldn't you be hating on Steve Larsen significantly more than on Kathleen Sebelius? Or did that memo not get out to the fringe rightwing yet?


----------



## Dragon (Feb 25, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> I make nothing up."



I didn't mean you, personally. Not necessarily anyway. But the person you're parroting there sure did.


----------



## Dragon (Feb 25, 2012)

Intense said:


> Concerning Centralization of Power. Yes. Concerning the Elevated Status of The Court. Yes. Concerning Statism. Yes. You cannot Sacrifice Individual Liberty for the Hive and be Pro Individual Liberty.



To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and to a man with an obsession, nothing else is visible. That's what we're seeing here. Big government IS NOT what progressivism is about, it's just a means to an end. Not even a constant means; progressives work as often against government power as for it. The thing you are missing is that we're not as obsessed with government as you are, and so what happens that you FIXATE on, and mistakenly think is the POINT, is merely an ancillary.

The idea -- the NONSENSICAL idea -- of Alexander Hamilton, of all people, as a progressive hero underscores your complete inability to get a clue what progressivism is about.


----------



## regent (Feb 25, 2012)

I couldn't believe Hamilton listed as a progressive. But some have their own definitions.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 26, 2012)

regent said:


> I couldn't believe Hamilton listed as a progressive. But some have their own definitions.



1.	Both Croly and TR abhorred Jeffersons legacy of limited government and uncontrolled individualism. Rather, they championed *Hamiltons legacy of strong government and elite leadership.*

a.	Croly favored Hamiltonianism. And Croly was a preeminent Progressive.

b.	Jefferson correctly viewed any tendency to impair the integrity of democracy as a prescription for disaster: the support must be of the whole people. And for Jefferson, democracy meant extreme individualism: as little government as possible. 

c.	For Croly, *the nation needed Hamiltonian means* to achieve Jeffersonian ends. Individual desires had to be subordinated to national purpose.

2.	Listen to the echo of Croly in the thoughts of TR, from his Autobiography, wherein he wrote, that after the Civil War, our strongest and most capable men had thrown their whole energy into business, into moneymaking, into the development, and above all the exploitation and and exhausdtion at the most rapid rate possible, of our natural resourcesthese men were not weak men, but they permitted themselves to grow short-sighted and selfish. Autobiography,  p.28.

3.	Wilson distrusted the great combinations that had come to dominate or destroy the Jeffersonian America of small business and community life.  He believed that the only way to rid the nation of this evil was by restoring full competition. Roosevelt saw in the industrialized America *what Hamilton had foreseen,* the ills visited upon the working class and knew that industrial capitalism could only be moderated, not eliminated. Chace, p. 197. 

4.	 TR and Wilson invented the activist modern presidency. TRs commitment to use *Hamiltonian means* to achieve Jeffersonian ends was not unlike Wilsons use of executive power to promote free competition that would prevent big business from stifling local economies.  
For TR, as for Wilson, *Hamiltons strong government* had to be united with the one great truth taught by Jefferson- that in America  a statesman should trust the people, and should endeavor to secure each man all possible individual liberty, confident that he will use it right.  Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest, p. 41.

See Chace, "1912."

So, in the sense of investing in a big, strong central government, *Hamilton was a Progressive....before progressivism*.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 26, 2012)

Greenbeard said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > 5. Today, another Progressive President uses bureaucracy to eviscerate our republic:
> ...



Do you get a government memos?

How about government compensation for posting the above?

Are you paid to put out your propaganda?


----------



## regent (Feb 26, 2012)

Jefferson were not set in cement, as America changed, so his means to the end changed, but not the end.  
The America of small farms Jefferson hoped for was disappearing even as he wrote the Declaration. Madison also was changing, flip flopping if you will, but both were changing their means to achieve a liberal America. Did the presidency change Jefferson's means to the end the most, was the purchase of Louisiana a harbinger, was it age, or simple recognition that America was changing, government, industry, politics all and he had to change his means to the end. Today, some take those changes as indicative of Jefferson's liberalism changing?


----------



## Sunni Man (Feb 26, 2012)

regent said:


> Jefferson were not set in cement, as America changed, so his means to the end changed, but not the end.
> The America of small farms Jefferson hoped for was disappearing even as he wrote the Declaration. Madison also was changing, flip flopping if you will, *but both were changing their means to achieve a liberal America*. Did the presidency change Jefferson's means to the end the most, was the purchase of Louisiana a harbinger, was it age, or simple recognition that America was changing, government, industry, politics all and he had to change his means to the end. Today, some take those changes as indicative of Jefferson's liberalism changing?


Would you please provide a link to exactly when and where  either Jefferson or Madison said their end goal was a liberal America?


----------



## regent (Feb 26, 2012)

Might try the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution instead of quotes. 
The time had come progressives believed, that we needed a strong central government to combat the strong corporations. Hamilton believed in strong a central government, Jefferson in the people, so finally the two philosophies came together in the progressive movement. Maybe Jefferson's ideal of a weak central government was sort of a pipe dream particulary now with three hundred million people instead of five million.  In any case the only ones that say they believe in a weak central government are some Republlcians but when in power they seem to enlarge the government.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

regent said:


> Might try the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution instead of quotes.
> The time had come progressives believed, that we needed a strong central government to combat the strong corporations. Hamilton believed in strong a central government, Jefferson in the people, so finally the two philosophies came together in the progressive movement. Maybe Jefferson's ideal of a weak central government was sort of a pipe dream particulary now with three hundred million people instead of five million.  In any case the only ones that say they believe in a weak central government are some Republlcians but when in power they seem to enlarge the government.




I've got your 'progressive movement' right here:

1.	In 1923 Georg Lukacs helped establish a Marxist research center at the University of Frankfurt under the sponsorship of Felix Weil. Like Marx&#8217;s benefactor, Friedrich Engels, Weil was the son of a wealthy capitalist and an ardent Marxist who had earned a Ph.D. in political science from Frankfurt University. These rich slackers used family money to fund the Institute for Social Research, best known as the institutional home of the Frankfurt School and critical theory. http://www.lust-for-life.org/Lust-F...turalMarxismAndPoliticalCorrectness-part2.pdf

a.	&#8230;the Institute attracted gifted scholars not only in economics but also in philosophy, history, psychology, sociology&#8230; *convinced that the major impediment to the spread of Marxism was Western culture. In particular, they despised traditional Judeo/Christian ethics and morality, which they believed prevented the widespread acceptance of Marxism.*

b.	The Frankfurt School propagated a revisionistic Neo-Marxist interpretation of Western culture called Critical Theory, an aggressive promotion of a radical left-wing socio/political agenda. In essence, Critical Theory was a comprehensive and *unrelenting assault on the values and institutions of Western civilization.* Based on utopian social and political ideals, Critical Theory offered no realistic alternatives, but it was nonetheless a devastating critique of the history, philosophy, politics, social and economic structures, major institutions, and religious foundations of Western civilization.

2. &#8220;Under Horkheimer&#8217;s leadership the Frankfurt School attracted some brilliant scholars and intellectuals such as Theodor Adorno, Eric Fromm, Wilhelm Reich, Walter Benjamin, Leo Lowenthal and Herbert Marcuse. Like Trotsky, Luxemburg, Lukacs, Bela Kun and other notable European Marxists in the early 1900s, many of the Frankfurt scholars were secular Jews, a fact that the Nazis successfully exploited in their propaganda regarding a &#8220;Jewish conspiracy&#8221; of Communist intellectuals who were perverting German society.&#8221; Ibid.

a. The Critical Theorists held a common commitment to* Neo-Marxism and the belief that Western civilization has been an imperialistic and repressive force in human history &#8211; especially, Western Christianity.* In their view, Western civilization was built on aggression, oppression, racism, slavery, classism and sexual repression.

b. Thus, there is a straight line *from the Frankfurt School to the formation in many colleges and universities of programs, and departments of African-American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Feminist Studies, Peace Studies, and LGBT (Lesbian/Gay/Bi-sexual/Transgender) Studies. *

3. *Waiting to ally themselves with the Frankfurt School Marxists were the Americans who had accepted the Wilson/TR synthesis of Hegel and Marx.* And a welcoming &#8216;nest&#8217; was provided for these vipers by the Columbia University Sociology department. And, the perfect storm: America was up for helping scholars fleeing from Germany. The guy in charge of this was* Edward R. Murrow,* the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars. 

4. Erich Fromm pushed cultural Marxism through psychology by blaming Western tradition for the rise of Nazism and the rejection of Marxism. Fromm, &#8220;The Fear of Freedom,&#8221; p. 241.

a.	Of course, *Marxism is just as totalitarian as Nazism.* But, by Fromm&#8217;s logic, just as soldiers are authoritarian because they follow orders, businessmen are authoritarian because the follow &#8220;economic laws.&#8221; Ibid, p. 145-146.  And, Leftists still enjoy using this logic and calling their opponents &#8216;Nazis.&#8217;

b.	*Fromm continued the John Dewey-rejection of parental authority, telling parents to stand by and let junior reinvent the wheel. *Next: Benjamin Spock, who helped launch the self-esteem movement.

c.	The purpose of *a university should be to make a son as unlike his father as possible. *     &#8220;The University's Part in Political Life&#8221; (13 March 1909) in PWW (The Papers of* Woodrow Wilson*) 19:99.


Wake up.
Wise up.


----------



## regent (Feb 27, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> 1. *re·pub·lic*/ri&#712;p&#601;blik/ Noun:
> A state in which supreme *power is held by the people* and their *elected representatives,* and which has an elected or nominated president...
> 
> 2. "*Woodrow Wilso*n first articulated what would become American government bureaucracy in a 1887 scholarly paper advocating the study of public administration (Wilson 1887).... Although the United States Constitution has been in existence since the beginning of the Union and states enacted their own constitutions modeled after it, very few municipal charters specifically limited or *delegated authority*."
> ...



Bureacracy has little to do with progressiveism, as does Hamilton. The goal of Progressives is to make the nation more responsive to the people and democratic. To this end a nation  may need larger government and a larger bureacracy but the goal is activism towards democracy and the well being of its people. During the Progressive period in our history, generally said to be somewhere between 1900 and 1915 the muckrakers made America aware of the evils taking place and government and the people tried with some success to correct those evils and make the US more democratic. We seem to have these periods but none so successful as the Progressive period.


----------



## Sallow (Feb 27, 2012)

It took some time off during Reaganism and Bushism. But it seems to be back.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

regent said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > 1. *re·pub·lic*/ri&#712;p&#601;blik/ Noun:
> ...



Dangerously short-sighted of you not to realize how the "movement" has been co-opted by the Left, the neo-Marxists.

But, of course, you are not alone.
Look at Sally.....


----------



## regent (Feb 27, 2012)

Of course, how negligent, not to see Marxism involved. Can you name the nations that have practiced Marxian communism?


----------



## Dragon (Feb 27, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> 1.	Both Croly and TR abhorred Jeffersons legacy of limited government and uncontrolled individualism. Rather, they championed *Hamiltons legacy of strong government and elite leadership.*



See, this is what happens when you don't check your theories against the facts. Here's how your reasoning appears to go:

1) Jefferson's views were all about small government -- that's what he wanted. Not equality and liberty, not keeping ordinary people safe from abuses by the rich and powerful, to which end small government was purely and only a means, but small government itself, for its own sake.

2) Modern liberals, on the other hand, are all about big government. That's what we want. Not equality and liberty, not keeping ordinary people safe from abuses by the rich and powerful, to which end in an industrial economy big government may sometimes be a means, but purely and only a means when it is -- we want big government itself, for its own sake.

3) Alexander Hamilton was also an advocate of big government.

4) Therefore, Alexander Hamilton must be a progressive icon.

Now, here we have what is known as a falsifiable prediction on the basis of the theory. _If the theory is correct,_ then indeed Hamilton should be a progressive icon.

What's the next step? Why, the next step -- if you have any intellectual integrity -- is to _ask progressives what they think of Hamilton_.

And I'll tell you, just as if you had asked. Alexander Hamilton was an advocate of capitalist concentration of wealth. He was a believer in industrialization, and for that purpose he wanted strong central government, so that it could aid and assist the rich getting richer. In that way, he hoped to accumulate capital and use it to industrialize the country. He wanted to keep ordinary people held down, and skim their wealth through one mechanism or another into the pockets of the very wealthy.

He was absolutely NOT a progressive. He was NOT one of us. He is NOT a progressive icon -- the notion is laughable.

Now -- what does that say about your theory as to what Jefferson and classical liberals on the one hand, and modern liberals on the other, were and are all about?

It says that your theory is WRONG. Because your reasoning is sound, if your theory was true, then indeed Hamilton should be a progressive icon.

But he's not.

And therefore your theory must be wrong.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

regent said:


> Of course, how negligent, not to see Marxism involved. Can you name the nations that have practiced Marxian communism?



So, the default position is the ol' "real Marxism hasn't been tried..."


A variation of "It wasn't tried long enough...."?


How many lives will have to be sacrificed before Leftists agree that human nature is  not malleable?
That was rhetorical...no number needed.


----------



## Wry Catcher (Feb 27, 2012)

Our Republic has evolved (devolved, IMO) into a Plutocracy.  The final nail in the coffin of democracy in America was CU v. FEC.

This was not happenstance, using the pen is mightier than the sword, the power elite in our nation has slowly, methodically and with malice  aforethought eroded our democratic principles and created a faux Republic.  No doubt there are good men and women in the Congress, but always enough have been purchased by the special interests; enough to ensure power is not shared with The People.


----------



## Dragon (Feb 27, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> regent said:
> 
> 
> > Of course, how negligent, not to see Marxism involved. Can you name the nations that have practiced Marxian communism?
> ...



Speaking as an ex-Marxist who has no interest in promoting even the REAL Marxism, that statement is in fact the truth: real Marxism hasn't been tried. I'm not sure it even can be, but am completely sure that when you violate all of its conditions (starting with an advanced capitalist economy, which according to theory was supposed to be a prerequisite for a workers' revolution), you ain't got it.

Not that this means we should try to have a real Marxist society, either. I've already expressed my problems with Marx elsewhere. But it does illustrate that for right-wingers, the term carries no real cognitive content and is used merely as a boogie-man to scare people away from anything resembling social and economic justice.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > regent said:
> ...



"...merely as a boogie-man to scare people..."

 "...real Marxism hasn't been tried...."
What a vapid excuse...

