Controversy #2 - The U.S. Constitution Sucks

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Re: Controversy #2 - The U.S. Constitution Sucks

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:31 pm

Michael Collins
07-26-2007, 02:49 AM

This is a provocative argument. There's a tendency to accept the conservative argument for Constitutional protections of individual rights/property rights as idealistic when compared to the actual practice of slavery by the authors of the Declaration and the Constitution. Now the idealism is also challenged, even if accepted as fundamentally conservative.

The Constitution can't restrain behavior, particularly when the behavior involves ignoring the Constitution.

The crux of the failure of modern governance is the surrender WAR making power to the President. The causes of this are:

1) The absolute determination to turn the American economy into one that relies on war.
2) The nit picking difference argued between a "formal" declaration of war justified by the needs of the modern world, that scary place that we help create, for a more flexible response that bypasses the formal declaration of war.
3) The permanent linkage of the war making elements of the economy with the need to "step in" and be the world's policeman.
4) The introduction of intense and relentless myth making to support this fundamental economic relationship.

The Constitution is clear (see below) that Congress declares war. The stupidity of arguing that Korea, Viet Nam, and Iraq (I & II) were something other than acts of war has nothing to do with the document unless we expected the founders to have inserted a clause to the effect "Future generations will be tempted to parse the meaning of the term "war" which should be seen as an act of treason on the part of those who make such distinctions."

The intent concerning the meaning of "war" is a bit more obvious than the understood intent to include a right of privacy. That right was so fundamental, the founders would be shocked by the current quibbling about the existence of such a right. But war is clearly inserted in the Constitution and it's meaning is clear...no Korea, Vietnam, etc. without a declaration.

It's not the primitiveness, in this instance, of the Constitution. It's the insidiousness of the four elements described above. What better place to expect the effectiveness of an oligarchies myth making than a nation where a majority of the people believe in "the devil." Now that's primitive. Anyone seen the hallowed one lately?

Here's some common sense.

WAR AND THE US CONSTITUTION
http://www.progress.org/2003/fold293.htm

by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor

"The Congress shall have Power ... To Declare War."
--- Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, The Constitution of the United States of America.

The powers of the federal government of the USA are authorized by the Constitution, and legally the federal government only has the power specifically provided for in the Constitution. The Constitution of the USA divides the federal government into three independent branches, and authorizes the powers of each branch. Each branch of government may have no power other than that authorized by the Constitution.

The authors of the Constitution endowed Congress with the power to declare war. Once war is declared, Article II, Section 2, authorizes the President, as the Commander in Chief, to execute the war. But the Constitution does not authorize the President to declare war. James Madison wrote in 1793 about the "fundamental doctrine of the Constitution that the power to declare war is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature." At the constitutional convention, George Mason of Virginia stated that the President "is not safely to be entrusted with" the power to decide on war. The framers clearly did not want just one man to put the country at war.

May the President start a war without a declaration of war? In old Europe, kings were constantly taking their countries into war, and the authors of the Constitution wanted to avoid this. By requiring Congress, not the President, to initiate war, the authors wanted to assure broad support for any war, since Congress more widely represents the people than does the President.

Yet since World War II, the U.S.A. has fought many wars, with no declaration of war. The excuse in the Korean War was that this was a United Nations war, and the U.S. was participating under the U.N. But the power "to declare war" means that the U.S. may not engage in a war unless Congress explicitly declares that the U.S. is at war. President Truman violated the Constitution and set down a very bad precedent. If a power is allocated to Congress, it may not be delegated to the President.

The War in Vietnam did not have a U.N. cover. It began with U.S. "advisers" and then, under President Johnson, massively escalated to a half million troops. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and provided the funds for the war, but did not declare war. One problem with that resolution is that it is not clear that the members of Congress intended this to be a general go-ahead to conduct the war rather than just repelling attacks against U.S. ships.

The war declaration is important because a state of war transforms the country. The entire country is at risk of being attacked, and the war becomes top priority for everyone, whether they like it or not. Because this is so serious, an explicit and specific declaration makes it very clear that this is what Congress, on behalf of the people, intends. By merely passing a resolution and providing funds, Congress is going along with a Presidential war rather than taking responsibility for starting a war.

Now the U.S. is at war again, and once more, there has been no declaration from Congress. Without a declaration of war by Congress, the war in Iraq violates the U.S. Constitution. Likewise, Congress should have declared war on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan if the members wished to send U.S. troops to fight there.

In 1970, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts challenged the Constitutionality of the Vietnam War (Massachusetts v. Laird, U.S. Sup. Ct. Nov. 9, 1970). It passed a law stating that no resident of Massachusetts "shall be required to serve" in the armed forces abroad if the armed hostility has not been declared a war by Congress. The attorney general of Massachusetts asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its case to test the legality of the Vietnam War.

In 1801, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Congress alone had the "whole powers of war" (Talbot v. Seeman, 1801). But, sadly, in 1970, the Supreme Court declined by a six to three vote to hear the Massachusetts case. Also, in Berk v. Laird, 39 U.S.L.W. 2201 (E.D.N.Y., Sept. 16, 1970), the Court held that Congress had authorized through legislative acts the use of U.S. Armed Forces in Vietnam, thereby not requiring a formal declaration of war.

On February 24, a federal district court dismissed a lawsuit (Doe v. Bush) challenging President Bush's authority to wage war against Iraq without explicit congressional authorization (http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/forumnew99.php). The court ruled the dispute to be a non-justiciable political question. The U.S. Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have thus failed to uphold the Constitution. This amounts to a tragic judicial failure.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Controversy #2 - The U.S. Constitution Sucks

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:33 pm

Two Americas
07-26-2007, 05:17 PM

Not that I think there is much danger of the "the founding fathers were freedom-loving radicals and visionaries" versus "the founding fathers were wealthy men who protected their own interests and kept slaves" argument breaking out here, but is might be worthwhile to discuss the exact nature of the privilege and power that the Constitutional convention represented.

The founding fathers were for the most part not hereditary landed aristocracy, but rather were strivers and climbers, or were the sons and grandsons of strivers and climbers. There were a few genuine radicals in the mix, as well. This goes a long way to understanding the curious blend of protections for personal liberties with protections of property in the Constitution.

Likewise, the Confederacy was not founded or led by men from the old planter families, but rather by a new generation of young strivers and climbers. That helps explain the curious blend there of anti-authoritarianism and anarchy with defense of slavery and property.

They didn't see property and freedom as oppositional, because the freedom they sought was the freedom to pursue property.

To this day, Americans resist anything that threatens property - gun control, environmental laws that restrict use of land, taxation, regulation - whether they are wealthy or not, because they identify not with entrenched wealth but rather because they identify with the those excercising the freedom to pursue property - starting with the right to own guns, own their own farm, rise on their own merits - which was denied to the people in Europe for centuries.

I think it is impossible to understand the modern American working class without understanding this. The "any man can become president" and "any man can become Henry Ford" myths have a profound hold on people, and are not completely irrational or delusional.

Working class people "hear" liberalism as a step backwards - a return to the days when an aristocracy controlled everything and when there was no chance to break into the aristocracy for people. Liberalism is a club that will not permit just anyone to join, and that seeks power and control based on something vague and fuzzy, when compared to successfully farming 300 acres, success being determined by objective standards - your neighbors buy your produce.
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Re: Controversy #2 - The U.S. Constitution Sucks

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:35 pm

Two Americas
07-26-2007, 08:23 PM

American Aristocracy

Pierce Butler

Pierce Butler was the third son of Sir Richard Butler, the fifth Baronet of Cloughgrenan and a member of the Irish Parliament. Traditionally British aristocrats directed younger sons into the military or the church, and Butler's father was no exception. In the honored fashion of the times, he bought his son a commission in the 22d Regiment of Foot (today's Cheshire Regiment). Butler demonstrated both military skill and the advantages of powerful and wealthy parents in his subsequent career in the British Army. His regiment came to North America in 1758 to participate in the French and Indian War and served in the campaigns that resulted in the capture of Canada from the French.

