Well, God dammit! I’ve ignored this thread long enough.
It’s definitely NOT because I’m losing interest. On the contrary, I want (almost desperately) to get back into the thick of it. It’s just that in the past, oh, 3 weeks or so, I’ve worked at least 230 hours. If you do the math, you’ll quickly figure out that I’m being worked to the bone. Just last week alone, I worked 83 hours. I’d start work at about 8:00 every day and quit between 9:30 and 10:30 each day of the week. I’d work at least a full 8 hours on Saturday and Sunday too. So I’ve had no time.
Suffice it to say, we’re going through a rough spell at work (tough economy, two people quit on us, and we’re desperate to please one of our Patron Clients–Alberta Health)–so we’re being over worked.
But God dammit, I’m not going to sacrifice this Friday to another neglect of one of my favorite pastimes: ILP.
It’s 1:06 on a Friday night (well, Saturday morning I guess), and I’m a bit drunk I have to warn you, but FUCK!!!–I’m going to keep this thread alive if it kills me!
So, anyway, where were we? Ah, yes, we just went through Section I of Article II. Let’s move on to Section II (it’s all I have time for right now):
These two sections are relatively straight forward, so I have no comments on them except this:
When it says “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment…” does it mean: shall be removed from office if impeached, or does it mean: shall be removed from office and the means shall be impeachment?
The Heritage Guide to The Constitution explains the vagueness of “good Behavior” as being for the sake of “the foundation stone for the independent judiciary in the American tripartite system of government,” meaning that the Constitution cannot dictate what “good Behavior” is supposed to mean if the judiciary is to function as an independent branch of government, and that it is up to the men and women within that branch to decide what counts as good behavior (after which point it functions as a binding contract).
The Heritage Guide explains this oddly phrased clause as follows:
I’ve been omitting to post my thoughts on the Wikipedia article on each Article, but I haven’t been neglecting to read it. I just don’t think, at this point, that going through a thorough analysis of the Wikipedia article on top of the Constitution is necessary.
Section 1:
In other words, if someone is convicted of a crime in Virginia, and that person makes his way into North Carolina, the NC State government must also recognize his status as criminal.
I suppose this applies to a person’s innocence as well: if, for example, littering were illegal in North Carolina but not in Virginia, then even if a person litters in Virginia and then makes his way across the border, the State government of North Carolina must regard him as innocent.
Section 2:
I sounds like it’s harkening to slavery. If a slave escapes into a free State, he can’t thereby proclaim himself free in the eyes of the law. He is to be returned to his owner in the State from which he fled upon the owner’s claim.
Sections 3:
^^ Not sure what this last part means: How would one construe something in the Constitution to “Prejudice” any claims of the United States. Does it mean claims to the territories? And if the Constitution were construed to prejudice such claims, then such claims become null and void?
And what about the claims “of any particular State”? Wasn’t there a great deal of confusion and unclarity about who really had a claim to the territories, or certain parts of it? So how could both claims–that of the federal government and of a particular State–remain unprejudiced?
Section 4:
What’s being guaranteed here? That the federal government will maintain a republican form for the sake of the States, or that the federal government will see to it that each State government take and maintain a republican form?
I finally got a question answered that I asked earlier in this thread: Does each state have its own legislature? The wiki article on Article V definitively says they do.
Now onto Article V:
That’s Article V, short and succinct.
So essentially, there are two conditions under which amendments to the Constitution may be proposed: 1) if 2/3 of the House of Representatives and the Senate motion for it, or 2) if 2/3 of the state legislatures motion for an amendment proposing convention. And once proposed, in needs to be ratified by either 3/4 of the State legislatures or 3/4 of the amendment proposing conventions of the States in order to be made part of the Constitution.
The first clause mentioned for protection against amendments makes sense–why would you want to leave open to amendment a date set in stone when clearly that date was strictly chosen. But to zero in on the clauses about proportional taxation and equal representation to the exclusion of any other clause throughout the Constitution seems rather arbitrary to me–I mean, why not any other clause? The Heritage Guide is not helpful here, except in saying that a man by the name of Roger Sherman really, really pushed for it.
Article VI:
Seems pretty clear to me.
Article VII:
Why is there a minimum number at all? What if only 3 States ratified the Constitution? Would it not work for those 3 States?
That’s phase 1. Phase 2 of this constitutionalogical analysis will involve the Amendments. We’re only half way through boys and girls.
But before we get into the Amendments, I want to give my assessment of what I think the Constitution is intended to accomplish: it seems intended to accomplish a government over governments–a federal government over the State governments–and this in the hopes of preserving a republic by means of preoccupying the federal government with rulership over State governments rather than the people.