1.  From The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, which is a compilation of research edited by French scholar Stephane Courtois, 
...totals *over 100 million victims of Communist murder* during the 20th Century.

a. Courtois and his colleagues do not simply unfold the numbers relentlessly and numbingly. Instead, they painstakingly explore the many ways the killing was done-from summary execution to forced deportations, from mass starvation to the gulag-and examine *its many pretexts.*
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression 
Foreign Affairs (Book Review); New York; Nov/Dec 1999; Robert Legvold;


2.'After the halo wore off the Soviet Union, China emerged as a new beacon for credulous Westerners. .Mr. Margolin writes that "one myth was common in the West: the idea that China was far from being a model democracy, but that at least Mao had managed to give a bowl of rice to every Chinese person." In fact, nothing was further than the truth. Mao, like Stalin deliberately engineered a famine that killed untold millions. '
WALL STREET JOURNAL MONDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1999

3.  [Paul Hollander]  is best known for his now-classic book "Political Pilgrims," which examined the phenomenon of *twentieth-century Western intellectuals who allowed themselves to be seduced and duped *by radical revolutionary regimes of the most patent despotism and brutality. How and why did so many intelligent, cultivated, and educated people come to believe such obvious nonsense? Pilgrims was a tragicomic study of how the cherished ideas of the self-important can so easily overwhelm their common sense, and how education can serve to blind as well as to enlighten.
Between Experience and Reflection by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal 27 April 2009


"Speaking as an ex-Marxist ...for right-wingers, the term carries no real cognitive content and is used merely as a boogie-man to scare people away from anything resembling social and economic justice."

You can stop using the "ex-."


----------



## Dragon (Feb 27, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> "...merely as a boogie-man to scare people..."
> 
> "...real Marxism hasn't been tried...."
> What a vapid excuse...



I don't need an excuse. Joseph McCarthy needs an excuse. And as you are following in his footsteps, so do you.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > "...merely as a boogie-man to scare people..."
> ...



But you haven't explained...were you a fool then, or now?

Senator Joseph McCarthy was a hero. It is slowly coming to light....maybe even to *ex-Marxists.*

1. Roosevelt flooded Stalin with Lend-Lease aid- food, planes, tools and supplies in large quantities. Stalin, in turn, planted spies in the United States who worked their way into key positions in the American government. They influenced U.S. policy to favor Russia; they sent copies of government documents to Russia; and they described U.S. plans in messages to Russia. Stalin knew about the development of the atomic bomb before President Truman did. Folsom and Folsom, "FDR Goes To War," P. 304.

2.  Whittaker Chambers wrote in his book "WITNESS" that liberals are/were incapable of ever effectively fighting Communism because they did not see anything in Communism that was antithetical to their own beliefs. In short, Liberals are Communists and Communists are Liberals. The revisionist is aware of the horrors of Communism; the tortures, the Gulags, the over 100 million persons done to death. 

3. Senator Joe McCarthy confronted government officials concealing communist involvement and excessively lax security with regards to Communists in sensitive U.S. Government posts. In many cases he was on target, with over 81 of the names he gave the Tydings committee resulting in resignations or movement of security risks. Given that over 200 of the spies uncovered in the Venona decrypts were never identified, we can only speculate as to the national security impact of removing Communists from key DoD and State Dept posts.

 Arthur Herman, author of "Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator," says that* the accuracy of McCarthy's charges "was no longer a matter of debate," that they are "now accepted as fact."* And The New York Post's Eric Fettmann has noted: "growing historical evidence underscores that, whatever his rhetorical and investigative excesses - and they were substantial - McCarthy was a lot closer to the truth about Communism than were his foes."

So, should I refer to you as Red-Liz from now on?


----------



## regent (Feb 27, 2012)

Marx gave Republicans their best ammunition to scare Americans. They have labeled everything they don't like from Social Security to ingrown toenails as communistic. To save their big gun, communism, from overuse they use socialism and stepping down from that Pinko, and fellow traveler, although those last two term have lost a lot of their pizazz with McCarthy gone. Have the Republicans been successful with the communist thing, you betcha.


----------



## rightwinger (Feb 27, 2012)

Our Republic has gone nowhere

It is the one nation under god......there are no others
We are indivisible
We provide liberty and justice for all


----------



## Dragon (Feb 27, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> But you haven't explained...were you a fool then, or now?



I have never been a fool, except when I was in love. Can't help that.

I was, in my current opinion, mistaken back when I was a Communist. Not a fool. Just wrong. But only in part.



> Senator Joseph McCarthy was a hero.



To tyrants and would-be tyrants, perhaps. Also to those who make heroes out of confused, attention-seeking drunks.


----------



## sealybobo (Feb 27, 2012)

Ronald Reagan had to reassure the American people that he wasn't going to run us into debt and then turn our nation over to the multinational corporations.  In his first inaugural, he had to add, "Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back." 

But what did Bush do?  Exactly what Reagan promised he would not.   

As we view today's corporate takeover of our government, We the People are faced with an historic challenge.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > But you haven't explained...were you a fool then, or now?
> ...



1. "I have never been a fool, except when I was in love."
I commiserate.

2. But, you might what to rethink that limited view, in the light of the fact that totalitarian philosophies begin with the premise that the right laws, the right governments, will change human nature so that one can find Utopia here, on earth.

The Constitution commemorates our revolution, and, as Madison states in the Federalist, is the greatest of all reflections on human nature"human beings are not angels. 

a. Humans are not perfectible, but are capable of self government. The republican form of government presupposes this idea of humans. Our government is not a controlling government, but must itself be controlled: by the Constitution....just, not if Progressives get their way, huh?

b. Communist Revolution is based on *the idea of transforming human nature.* The New Soviet man or New Soviet person (Russian: &#1085;&#1086;&#1074;&#1099;&#1081; &#1089;&#1086;&#1074;&#1077;&#1090;&#1089;&#1082;&#1080;&#1081; &#1095;&#1077;&#1083;&#1086;&#1074;&#1077;&#1082, as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union, irrespective of the country's long-standing cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single Soviet people, Soviet nation.[1]
New Soviet man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Diversity and variety don't sit too high on the Left's agenda-ladder.
Equality and 'social justice,' right?

c. Leon Trotsky wrote in his Literature and Revolution [2] :
"The human species, the sluggish Homo sapiens, will once again* enter the stage of radical reconstruction *and become in his own hands the object of the most complex methods of artificial selection and *psychophysical training.*.. Man will make it his goal...to create a higher sociobiological type, a superman, if you will" 
New Soviet man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So, what did the totalitarians, your 'former' colleagues, do when humanity wouldn't change?

a. Culture is a stubborn opponent. The Soviet Union attempted to create the New Soviet Man with *gulags, psychiatric hospitals, and firing squads *for seventy years and succeeded only in producing a more corrupt culture. Bork, Slouching Toward Gomorrah, p. 198

b. Progressives have a similar view: human nature is plastic; politics is a means of perfecting man!

c.  In 1969, Hillary Rodham gave the student commencement address at Wellesley in which she said that  for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible.*Were not interested in social reconstruction; its human reconstruction.*
http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffa..._____________________________________________


You too?
Or are you sticking to the "ex-Marxist" thing, Red-Liz?


BTW....think we should have a national holiday for Senator McCarthy? After all...look what he saved us from.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

sealybobo said:


> Ronald Reagan had to reassure the American people that he wasn't going to run us into debt and then turn our nation over to the multinational corporations.  In his first inaugural, he had to add, "Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back."
> 
> But what did Bush do?  Exactly what Reagan promised he would not.
> 
> As we view today's corporate takeover of our government, We the People are faced with an historic challenge.



Deficit under Reagan never over 6%; obama 9%. Bush 5%


----------



## Foxfyre (Feb 27, 2012)

CrusaderFrank said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > Intense said:
> ...



You could add Bachmann to that list too, I think, and maybe one or two others.

What we need is a Ron Paul with his fiscal and mind-our-own-business sense without the looney tunes factor and with  Palin and Bachmann's appreciation for basic American traditional values/social contract below the federal level and with a Reaganesque leadership skill set so that people will be inspired to follow.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

Foxfyre said:


> CrusaderFrank said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...



Speaking of followers...did you see this:
Danica Patrick: I leave it up to the government to make good decisions for Americans.

Did Americans always think this way...
Where have all the flowers gone?


----------



## Dragon (Feb 27, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> But, you might what to rethink that limited view, in the light of the fact that totalitarian philosophies begin with the premise that the right laws, the right governments, will change human nature so that one can find Utopia here, on earth.



I don't care what "totalitarian philosophies" assert. They have nothing to do with me, and nothing to do with liberalism, classical or modern.

As I said, nothing but a boogie-man.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > But, you might what to rethink that limited view, in the light of the fact that totalitarian philosophies begin with the premise that the right laws, the right governments, will change human nature so that one can find Utopia here, on earth.
> ...



1. Oooo....you sound a bit touchy about it....
...as an *"ex-Marxist,"* is it the stain?

2. "...nothing to do with liberalism,..."
Not true, Red-Liz....

You see, every *totalitarian* straight-suit is the fruit of the 'poison tree'..the view that the some form of big government is necessary to teach folks the correct way to think, to act...
that some form of lock-step uniformity is the correct strategy.

That *big government* central planning is the correct path for the economy.

That government give-aways and *equality of results* is the desired goal, rather than the equality of opportunity of our Founders, the classical liberals.

3. And, while I'm instructing you in political theory, let me take a moment to add the correct use of language to the lesson.
"nothing but a *boogie-man*..."

"an* imaginary *evil character of supernatural powers,"
Bogeyman | Define Bogeyman at Dictionary.com

Now, I know that you are a bright Lizard...so why pretend that the 
depredations of *totalitarian* rule is mythical?

Deflection.

You know that said doctrine is the most* brutal, inhuman* of endeavors...and
are afraid to acknowledge same.
True?

4. Before WW II, the same *folks who championed Progressivism, viewed fascism as a noble economic agenda, and praised Mussolini. *It was the horrors of the Holocaust that required both the rapid retreat from associations with the term fascism, and the rebranding by John Dewey of progressivism as liberalism.
	W.E.B.DuBois suggested that National Socialism seemed an excellent model for economic organization. http://www.ghi-dc.org/files/publications/bu_supp/supp5/supp5_099.pdf

5. 	Peter Witonski, in his essay "The Historical Roots of American Planning" said: &#8220;Dewey was the first to argue that the world &#8216;liberal&#8217;&#8212;which once stood for liberal, free-market capitalism&#8212;could better serve the needs of social democracy in America than the world *&#8216;socialism&#8217;.*.... o-called &#8220;liberals&#8221; support *socialism, state ownership, bureaucratic management and statism.            *
Ending the Liberal Confusion, by Jim Peron


*Shall we review:*
The various permutations of totalitarianims include communism, national socialism, socialism, progressivism, fascism, modern liberalism....etc.

Did they kill millions, or are they mythical? Killed and repressed.

Are you as self-professed "ex-Marxist"? Seems so.

"They have nothing to do with me,..." Doesn't seem to be
the case, does it.


----------



## Dragon (Feb 27, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> You see, every *totalitarian* straight-suit is the fruit of the 'poison tree'..the view that the some form of big government is necessary to teach folks the correct way to think, to act...



And that, in turn, is associated with conservatism, not liberalism. It's conservatism that wants to maintain strict authority, conservatism that wants to preserve tradition against the challenge of any creative individual, conservatism that defends the Fatherland or the Motherland against alleged traitors. Even when totalitarians pay lip service (for the purpose of gaining support) to liberal values, they show their conservative real values in their willingness to brutalize people to protect national security:

To imprison social democrats and liberals as enemies of the state, the way Hitler did . . .

To purge and destroy his fellow revolutionaries as enemies of the state, the way Stalin did . . .

To ruin people's lives for their political beliefs, or even for their association with others, as McCarthy did . . .

The fact that you call McCarthy a "hero" shows your own true colors. Obviously you have no problem with government authority that smashes free thought and association flat, and tramples all over people's rights to protect the authority of the state.

I am not a totalitarian.

No liberal is a totalitarian.

You are one.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > You see, every *totalitarian* straight-suit is the fruit of the 'poison tree'..the view that the some form of big government is necessary to teach folks the correct way to think, to act...
> ...



Oh, boy...are you gonna take a spanking with this post!!!


1. " maintain strict authority," As in ObamaCare?

2. "against the challenge of any creative individual,"  You haven't noticed that 90% of GDP is the production of red tape and regulations...thank's to big government progressives.

3. "defends the Fatherland or the Motherland against alleged traitors"  Along these lines:
"If the Obama Administration were to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, it would be the sixth time the Administration has pressed charges against defendants suspected of leaking classified information. The government has only ever filed similar charges three times over the last 40 years." 
Read more: Obama vs. Whistle-Blowers: Taking a Hard Line on Leaks - TIME

4. "Even when totalitarians pay lip service (for the purpose of gaining support) to liberal values," So. you admit that totalists subscribe to modern liberal doctrines? Good start!

5."... the way Hitler did . . ." But Hitler was a totalitarian...National Socialist.

6. " purge and destroy his fellow revolutionaries as enemies of the state, the way Stalin did"
Right....keep going!!! Now you're on my side.

7. "To ruin people's lives for their political beliefs, or even for their association with others, as McCarthy did . . ."

*You couldn't be more wrong* about the Senator.

a. The great Senator McCarthy refused to give out the names until he was force to:
" McCarty: The Senator from Illinois* demanded that I furnish all names*. I told him that so far as I was concerned, that would be improperI have enough to convince me that either they are members of the Communist Party or they have given great aid to the Communists: I may be wrong. That is why I said that *unless the Senate demanded that I do so, I would not submit this publicly,* but I would submit it to any committeein executive session. It is possible that some of these persons will get a clean bill of health.
! (William F. Buckley and Brent Bozell, McCarty and His Enemies, p. 71, quoting the Congressional Record)

*Could you name any* one who wasn't a communist whose life was ruined by McCarthy?
Didn't think so.

b.* Hollywood Blacklisting had nothing to do with McCarthy. *The Hollywood Ten were called before the HUAC in 1947.  McCarthy had just been elected to the Senate, and the Alger Hiss exposure, indictment and conviction occurred before McCarthy made his famous 1950 speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, before McCarthy did any investigating of Hollywood. When anti-communism took its toll in Hollywood, the blacklisting took the deadly form of not having ones name in the credits, or living in Paris, or not being able to sell a teleplay for as much as three years.* This for folks who had no problem with Ukrainian farmers and their children eating their shoes.*

8. "government authority that smashes free thought..."
Wrong again, Red-Liz!
I fully support the actions of the hero, Senator McCarthy!
He did nothing to suppress free thought...he acted *against Soviet spies *who had access to classified data.