Daniel Carroll

Daniel Carroll was a prominent member of one of America's great colonial families, a family that produced a signer of the Declaration of Independence in Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a cousin, and the first Catholic bishop in the United States, Daniel's brother John. Daniel Carroll was a patrician planter who fused family honor with the cause of American independence, willingly risking his social and economic position in the community for the Patriot cause. Later, as a friend and staunch ally of George Washington, he worked for a strong central government which could secure the achievements and fulfill the hopes of the Revolution. Ironically, for one whose name was synonymous with the colonial aristocracy, Carroll fought in the Convention for a government responsible directly to the people.

George Clymer

George Clymer was a successful businessman with an abiding interest in the welfare of the common man. He never served in uniform during the Revolutionary War, but he made a significant contribution to the cause of liberty by organizing essential congressional support for needed military reforms and by personally helping to reorganize the Continental Army. As a politician he tended to avoid the limelight, preferring to work on committees where he could bring his administrative skills to bear. He was a soft-spoken man who, as a contemporary said, "was never heard to speak ill of any one." He signed the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution.

Clymer was orphaned as an infant and adopted by an uncle, William Coleman, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant and friend of Benjamin Franklin. Informally educated, he became a clerk and, later, partner in his uncle's mercantile firm, which he would inherit. In 1765 he married Elizabeth Meredith, whose socially prominent family introduced him to George Washington and other Patriot leaders. He eventually merged his business with that of his in-laws to form Meredith-Clymer, a leading Pennsylvania merchant house.

Abraham Baldwin

Abraham Baldwin, who represented Georgia at the Constitutional Convention, was a fervent missionary of public education. Throughout his career he combined a faith in democratic institutions with a belief that an informed citizenry was essential to the continuing wellbeing of those institutions. The son of an unlettered Connecticut blacksmith, Baldwin through distinguished public service clearly demonstrated how academic achievement could open opportunities in early American society.

Educated primarily for a position in the church, he served in the Continental Army during the climactic years of the Revolution. There, close contact with men of widely varying economic and social backgrounds broadened his outlook and experience and convinced him that public leadership in America included a duty to instill in the electorate the tenets of civic responsibility.

The Baldwins were numbered among the earliest New England settlers. Arriving in Connecticut in 1639, the family produced succeeding generations of hard-working farmers, small-town tradesmen, and minor government officials. Abraham Baldwin's father plied his trade in Guilford, where he eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant in the local unit of the Connecticut militia. A resourceful man with an overriding faith in the advantages of higher education, he moved his family to New Haven where he borrowed heavily to finance his sons' attendance at Yale College (now Yale University). Abraham Baldwin never married, but he made a similar sacrifice, for after his father's death he assumed many family debts and personally financed the education of the family's next generation.

Gunning Bedford

Gunning Bedford was the quintessential champion of the rights of the small states. His experience in local politics, along with his service in the Continental Congress, taught him much about the political and economic vulnerabilities of states like Delaware. Unlike some other small-state representatives who looked to the creation of a strong central government to protect their interests against more powerful neighbors, Bedford sought to limit the powers of the new government. But when the conflict over representation threatened to wreck the Constitutional Convention, he laid regional interests aside and, for the good of the country, sought to compromise.

Bedford's family could trace its roots back to the settlement of Jamestown. He was a cousin of Colonel Gunning Bedford, a Revolutionary War hero and Delaware politician with whom he is often confused. Bedford attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) where he was a roommate of James Madison. After graduating in 1771, he studied law with Joseph Read, an influential politician with connections in both Pennsylvania and Delaware who would also sign the Constitution. Little is known about Bedford's early career until he opened a law practice in Dover, and then in Wilmington, during the later years of the Revolution. He sat briefly in the Delaware legislature during the early postwar period and represented his state in the Continental Congress (1783-85). He also served as the state's attorney general (1784-89).

James Wilson

James Wilson was probably the leading constitutional lawyer among the Founding Fathers. Strongly committed to the cause of nationalism and possessed of an exceptional clarity of vision, he firmly believed that, from a legal perspective, both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution required a philosophical statement justifying the national programs laid out by their authors. His well-informed leadership, especially in legal matters, played a vital role at a critical time in the nation's history.

Wilson was born in Scotland, where he attended three universities, but failed to earn a degree. Shortly after arriving in America in 1765, he became a Latin tutor at the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania), and successfully petitioned that institution to grant him an honorary master's degree. He soon decided that the law, rather than the academy, was the shortest route to advancement in America. He studied under John Dickinson, a fellow signer of the Constitution, and established a practice in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1768. Two years later, he moved westward to the Scots-Irish settlement of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where his new practice quickly prospered. Land speculation and lecturing on English literature at the College of Philadelphia occupied his remaining time.

Roger Sherman

Roger Sherman's public career reflected the heritage and concerns of his native New England. He attributed his rise from humble beginnings to the twin virtues of hard work and honesty, virtues that he assiduously applied to the service of the republic. John Adams, himself an heir to the same tradition, described Sherman as "an old Puritan, as honest as an angel and as firm in the cause of American Independence as Mount Atlas." Sherman was the only Founding Father to sign the four major documents of the era: the Articles of Association (1774), a Patriot call for the boycott of British goods; the Declaration of Independence; the Articles of Confederation; and the Constitution.

Sherman was a descendant of Captain John Sherman, who settled in Massachusetts in 1636, and the son of a Newton cobbler. Destined to follow his father's trade, Sherman received little formal education, but he read widely, especially in theology, history, mathematics, law, and politics. Tradition pictures the young Sherman at the cobbler's bench, always with a book open in front of him. Sherman moved to New Milford, Connecticut, in 1743, two years after his father's death, to live with his brother. His strong personality and dedication to the work ethic soon led to success. He purchased a store and became county surveyor, a lucrative position that enabled him in time to become a major landowner. He also assumed a variety of town offices, including juryman, town clerk, deacon, and school committeeman. He taught himself the law during this period and in 1754 was admitted to the bar, marking the beginning of a distinguished legal career.

William Livingston

William Livingston, who represented New Jersey at the Constitutional Convention, was one of the new nation's authentic renaissance figures. An accomplished man of letters, linguist, agronomist, and charter member of the American Philosophical Society, he was also a notable man of action, as attorney, soldier, and state governor. The many facets of his personality combined to form a complex public figure who stood at the forefront of those fighting for independence and the creation of a strong national government. His was not a career eagerly sought. In fact, Livingston sincerely desired the quiet life of a country gentleman, but his exceptional organizational skills and dedication to popular causes repeatedly thrust him into the hurly-burly of politics.

The Livingstons stood at the pinnacle of colonial New York society, controlling a vast estate along the Hudson River near Albany. Their wealth and an interlocking series of marriages with other major families gave them great political and economic influence in the colony. William Livingston received his primary education in local schools and from private tutors, but his horizons were considerably expanded at the age of fourteen when his family sent him to live for a year with a missionary among the Iroquois Indians in the wilds of the Mohawk Valley. In 1738 he enrolled at Yale College, where he developed a lifelong interest in political satire.

Graduating in 1741, Livingston resisted pressure to enter the family fur business and moved to New York City to study law. He clerked under James Alexander and William Smith, both champions of civil rights and among the best legal minds of the day. In 1748 Livingston was admitted to the bar and opened a practice in the city, a year after marrying the daughter of a wealthy New Jersey landowner. The couple became a glittering fixture in the city's social whirl, but Livingston still found time to pursue his interest in art, languages, and poetry.

Rufus King

Rufus King, who represented Massachusetts in the Constitutional Convention, was a political realist. The lessons of a classical education and certain tragic events in his family's history combined to convince him that idealism had to be tempered with vigilance and that a fledgling nation would need a strong government to protect the rights of its citizens while defending its interests in a hostile world. Throughout a lengthy public career he employed his considerable diplomatic and oratorical skills to promote the twin causes of nationalism and civil liberty, fighting in the last decade of his life to extend those liberties to the nation's enslaved minority.

King was born in Scarboro, in that part of Massachusetts which subsequently became Maine. His father had served as a citizen-soldier during the early stages of Britain's contest for North America, participating in the successful assault on the French fortress at Louisbourg, Canada, in 1745. Shortly after that victory he left the Boston area to settle on the northern frontier of Massachusetts, where he quickly rose to prominence as a well-to-do farmer and merchant. His ability to dominate affairs in Scarboro provoked considerable envy, an emotion that turned ugly as the rift between the colony and the mother country widened. A strong supporter of Royal authority, the elder King defended the unpopular Stamp Act, a measure enacted by Parliament to raise revenues in the colonies to defray the cost of the French and Indian War. In retaliation the local Patriots, dubbed Sons of Liberty, ransacked the family's home in 1766. Unintimidated, the father retained his Loyalist sympathies, provoking yet another confrontation in 1774. This time a force of local militia visited the King home and demanded a public recanting. The humiliation and strain caused by this incident led directly to the old captain's death and instilled in his son a lifelong passion for law and order and for a society controlled by rational men.

Rufus King was the first member of his family to benefit from a formal education. Thanks in great part to the persistence of his stepmother, he attended a boarding school, where he received the rudiments of a classical education, and then Harvard College. There he graduated first in his class in 1777 before moving on to Newburyport to study law under Theophilus Parsons, who later became Massachusetts' chief justice and one of the most important Federalist theoreticians and philosophers. King also joined a men's club in Boston whose members would form the nucleus of what eventually became the states Federalist party.

John Dickinson

John Dickinson lived one of the most extraordinary political lives of all of the founding fathers. It is perhaps only because of his steadfast opposition to American independence that he is not celebrated with the likes of Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin.

He was born to a moderately wealthy family in Maryland. His father was first judge to the Court of Pleas in Delaware. He studied law at the Temple in London, the most prestigious education that a young man could hope for. Dickinson joined politics as a member of the Pennsylvania assembly in 1764, proceeded with the Stamp Act Congress in 1765 where he drafted the Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress. It was also during this he wrote an important series of essays, Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer, regarding the nonimportation and nonexportation agreements against Gr. Britain. These essays were published in London in 1768 by Benjamin Franklin, and later translated to French and published in Paris. In 1774 he attended the first Continental Congress and wrote an Address to the Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec. There also, in 1775, and in combination with Jefferson, he wrote a Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. Dickinson was opposed to a separation from Gr. Britain and worked very hard to temper the language and action of the Congress, in an effort to maintain the possibility of reconciliation. It was for this reason that he abstained from voting on and signing the Declaration of Independence. In what may have been a rather cruel joke, Thomas M'Kean (a signer of the Declaration), then president of Delaware, appointed Dickinson a Brigadier-General in the Continental Army. His Military career is said to have been brief.

Thomas Fitzsimons

Thomas Fitzsimons 1741-1811 was born in Ireland in 1741. Coming to America about 1760, he pursued a mercantile career in Philadelphia. The next year, he married Catherine Meade, the daughter of a prominent local merchant, Robert Meade, and not long afterward went into business with one of his brothers-in-law. The firm of George Meade and Company soon became one of the leading commercial houses in the city and specialized in the West India trade.

When the Revolution erupted, Fitzsimons enthusiastically endorsed the Whig position. During the war, he commanded a company of militia (1776-77). He also sat on the Philadelphia committee of correspondence, council of safety, and navy board. His firm provided supplies and "fire" ships to the military forces and, toward the end of the war, donated £: 5,000 to the Continental Army.

In 1782-83 Fitzsimons entered politics as a delegate to the Continental Congress. In the latter year, he became a member of the Pennsylvania council of censors and served as a legislator (1786-89). His attendance at the Constitutional Convention was regular, but he did not make any outstanding contributions to the proceedings. He was, however, a strong nationalist.

William Blount

William Blount, who represented North Carolina at the Constitutional Convention, personified America's enduring fascination with its frontier. Raised in the aristocratic tradition of the seaboard planter society, Blount faithfully served his native state in elective office and under arms during the Revolution. But like George Washington, Blount also foresaw the boundless opportunities and potential of the west. Drawn to the trans-Allegheny territories, he eventually played a major role in the founding of the state of Tennessee.

Blount's journey from the drawing rooms of the east to the rude frontier cabins of his adopted state not only illustrates the lure of the region to a man of business and political acumen but also underscores the fact that the creation of a strong central government that could protect and foster westward expansion was a critical factor in America's growth as a nation. Indeed, Blount had led the fight in North Carolina for ratification of the new Constitution because he, like many of his fellow veterans, had already come to realize that the various political and economic promises of independence could be fulfilled only by a strong, effective union of all the states.

Blount was born into a world of wealth and privilege. The oldest son in a family of distinguished merchants and planters who owned extensive properties along the banks of the Pamlico River, he was educated by private tutors, and with his brothers he moved with ease into a career managing some of his father's mercantile interests. At this stage of his life, Blount showed little sympathy for the aspirations of the roughhewn settlers in the western regions of the colony. Influenced by the Whig planter class, he opposed the demands of the Regulators, a loose organization of western populists who sought greater economic and political parity with the eastern planters through reform of the colony's election laws, tax and land regulations, and judicial system. When these demands turned to physical confrontation, Blount joined a force of militia loyal to the governor, which in May 1771 confronted some 2,000 mostly unarmed Regulators on the banks of the Alamance River. Although the largely bloodless battle that followed saw the defeat of the Regulators and the execution of their leaders, many of their reforms were eventually adopted by the North Carolina assembly.

Jonathan Dayton

Jonathan Dayton, who represented New Jersey at the Constitutional Convention, believed that government should defend individual freedoms, but within the framework of an established social hierarchy. He held to this traditional concept of government well into the nineteenth century. Even when the social distinctions that had guided the leaders of the Revolutionary generation had long faded, he retained the manners, customs, and political philosophy of his youth. His insistence on the old ways won him the title "the last of the cocked hats." But if Dayton insisted on outmoded social distinctions, he also possessed a healthy political realism that contributed in full measure to the creation of the new American republic.

Dayton was born in Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth), the focal point of "East Jersey," as the northern part of the colony was commonly known. The town traditionally supplied a major portion of the colony's leaders. Dayton's father, Elias, for example, was a militia officer in the French and Indian War who returned home to prosper as a merchant and colonial official. Dayton was clearly influenced by his family's position in the community and his father's ideas about government. Both men, like most Americans of their day, believed that the average citizen should defer to the views of his "betters," while prominent citizens, those with the largest stake in society, had an obligation to lead the community, sacrificing their own interests if necessary for the common good. These beliefs moved the family by natural steps into local leadership of the Patriot cause.