"He raised the issue of loyalty risks working for the government rather than proven cases of espionage. His argument was that there are many reasons that a person should not be handling classified material, far less than proof beyond a reasonable doubt that one was a Soviet spy." 
Coulter, "Treason."

	You have become the same source of entertainment as a piñata, and for the same reason: the fun of beating you with a stick!


Give up?
Admit you've been wrong about everything and throw yourself on the mercy of the court??


----------



## Dragon (Feb 27, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> 1. " maintain strict authority," As in ObamaCare?



Nope. As in McCarthyism, the Red Scare in general, the draft . . . closest thing we have to it now is the Patriot Act. Which you probably approve of -- another point in evidence.



> You haven't noticed that 90% of GDP is the production of red tape and regulations



That's both nonsense and totally irrelevant to what I was saying.



> "defends the Fatherland or the Motherland against alleged traitors"  Along these lines:
> "If the Obama Administration



May as well stop there. You are trying to indict liberals. You need not mention Obama as if he were one. Nothing you say about him is in any way pertinent to the discussion, and I will save time henceforth by snipping any further reference to him or his administration.



> So. you admit that totalists subscribe to modern liberal doctrines?



No, only that they sometimes pretend to, because liberalism is popular and they need popular support. In fact, none of them really do. Totalitarianism and liberalism are incompatible.



> "... the way Hitler did . . ." But Hitler was a totalitarian...National Socialist.



That's why I used him as an example, of course -- duh!



> Right....keep going!!! Now you're on my side.



Since I'm pointing out how your own views are similar to those of Hitler and Stalin, I hardly think so. Pay more attention, please.



> The great Senator McCarthy refused to give out the names until he was force to



Actually, he didn't even then, because he had no names. He was making the whole thing up.

The Red Scare really preceded McCarthy anyway. He was mostly a buffoon who took advantage of it. Far more serious were the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee. But it was all about quelling dissent and punishing people for their challenge to the established order -- in short, it was a totalitarian enterprise from start to finish, very similar to the activities of the Gestapo or the KGB, although thankfully not quite as thorough -- we were not, even then, a genuine totalitarian state.

It's one thing to seek out foreign espionage agents in the government, which is how it all began (e.g. the trial of Alger Hiss). But it's quite another thing to seek out and try to destroy people merely for their _beliefs_. Being a spy for the Soviet Union was a crime; being a Communist was not -- and trying to punish Communists as if it were was a totalitarian activity. What's even worse was that the anti-communist witch-hunting hysterics of the period sought out and punished people who belonged to organizations that _weren't_ Communist, on the type of tar-brushing, guilt-by-association balderdash that you are ladling up here and now: because those organizations were on a list that the despots wanted to discredit.

Communism was totalitarian. So was anti-Communism.

Liberalism is not, and never was, and never will be; the two are mutually exclusive and fundamentally opposed.



> Could you name any one who wasn't a communist whose life was ruined by McCarthy?



Sure, start with Charles LaFollette. For the most part, however, he was prevented from doing any serious damage by the Tydings Committee, which gave his claims the disdainful treatment they deserved.

However, you're missing the point. _There is nothing illegal about being a Communist._ Just so we put things in proper perspective, I want to quote you the relevant part of the United States Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or* the right of the people peaceably to assemble*, or to petition the government for redress of grievances."

First Amendment, U.S. Constitution. (Emphasis added.) Belonging to a political philosophy is a function of peaceful assembly; moreover, expressing political views is a function of free speech. Only totalitarian states punish people for belonging to political parties or expressing political views, no matter what those views may be. As that is what the anti-Communist witch-hunting hysteria sought to do, it was an enterprise totalitarian in nature, although thankfully not in scope.

The real damning criticism of McCarthy and his ilk is not that most of those they sought to condemn were not Communists, although that's also true. The real damning criticism is that to condemn people for being Communists _even if they really are_ is against everything America stands for, is a dire offense against liberty, and is a totalitarian act very much along the same lines as Hitler's concentration camps or Stalin's purges.

And you approve of this. I am not the totalitarian here. You are.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > 1. " maintain strict authority," As in ObamaCare?
> ...



"...because he had no names. He was making the whole thing up."
This, after you claimed that he 'ruined people's lives...."

It's clear that you haven't a clue about the Senator, nor about the period.

Neither have you countered any of the posts....

You should learn not to merely accept and repeat the blather of the Left, and do both some research and some thinking.

With very little effort, you have become to any with serious knowledge of the subject what the Washington Generals are to the Harlem Globetrotters.


No competition, and hardly worth the effort.


----------



## Dr Grump (Feb 27, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> ...that unalienable rights were mere fiction,...
> ..



That's because they are....


----------



## TakeAStepBack (Feb 27, 2012)

No shit. Dragon should read blacklisted by history and return with humble apologies of misunderstanding. The case McCarthy spoke on starting in Wheeling in 1950, was based on inside FBI information and the Gregory case dating back more than a decade before he brought it back to the front pages. The infiltration of soviets into the state department and then on to many areas within the federal government was real. 

The book will spell it out using declassified documentation and six years of research. McCarthy was deliberately thrown under the bus because the entire affair made the highest office in the land look both foolish and perhaps, even implicated them from prior years. It was an embarrassment no one wanted to deal with. But it was very real.

Everything else PC is saying, is about as dead on as I could put it too.


----------



## Dr Grump (Feb 27, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Dragon said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...



Ah, yes, the great Monday morning quater backing and the rewriting of history by making out Joe Mccarthy to be some sort of hero. He was a hideous, pathetic alcoholic.

I find it ironic that one of the main abusers of your constitution is one of your heros. Which is even more amazing when you look at your whine in the OP.

In one breath you're wondering where your republic went, while at the same time championing somebody who had a good crack at trying to dismantle it.

Only a neocon whackjob loon would use that logic....


----------



## TakeAStepBack (Feb 27, 2012)

And so after seeing how well the slow turn of classical liberals into neo-communists that you see here in this thread, is a big part of where the republic went. A very, very unfortunate thing.


----------



## Dragon (Feb 27, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> No competition, and hardly worth the effort.



[Bow]

Your surrender is gracefully accepted.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

Dr Grump said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > Dragon said:
> ...



Another successful attempt to sustain ignorance.


Brilliant post, brimming with scintillating doses of enlightenment.

In the interests of safety, one should avoid your posts if one is operating heavy machinery, or driving on the highway.


----------



## Dr Grump (Feb 27, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Another successful attempt to sustain ignorance.
> 
> 
> Brilliant post, brimming with scintillating doses of enlightenment.
> ...



Great comeback <rolls eyes>....


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > No competition, and hardly worth the effort.
> ...



David Blaine never made anything disappear as fast as your reputation.
If this absurd post is your attempt at face-saving, the necessity is understandable.

I am puzzled, though, as to why you would bother in this thread, as you are not equipped with 
any knowledge of the subject.

Why not simply wait for a topic in which you have some cache...unless such subjects tend to be few and far between.


----------



## Dragon (Feb 27, 2012)

I've pointed out before, PC, that when soundly trounced -- when your arguments have been shown to be completely empty and without foundation -- you fall back on personal insult and present a post containing nothing in the way of argument or evidence whatsoever; nothing, in fact, EXCEPT personal invective. It's a clear concession of defeat, whether you realize it or not.

Ever see a cat-fight? (I mean a literal cat-fight, not one between two women.) Ever see the loser scamper away into a safe place, hiss at the winner, and lick its wounds as nonchalant as possible, apparently attempting to convey that it COULD have won if the other cat was worth the bother?

That's what you remind me of at times like these.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 27, 2012)

Dragon said:


> I've pointed out before, PC, that when soundly trounced -- when your arguments have been shown to be completely empty and without foundation -- you fall back on personal insult and present a post containing nothing in the way of argument or evidence whatsoever; nothing, in fact, EXCEPT personal invective. It's a clear concession of defeat, whether you realize it or not.
> 
> Ever see a cat-fight? (I mean a literal cat-fight, not one between two women.) Ever see the loser scamper away into a safe place, hiss at the winner, and lick its wounds as nonchalant as possible, apparently attempting to convey that it COULD have won if the other cat was worth the bother?
> 
> That's what you remind me of at times like these.



1. personal insult ...no more than you deserve.

2.  soundly trounced...absurd.

3. You...attempting to express any expertise in this thread would be akin to Charlie Sheen doing a testimonial for eHarmony.


Step off.


----------



## Dr Grump (Feb 27, 2012)

Dragon said:


> I've pointed out before, PC, that when soundly trounced -- when your arguments have been shown to be completely empty and without foundation -- you fall back on personal insult and present a post containing nothing in the way of argument or evidence whatsoever; nothing, in fact, EXCEPT personal invective. It's a clear concession of defeat, whether you realize it or not.
> 
> Ever see a cat-fight? (I mean a literal cat-fight, not one between two women.) Ever see the loser scamper away into a safe place, hiss at the winner, and lick its wounds as nonchalant as possible, apparently attempting to convey that it COULD have won if the other cat was worth the bother?
> 
> That's what you remind me of at times like these.



She's always been like that...posts inane right-wing rhetoric, gets called on it, then insults..

Pathetic really...


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 28, 2012)

Dr Grump said:


> Dragon said:
> 
> 
> > I've pointed out before, PC, that when soundly trounced -- when your arguments have been shown to be completely empty and without foundation -- you fall back on personal insult and present a post containing nothing in the way of argument or evidence whatsoever; nothing, in fact, EXCEPT personal invective. It's a clear concession of defeat, whether you realize it or not.
> ...



If you can't stand the heat, stay outta the kitchen.


----------



## Dragon (Feb 28, 2012)

I can stand the heat just fine. I can even keep my cool and stay rational in the process, which, PC, quite obviously you can't. Perhaps you should take your own advice.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 28, 2012)

Dragon said:


> I can stand the heat just fine. I can even keep my cool and stay rational in the process, which, PC, quite obviously you can't. Perhaps you should take your own advice.



1. I admit to one teensy-weensy character flaw...so insignificant, it is hardly worth mentioning...but since you refer to same, here goes:

I find it difficult to suffer fools easily.

 (2 Corinthians 11:19) reads, "ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise."

2. So, according to St. Paul, I am less than wise.
Guilty.
I have not the resignation to accept the fact that a poster either pretends expertise or knowledge that he does not have, or is willing to trumpet his own ignorance.

3. According to you and Grump, I'm supposed to simply stroke my chin, furrow my brow, and pretend you have a point.
That's not gonna happen.

4.If you are correct, I won't deny it. I expect the same....or else I will find some retort that amuses me and impales you.
In the case of Senator McCarthy, I have done extensive study. You have not. You got what you deserve.

5. In the following you show the consistent lack of perception: "I can even keep my cool and stay rational in the process, which, PC, quite obviously you can't."
I rarely lose my cool. And certainly have not in this thread.

Better luck in your future studies.


----------



## Dragon (Feb 28, 2012)

LOL a lot of words saying nothing. Hope it made you feel better. It accomplished bugger-all otherwise.

Looks like we're done here. Till next time, au revoir.


----------



## Dante (Feb 28, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> 1. *re·pub·lic*/ri&#712;p&#601;blik/ Noun:
> A state in which supreme *power is held by the people* and their *elected representatives,* and which has an elected or nominated president...
> ...
> 
> ...



Everything is fine. The republic stands. Democracy (politics) is messy.

Grow up


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 28, 2012)

Dante said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > 1. *re·pub·lic*/ri&#712;p&#601;blik/ Noun:
> ...



So...when you buy a defective product..."Everything is fine."

Pick up your suit and it still has a stain..."Everything is fine."

Steak is raw....."Everything is fine."

Politicians break their word...."Everything is fine."


I shudder to think, if everyone were like you....


----------



## Foxfyre (Feb 28, 2012)

Perhaps without intending to, I think you may have touched on the No. #1 issue that is eroding the Republic that the Founders intended that we have.

That issue is a woeful lack of education re three important game changers.

Those of us who are students of American history, including modern history, have seen the creep of authoritarian government gradually eroding the Founders' concept of self governance.

The first game changer was the Teddy Roosevelt administration who was the first to use big government and his office in any significant way to bend commerce and industry to the will of the President.  Through regulation, threats, and manipulation, he significantly expanded the scope, reach, and authority of the Presidential office and the federal government.  The free market system and individaul rights began to erode at that point, slowly at first, and escalating ever since.

The second game changer was the Franklin Roosevelt administration who was the first to use the federal treasury to dispense charity.  However limited and innouous and intended to be temporary that federal government benevolenvce was, it formed the snowball that has been rolling and gathering size and momentum ever since to create a welfare state in which the government holds the power, and the people are slowly and systematically stripped of their dignity, self worth, incentives, and rights.

The third game changer was the cultural revolution of the Sixties in which rebels tuned out, zoned out, opted out of the traditional American culture and trashed traditional American values in all aspects of American life.  Gradually most of those rebels returned to the mainstream, but not before the new American Left had fully emerged and taken over a huge segment of the education system, most especially higher education, the media, and had infiltrated government.   They and those they mentored to follow in their footsteps have manipulated and twisted the histories and traditional values into concepts that would have horrified Founders.

And too many Americans have been so dumbed down, brain washed, misled, and misdirected so that they now can see only how bad it once and reject any evidence to the contrary.  Many believe that the pre 1960's America never existed and was a myth promoted by the shrinking traditional values crowd.  And they have been conditioned to exalt, trust, and accept an ever more powerful, more overreaching, more intrusive, more authoritarian federal government that they see as more honest, more trustworthy, more noble, and more righteous than the state and local governments are percveived.

And in my opinion, THAT is where our Republic has gone.


----------



## TakeAStepBack (Feb 28, 2012)

Pretty good post, fox.

the only thing I will add, and I believe it is the start point of all that comes into your post, is the federal reserve act of 1913. those who know our history, know that the founders were dead set against central banking and for very good measure. We fought wars to keep the central banks off these shores.

Without the ability to expand the money supply, the wars and the welfare programs would never have been possible without taaxing the populace into oblivion. Which, would have made both of these terrible policies extremely unfavorable with voters and would likely have kept the authoritarian creep at bay.

otherwise, perhaps debatable on your third point (as I believe the 60s counterculture was actually a reaction, verse a stand alone problem), I'm in complete agreement with that assessment.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 28, 2012)

Foxfyre said:


> Perhaps without intending to, I think you may have touched on the No. #1 issue that is eroding the Republic that the Founders intended that we have.
> 
> That issue is a woeful lack of education re three important game changers.
> 
> ...