Elizabethtown had a reputation for educational excellence. The local academy, which prepared young men for college with a classical liberal arts curriculum, emerged in the decade and a half prior to the Revolution as one of the leading schools in the colonies under the famous educator Tapping Reeve and his protege, Francis Barber. After graduating from Reeves school, where two of his schoolmates were Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, Dayton attended the nearby College of New Jersey (today's Princeton University).

George Read

George Read was the son of an Irish immigrant, a well-to-do landowner from Dublin who eventually settled his family in New Castle, Delaware. Read attended local schools in Chester, Pennsylvania, and Reverend Francis Alison's well-known academy in New London, Pennsylvania, before reading law under John Moland of Philadelphia. He married Gertrude (Ross) Till, daughter of a future signer of the Declaration of Independence. Read established a legal practice in New Castle in 1754 and quickly developed a local reputation as an honest lawyer and a clientele that extended beyond the boundaries of his colony. He began his public career when he accepted appointment from the Royal governor as attorney general (1763-74) of the Three Lower Counties (the colonial name for Delaware). But he was soon speaking out in sympathy with those protesting Parliament's increasing interference with colonial self-government. In reference to the Stamp Act, an internal tax which Parliament sought to use to recoup the cost of the French and Indian War, he said that if it or anything like it were enforced, "the colonists will entertain an opinion that they are to become the slaves" of Great Britain and will endeavor "to live as independently of the mother country as possible."

Elected to the colonial legislature (1765-76), Read worked in union with the moderate representatives of the local merchants and landowners to press for nonimportation measures to protest Parliament's actions. Later he supported the committees established throughout the colonies to organize relief for the citizens of Boston, who were suffering from the severe economic measures imposed by Parliament in the wake of the Tea Party.

Read presided over Delaware's constitutional convention (1776), where he exercised more influence than any other member. He chaired the drafting committee, serving as a voice for moderation by balancing the revolutionary impulses of the people with the legitimate rights of property owners. His service as speaker of the Legislative Council (the upper house of the Delaware legislature) made him, in effect, the assistant governor of the state. In November 1777, after narrowly escaping capture by British troops while en route from Philadelphia to Dover, he assumed the presidency (governorship) of Delaware, a post he held until March 1778. Back in the Legislative Council in 1779, he drafted the act authorizing Delaware's ratification of the Articles of Confederation. Reflecting the views of the smaller states, Read argued that taxes levied by Congress should be based on the population of the states, rather than on the value of lands and improvements, and that the title to western lands should be held jointly with specific limits placed on the claims of individual states to them.

Jared Ingersoll

Jared Ingersoll overcame the strong influence of his Loyalist father to become a supporter of the Revolutionary cause. His training as a lawyer convinced him that the problems of the newly independent states were caused by the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation. He became an early and ardent proponent of constitutional reform, although, like a number of his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention, he believed this reform could be achieved by a simple revision of the Articles. Only after weeks of debate did he come to see that a new document was necessary. Ironically, his major contribution to the cause of constitutional government came not during the Convention, but later during a during a lengthy and distinguished legal career when he helped define many of the principles enunciated at Philadelphia.

Ingersoll was the son of a prominent British official, whose strong Loyalist sentiments would lead to his being tarred and feathered at the hands of radical Patriots. Ingersoll graduated from Yale College in 1766, studied law in Philadelphia, and was admitted to the bar in 1773. Although by training and inclination a Patriot sympathizer, the young Ingersoll shied away from the cause at the outset because of a strong sense of personal loyalty to his distinguished father. On his father's advice, he sought to escape the growing political controversy at home by retiring to London to continue his study of the law at the Middle Temple (1773-76) and to tour extensively through Europe. But shortly after the colonies declared their independence, Ingersoll renounced his family's views, made his personal commitment to the cause of independence, and returned home. In 1778 he arrived in Philadelphia as a confirmed Patriot. With the help of influential friends he quickly established a flourishing law practice, and shortly thereafter he entered the fray as a delegate to the Continental Congress (1780-81).

Always a supporter of strong central authority in political affairs, he became a leading agitator for reforming the national government in the postwar years, preaching the need for change to his friends in Congress and to the legal community.

Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer

Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer was an honored and effective local leader who, when conflict arose with Great Britain, embraced the Patriot cause, willingly abandoning the ordered society of colonial Maryland for the uncertainty of revolution. One of the oldest delegates in Philadelphia, he used his prestige to work for a strong and permanent union of the states. Contemporaries noted his good humor and pleasant company, which won him many friends at the Convention. When Luther Martin, who refused to sign the document, said that he feared being hanged if the people of Maryland approved the Constitution, Jenifer told him, humorously, that Martin should stay in Philadelphia, so that he would not hang in his home state. Along with Benjamin Franklin, Jenifer used laughter to help reconcile the opposing views of the delegates and to formulate the compromises that made the Convention a success.

Jenifer was the son of a colonial planter of Swedish and English descent. Born long before conflicts with Great Britain emerged, he was for many years a leader in Maryland's colonial government. As a young man, he acted as a receiver-general, the local financial agent for the last two proprietors of Maryland. Jenifer served as justice of the peace for Charles County and later for the western circuit of Maryland. He sat on a commission that settled a boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland (1760) and on the Governor's Council, the upper house of the Maryland legislature that also served as the colony's court of appeals and as a board of senior advisers to the governor (1773-76).
Along with James Madison, John Dickinson, and his good friend George Washington, he began to explore ways to solve the economic and political problems that had arisen under the weak Articles of Confederation. Consequently, he attended the Mount Vernon Conference, a meeting that would lead eventually to the Constitutional Convention.

Like his old friend Benjamin Franklin, Jenifer enjoyed the status of elder statesman at the Philadelphia Convention. He took stands on several important issues, although his advanced age restricted his activity in the day-to-day proceedings. Business experience gained while managing a large plantation had convinced him that an active central government was needed to ensure financial and commercial stability. To that end, he favored a strong and permanent union of the states in which a Congress representing the people had the power to tax. Concerned with continuity in the new government, he favored a three-year term for the House of Representatives. Too frequent elections, he concluded, might lead to indifference and would make prominent men unwilling to seek office.

Richard Dobbs Spaight

Throughout his short life Richard Dobbs Spaight, who represented North Carolina in the Constitutional Convention, exhibited a marked devotion to the ideals heralded by the Revolution. The nephew of a Royal governor, possessed of all the advantages that accompanied such rank and political access, Spaight nevertheless fought for the political and economic rights of his fellow citizens, first on the battlefield against the forces of an authoritarian Parliament and later in state and national legislatures against those who he felt sought excessive government control over the lives of the people. The preservation of liberty was his political lodestar.

Always an ardent nationalist, Spaight firmly supported the cause of effective central government. In this, he reflected a viewpoint common among veterans of the Revolution: that only a close union of all the states could preserve the liberties won by the cooperation of all the colonies. At the same time, Spaight believed that to guarantee the free exercise of these liberties, the powers of the state must be both limited and strictly defined. He therefore advocated constitutional provisions at the Convention that would protect the rights of the small states against the political power of their more populous neighbors, just as he later would fight for a constitutionally defined bill of rights to defend the individual citizen against the powers of government.

Spaight's political ideas were formed during a youth spent outside his native North Carolina. Following the death of his parents in 1767, the boy sailed to Ireland to be raised and educated among his Anglo-Irish relatives. This experience, which would include matriculation at the University of Glasgow, thrust the young colonial into the intellectual ferment swirling around the philosophers of the Enlightenment. These men taught that government was a solemn social contract between the people and their sovereign, with each party possessing certain inalienable rights. Like many of their American counterparts, the Anglo-Irish politicians considered themselves Englishmen with all the ancient rights and privileges such citizenship conferred and were quick to oppose any abridgment of those rights by Parliament. But while the Irish had been able to retain home rule, the American colonies were finding the power of their popular assemblies increasingly curtailed by a Parliament anxious to end an era of "salutary neglect." The contrast was not lost on young Spaight. The Declaration of Independence found a sympathetic audience in Ireland, and Spaight's loyalty to the Patriot cause only increased with the news in 1777 that North Carolina units had participated in the battle of Brandywine.

Despite the increasingly democratic inclinations of the age, family and fortune still counted heavily in the political life of the North Carolina seaboard. Spaight's uncle, Arthur Dobbs, whose name Spaight proudly and conspicuously bore, had been a highly popular Royal governor. His father, a popular Royal official in his own right, was North Carolina's treasurer and later a member of the Royal Governor's Council, the executive committee that directed the affairs of the colony. The Spaight family enjoyed extensive properties in the mercantile-planter region of Pamlico Sound. These advantages brought with them a traditional deference, especially when combined with young Spaight's patriotic ardor.

Gouverneur Morris

Gouverneur Morris, who represented Pennsylvania at the Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, was the author of much of the Constitution. The noble phrases of that document's Preamble—"We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union"—sprang from his gifted mind, and, like the finely wrought clauses that followed, clearly mirrored his personal political philosophy. Morris was perhaps the most outspoken nationalist among the Founding Fathers. Although born into a world of wealth and aristocratic values, he had come to champion the concept of a free citizenry united in an independent nation. In an age when most still thought of themselves as citizens of their sovereign and separate states, Morris was able to articulate a clear vision of a new and powerful union. He was, as Theodore Roosevelt later put it, "emphatically an American first."

The Morris family of New York, descended from Welsh soldiers, represented the closest thing to an aristocracy that could be found in colonial America. Morris' father had inherited a large manor in Westchester County, but his economic and political interests extended to nearby colonies as well. He raised two families. Gouverneur, the only son of the second marriage, knew that he would inherit only a small share of the estate and would have to work to retain the comforts and privileges of his forebears.

Morris' political career began in 1775 when he was elected to represent the family manor in New York's Provincial Congress, an extralegal assembly organized by the Patriots to direct the transition to independence. He soon discovered that the cauldron of revolutionary events imposed a personal choice from which there could be no drawing back. Class identity and family ties should have inclined him away from revolution. Morris' half-brother was a senior officer in the British Army, his mother remained a staunch Loyalist, and Smith, now with almost a father's influence, has precipitously abandoned the Patriot cause when he saw it heading toward independence. Like many of his contemporaries, however, Morris adhered to the principle that, as he put it, "in every society the members have a right to the utmost liberty that can be enjoyed consistent with the general safety.

Nicholas Gilman

Nicholas Gilman, New Hampshire Patriot and Revolutionary War veteran, was among those assembled in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to devise a new instrument of government for the independent American states. Gilman realized that the resulting Constitution was less than perfect, leaving certain viewpoints and interests largely unsatisfied. It was, in fact, an amalgam of regional ambitions and citizen safeguards forged in the spirit of political compromise. But Gilman was among the Constitution's most ardent supporters, believing that there was no alternative to the strong, viable union created by such a Constitution except a drift into political and economic chaos. Imbued with the emerging spirit of nationhood, he entered the struggle for ratification in his own state. At least nine favorable votes from the states were needed to install the new Constitution. Thanks to the work of Gilman and others, New Hampshire cast the crucial ninth aye vote.

Gilman could trace his roots in America to the earliest days of New Hampshire. The family had settled in Exeter, a substantial town in the eastern part of the colony. Here the Gilmans engaged in ship construction as well as in the profitable mercantile trade that linked the growing frontier settlements, the rest of the American colonies, and the West Indies. The Gilman family also performed the traditional public services expected of men of substance in eighteenth-century America. Its sons, for example, served as militia officers in the 1745 campaign against the French stronghold at Louisbourg, Canada, and ten years later they were among those soldiers New Hampshire mobilized to fight in the French and Indian War. Gilman's father was both a prosperous local merchant and the commander of the town's militia regiment.

John Langdon

John Langdon, who represented New Hampshire at the Constitutional Convention, was a wealthy international trader. Thrust by his widespread commercial interests into the forefront of the Patriot cause, Langdon contributed his highly developed business acumen during the Revolution to the problems of supplying the Continental Navy. As a citizen-soldier, he also participated under arms in the American victory, on several occasions using his personal fortune to ensure the success of his militia command.

The Langdon family was among the first to settle near the mouth of New Hampshire's Piscataqua River, a settlement which in time became Portsmouth, one of New England's major seaports. The son of a substantial farmer and local politician, John Langdon was educated at a local school run by a veteran of New England's 1745 expedition against the French at Louisbourg, Canada. Langdon and his older brother Woodbury both rejected the opportunity to join in their father's successful agricultural pursuits, succumbing instead to the lure of the thriving port. With the idea of entering the Yankee sea trade, they apprenticed themselves to local merchants.

John Langdon did not remain long in the counting house. By the age of twenty-two he was captain of a cargo ship sailing to the West Indies, and four years later he owned his first merchantman. Over time he would acquire a small fleet of vessels, which engaged in the triangular trade between Portsmouth, the Caribbean, and London. His older brother was even more successful in international trade, and by 1770 both young men could be counted among Portsmouth's wealthiest citizens.
The brothers entered local politics on the eve of the Revolution. Despite similar educations and business careers, however, they represented opposite ends of Portsmouth's political spectrum. While Woodbury Langdon rapidly rose to become a leader of the conservative merchants, John served on the town committees elected to protest the tax Parliament enacted on the tea trade and to enforce the Continental Association, a boycott of British goods organized throughout the colonies.

Illustrating divided political opinion in the colony, both brothers were elected in 1774 to represent Portsmouth in the New Hampshire legislature. But John Langdon soon grew impatient with the political process. He joined a group of militiamen who removed the gunpowder stored at the local fort before it could be seized by the Royal governor. In 1775 New Hampshire selected him and another leader of the gunpowder raid, John Sullivan, to attend the Second Continental Congress. Langdon immediately cast his lot with those calling for independence.

Thomas Mifflin

Thomas Mifflin, who represented Pennsylvania at the Constitutional Convention, seemed full of contradictions. Although he chose to become a businessman and twice served as the chief logistical officer of the Revolutionary armies, he never mastered his personal finances. A Quaker with strong pacifist beliefs, he helped organize Pennsylvania's military forces at the outset of the Revolution and rose to the rank of major general in the Continental Army. Despite his generally judicious deportment, contemporaries noted his "warm temperament" that led to frequent quarrels, including one with George Washington that had national consequences.

Mifflin was among the fourth generation of his family to live in Philadelphia, where his Quaker forebears had attained high rank. His father served as a city alderman, on the Governor's Council, and as a trustee of the College of Philadelphia (today's University of Pennsylvania). Mifflin attended local grammar schools and graduated in 1760 from the College. Following in his father's footsteps, he then apprenticed himself to an important local merchant, completing his training with a year-long trip to Europe to gain a better insight into markets and trading patterns. In 1765 he formed a partnership in the import and export business with a younger brother.