What a nice job, Foxy.

If you don't mind my gilding the lily, I'd like add some evidence to your post...

1. Danica Patrick: I leave it up to the government to make good decisions for Americans.

2. From a poster on the board:
"What you CONZ seem to fail to understand is that when government gets involved regulating an industry, it's for the PUBLIC GOOD, as the PUBLIC GOOD is NOT in the charter of private business. MAKING MONEY is."

3.  	The attitude of the FDR government can be seen in these words of  A.B. Happy Chandler, a former Kentucky governor: [A]ll of us owe the government; we owe it for everything we haveand that is the basis of obligationand the government can take everything we have if the government needs it. . . . The government can assert its right to have all the taxes it needs for any purpose, either now or at any time in the future.

4. And, another one of our colleagues:
"We have really messed up our environment, and we don't have another planet to go to. 

Any protection that the average person from the polluters has IS FROM GOVERNMENT.

Any consumer protection is from the government. 

Our educational system is from the government. 

Our transportation. Our military. Our police. 

We vote in officials, who make decisions on expenditures for our societal benefit.

That is not servitude. I'm freer under this government [along with people in other modern democracies] than any average person in the history of the world."



This is what they never learned:
Reagan  we are a nation that HAS a government  not the other way around.


----------



## Dante (Feb 28, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Dante said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...



Democracy by definition is a defective product. It's in the fine print.

You truly live in a dream world.


----------



## Foxfyre (Feb 28, 2012)

TakeAStepBack said:


> Pretty good post, fox.
> 
> the only thing I will add, and I believe it is the start point of all that comes into your post, is the federal reserve act of 1913. those who know our history, know that the founders were dead set against central banking and for very good measure. We fought wars to keep the central banks off these shores.
> 
> ...



Good points.  However, I think if Teddy Roosevelt had been challenged and stopped when he began federalizing the free market and manipulating the system--he was far too popular and admired to challenge I suppose--then Woodrow Wilson, two administrations later and sometimes thought of as the father of modern progressivism, would never have been able to create the Federal Reserve.  Probably neither of them  were able to see what monsters they had given birth to though.  I don't think either of them intended to harm the country, but unless power is checked, it seems to almost always careen out of control.

As for the cultural revolution, it of course began as a protest of the insanity of the Vietnam War.   And then it morphed into its own thing, sucking in the young by the thousands, and lulling them into complacency and full rebellion by unlimited access to booze and mind altering drugs.  And much of it was utilized and absorbed into the progressive moment started under Wilson.


----------



## TakeAStepBack (Feb 28, 2012)

points taken. Excellent assessment.


----------



## Moonglow (Feb 28, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Dragon said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...


Sorry, but Washington taxing whiskey makers and then killing them for rebelling started the whole process. How could early America be considered a republic when the masses could not even vote for the executive branch and slavery was allowed by the state and the nation.


----------



## Moonglow (Feb 28, 2012)

Foxfyre said:


> TakeAStepBack said:
> 
> 
> > Pretty good post, fox.
> ...



Yes, great granny was a cocaine addict. President Grant was a drunk. We need to get back to our roots of killing injuns and beating the wife without government intervention.


----------



## Dante (Feb 28, 2012)

Moonglow said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > Dragon said:
> ...



Nothing about being a republic demands all people in it have the vote. Slavery existed in most all republics America was modeled on.


----------



## Foxfyre (Feb 28, 2012)

Moonglow said:


> Foxfyre said:
> 
> 
> > TakeAStepBack said:
> ...



And that relates to the topic how?


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 28, 2012)

Dante said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > Dante said:
> ...



1. "Democracy by definition is a defective product."
Can you produce that definition, from a source other than your imagination?

There are those who find that evincing a world-weary cynicism gives a certain sophistication....I see it as either a lack of understanding or a pretension.

2. "You truly live in a dream world."

a. There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?
Robert Kennedy

b. Our ideals resemble the stars, which illuminate the night. NO one will ever be able to touch them. But the men, who, like the sailors on the ocean, take them for guidelines, will undoubtedly reach their goal.
		Carl Schurz

c. Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
 Robert Browning


Hope this helps you out.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 28, 2012)

Foxfyre said:


> TakeAStepBack said:
> 
> 
> > Pretty good post, fox.
> ...



"As for the cultural revolution, it of course began as a protest of the insanity of the Vietnam War. And then it morphed into its own thing, sucking in the young by the thousands, and lulling them into complacency and full rebellion by unlimited access to booze and mind altering drugs."

1. No doubt the war was a factor.

2. That said, it is easy to forget the huge numbers of babies born after WWII,...and there is a case to be made that the society could not assimilate same as far as values and attitude.

a. 	The sixties was a pivotal time in the formation, or reformation of this culture. One interesting explanation involves the* huge numbers of individual coming of age *at the time, who must be civilized by their families, schools, and churches. A particularly large wave may swamp the institutions responsible for teaching traditions and standards. 
see chapter one of Bork, "Slouching Toward Gomorrah."

b.	The baby boomers were a generation so large that they formed their own culture. The generation from 1922-1947 numbered 43.6 million, while that of 1946-1964 had 79 million. Would it surprise anyone if this culture was opposed to that of their parents?
Rathenau called [this] the vertical invasion of the barbarians. Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, p. 53.

3. As far as a reaction to 'the insanity'...no, it was the creator of insanity.

a. The unrest of the sixties was born in June of 1962 at the AFL-CIO camp at Port Huron, Michigan.
Some prior rumblings had been heard in a nascent civil rights movement, and from the Free Speech movement at Berkeley- but it was the Port Huron meetings that represented the heart of Sixties radicalism. 

b.	Port Huron was an early convention of SDS, a small group of alienated, left-wing college students, 59 from 11 campuses.

c.	One member gave this prescription: *four-square against anti-Communism, eight-square against American-culture, twelve-square against sell-out unions, one hundred and twenty against an interpretation of the Cold War that saw it as a Soviet plot and identified American policy fondly.*  Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, p. 109-110

4.	A draft of the meeting can be found at Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society, 1962. 
It sets forth *an agenda for changing human nature, the nation, and the world. *In it, one can hear the ignorance and arrogance so inherent in adolescents: the euphoria due to being convinced of their own wisdom, moral purity, and ability to change everything. 

5. *Did you notice the hallmark of totalitarian thought, mentioned earlier in this thread, "agenda for changing human nature..."*?


----------



## Foxfyre (Feb 28, 2012)

All good stuff PC.

However, being a member of that immediate post war generation, we were as rebellious as any generation.  Every generation pushes the envelope re values of its parents and grandparents, else civilization would never evolve; never progress; never advance.  But in the end, most of us recognized the value of and adopted most of the core culture of our parents and most of us were mostly unaffected and unwooed by the anti culture revolution.   It was a segment of the baby boomers who joined the anti-culture revolution, but by no means all of them.

Still, it was that generation of the 1960's which was the first to totally reject the traditional American values of their parents and our society.  And because they seized the power in education and the media, I think is a huge reason that our society has been in a state of gradual decline ever since.  As we have seen in Russia and China and India, such rejection of the existing culture has generally not turned out well for many of the people.

Those traditional American values had formed the core of a Republic in which people, and not an authoritarian government, successfully governed themselves.  Once that responsibility is shifted to government, the society becomes far more selfish, far more self serving, far more demanding.  The free market begins breaking down and the nanny state emerges as those with unprecedented power become drunk on it and shift the emphasis to increasing and protecting it.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 28, 2012)

Foxfyre said:


> All good stuff PC.
> 
> However, being a member of that immediate post war generation, we were as rebellious as any generation.  Every generation pushes the envelope re values of its parents and grandparents, else civilization would never evolve; never progress; never advance.  But in the end, most of us recognized the value of and adopted most of the core culture of our parents and most of us were mostly unaffected and unwooed by the anti culture revolution.   It was a segment of the baby boomers who joined the anti-culture revolution, but by no means all of them.
> 
> ...



1.   "... they seized the power in education and the media...."
Yup.
"The radicals of the sixties did not remain within the universitiesThey realized that the apocalypse never materialized. they were dropping off into environmentalism and consumerism and fatalismI watched many of my old comrades apply to graduate school in universities they had failed to burn down, so they could get advanced degrees and spread the ideas that had been discredited in the streets under an academic cover.  Collier and Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About The Sixties, p. 294-295.


2. "But in the end, most of us recognized the value of and adopted most of the core culture of our parents and most of us were mostly unaffected and unwooed by the anti culture revolution.'

Based on same, any predictions for November?


----------



## Foxfyre (Feb 28, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Foxfyre said:
> 
> 
> > All good stuff PC.
> ...



Not really.  Just some gut level impressions mostly.

1.  Those who have no grasp or understanding of history or who have bought into the modern progressive rewrite of it or who simply don't give a damn about it will vote for Obama.  So he will receive a sizable percentage of the vote.  Whether it will be enough to re-elect him, I don't know yet.   That will depend on whether the Left is successful in creating an "October surprise" and/or on whether the economy can be shown or manipulated to pretend that it is markedly better and therefore also reel in the most gullible among us.

2.  Those with the strongest grasp of history have to appreciate Gingrich's amazing sense of it and his ability to apply it to everyday problems and issues.   However those same folks may also hold on to traditional American values and question whether Gingrich shares them.

3.  Romney has the same problem.  Those of us with a solid educations in history and economics recognize him as the superior leader, the best at analyzing and solving problems, and a master of getting things done.  But does he share the core beliefs of those of us who recognize that and will channel it into a stronger American?  Or just more of a big government one?

4.  And even when you strip away all the seeming looney tunes and naivete from Ron Paul and focus on his really sound fiscal sense, does he fully understand the concept of a social contract.  A principle in which the people voluntarily regulate their local societies to create the kind of environment that supports children, families, and the American way?  Does he understand or care about the values that are most important to most people?

5.  Santorum has gained unprecedented momentum purely because he is tapping into our deepest desires to return to core values and principles that made America the greatest nation on Earth.    In no other election would his more passionate views be as well received (or as much overlooked) as what we have been seeing.  He is the one candidate who really seems to 'get it'.   And yet he hasn't emerged as the clear front runner because of questions re his leadership ability and whether he will actually walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

There is a part of me that is actualy wanting a brokered convention this year.  A convention in which the delegates will come together and raise up the one who will best represent us.   And I can't tell you who I think that would be.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 28, 2012)

Foxfyre said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > Foxfyre said:
> ...



"Those who have no grasp or understanding of history or who have bought into the modern progressive rewrite of it or who simply don't give a damn about it will vote for Obama."

1. Let's add in those who believe that there is some free stuff or 'em in an Obama vote...
...equality has been defined as 'I get to take some of my neighbor's possessions." 

Sociologist Helmut Schoecks observation: Since the end of the Second World War, however, a new ethic has come into being, according to which the envious man is perfectly acceptable. Progressively fewer individuals and groups are ashamed of their envy, but instead make out that its existence in their temperaments axiomatically proves the existence of social injustice, which must be eliminated for their benefit. Helmut Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior, p. 179

If Schoeck is correct, the nation is doomed; if so, it is not politics, nor lack of education, but simply the flaw in human nature.

I think you can see that the back and forth on the board changes few minds....

I worry for my children.

2. My vote will be as per Buckley suggested: ""we should support the most conservative candidate who is electable"

3. If the same force that has protected this nation throughout history is still behind it, we'll win.


----------



## regent (Feb 28, 2012)

Historians are usually accused of being liberal. The founders before the ink was dry on the ratification of the Constitution, created a central bank. the Bank of The United States. And what of the Roaring Twenties?


----------



## Foxfyre (Feb 28, 2012)

regent said:


> Historians are usually accused of being liberal. The founders before the ink was dry on the ratification of the Constitution, created a central bank. the Bank of The United States. And what of the Roaring Twenties?



The Roaring Twebties was a combination of affluence and atni-government sentiment.  The folks simply were not allowing the government to dictate to them what liberties they would be permitted.   Such has been the history of the American people who don't take well to the concept of having the government ban things when there is no compelling reason, at least in the mind of the people, to do so.  America was founded on the principle of self governance and it has become ingrained into the American culture.  Elected leaders fail to recognize that at their peril.  At least that was true until the government was able to put about half of America on the government dole as is the case now.

And that is putting us perilously close to being back in bondage to a government that answers to nobody but itself.

As for that original central bank, it was not the fed, but was intended to be the agency through which the U.S. treasury could distribute and properly control the distribution of currency.  The Founders would have been horrified at the concept of a Federal Reserve that not only operates mostly in secrecy but on its own authority with very little oversight of the people's elected representatives.


----------



## Foxfyre (Feb 28, 2012)

regent said:


> Historians are usually accused of being liberal. The founders before the ink was dry on the ratification of the Constitution, created a central bank. the Bank of The United States. And what of the Roaring Twenties?



Oh and I failed to address your original point.  Historians with integrity are neither liberal nor conservatives but stay as close to the discernable facts as possible.  Just as scientists with integrity are not swayed by ideology.

But going back to an earlier point, the public education system has been so infused with the prodigy of those 1960's cultural revolutionaries that we too often see the process of education tainted with ideological bias.  Not only are they interpreting the history to justify that bias, but too often are rewriting it for that purpose.


----------



## regent (Feb 28, 2012)

Foxfyre said:


> regent said:
> 
> 
> > Historians are usually accused of being liberal. The founders before the ink was dry on the ratification of the Constitution, created a central bank. the Bank of The United States. And what of the Roaring Twenties?
> ...



It's good that you have confidence in most of our historians, because as you know they often rate the presidents. In 2010 238 noted historians and presidential experts were polled to rate the presidents on 20 characteristics associated with the office. They rated FDR as America's greatest president and rated Obama thus far in his term of office as the 15th. best, and Bush as 5th worst.


----------



## sealybobo (Feb 28, 2012)

Where did our Republic go?  Down the drain in 2000 when the GOP stole the election and the rich finally pulled off a successful coup.  Broke the economy, bankrupted the government, killed a lot of New Deal programs that were good, started a war for oil.

Then appointed two right wing supreme court justices.  Most Americans don't know how important this was for the GOP.  Just look at Citizens United, and every other case where Alito and Roberts always side with the corporations.  

The rich now own our country.  They always had too much power but this is different.  Now they say corporations are people and money is speech.  Great.


----------



## Dante (Feb 28, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Dante said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...



Democracy is messy.



the republic still stands.