Mifflin married a distant cousin, and the young couple—witty, intelligent, and wealthy—soon became an ornament in Philadelphia's highest social circles. In 1768 Mifflin joined the American Philosophical Society, serving for two years as its secretary. Membership in other fraternal and charitable organizations soon followed. Associations formed in this manner quickly brought young Mifflin to the attention of Pennsylvania's most important politicians, and led to his first venture into politics. In 1771 he won election as a city warden, and a year later he began the first of four consecutive terms in the colonial legislature.

Mifflin's business experiences colored his political ideas. He was particularly concerned with Parliament's taxation policy and as early as 1765 was speaking out against London's attempt to levy taxes on the colonies. A summer vacation in New England in 1773 brought him in contact with Samuel Adams and other Patriot leaders in Massachusetts, who channeled his thoughts toward open resistance. Parliament's passage of the Coercive Acts in 1774, designed to punish Boston's merchant community for the Tea Party, provoked a storm of protest in Philadelphia. Merchants as well as the common workers who depended on the port's trade for their jobs recognized that punitive acts against one city could be repeated against another. Mifflin helped to organize the town meetings that led to a call for a conference of all the colonies to prepare a unified position.

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was the tenth son of a Massachusetts soap and candle maker. Largely self-taught, Franklin displayed an intellectual ability, readily apparent to those around him, that would earn him an international reputation in various fields. He began his career as a printer, going on to found the New England Courant, the fourth newspaper in the colonies. Following a serious argument with his brother in 1723, Franklin left Boston to start life anew in Philadelphia. There he quickly became an honored citizen and began his lifelong participation in political affairs. He served in Pennsylvania's colonial legislature (1736-64), both as delegate and elected clerk of the general assembly. In 1737 he also became postmaster of Philadelphia. He rose to prominence throughout the colonies when he became deputy postmaster general of British North America (1753-74).

At the age of 81, Franklin was the senior statesman of the Constitutional Convention, but his advanced years only served to enhance his importance in the Convention, giving him a singular role to play. His few formal discourses were written out and read, since he was no orator, and none of his major ideas, including a single-chambered legislature, an executive board rather than a single President, and service in public office without pay, was ever adopted. Yet he remained among the most influential delegates because of his unique ability to soothe disputes and encourage compromise through his prestige, humor, and powers of diplomacy. When a deadlock developed over the question of how the states should be represented in Congress, Franklin rephrased the problem in simple yet direct terms: "If a property representation takes place, the small states contend their liberties will be in danger. If an equality of votes takes place, the large states say their money will be in danger. When a broad table is to be made, and the planks do not fit, the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint." In the end, Franklin was an important member of the committee that adjusted the matter of representation, thus working out the "good joint" that was to be the most important prerequisite to the adoption of the Constitution. When the time came to sign the document, Franklin encouraged his fellow delegates to take this spirit of compromise to its conclusion by lending the Constitution their unanimous support, despite the fact that he himself did not approve of every aspect of the new plan of government. He concluded: "On the whole . . . I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention . . . would with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to the instrument."

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who represented South Carolina at the Constitutional Convention, was an American aristocrat. Like other first families of South Carolina, whose wealth and social prominence could be traced to the seventeenth century, the Pinckneys maintained close ties with the mother country and actively participated in the Royal colonial government. Nevertheless, when armed conflict threatened, Pinckney rejected Loyalist appeals and embraced the Patriot cause. Pragmatically, his decision represented an act of allegiance to the mercantile-planter class of South Carolina's seaboard, which deeply resented Parliament's attempt to institute political and economic control over the colonies. Yet Pinckney's choice also had a philosophical dimension. It placed him among a small group of wealthy and powerful southerners whose profound sense of public duty obliged them to risk everything in defense of their state and the rights of its citizens. In Pinckney's case this sense of public responsibility was intensified by his determination to assume the mantle of political and military leadership traditionally worn by members of his family.

As a boy, Pinckney witnessed firsthand the close relationship between the colonial elite and the British. His father was the colony's chief justice and also served as a member of its Royal Council; his mother was famous in her own right for introducing the cultivation of indigo, which rapidly became a major cash crop in South Carolina. In 1753 the family moved to London where the elder Pinckney served as the colony's agent, in effect, as a lobbyist protecting colonial interests in political and commercial matters. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney enrolled in the famous Westminster preparatory school, and he—with his brother Thomas—remained in England to complete his education when the family returned to America in 1758. After graduating from Christ Church College at Oxford, he studied law at London's famous Middle Temple. He was admitted to the English bar in 1769, but he continued his education for another year, studying botany and chemistry in France and briefly attending the famous French military academy at Caen.
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Re: Controversy #2 - The U.S. Constitution Sucks

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:36 pm

Michael Collins
07-27-2007, 06:41 PM

Revolutionary Army, particularly those from Pannsylvania.

These soldiers did not have the advantages of this interesting collection (thanks) but they were a healthy lot.

-----------------------------

http://scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0705/S00471.htm

The Revolutionary Army’s demand for voting rights was a strong influence that spread democratic ideals. While the wealthy in other states were troubled by Pennsylvania’s consistent application of revolutionary ideals, those states were ultimately influenced by the general trend toward democracy generated by the war time contributions of citizens from all economic classes.

"During the war, many patriot militiamen claimed the right to elect their officers; subsequently, many veterans, whether or not they had property, demanded the franchise. And when they voted, they chose different sorts of leaders. Before the war, about 85 percent of the assembly were wealthy men; by 1784, however, middling farmers and artisans controlled the lower houses of most northern states and formed a sizable minority in the southern states. "Oxford University Press

-----------------------------

"whether or not they had property" they "demanded the franchise." Adversity is the fertile ground for greatness, at times. This was one of those times. Here's the crystal of a true democracy, seen elsewhere, but we're talking about here. The spirit of Bacons Rebellion was crushed by force and the profound cynicism used by the restored aristocracy - create a true rift between black and white settlers so they'll never fight together again. They did. The response to the enfranchisement movement, true humanism imho, is something I'd like to understand better. In the case of Bacon's Rebellion, Berkeley, I believe, actually figured out the need to alienate the races. Did the rise of "the money party" (with its many factions) come as the result of a conscious decision of a Berkeley or a group of the owners and managers?

Nevertheless, the record was established in this conflict - give people a chance to evolve and they will do it quickly in the direction of their individual and collective dignity.
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Re: Controversy #2 - The U.S. Constitution Sucks

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:38 pm

anaxarchos
07-27-2007, 06:47 PM
Nevertheless, the record was established in this conflict - give people a chance to evolve and they will do it quickly in the direction of their individual and collective dignity.
Give them guns and a monopoly on armed power and they will evolve even faster.

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Re: Controversy #2 - The U.S. Constitution Sucks

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:39 pm

Michael Collins
07-28-2007, 03:29 AM

Those who fulfill their personal fears and inadequacy by holding a piece (not their own) and leading a gang of like minded thugs to scare their fellow citizens. I think if there's enough work and food, you don't need this sort of silliness that turns into tragedy on a mass scale.

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Re: Controversy #2 - The U.S. Constitution Sucks

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:41 pm

anaxarchos
07-28-2007, 12:34 PM
Those who fulfill their personal fears and inadequacy by holding a piece (not their own) and leading a gang of like minded thugs to scare their fellow citizens. I think if there's enough work and food, you don't need this sort of silliness that turns into tragedy on a mass scale.

Image
Oops... We've missed each other, as is our custom. Those were Red Guards from 1917 and it is fine with me that they were "evolving quickly" (in fact I kinda count on it). The fellow citizens they are scaring deserved some scaring. I suppose if they were Friekorps, it would be the opposite. It just goes to show you, it all depends on "which side are you on?"

BTW, months ago I put up a link to an amazing version of that song (with video) and it got no comment. I thought everybody either missed it or had different taste. Then I ran across PPLE commenting elsewhere that it was his favorite... Check this out:

http://www.harlancountypotluck.com/flsh/whichsd.html
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Re: Controversy #2 - The U.S. Constitution Sucks

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:45 pm

Two Americas
07-28-2007, 02:48 PM

The Revolutionary Army’s demand for voting rights was a strong influence that spread democratic ideals. While the wealthy in other states were troubled by Pennsylvania’s consistent application of revolutionary ideals, those states were ultimately influenced by the general trend toward democracy generated by the war time contributions of citizens from all economic classes.

Not sure what you are driving at here, auto. Are you saying that the Constitution doesn't suck because ideas percolated up from the masses?

Those who fulfill their personal fears and inadequacy by holding a piece (not their own) and leading a gang of like minded thugs to scare their fellow citizens. I think if there's enough work and food, you don't need this sort of silliness that turns into tragedy on a mass scale.
Are you saying that an enlightened aristocracy feeding and housing the mob will put an end to all of this silly and dangerous rabble rousing? That the main thing to worry about is the working class rising up, because we all know where that leads?

I posted the brief bios of the founding fathers, neither to praise nor to bury them, by the way. I think when modern Americans read those bios, they can't look at them objectively because that precise mix of qualities and backgrounds set the pattern for a new type of aristocracy distinct from the European aristocracy, and a new type of tyranny, and that became the model for what we take for granted to this day as the qualities that are appropriate for leadership and power. John Kerry's bio would fit in nicely there - wealthy, educated, married into money, law background, connections. We can't imagine any other narrative for success, any other hierarchy, any other path to power, so the bios of the founding fathers don't seem remarkable or interesting to us. "Of course. That is the way the world works." We unconsciously look at those bios from the viewpoint of the American ruling class, and we can't see the American aristocracy because we are immersed in the pervasive apologies for it and assume it as an inevitable and unavoidable state of affairs. "He is a pretty smart and accomplished man." "You can't argue with success." "Well he has done some good things."

The pattern that was set by the Revolution and the Constitution persists today. The net results of that pattern are tyranny and destruction. Who was set free by the revolution and for what purposes? Who is protected by the Constitution? Those who find a way to rise, to make a fortune one way or another - born to it, marry it, use capitalism to amass it, kiss up to it as some sort of court jester - as with the attorneys for the wealthy and powerful. This is a distinctly American pattern, and is not a law of the universe or the inevitable outcome of something about human nature.

This new class - from New England shipping magnates to slave traders to bankers to real estate speculators to brokers to dealers and developers, with their connections and law degrees and control over the legislatures - ascended to power and remains in power. Those whose skills and contributions cannot be leveraged into massive fortunes are left behind. We can't expect a nurse or a teacher to make a fortune selling their skills on the supposed free market, and that means they are powerless in the American system, unless they organize, and the history of the country is an ongoing ruthless suppression of such organizing.

The Revolution liberated, and the Constitution protects, a new group of striving, upwardly mobile men and a particular path to amassing wealth and gaining power. The crown was a check on their lust for power. The working class didn't benefit by the Revolution and is not protected by the Constitution. Were that true, then we would expect to find that the working class would have been dramatically worse off in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and in the UK itself over the years.

We are to believe that because we threw off the monarchy, and because we don't have a European style landed aristocracy, that we are therefore “free.” Pointing out that there were working class men fighting in the Revolution who, "whether or not they had property demanded the franchise" tells us nothing. Working class people at all times and places have yearned to overthrow the tyranny of the aristocracy. That doesn't legitimatize or mitigate the replacement of one tyranny with another.

I know, I know - “America may not be perfect, but it is a lot better than anything else anyone has come up with.”
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Re: Controversy #2 - The U.S. Constitution Sucks

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:48 pm

anaxarchos
08-31-2007, 12:28 AM

Chlamor put up a version of this thread on PI and after the usual back and forth (with some insane and totally unexpected "States' Rights" partisanship in the middle), a counter-thread appears the OP of which I reproduce below because I think it is important:



Original Post: The Constitution Sucks, Part Deux:

There were a few observations i wanted to make in Chlamor's OP on this subject, but didn't wish to 'hijack' the discussion and drive it off a Paulista cliff. But so many of my opinions tended in that direction that i considered it worthwhile to create a new post on this related subject.

While reading the responses to the OP, i was struck by the number of references to the Constitution as having been written by 'greedy white men' gaming the system to their own advantage, and everyone else's disadvantage...which struck me as a rather superficial understanding of the matter. And underlining this shallowness was a misappreciation of the role of 'property' to the 18th C. (or 'enlightment') mind--it was more than possession-obsession; it was the pre-eminent organizing principle of not only government and economy, but of society and culture, and (in more extreme forms) of spirituality/religion and individual identity.

First, a disclaimer: i am absolutely convinced there is nothing intrinsic to poverty that makes the poor virtuous, any more than there is anything intrinsic to wealth that makes the rich evil. "Good" and "bad" are matters of ethical character (as distinct from what conservatives call 'moral' character), which may be influenced--but NOT axiomatically determined--by one's economic class or social status. Rich and poor each had their own 'sinners' (alcoholics, gamblers, crooks, idlers and misanthropes) and 'saints' (philantrophists, altruists and other do-gooders). And the leading thinkers and activists of the age--the generation that staged the Revolution and wrote the Constitution--knew this; a knowledge that seems to have been lost today.

In an era of extremely tight credit, a currency system limited by (and to) 'hard' money, and largely bereft of 'safety nets', property was regarded as one of the more reliable measurements of an individual's value--those who acquired it displaying the qualities of thrift, practicality, discipline, ambition and critical intelligence; while those who didn't were deemed to display sloth, hedonism, self-indulgence, carelessness and short-sightedness. This is evident in the biographical sketches Chlamor so thoughtfully provided; the necessity of men of humble origins to obtain an education not only for acquiring property, but the 'culture' (an appreciation for art, literature, music, theater, and the harder sciences--medicine, engineering, economics, astronomy, agriculture and animal husbandry) which prosperity allowed them to pursue. Given this, the 'greedy white men' who invented the US of A can be forgiven for believing that men of property--those proven by experience to be the 'best and the brightest', the most competent and able--should be responsible for the future governance and well-being of the new Republic.

I offer this as preface to my main point: that for men of the 18th C., notions of civil liberties flowed directly from their ideas about property rights; and they made no pretension that the latter was subordinate to the former: without property there could be no freedom--from hunger, destitution, ignorance, superstition and despair.

What we know today as Libertarianism descended directly (and with little evolutionary improvement) from this philosophical prejudice, which--in an era of (too) easy credit, paper money and social programs--has become an ideological anachronism woefully out of touch with contemporary realities. In fact, Libertarianism is quite the cult of overly romanticising an era which is in itself overly idealized. One can appreciate that modern life--mass-society madness--is complicated and complex, threatening and disorienting, violent, vulgar and expensive. Libertarians offer an escape from this, but only in rhetoric, for their backward-looking, nostalgia-blinkered ideology would actually make our present system--with all its corruptions and failures--seem quite the bargain: the economic and social Darwinism of predators in a lawless wilderness; Leviathan, indeed.


Next to the phenomena of "cube rats", I think the "left" confusion of the political and social fabric of America based on Democratic mythology is exceedingly important. The narrative above is an entirely well meaning and sincere attempt at the question, and it is also quite typical of the "radical" or "left-liberal" perspective of the 1960s. Yet, it is completely wrong. In ascending order of importance:

1) There is a complete but very common misunderstanding of "Libertarianism", as a "movement", in the above. I'm gone for a few days but when I come back, I want to write a little about that subject as it seems to be the source of considerable confusion in its own right.