----------



## Foxfyre (Feb 29, 2012)

regent said:


> Foxfyre said:
> 
> 
> > regent said:
> ...



I would like to have a link to see who chose the 238 noted historians and presidential experts and how they obtained that designation.

But rating of Presidents really has little or nothing to do with how we are losing our great republic, don't you think?


----------



## JDzBrain (Feb 29, 2012)

Intense said:


> Hamilton held little regard for the Individual. *He Trumped Enumerated Powers with the General Welfare Clause*...


Have any of you folks actually READ Article 8 of Section I of the Constitution.  Cause it DAMN SURE doesn't seem like it some times.  

It's a list of the powers and responsibilities Congress DOES have that they CAN tax to fund.  

Article I, Section 8, clause 1.  "_The Congress shall have Power *To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises*, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; *but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States*;_"

The all empowering 'general welfare' clause is NOT a clause.  It is PART of a clause that is simply the statement of the congressional power and responsibility they can tax to fund and the parts I bolded are the actual point of the clause....the power to lay taxes to fund 3 things which are described in detail in the 17 clauses that follow the first one!  

That first clause also says, "_provide for the common Defence_." So why don't you call it the common defense clause?  Why...BECAUSE IT'S NOT!

How do I know that?  Because further down as the founders described the EXACT NATURE of those powers and responsibilities, it says: 

"_To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

*To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;*

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;_"

Now just WHY IN THE HELL would the founders say provide for the common defense and then go to all the detailed trouble of stating such an ABSURDLY OBVIOUS thing as telling Congress to maintain an Army...UNLESS the common defense order in the first clause was a GENERAL statement that need defining.  

A little COMMON SENSE PLEASE!?

The so called 'general welfare' clause is NO SUCH THING...and just as with the common defense statement, the general welfare STATEMENT is defined further down in Article 8 with clauses like: 

"_To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;_"

ALL of which require Congress to lay tariffs and tax to fund!

People, please...apply a little common sense before blindly accepting the nonsensical prattling of pseudo intellectuals that believe they are ghost whispers that know the minds of 200 year old dead men.  

There is NO da Vinci code in Constitution.  It says what it means and means what it says...as long as your reading comprehension is above a 5th grader that is!

PoliticalChic, you ask what has become of our Republic?  THIS is what's become of our republic!!!!


----------



## regent (Feb 29, 2012)

The Constitution is but a very short framework for government. No document of its length can spell out every detail, some state constitutions try to do that and some have six hundred amendments or so. The  national Constitution has 27 amendments, but has been interpreted thousands of times by simple tradition, by useage and Court intrpretations. Conservatives often try to use the Constituton as their anchor to impede changes and it hasn't always worked. As Justice Hughes said, The Constitution is what the Court say it is. 
Incidently, try and find the clause in the Constitution that says the Court has the power to interpret the Constitution, the Court just assumed that responsiblity and bingo by that one little act look at what has happened.


----------



## Dragon (Feb 29, 2012)

JDZBrain:

I refer you to the Supreme Court case United States v. Butler in which the Agricultural Adjustment Act was ruled unconstitutional and in which the language of the tax and spend clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution was clarified legally. United States v. Butler



			
				SCOTUS said:
			
		

> In Article I, § 8, cl. 1 of the Constitution, which provides that Congress shall have power
> 
> to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States,
> 
> ...



(Emphasis added.) It's true that the "general welfare" clause is not a separate power, but it is not true as you seem to want to believe that it has no legal meaning. Nor is it true that the power to tax, and by implication the power to spend, is confined to the other enumerated powers. I realize that's what James Madison argued in vetoing an appropriations bill he disapproved of, and perhaps it's what he would have preferred the language to say, but if so his intent did not prevail at the convention, because that's not what the language actually DOES say.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 29, 2012)

regent said:


> The Constitution is but a very short framework for government. No document of its length can spell out every detail, some state constitutions try to do that and some have six hundred amendments or so. The  national Constitution has 27 amendments, but has been interpreted thousands of times by simple tradition, by useage and Court intrpretations. Conservatives often try to use the Constituton as their anchor to impede changes and it hasn't always worked. As Justice Hughes said, The Constitution is what the Court say it is.
> Incidently, try and find the clause in the Constitution that says the Court has the power to interpret the Constitution, the Court just assumed that responsiblity and bingo by that one little act look at what has happened.



Every judicial decision must be authorized by the Constitution. 
Every single one.

Any decision not so decided is a rogue decision.

"All who have studied law, and many who have not, are familiar
with John Marshall&#8217;s classic defense of judicial review in
his opinion for the Court in Marbury v. Madison.  The ultimate source of authority in this Nation, 
Marshall said, is not Congress, not the states, not for that matter the Supreme
Court of the United States. The people are the ultimate
source of authority; they have parceled out the authority that
originally resided entirely with them by adopting the original
Constitution and by later amending it."
Chief Justice William Rehnquist.


He went on to say, in that essay, that any judges or Justices who decide 
based on other than the Constitution:

"Once we have abandoned the idea that the authority
of the courts to declare laws unconstitutional is somehow tied
to the language of the Constitution that the people adopted, a
judiciary exercising the power of judicial review appears in a
quite different light. Judges then are no longer the keepers of
the covenant; instead they are a small group of fortunately
situated people with a roving commission to second-guess
Congress, state legislatures, and state and federal administrative
officers concerning what is best for the country."
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol29_No2_Rehnquist.pdf


----------



## Dragon (Feb 29, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Every judicial decision must be authorized by the Constitution.
> Every single one.
> 
> Any decision not so decided is a rogue decision.



Oh, really? And who gets to decide whether a judicial decision is "authorized by the Constitution" or not?

You?


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 29, 2012)

Dragon said:


> JDZBrain:
> 
> I refer you to the Supreme Court case United States v. Butler in which the Agricultural Adjustment Act was ruled unconstitutional and in which the language of the tax and spend clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution was clarified legally. United States v. Butler
> 
> ...



1.	Article I, section 8, clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;.

a.	Hamiltons view was that this clause gave Congress the power to tax and spend for the general welfare, whatsoever they decide that might be.

b.	William Drayton, in 1828, came down on the side of Madison, Jefferson and others, pointing out that* if Hamilton was correct, what point would there have been to enumerate Congresses other powers? * If Congress wished to do anything it was not authorized to do, it could accomplish it via taxing and spending. He said, "If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?" 
'Charity Not a Proper Function of the American Government' by Walter E. Williams

2. 	In his farewell address of our first President, George Washington, in reference to our constitution, warned, "Let there be no change [in the Constitution] by usurpation. For though this, in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."  But, change there has been: FDR was the culprit.

3. 	In 1937:  up until that year the Congress of the United States conducted its business within the boundaries of seventeen enumerated powers granted under Article I Section 8 of the United States Constitution; these powers defined clearly the areas within which Congress could enact legislation including the allocation of funds and levying of taxes. The Court, in Butler, tried, for the last time, to limit spending as a way to control and coerce state prerogatives. Anything not set down in the enumerated powers was considered outside the purview of the national government and hence, a matter for the states. There were occasional challenges to the concept but it was not until Franklin Roosevelt's new deal that it was attacked in deadly earnestness.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 29, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > Every judicial decision must be authorized by the Constitution.
> ...



Let me give you the instruction you so dearly require.

1. The people are the holders of all power in the United States of America.

2. They delegate same by elections.

3. The Congress passes laws they deem constitutional; by signing a law, it is assumed that the President agrees to the constitutionality.

4. Those laws brought to the Court must be judged by the language of the Constitution.

5. If there is no specific unconstitutionality that can be pointed to vis-a-vis the US Constitution, the law must be found constitutional.

a. This obviates any belief that Justices have a view superior to the US Constitution.

6. Changes can be made only through the amendment process.


Don't you feel smarter now?


----------



## Dragon (Feb 29, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Hamiltons view was that this clause gave Congress the power to tax and spend for the general welfare, whatsoever they decide that might be.



Yes. And his view quite obviously prevailed. Otherwise, the language would have been different.



> William Drayton, in 1828, came down on the side of Madison, Jefferson and others, pointing out that if Hamilton was correct, what point would there have been to enumerate Congresses other powers?



The power to tax and spend does not encompass the other enumerated powers. It does not provide the power to declare war, to set standards of weights and measures, to coin money, to borrow money, or even to create an army or navy, since in addition to spending money that requires the setting of standards of military discipline, authorizing uniforms and chains of command, and many other things that are not simply matters of spending money.

The first clause of I:8 authorizes Congress to tax and spend to provide for the common defense and general welfare; it does not however authorize Congress to do anything BUT tax and spend for those purposes, hence the need for the other enumerated powers.



> The Court, in Butler, tried, for the last time, to limit spending as a way to control and coerce state prerogatives.



You are mistaken both that the court in Butler went against the idea of taxation and spending as a separate power, and that it was the last time the Court set limits to federal authority. The quote I presented earlier was from precisely that decision, and it reflected Hamilton's view as to how to interpret the tax and spend clause; the AAA was invalidated on other grounds.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Feb 29, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > Hamiltons view was that this clause gave Congress the power to tax and spend for the general welfare, whatsoever they decide that might be.
> ...



 "Butler was the last case in which the Court would find a constitutional limitation on the power of Congress to tax and spend."
Taxing and Spending Clause - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


----------



## Foxfyre (Feb 29, 2012)

Alexander Hamilton was perhaps America's first prominent 'progressive' and history testifies to his economic genius.   After reading and considering his writings, most especially in the Federalist papers, I think he was the one Founder who did not subscribe to the thesis of the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of the Republic on a concept of God given unalienable rights that guided the construction of the Constitution.  Like all Progressives he supported the concept of a 'good king' who would force the people to form a righteous society.  He did not trust the people to govern themselves.

Had Hamilton had his way, the United States would have formed just another quasi European nation and there would have never been American exceptionalism that made it the greatest, most free, most prosperous, most innovative, and most benevolent nation the world has ever known.

It breaks my heart that the "Hamiltonians" are gradually taking over the government and society and we are losing that exceptionalism and the freedom it offered drip by drip.  And I despair that there is time to re-educate the indoctrinated and brainwashed and turn it around before it is too late.  But I will keep trying.


----------



## JDzBrain (Feb 29, 2012)

Dragon said:


> The power to tax and spend does not encompass the other enumerated powers. It does not provide the power to declare war, to set standards of weights and measures, to coin money, to borrow money, or even to create an army or navy, since in addition to spending money that requires the setting of standards of military discipline, authorizing uniforms and chains of command, and many other things that are not simply matters of spending money.


YES...IT DOES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why don't you describe a process whereby the government...ANY government can do  ANY of those things without creating an infrastructure or paying others to do so.  

Does declaring a war with no army to fight it make sense?  Does being directed to coin money without the mechanisms to stamp them out make sense?  How about being directed to establish postal routs and deliver the mail without the funding to build roads and pay people to deliver it?  

Congress can't even print the Uniform Code of Conduct manual with out the funding to make it happen.  HELL...they can't even print the legislation for those regulations to read it among themselves without public funding!

CRAP man, THAT...is how Ben Franklin made his living!

Dude...that is what I'm talking about.  A little common sense can go a LONG way!


----------



## Dragon (Feb 29, 2012)

JDzBrain said:


> Dragon said:
> 
> 
> > The power to tax and spend does not encompass the other enumerated powers. It does not provide the power to declare war, to set standards of weights and measures, to coin money, to borrow money, or even to create an army or navy, since in addition to spending money that requires the setting of standards of military discipline, authorizing uniforms and chains of command, and many other things that are not simply matters of spending money.
> ...



Excuse me, but you're committing an error of categorization. I am saying, "the power to do A is not SUFFICIENT FOR the power to to B." You are coming back saying, in effect, "the power to do A is NECESSARY FOR the power to to B."

Necessary and sufficient are not the same thing. Yes, Congress must tax and spend in order to exert any of its other powers, but I wasn't saying anything to the contrary. I was saying, rather, that it must do something MORE THAN -- or, you could say, IN ADDITION TO -- taxing and spending in order to exert those powers.

Congress cannot build an army WITHOUT spending money, but neither can Congress build an army if spending money is ALL that it does.

Clear now?


----------



## JDzBrain (Feb 29, 2012)

The Constitution does NOT say...in addition to.  It says the Congress SHALL have the power do these 3 things and have the power to tax to do them.  And then it defines EXACTLY how and what those things are to be done.

You can NOT separate out one thing from the other...OR as some activist judges have done...decided the Constitution doesn't say what it says or that common sense is suspended.  

These men did not waste words on the superfluous.  They would NOT say defend this nation and then describe how to do it and then say provide for the general welfare and just leave the definition of what was the general welfare up to interpretation.  

The ONLY parts of it left up to interpretation by Congress is how many roads are required for mail delivery, how many troops are required or is treason still a Capitol offense in the Unified Code given the social mores of the day.

Oh, and it's perfectly clear.  I'm being asked to suspend common sense.


----------



## Dragon (Feb 29, 2012)

JDzBrain said:


> The Constitution does NOT say...in addition to.  It says the Congress SHALL have the power do these 3 things and have the power to tax to do them.  And then it defines EXACTLY how and what those things are to be done.
> 
> You can NOT separate out one thing from the other..



I'm sorry, but there's no evidence in the document to support that statement. It's clear from the context that the enumerated powers are all supposed to be separate and independent. The power to coin money is not a function of the power to declare war or the power to establish post offices or the power to govern the nation's capital or the power to punish counterfeiting. Nor is there any evidence in the way the section is set up that the first enumerated power (to tax) is any different from all the others: a separate power in itself, not dependent on or limited by the others.

Are you familiar with the Confederate Constitution? You probably know that it was almost a perfect copy of the U.S. Constitution except for a few changes, like a single 6-year term for the president and a right to property in slaves. One of the changes they did make was the language equivalent to the tax and spend clause, which reads as follows:

"The Congress shall have power-

(I) To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises for revenue, necessary to pay the debts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the Confederate States"

See the difference? It would have been very simple and easy for the delegates to the Constitutional Convention to make our own document say much the same, but they didn't. Why not? Because enough of them didn't want to, obviously. Remember, these were in some cases highly literate and verbally capable men. Two of them, Madison and Hamilton, were authors of the Federalist Papers. So they had the ability to express themselves precisely and it's most unlikely this is a case of sloppy language.

I believe the clause says exactly what the framers intended it to say. And it says that Congress may tax (and by implication, spend) "to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." And the plain meaning of that is that they can tax and spend on a very broad range of things, essentially anything that doesn't 1) benefit one state at the expense of others, 2) implicitly create a regulatory power that Congress is not otherwise authorized to have, or 3) violate some explicit ban on government action.


----------



## JDzBrain (Feb 29, 2012)

Ok, let's approach this a different way.  

Article I, Section 2...titled The House...the first clause says, "_The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature._"

Ok?  That is the first clause and defines the purpose of Section 2, which is to establish the body we call the House of Representatives and says that if they meet the qualifications for a state legislature they can run and be chosen every 2 years.  Right?

Now does that mean that after that statement, every other part of the Section is individual and independent from that clause and Congress is free to alter or interpret that clause to fit their needs or desires?   

OR...when it says, "_No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen._" in the next clause, is that clause a clarification for the qualification for a Representative...BEYOND being qualified for the state electors?

Or in the 3rd clause when it SPECIFICALLY states the number of representatives each of the original states can have, was that just a suggestion or a *clear definition* of how they intended apportioning of those Representatives was to occur?

How about the next clause when it says, "_When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies._"  Does that not REALLY apply to representatives since the first clause says they should be elected every 2 years?

Can one exist without the other?

You are saying YES...they are independent, when in fact they are part and parcel.  As are the clauses in the Powers of Congress section.

It's the SAME THING!

There was no fuzzy logic applied to how and why the Constitution was written the way it was.  These men were practical and pragmatic and the Constitution was written with INTENT!

They did NOT just suddenly abandon logic when they reached the Powers of Congress!


----------



## Dragon (Mar 1, 2012)

I am saying nothing about any part of the Constitution except the enumerated powers in Article I, Section 8. Each power is presented as a separate authorization of the federal government. Specifically, Congress may:

1. Levy taxes;
2. Borrow money;
3. Regulate international and interstate commerce;
4. Coin money and set standards of weights and measures;
5. Punish counterfeiting;
6. Establish post offices and post roads;
7. Authorize patents and trademarks;
8. Set up courts;
9. Punish piracy and international crimes;
10. Declare war;
11. Raise and support armies;
12. Raise and maintain a navy;
13. Make rules governing naval and land forces;
14. Call up and federalize the militia;
15. Set rules governing the militia;
16. Govern the nation's capital directly; and
17. Make all laws "necessary and proper" for executing its other powers.

Except for number 17, which obviously and logically depends on the other powers, each one here is a separate item. None of them is set apart from the others. There is simply nothing in the language that says the power to tax and spend is limited to carrying out the other powers (as there IS such language impacting the "necessary and proper" clause). Instead, the language says that the power to tax and spend is limited to paying the debts and providing for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. They key words there being "common" and "general," as states are supposed to provide for their own local defense and welfare, but the federal government is to handle threats to the nation as a whole and activities benefiting it as a whole.

I understand why you might find this problematical, but let that show you that the Constitution isn't the libertarian document you might have supposed.


----------



## JDzBrain (Mar 1, 2012)

You just proved my point.  Section 8 is written EXACTLY like section 2, which is written like section 1 which is written just like every other article and section in the Constitution!

You do NOT get to rewrite the Constitution or take parts out and mix and match.  The founders did NOT simply abandon the structure they established for writing the Constitution in the first 7 sections when they got the the 8th.  And by pointing out that the 17th thing on your list is dependent on the others, you have proven the point. 

NOTHING in the sections of the Articles was independent from the others and none of the sections or articles deviated from the structure they establish in the first one.  

If they had been intended to be...there would have been NO NEED to break it up into articles and sections.  Just a freakin list like you made out.  

Unless you believe the founders...the greatest collection of minds in one place at one time in the history of man...were too stupid to do in 2 years what you did in 15 minutes!?

Common sense please!

Each section begins with a clause that is a statement of intent and IF further direction was necessary...additional clause were added for CLARITY!

It IS that simple!


----------



## Dragon (Mar 1, 2012)

LOL no, I haven't proven your point, and I am not the one trying to rewrite the document.

Article I, Section 2 isn't written the same as Section 8. Section 2 is a description of how Representatives are to be elected and qualifications for the office. Section 8 is a list of enumerated powers. Section 2 is written in paragraph form, while Section 8 is for all purposes a bullet list (without the bullets).


----------



## Foxfyre (Mar 1, 2012)

He isn't rewriting anything, Dragon, but the points you guys are debating has been part of the debate between Constitutional scholars, beginning with Madison and Hamilton, during the writing of and ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

The specific tax clause is:



> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;



The Founders determined this clause was necessary becauses under the Articles of Confederation the federal government had no authority to levy and collect taxes.  It requisitioned funding from the states who either coughed up the money requisitioned or didn't.  The funding was therefore so uneven it was impossible to budget and sometimes difficult to pay the bills.

Subsequently, once Congress had the power to collect taxes necessary to operate the federal government, almost all bones of contention re federal taxes was related to the general welfare 'clause'--not really a clause but more of a specified authorized expense.

James Madison, who strongly supported the Constitution and its ratification, looked at the general welfare clause as spending must be tied  to one of the other specifically enumerated powers, such as regulating interstate or foreign commerce, or providing for the military.   The  "general welfare" was not a specific power of Congress but simply a qualification of what taxes can be used for.''\

Alexander Hamilton, less passionate about the Constitution and its limitations on government powers, wanted a broader interpretation of 'general welfare'.  He wanted the federal government to aid agriculture and education and commerce though even he rejected the idea of targeted benevolence.   He thought such aid should be evenly distributed and not benefit any part of the country or any group more than any other.

Every U.S. President, up to FDR, has gone with the Madison concept of 'general welfare' and an understanding that there is nothing in the Constitution allowing the federal government to dispense charity or aid or benevolence to anybody.

Since FDR, presidents have increasingly gone with the Hamiltonian model but have thoroughly trashed all the restraints once they became drunk with power to use the people's money to increase their personal power, prestige, influence, and fortunes.

It is THAT which is chipping away at our Republic that is already almost unrecognizable from the freedom and unalienable rights the Founders intended for us and which we will lose if we do not reverse that trend.


----------



## Greenbeard (Mar 1, 2012)

Foxfyre said:


> Every U.S. President, up to FDR, has gone with the Madison concept of 'general welfare' and an understanding that there is nothing in the Constitution allowing the federal government to dispense charity or aid or benevolence to anybody.



Every one?

Freedmen's Bureau - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


----------



## idb (Mar 1, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Foxfyre said:
> 
> 
> > CrusaderFrank said:
> ...



Well, what greater authority do you need?
Your argument is hereby proven beyond dispute.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Mar 1, 2012)

idb said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > Foxfyre said:
> ...



You have a point, BVD's ....beside the one on your head?


----------



## idb (Mar 1, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Dante said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...





> 1. "Democracy by definition is a defective product."
> Can you produce that definition, from a source other than your imagination?
> 
> There are those who find that evincing a world-weary cynicism gives a certain sophistication....I see it as either a lack of understanding or a pretension.


You dismiss communism as a theory that is unworkable due to the impossibility of controlling human nature, but are unwilling to accept that democracy might have any shortcomings for the same reason?


----------



## idb (Mar 1, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> idb said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...



It speaks for itself, couldn't you find a cut-and-paste retort?


----------



## PoliticalChic (Mar 1, 2012)

idb said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > Dante said:
> ...



*"You dismiss communism blah blah blah...."*

When I read your post I shook my head so rapidly, you could blend paint colors in my mouth.

Applying your entire compliment of brain cells, 
...and delving deeply into your knowledge of history, 
you decided to make the case that the evidence from those nations that have tried democracy is equivalent to those that have wandered down the paths of communism????


Well, at least your number of brain cells has reached a manageable number....


Speaking of numbers, did the slaughter of over one hundred million human beings by the forces of communism in the last century enter into your calculations to any extent?


Now, since education hasn't taken, the next experiment on the agenda would be for you to jump in the lake to see if that point on your head writes underwater.


----------



## Foxfyre (Mar 1, 2012)

Greenbeard said:


> Foxfyre said:
> 
> 
> > Every U.S. President, up to FDR, has gone with the Madison concept of 'general welfare' and an understanding that there is nothing in the Constitution allowing the federal government to dispense charity or aid or benevolence to anybody.
> ...



Sorry to be so long responding to this because it is an excellent addition to the debate.  (I got sidetracked by another matter.)

In the wake of the Civil War and with slavery outlawed, we suddenly had tens of thousands of slaves thrown off the reservations with no visible means of support and, in a war ravaged South, few people willing or able to hire them.  As the refugees began streaming north, the North became increasingly alarmed.   Numerous private charities sprang up to help feed, clothe, and house people, but that wasn't sufficiently stemming the flow of refugees into the northern states who didn't want them.   So the Freedmen's Bureau was established within the Department of War (defense) which is an important distinction.   It was intended to be a temporary agency and was the same kind of reparations the federal government would expect to make to anybody when a federal action compromises a people's property or livelihood.   In other words, the federal government was addressing a dilemma that it had created itself and saw that as a responsibility of the military as it had been a military action creating the problem.

The limited temporary budget provided immediate emergency relief with most of the budget designated to offer small loans to help people to get a new start.  The loans were expected to be paid back.  Only a small fraction of the designated funds were ever loaned out.   I'm not sure if most of those were in fact paid back.

All this is to say that this was a very different thing that the government presuming to dispense charity to folks just because they are needy or, most especially, just to win their gratitude and vote.


----------



## Greenbeard (Mar 1, 2012)

Foxfyre said:


> All this is to say that this was a very different thing that the government presuming to dispense charity to folks just because they are needy or, most especially, just to win their gratitude and vote.



I don't recall there being a space left for your perceptions of politicians' motivations in the statement "there is nothing in the Constitution allowing the federal government to dispense charity or aid or benevolence to anybody."


----------



## Foxfyre (Mar 1, 2012)

Greenbeard said:


> Foxfyre said:
> 
> 
> > All this is to say that this was a very different thing that the government presuming to dispense charity to folks just because they are needy or, most especially, just to win their gratitude and vote.
> ...



The distinction is the diference between 'charity/benevolence' and 'reparations' don't you think?  Do you not see a difference between these two things?


----------



## Greenbeard (Mar 1, 2012)

What I see is the tacit acknowledgement that social welfare spending is not in violation of the Constitution, as long as it meets whatever arbitrary philosophical test you decide to put it to. 

The existence of a federal agency dispensing education, food, housing, health care, etc in the mid-19th century puts to rest the notion that prior to FDR there was some universal "understanding that there is nothing in the Constitution allowing the federal government to dispense charity or aid or benevolence to anybody." Your own posts in this thread put to rest any notion that _you_ personally hold such a rigid understanding of the federal government's authority to tax and spend.

I'm not particularly interested in trying to parse out the details of when you feel like using the general welfare clause to justify social spending. I'm simply pointing out that 1) your language suggests an ideological rigidity that you clearly don't exhibit, and 2) that American politicians prior to 1933 also failed to adhere to the 'consensus' you're imagining.


----------



## idb (Mar 1, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> idb said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...



I make no case except that your obvious unthinking partisanship prevents you from adopting an unbiased view.
Your reply confirms it yet again.

Now...give me another insult...I dare ya!!!
I do suggest another cut-and-paste one though, as I suggested earlier, because your free-lance efforts are around 10 year-old level and I'm sure that isn't the image you're aiming for.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Mar 1, 2012)

idb said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > idb said:
> ...



Did you think this a clever retort?

You sound like an idiot who has been wounded....

...and appears no more than a child looking for a high-sounding
way of saying 'I don't like you.'

Why not simply say 'I don't like you'?

I suppose because you realize the effect it would have....
...I'd be terribly upset.


----------



## idb (Mar 1, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> idb said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...



Really...here's the link Google 
Try searching for something like 'trying to sound grown-up insults'.


----------



## Foxfyre (Mar 1, 2012)

Greenbeard said:


> What I see is the tacit acknowledgement that social welfare spending is not in violation of the Constitution, as long as it meets whatever arbitrary philosophical test you decide to put it to.
> 
> The existence of a federal agency dispensing education, food, housing, health care, etc in the mid-19th century puts to rest the notion that prior to FDR there was some universal "understanding that there is nothing in the Constitution allowing the federal government to dispense charity or aid or benevolence to anybody." Your own posts in this thread put to rest any notion that _you_ personally hold such a rigid understanding of the federal government's authority to tax and spend.
> 
> I'm not particularly interested in trying to parse out the details of when you feel like using the general welfare clause to justify social spending. I'm simply pointing out that 1) your language suggests an ideological rigidity that you clearly don't exhibit, and 2) that American politicians prior to 1933 also failed to adhere to the 'consensus' you're imagining.



Again this was NOT social spending.  This was reparations for a situation the government itself had created.  You can parse it any way you like, but there is a huge difference between this temporary provision included in the War Dept. budget and for say food stamps or free breakfasts for school kids or any other social program you might wish to bring up.  It is a failure to assess accurate history and a propensity to twist it to fit whatever social agenda that one might have that has significantly contributed to the steady chipping away at the Republic the Founders gave us.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Mar 1, 2012)

idb said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > idb said:
> ...



My remark was designed not so much to pierce as to stingand I see it succeeded.

You posted a very stupid suggestion of analogy between democracy and communism.
Why not behave as an adult and either admit it, or, if that is the way you were brought up, simply wander off.

I try to give an intelligent post an intelligent response...an inane post gets what it deserves.


I don't see that our conversation has any journey left.
Do you?
Adieu.


----------



## idb (Mar 1, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> idb said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...



Crikey...that was too easy.
Oh well.


----------



## Dragon (Mar 1, 2012)

Two centerpiece acts of the First New Deal were struck down by the Supreme Court: the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act. However, Congress also passed legislation at roughly the same time granting relief to the unemployed both as open largesse and in the form of work-relief. These acts were never even seriously challenged as to their constitutionality.

The reason why the federal government did not involve itself in aid to the poor and unemployed prior to the Great Depression is not because it was believed to have no constitutional authority, but simply that by custom that was a state responsibility and there was no perceived need to make it a federal one. The Depression changed that by so greatly increasing the number of unemployed and at the same time reducing state tax revenues that the states were unable to handle the load.


----------



## JDzBrain (Mar 2, 2012)

Greenbeard said:


> Every one?
> 
> Freedmen's Bureau - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Yeah...the Freedmen Bureau.  Brought to you by the same SON OF A BITCH that started a war to collect taxes from the south!  That was Lincoln's baby....which was the genesis for radical reconstruction.  A beautiful piece of benevolence whose scares can STILL be seen in parts of the south.  

But Lincoln was NOT one of the founders!