2) The writer is entirely correct about the politics of the 18th century being driven by property, but also skids to a halt with respect to why. Put in more general terms, why is there such a blind spot to class in the United States? The principles in the Democratic revolutions were the "bourgeoise". They were so defined, readily admitted it, it has correctly gone down in history as such and it is entirely obvious. How is it that here alone, it turns into "people" who are "concerned" with property?

3) The inward turn - the poor are not good and the rich are not bad - this is hipster ethics in spades from 1969. It's what's inside you, man... There is nothing inherent. Instead, it is greed in your heart... How can anybody buy this when for one class this "emotional tendency" is the entire key to their social survival while for the other, it is a side-effect of existence at best?

I ask the congregation...
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Re: Controversy #2 - The U.S. Constitution Sucks

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:50 pm

Kid of the Black Hole
08-31-2007, 12:49 AM
Chlamor put up a version of this thread on PI and after the usual back and forth (with some insane and totally unexpected "States' Rights" partisanship in the middle), a counter-thread appears the OP of which I reproduce below because I think it is important:



Original Post: The Constitution Sucks, Part Deux:

There were a few observations i wanted to make in Chlamor's OP on this subject, but didn't wish to 'hijack' the discussion and drive it off a Paulista cliff. But so many of my opinions tended in that direction that i considered it worthwhile to create a new post on this related subject.

While reading the responses to the OP, i was struck by the number of references to the Constitution as having been written by 'greedy white men' gaming the system to their own advantage, and everyone else's disadvantage...which struck me as a rather superficial understanding of the matter. And underlining this shallowness was a misappreciation of the role of 'property' to the 18th C. (or 'enlightment') mind--it was more than possession-obsession; it was the pre-eminent organizing principle of not only government and economy, but of society and culture, and (in more extreme forms) of spirituality/religion and individual identity.

First, a disclaimer: i am absolutely convinced there is nothing intrinsic to poverty that makes the poor virtuous, any more than there is anything intrinsic to wealth that makes the rich evil. "Good" and "bad" are matters of ethical character (as distinct from what conservatives call 'moral' character), which may be influenced--but NOT axiomatically determined--by one's economic class or social status. Rich and poor each had their own 'sinners' (alcoholics, gamblers, crooks, idlers and misanthropes) and 'saints' (philantrophists, altruists and other do-gooders). And the leading thinkers and activists of the age--the generation that staged the Revolution and wrote the Constitution--knew this; a knowledge that seems to have been lost today.

In an era of extremely tight credit, a currancy system limited by (and to) 'hard' money, and largely bereft of 'safety nets', property was regarded as one of the more reliable measurements of an individual's value--those who acquired it displaying the qualities of thrift, practicality, discipline, ambition and critical intelligence; while those who didn't were deemed to display sloth, hedonism, self-indulgence, carelessness and short-sightedness. This is evident in the biographical sketches Chlamor so thoughtfully provided; the necessity of men of humble origins to obtain an education not only for acquiring property, but the 'culture' (an appreciation for art, literature, music, theater, and the harder sciences--medicine, engineering, economics, astronomy, agriculture and animal husbandry) which prosperity allowed them to pursue. Given this, the 'greedy white men' who invented the US of A can be forgiven for believing that men of property--those proven by experience to be the 'best and the brightest', the most competent and able--should be responsible for the future governance and well-being of the new Republic.

I offer this as preface to my main point: that for men of the 18th C., notions of civil liberties flowed directly from their ideas about property rights; and they made no pretention that the latter was subordinate to the former: without property there could be no freedom--from hunger, destitution, ignorance, superstition and dispair.

What we know today as Libertarianism descended directly (and with little evolutionary improvement) from this philosophical prejudice, which--in an era of (too) easy credit, paper money and social programs--has become an ideological anachronism woefully out of touch with contemporary realities. In fact, Libertarianism is quite the cult of overly romanticising an era which is in itself overly idealized. One can appreciate that modern life--mass-society madness--is complicated and complex, threatening and disorienting, violent, vulgar and expensive. Libertarians offer an escape from this, but only in rhetoric, for their backward-looking, nostalgia-blinkered ideology would actually make our present system--with all its corruptions and failures--seem quite the bargain: the economic and social Darwinism of predators in a lawless wilderness; Leviathan, indeed.


Next to the phenomena of "cube rats", I think the "left" confusion of the political and social fabric of America based on Democratic mythology is exceedingly important. The narrative above is an entirely well meaning and sincere attempt at the question, and it is also quite typical of the "radical" or "left-liberal" perspective of the 1960s. Yet, it is completely wrong. In ascending order of importance:

1) There is a complete but very common misunderstanding of "Libertarianism", as a "movement", in the above. I'm gone for a few days but when I come back, I want to write a little about that subject as it seems to be the source of considerable confusion in its own right.

2) The writer is entirely correct about the politics of the 18th century being driven by property, but also skids to a halt with respect to why. Put in more general terms, why is there such a blind spot to class in the United States? The principles in the Democratic revolutions were the "bourgeoise". They were so defined, readily admitted it, it has correctly gone down in history as such and it is entirely obvious. How is it that here alone, it turns into "people" who are "concerned" with property?

3) The inward turn - the poor are not good and the rich are not bad - this is hipster ethics in spades from 1969. It's what's inside you, man... There is nothing inherent. Instead, it is greed in your heart... How can anybody buy this when for one class this "emotional tendency" is the entire key to their social survival while for the other, it is a side-effect of existence at best?

I ask the congregation...
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Whoa I never go to PI anymore but for some reason I was over there and spotted Chlamors Constitution thread. I didn't see this one but..how is this not a non-sequitur:

What we know today as Libertarianism descended directly (and with little evolutionary improvement) from this philosophical prejudice

Whatever "philosophical prejudice" he may or may not have discussed up to that point was all favorably cast. And he isn't, I don't think, linking "Libertarianism" to a bunch of old white men (although, actually..) which was the centerpiece of the post. I've thought of a couple other interpretations too..I follow what he means but don't see how it follows really.

First, a disclaimer: i am absolutely convinced there is nothing intrinsic to poverty that makes the poor virtuous, any more than there is anything intrinsic to wealth that makes the rich evil. "Good" and "bad" are matters of ethical character (as distinct from what conservatives call 'moral' character), which may be influenced--but NOT axiomatically determined--by one's economic class or social status. Rich and poor each had their own 'sinners' (alcoholics, gamblers, crooks, idlers and misanthropes) and 'saints' (philanthropists, altruists and other do-gooders). And the leading thinkers and activists of the age--the generation that staged the Revolution and wrote the Constitution--knew this; a knowledge that seems to have been lost today.

He might as well say there is nothing intrinsically wrong with giving handjobs behind the local Arbys or huffing Elmer's glue (which, incidentally, why is the nozzle virtually MADE to be inserted up the nostril?). I REALLY don't think what we need is more Deconstructionism. There is nothing intrinsically good or bad about anything. Its a case where a statement that says nothing really, really says nothing.

The other part is a near tautological statement with a (fake) cherry on top: the leading thinkers of the age, in their infinite wisdom, knew where wisdom was to be found (and occasionally even some morsel-starved scrapper might be let in on the act if deemed worthy). Tell me how the "leading thinkers of the age" serves as anything other than a euphemism to "the fuckers in power" please.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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