However, he wasn't the first president to break faith with the Constitution and commit errors that we are STILL dealing with the consequences of.  

Thomas Jefferson knowingly and admittedly...illegally purchased the Louisiana territories from the French.  He did get a good deal and it worked out for us at that time, but it was still unconstitutional.  

On top of that, it pissed of the British, which he said he enjoyed, but it lead to another war with them.  Plus, if he'd just waited, Napoleon would have been defeated quicker, the French empire fallen quicker and we would have likely inherited it for virtually nothing...which even our conservative Congress WOULD have approved.

Instead, we now have US presidents...as a matter of course...ILLEGALLY and covertly purchasing huge swaths of state lands using discretionary spending.  

More than 80% of the state of Utah is already owned outright by the federal government.  Hell, the fed owns more than 50% of ALL land west of Texas.  Which IS unconstitutional by the manner of it's acquisition and prescribed scope for federal land ownership and a direct result of Jefferson's actions.  

Because of the poorly thought out actions of Thomas Jefferson, the fed owns some of the most resource rich land in this country and environmentalist WACKOS inside the government make it nearly impossible for us as a nation or the state in which the lands lay to utilize them...even as outdoorsmen or sportsmen.  

NOTHING good has ever or will ever come from our breaking faith with the Constitution!

You want to do your state a favor?  Ask any representative if they will vote to sell state land to the federal government under any circumstance other than for DOD use.  If they say yes...FIND A BETTER REPRESENTATIVE!


----------



## regent (Mar 2, 2012)

The selling of federal lands was long a policy of the government. Perhaps the only time in our history the debt was paid off was by selling land. And not only did we sell the land cheap but it changed those lands into tax producers. Our railroads were given tremendous amounts of government lands, far more than needed to build their lines. But of course all this land giveaway was seen as a bonanza by speculators and they got into the mix and fortunes were made. Perhaps the greatest bonanza was the Tea Pot Dome thing. But like Friedman said, America runs on greed.


----------



## Foxfyre (Mar 2, 2012)

Again the Freedman's Act was a military project of reparations to solve a problem created by the military.  It was not designed nor administered as a 'charitable act'.

Up until the New Deal, including FDR himself until he devised the New Deal, no U.S. President saw charity or benevolence as a prerogative of the U.S. federal government.

Some assorted quotations:

The Framers Speak: 

*Proof of intentional and strict limitations on the authority and power of Congress: 
"[Congressional jurisdiction of power] is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any."* - James Madison, Federalist 14 

*"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined . . . to be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce."* - James Madison, Federalist 45 

*"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."* - James Madison, 1792 

*"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."* - James Madison criticizing an attempt to grant public monies for charitable means, 1794

*"The Constitution allows only the means which are necessary, not those which are merely convenient, for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one power, as before observed"* - Thomas Jefferson, 1791 

*"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."* - Thomas Jefferson, 1798 

Even Hamilton, who advocated a looser interpretation than most of his fellow Founders, did not see an unlimited ability of the U.S. government to dispense charity:

*"No legislative act  contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid."* - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 78 



Spoken while serving as President... 

While vetoing a social welfare charity bill in 1854, Franlin Pierce stated: 
*"[I must question] the constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming to enter into a novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of providing for the care and support of all those  who by any form of calamity become fit objects of public philanthropy ... I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States. To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."*

And while vetoing a bill appropriating relief charity from public monies kin 1887, Grover Cleveland stated:: 
*"I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit."*

Franklin Delano Roosevelt took to the podium on March 2, 1930 to talk about states rights as Governor of New York. In this speech, printed in entirity on March 3, 1930 by the New York Times, he said: 

*"As a matter of fact and law, the governing rights of the States are all of those which have not been surrendered to the National Government by the Constitution or its amendments. 

Wisely or unwisely, people know that under the Eighteenth Amendment Congress has been given the right to legislate on this particular subject, but this is not the case in the matter of a great number of other vital problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other important features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere."*

Of course Roosevelt violated his own principles two years later when he came up with the New Deal.  A careful reading of history shows that a lot of those New Deal proposals were immediately declared unconstitutional by other national leaders.

Though not a President, this excerpt of a speech by Congressman Davy Crockett is recorded in the Libary of Congress:
*  "Mr. Speaker, I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, as any man in this House. But we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it.  We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to so appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bills asks."*


----------



## JDzBrain (Mar 2, 2012)

Semantically...you are ABSOLUTELY CORRECT Foxy.  

However, the practical effect of these men twisting the Constitution to fit their needs has a DIRECT lineage to things like the ATF we have today.  The production of liquor was an age old tradition throughout our early history.  Hell, George Washington produced shine.  The problem came in when as president, Washington decided to place a DIRECT tax on liquor to fund the military.  This was a result of a bad experience he had trying to pay his Army during the Revolutionary War.  He had to pledge his wealth to keep them from walking off the battlefield because the states were slow to authorize their payments.  

It worked and we won of course, but it left a scare that Washington carried to the presidency with him.  From that tiny seed grew the MASSIVE regulations, laws and bureaucracy associated with the ATF and the STOLEN RIGHT of Americans to produce shine as they please.

And there are DOZENS of other examples like this and Jefferson.  

THAT is why it is so important that we recognize our mistakes and reclaim this country to it's foundings and the principles expressed in the Federalist Paper exerts you posted. 

If we don't....this Republic is DOOMED!

Oh, and regent.  It's not the selling of federal lands that was and is the problem.  The Congress has the VERY defined constitutional power to depose of federal lands under Section 8, Powers of Congress, clause 17. 

"_To exercise *exclusive* Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places *purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;*_"

However, the president does NOT have that power...AT ALL inside the US.  And the congress does not have the power to lock huge swaths of state lands from it's people for purposes other than those defined in that clause...even WITH the consent of the state in which it shall be!

It's not the sales...it's the spending tax dollars from the states to buy states land for unconstitutional purposes that's the problem!

But you are dead on, Friedman had if right.  But hey, fortunately we ARE a capitalist society.  ;~)


----------



## Dante (Mar 5, 2012)

regent said:


> ...
> 
> Incidently, try and find the clause in the Constitution that says the Court has the power to interpret the Constitution, the Court just assumed that responsiblity and bingo by that one little act look at what has happened.



The people who framed the our constitution _assumed_ the Court had a certain role. The US Constitution is NOT the sacred word of some god, nor is it what most people claim it to be.

_*"...judicial review had its origins in early seventeen-century England and had been asserted by James Otis in the period leading up to the American Revolution..."*_ 

- John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, and Judicial Review
_
* A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body..."*

    Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78
*
    "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."*

    Chief Justice John Marshall, in Marbury v. Madison, 1803_


----------



## Dante (Mar 5, 2012)

Dragon said:


> ...
> I realize that's what James Madison argued in vetoing an appropriations bill he disapproved of, and perhaps it's what he would have preferred the language to say, but if so his intent did not prevail at the convention, because that's not what the language actually DOES say.



The intent, the language?

Madison himself once said if people wanted to know the _intent _of the wording in the constitution, people should not look to him or others (framers or founding fathers), but to the ratifiers, and what they thought words meant and the intent was. 

Who were the ratifiers? The people of the states who as a national body, ratified the document


----------



## Dante (Mar 5, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> regent said:
> 
> 
> > The Constitution is but a very short framework for government. No document of its length can spell out every detail, some state constitutions try to do that and some have six hundred amendments or so. The  national Constitution has 27 amendments, but has been interpreted thousands of times by simple tradition, by useage and Court intrpretations. Conservatives often try to use the Constituton as their anchor to impede changes and it hasn't always worked. As Justice Hughes said, The Constitution is what the Court say it is.
> ...



The language of the Constitution...not the text. Language has meaning and contains nuance. Texualists, originalists, and strict constructionists, all mistake their own views for purist readings of more than just the text in the Constitution. 

Madison himself took conflicting positions on issues of the day, while he represented both he and Jefferson's battles with the Federalists and Chief Justice Marshall (Jefferson's cousin). The main framer of the document was all over the place.

_go figure_

dD


----------



## Dante (Mar 5, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Dragon said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...



1) D'Oh! 

2) Captain Obvious Strikes Again 

3) What a crock of sheet. You assume when you feel like it, yet in other posts you knock assumptions? Here you are woefully ignorant of human nature and the nature of politics. Stick with theoretical bullcrap.

4) By the meaning of the language.  

5) otay

6) STFU you moron


----------



## regent (Mar 5, 2012)

Is a law not reviewed by the Court constitutional? 

Are we obeying laws today that are possibly unconstitutional?

So where in the Constitution is it written that the Supreme Court will interpret the Constitution? 

If the Constitution did not give the interpretation power to the Court, is the Court breaking the law when it declares a law unconstitutional?

Was Justice Hughes correct when he said the Constitution is what the Court say it is?


----------



## Outback (Mar 5, 2012)

It's still there.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Mar 6, 2012)

Dante said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > regent said:
> ...



Of course you show a lack of understanding of the view of an originalist....
....let me help:


1.	Originalists begin with the belief that ours should be a government of laws, and not one of men, or of judges, and this book addresses that question of judicial philosophy.

a.	*The originalism looks to the original public-meaning of the Constitution and its amendments at the time they were enacted. The meaning of the Constitution must remain the same, until it is properly changed. *And it cannot be changed unilaterally by the courts, or even by courts acting in conjunction with other branches of government. Professor Randy Barnett, in Originalism, p. 262.


2.	Attorney-general Edwin Meese, IIIs speech to the ABA, July 9, 1985, called for Jurisprudence of *Original Intention,* focusing on several themes. The first is the primacy of the rule of law.
 Thomas Paine said, America has no monarch: Here* the law is king.* Originalists believe that* the written Constitution *is our most fundamental law and that it binds us all. Justices who abandon the original meaning of the text of the Constitution invariably end up substituting their own political philosophies for those of the framers. Americans have to d*ecide whether they wish a government of laws or one of judges.* 

a.	There is no liberal or conservative meaning of the text of the Constitution, only a right meaning or a wrong meaning. Those who convert the Constitution into a license for judges to make policy instead of being a limit on the power of judges, pervert a document that is supposed to limit power into one that sanctions it. 


3.	Note, it is *only the text of the written Constitution *to which we the people of the United States have given our consent, never having consented to be governed in a formal way by the five hundred volumes of the U.S. Reports. We know from the D of I that a precept of our order is that it is the people who must consent to governance.

4. 	As a basis for understanding the Commerce Clause, Professor Randy Barnett *examined over 1500 times the word commerce appeared in the Philadelphia Gazette between 1715 and 1800.* In none of these was the term used to apply more broadly than the meaning identified by Justice Thomas in his concurring opinion in Lopez, in which he maintained that the word commerce refers to the trade and exchange of goods, and that process, including transportation of same. A common trilogy was agriculture, manufacturing and commerce.

a.	For an originalist, direct evidence of *the actual use of a word is the most important source of the words meaning.* It is more important than referring to the broader context, or the larger context, or the underlying principles, which is the means by which some jurists are able to turn black into white, and up into down.


b.	Consider the opposite view, in the words of Chief Justice Hughes: The Constitution is *what the judges say it is.* Correct? Or hubris?


----------



## Dante (Mar 6, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Dante said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...



1) Originalists do NOT own the idea that "ours should be a government of laws, and not one of men..."

2) Original intent? Madison himself said look for original intent from the understanding of ratifiers (the people as opposed to state legislatures or congress) and not the framers.

What exactly did Thomas Paine have to do with the Constitution that makes his words worthier than the words of others? and you mention 'original meaning of the text' which seems like a voodoo attempt to _divine_ what a supposedly reasonable person of the past would have understood a word (as opposed to idea?) to have meant. 

a. there are always different understandings of words and terms where people are concerned. In law we may attempt top enforce agreement, but if we take Madison at his word we should be looking to what the intentions of people collectively were, not some legal meaning of the text itself, which itself can be liberal or conservative.

3) We the people give our consent. How about those the people who gave consent before us? What they intended is what we intend? What if we disagree with the people of the past who consented to be governed in a different way? Do we have to obey the Constitution and go the amendment route, or do we announce our right to refuse to be governed by the intent of the past and an old document? Your arguments lead down a very slippery slope where anarchy attains legitimacy. Just speak with a few of the sovereign people crowd. I met a few at occupy meetings -- nuts!

4) One professor and Justice Thomas say ... I guess it's case closed, eh? 

a. then you disagree with Madison and Hamilton, and your authority rests with Justice Thomas?

b. Chief Justice Hughes may have been correct even while being afflicted with hubris, the two things are not exclusive of one another.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Mar 6, 2012)

Dante said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > Dante said:
> ...




". there are always different understandings of words and terms where people are concerned. In law we may attempt top enforce agreement, but if we take Madison at his word we should be looking to what the intentions of people collectively were, not some legal meaning of the text itself, which itself can be liberal or conservative."


I believe we can short-circuit this discussion in the following way:
If there is any debate about the meaning, the text- which is more important than any interpretation- the constitutionality must be tied to the actual language of the Constitution.

If that is not possible, then, a) the law must be found constitutional or
b) the Constitution must be amended to incorporate the view.

But...under no circumstances can any judge or Justice be allowed to replace the Constitution with his or her ideology.


----------



## Dragon (Mar 6, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> But...under no circumstances can any judge or Justice be allowed to replace the Constitution with his or her ideology.



On no occasion can it be proven to the satisfaction of all informed parties that any judge has ever done so.


----------



## Dante (Mar 6, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> Dante said:
> 
> 
> > PoliticalChic said:
> ...



Problem has always been that people of good faith almost always remain silent when a Judge's ideological based reasoning and interpretation supports their own ideological views. Take Madison and Jefferson for example...


----------



## regent (Mar 6, 2012)

What is ironic is that all the poster's solutions require an interpretation of the Constitution by humans. Marshall interpreted the Constitution to mean the Court should be the final interpreters and it became a tradition, but it might have gone the other way, the Congress might have passed a law that they were the final interpreters. Still the President might have made a case that he or she was the final word. States toyed with the idea that even they were the deciders. The Constitution still comes back to someone or some body deciding what it means and the Court was there first.  Someday it may come down to a computer?


----------



## Dante (Mar 6, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > But...under no circumstances can any judge or Justice be allowed to replace the Constitution with his or her ideology.
> ...



sure it has and can. but denial is an awful thing to behold.


----------



## Dante (Mar 6, 2012)

regent said:


> What is ironic is that...
> ...*Someday it may come down to a computer?*



What is ironic is that...
you are unaware of how this type of sentiment shows how much you really, really, really need to get a life.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Mar 6, 2012)

Dragon said:


> PoliticalChic said:
> 
> 
> > But...under no circumstances can any judge or Justice be allowed to replace the Constitution with his or her ideology.
> ...



That's just out and out false.

1. There is the question of the proper function of the courts, and the overreach that some recognize in cases such as Lochner v. NY, and characterized as Lochnerizing

a.	Lochnerization is a method to examine and strike down economic legislation under the guise of enforcing the Due Process Clause. Lochnerization was first used by the U.S. Supreme Court in the early 20th century. Lochnerization is derived from the decision in Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (U.S. 1905). Lochnerization also describes a method of legal reasoning where a court substitutes its policy judgment for a legislature in overturning legislation.                    
Lochnerization Law & Legal Definition 

b.	This case is often cited as an example of judicial activism in opposition to textualism, that is finding rights in the Constitution that are not in its wording. 

2. Further, the view is found in Justice Wm. Brennan, jr1985 Georgetown speech in which he supported the transformative purpose of the Constitution, in which he argued for an aspiration to social justice, brotherhood, and human dignity

a.	He claimed that General Meeses vision was little more than arrogance cloaked in humility because we cannot discern how the Framers would apply moral-philosophic natural law to modern problems. Brennan denies any static meaning, but looks, instead, for adaptability.

b.	To say that the genius of a constitution lies in* the fluidity of its meaning *is a little bit like saying that the genius of the brakes on your car is the way they can be used for acceleration. The whole point of having a constitution or a bill of rights is to memorialize and entrench fundamental rights so they can prevail in moments of passion. 

3. I suggest you consider the view of Chief Justice Rehnquist:
"The brief writers version
seems instead to be based upon the proposition that federal
judges, perhaps *judges as a whole, have a role of their own,
quite independent of popular will, to play in solving societys
problems. Once we have abandoned the idea that the authority
of the courts to declare laws unconstitutional is somehow tied
to the language of the Constitution that the people adopted, a
judiciary exercising the power of judicial review appears in a
quite different light.*
*Judges then are no longer the keepers of
the covenant; *instead they are a small group of fortunately
situated people with a roving commission to second-guess
Congress, state legislatures, and state and federal administrative
officers concerning what is best for the country."
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol29_No2_Rehnquist.pdf


----------



## PoliticalChic (Mar 6, 2012)

regent said:


> What is ironic is that all the poster's solutions require an interpretation of the Constitution by humans. Marshall interpreted the Constitution to mean the Court should be the final interpreters and it became a tradition, but it might have gone the other way, the Congress might have passed a law that they were the final interpreters. Still the President might have made a case that he or she was the final word. States toyed with the idea that even they were the deciders. The Constitution still comes back to someone or some body deciding what it means and the Court was there first.  Someday it may come down to a computer?



1. "What is ironic is that all the poster's solutions require an interpretation of the Constitution by humans."
Welcome to our planet. We wish peace with you visitors.

2. "Congress might have passed a law that they were the final interpreters."
The people are the final interpreters via the election process.

But, in the short term, each of the three branches is an interpreter. The Congress is assumed to have vetted a law and found it to be constitutional, or it should not pass same. 
The President, by signing, the same.
The Court should assume constitutionality, and find a law not so, only by a specific reference to the Constitution.
In the best of all possible worlds.

Article Six. Clause two provides that the Constitution, federal laws made pursuant to it and treaties made under its authority, constitute the supreme law of the land.


----------



## regent (Mar 6, 2012)

The Court is a political animal, with politicians appointed for life by politicians for a purpose. The purpose:  to interpret the Constitution according to political beliefs. But maybe it is that appointed for life clause that allows some judges, on occassion, to turn on his political benefactors and find for the common good. Those judges are considered turncoats, and it is those few turncoats that give the court some credence.


----------



## PoliticalChic (Mar 6, 2012)

regent said:


> The Court is a political animal, with politicians appointed for life by politicians for a purpose. The purpose:  to interpret the Constitution according to political beliefs. But maybe it is that appointed for life clause that allows some judges, on occassion, to turn on his political benefactors and find for the common good. Those judges are considered turncoats, and it is those few turncoats that give the court some credence.




1. Attorney-General Meese spoke at Tulane University in 1986, and caused quite a stir. He echoed President Reagans exceptionalist views. Celebrating the text of our written Constitution, he goes on to attack on the Supreme Courts decisional case law.

2.	In his speech, he draws a distinction between the Constitution and constitutional law. General Meese argues that only the first is the supreme law of the land. Meese quotes constitutional historian Charles Warren in the following: "however the court may interpret the provisions of the Constitution, it is still the Constitution which is the law, not the decisions of the court." Justice Frankfurter made the same point:  The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.

a.	Indeed, if the text were not supreme over decisions, the court would not be empowered to overrule itself, as it has done more than one hundred and seventy times in its history.

3. So, it it not the particular Justices that we should focus on...as long as those appointed are true to the Constitution. Else, they should be removed.


----------



## regent (Mar 6, 2012)

So if the Court changes its mind about a Constitutional provision how does this make text supreme and not the Court. Who decided the Court was wrong? It was the Court, that for whatever reason, not the text that decided the Court was wrong. It is the Court that decides what the text says. I refer you to Article IV, Section 2, clause 2. Notice the word "shall" does the word shall, mean maybe, could be, we'll see, or does it mean shall, must do? What did the Court say it meant?


----------



## PoliticalChic (Mar 6, 2012)

regent said:


> So if the Court changes its mind about a Constitutional provision how does this make text supreme and not the Court. Who decided the Court was wrong? It was the Court, that for whatever reason, not the text that decided the Court was wrong. It is the Court that decides what the text says. I refer you to Article IV, Section 2, clause 2. Notice the word "shall" does the word shall, mean maybe, could be, we'll see, or does it mean shall, must do? What did the Court say it meant?



Your example, a good one, answers the question you pose in sentence one.


----------



## JDzBrain (Mar 8, 2012)

regent said:


> I refer you to Article IV, Section 2, clause 2. Notice the word "shall" does the word shall, mean maybe, could be, we'll see, or does it mean shall, must do? What did the Court say it meant?


I will refer you to Article III, which is the ONLY part that you should be looking for instruction for defining the Judicial Branch...hence the title, _The Judicial Branch_.  In Article III, Section 2, clause 1...it says, "_The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority..._"

Who writes law?  The congress AND state legislatures.  Why does it say judicial Power _shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution_?  Because it is instructing the court that it's responsibility is to determine if laws written by Congress OR Legislatures were WRITTEN within the range of their AUTHORITY as defined by the Constitution...AND that all laws passed are EQUAL as to their application.

THOSE are the two things the constitution really does.  Defines the powers the fed and states do and don't have respectively and directs that those powers be applied equally...WITHOUT exception!

The Supreme Court's ONLY roll is to determine if the body that writes it has the power to do so under the enumerated powers and is it equitable as defined in the constitution!

It doesn't say fair laws or interpret or ANY of that nonsense.  Find those words in the constitution for me.  I'll be GLAD to change my opinion if you can direct me to the place where it's said!


----------



## Dragon (Mar 8, 2012)

JDzBrain said:


> The Supreme Court's ONLY roll is to determine if the body that writes it has the power to do so under the enumerated powers and is it equitable as defined in the constitution!
> 
> It doesn't say fair laws or interpret or ANY of that nonsense.



"Interpret" is implied in the power to determine if a law is Constitutional. The Court MUST interpret the document in order to come to that decision. There is simply no other way to do it.


----------



## regent (Mar 8, 2012)

The use of the word "implied" means it the power was not written in the Constitution.
The other two branches of government and the states believed they might have some say in the interpretation but no one took the initative until Marbury. The states finally gave up their claim to interpretation with the Civil War.


----------



## Dragon (Mar 8, 2012)

regent said:


> The use of the word "implied" means it the power was not written in the Constitution.



Well, yes and no. Let's consider one of the most controversial cases, the right to privacy. (Or we could even consider the power of judicial review itself -- but privacy will do.)

What the Constitution explicitly protects, in the Fourth Amendment, is a right to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."

This is taken to imply a right to privacy because, well, because it does: if the government respects a right to be secure in one's person, house, papers, and effects against "unreasonable" (note the subjective judgment called for in that word) searches and seizures, then _ipso facto_ it respects a right to privacy, because that's really what privacy is. It means that the government can't spy on me, or seize my property or person or any part thereof, without proper justification (i.e. it may not do so "unreasonably").

Privacy means that the government cannot "search" my body, or my home, or my property, unless it has reason to suspect a crime is being committed.

It's kind of like mathematical induction: small particulars imply large generalities, not as an expansion of rights, but as a shorthand for rights that are in fact literally implied in what is explicitly stated.


----------



## Cecilie1200 (Mar 8, 2012)

Mr Clean said:


> Still here.
> 
> Just under different ownership.



You mean, someone other than the American people?  How is that 1) our republic, and 2) a good thing, in your "mind"?


----------



## Foxfyre (Mar 8, 2012)

JDzBrain said:


> The Supreme Court's ONLY roll is to determine if the body that writes it has the power to do so under the enumerated powers and is it equitable as defined in the constitution!



This focuses on the very heart of the matter, not only for SCOTUS but for all courts of the land.  The Founders never in their wildest dreams saw that the role or function of the courts was to make law.  The Court at all levels is to apply the specific clauses of the Constitution ratified by the people of the various states and/or the law passed by the elected representatives of the people.   When the Court applies its own interpretation of anything and thereby writes a new law to supercede the intent of the law makers, or inappropriately applies its own interpretation to overturn the intent of the lawmakers, it has assumed a power the Founders never intended for it to have.

I think there is a segment of our society, however, so determined to change the basis of the Constitution and so determined to have their own way, they increasingly look to the courts to make those changes for them.  The legislative process is too cumbersome for them and has not produced the results they wanted.  And too often the courts have rendered the legislative process impotent.

And in my opinion, this is a very dangerous thing.


----------



## regent (Mar 8, 2012)

Can the legislature write a law that violates the Constitution, can the president enforce a law in such a manner that it violates the Constitution, can a state pass a law that violates the Constitution, can the Court interpret a law that violates the Constitution? So where would that leave us, who has the final word? 
In another vein, can the Court interpret the Consitution without making law?


----------



## Foxfyre (Mar 8, 2012)

regent said:


> Can the legislature write a law that violates the Constitution, can the president enforce a law in such a manner that it violates the Constitution, can a state pass a law that violates the Constitution, can the Court interpret a law that violates the Constitution? So where would that leave us, who has the final word?
> In another vein, can the Court interpret the Consitution without making law?



Yes, the legislature can write a law that violates the Constitution and it is a valid function of the court to rule any such law that passes to be unconstitutional IF somebody with standing challenges that law.  That will happen if SCOTUS rules that the Congress cannot force a person to buy a product as is the case with Obamacare.  And if a Presidential proclamation is that a Catholic organization is required to purchase a specific product, that could no doubt wind up with SCOTUS as well.   Such is a proper function of the courts who are charged to ensure that the other branches of government do not overstep their legal authority.

The problem comes with the Court, at any level, makes up its own interpretation and applies that to the situation  and thereby creates a new and different law based on the whims or ideology of the judge or judges.


----------



## Dragon (Mar 8, 2012)

Foxfyre said:


> The Founders never in their wildest dreams saw that the role or function of the courts was to make law.



Neither has the court -- ever. Not once. You should not confuse right-wing talking points with reality.


----------



## OohPooPahDoo (Mar 8, 2012)

PoliticalChic said:


> 1. *re·pub·lic*/ri&#712;p&#601;blik/ Noun:
> A state in which supreme *power is held by the people* and their *elected representatives,* and which has an elected or nominated president...
> 
> 2. "*Woodrow Wilso*n first articulated what would become American government bureaucracy in a 1887 scholarly paper advocating the study of public administration (Wilson 1887).... Although the United States Constitution has been in existence since the beginning of the Union and states enacted their own constitutions modeled after it, very few municipal charters specifically limited or *delegated authority*."
> ...





We didn't lose our republic shit for brains. The health care bill was voted on by Congress who was elected by the people. You seem to think "republic" means a system in which all decisions of the government are agreeable to you.


----------



## regent (Mar 8, 2012)

The justices of the Court are politically appointed to make politicial decisions for the party that gave them the appointment. To believe otherwise is foolish. A few times in our history justices decided to interpret the Constitution for other purposes and reasons than political and could do so for they had a lifetime appointment.


----------



## Foxfyre (Mar 8, 2012)

Dragon said:


> Foxfyre said:
> 
> 
> > The Founders never in their wildest dreams saw that the role or function of the courts was to make law.
> ...



And you should not confuse leftwing talking points with the history that is so easy to look up and understand how, where, and when the courts have overstepped their intended authority.


----------



## OohPooPahDoo (Mar 8, 2012)

regent said:


> The justices of the Court are politically appointed to make politicial decisions for the party that gave them the appointment. To believe otherwise is foolish. A few times in our history justices decided to interpret the Constitution for other purposes and reasons than political and could do so for they had a lifetime appointment.



Justices are insulated from politics by their life terms.


Moron.


----------



## OohPooPahDoo (Mar 8, 2012)

Foxfyre said:


> Dragon said:
> 
> 
> > Foxfyre said:
> ...



It says it all on the internet, it must be true.


----------



## Foxfyre (Mar 8, 2012)

OohPooPahDoo said:


> Foxfyre said:
> 
> 
> > Dragon said:
> ...



It also says it in the history books and in other sources for those with the interest to look it up.  And no, just because it is on the internet doesn't make something true.  Nor does the fact that something IS on the internet make it untrue.


----------



## OohPooPahDoo (Mar 8, 2012)

Foxfyre said:


> OohPooPahDoo said:
> 
> 
> > Foxfyre said:
> ...



I'm sure it does.

Judges over-stepped their authorities.

Wow. How surprising. I definitely need history books to tell me that government officials sometimes abuse their power.


----------



## regent (Mar 8, 2012)

When the Court interprets the Constitution and arrives at a decision is that a form of not only creating a law but making the law constitutional? 
Was the law constitutional before the Court decision?


----------



## regent (Nov 17, 2018)

OohPooPahDoo said:


> regent said:
> 
> 
> > The justices of the Court are politically appointed to make politicial decisions for the party that gave them the appointment. To believe otherwise is foolish. A few times in our history justices decided to interpret the Constitution for other purposes and reasons than political and could do so for they had a lifetime appointment.
> ...


----------