As I said earlier in this thread, the American Constitution seems geared towards giving the federal government dictatorial power over the State governments–empowering it to dictate what the State governments can and can’t do–and to provide it with the means of enforcing its authority. The lessons of history show that in order to maintain order, a government must be able to rule with an iron fist. The flip side to that is that it robs the people of their liberty and forces them to live in fear of their government. I think that what the American Constitution accomplishes is a way of preserving that dictatorial power, thereby maintaining a strong capable authority at the head, while at the same time preserving the liberty of the people by making the State governments the only subjects of the federal dictatorship (if we may call it that) rather than the people.
But what prevents the federal government from taking more power? Why, if they already hold authority over the State governments, would they not over step their bounds and exercise power over the people as well? Well, it wouldn’t necessarily, but the only way for the federal government to over step its bounds is by engaging in unconstitutional acts, and I’ll say a few things about this below. For now, let me just state that it is my honest opinion that what the Constitution was designed to accomplish is not so much the limiting of power for its own sake but for the sake of avoiding the kinds of tyrannical and terrorist governments that plagued Europe at the time and from which the colonists and the founding fathers were trying to escape. And there was a post earlier in this thread in which I offered a theory about why tyranny and terrorism ends up being exacted by dictatorial powers:
When a dictator rules directly over the people, he runs the risk (which is bound to be realized sooner or later) of inciting the people’s resistance and rage, which eventually culminates in rebellion. When that happens, the dictator must fend for his life. Kill or be killed. But the kind of dictatorship that the American Constitution prescribes for the federal government is not one over the people but one over State governments–and this makes a big difference. Members of State governments, unless they’ve been living under a rock all their lives, enter into the profession knowingly and willingly–very much like a soldier voluntarily enrolling in the army, knowing full well that he’ll be taking his orders from his superiors and that life will be rough, and accepting that willingly. Politicians in State governments are in the business of dealing with the federal government, where knowing the rules and playing along are par for the course. The end result is that all apprehension and proclivity to panic is removed from the federal government and replaced by a sense of “business as usual”. There is no need for coming down hard on the State governments, for oppression and brutal tactics of punishment and instilling fear. Instead, a harmony arises, the proper functioning of a well oiled machine.
It’s a bit like separating the workers in a corporation from upper management by a layer of middle management. Middle management are selected for their skills at mediating between upper management (or clients) and the workers. They are the type of people who know how to handle such a situation. If upper management or clients dealt directly with the workers, many workers would not be able to handle the pressure and either break down psychologically or rise up and rebel (i.e. quit, fall back on unions, etc.).
At the same time, however, the kind of rulership the federal government holds over State governments is not whimsical–the Constitution does not leave the rules of the game open ended for the federal government to decide willy-nilly. The Constitution structures the law in a very particular and detailed way such as to preserve a republic. It prescribes laws that all State governments must adhere to and powers with which the federal government can enforce those laws, but the aim is to preserve a republic in which the people can enjoy as much freedom as practically possible. We see this in the many clauses mentioning the rights of the people–such as the Habeas Corpus clause of Article I, Section 9, or the Privileges and Immunities clause of Article IV, Section 2–effectively restraining the State governments from overt acts against the liberties of American citizens. The dictatorial rule, in other words, is to command, by law, what is necessary in order to protect the liberties of the people and thereby preserve the republic.
Notice that the most basic laws of any nation–don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t rape–aren’t even mentioned in the Constitution. Why? Not because the authors of the Constitution wanted just that much freedom for the people, but because the subjects of the federal law–that is, the law of the Constitution–weren’t the people–it was for the people, for the sake of protecting them, but the actual subjects to whom the law applied were the State governments. If the US were a direct dictatorship, like a monarchy, it would have to make laws applicable to the people–like don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t rape–and you would see this in the Constitution. But it makes no sense to make such laws for State governments. They get a different set of laws. The State governments, in turn, are the ones making laws binding on the people, but with the federal law restricting what they can and can’t do to the people, the people are in much less danger of being bound by unreasonable and brutal laws, or worse, a total disregard for the law on the part of the State governments.
But why would the federal government adhere to this constitutional prescription? Why not extend their power over the people as well as the State governments? Well, of course, they can’t make such a move in one foul swoop, at least not without risk wholesale rebellion on the part of the people (and perhaps the State governments as well), but they can do it by a series of surreptitious and duplicitous baby steps–in other words, exactly what liberals do (according to some in this thread). When they legislate for a ban on smoking in public restaurants and pubs, they are exercising, through the State government, power over the people that does not serve republican ends. How does a ban on smoking help maintain a republic? Remember, the laws layd out by the Constitution not only apply to State governments, but they enumerate the things the State governments cannot do to the people, whereas a ban on smoking in public restaurants is a law applied directly to the people and an addition to the enumeration of things they cannot do. This one example may be small potatoes compared to other limitations on individual liberties, but it fits the form of what undermines a republic and renders the nation subject to factionalism.
This, I think, it the fundamental danger of the liberal approach to politics–to subvert the process by which the law is made to serve republican ends and to invert it to serve the interests of factions and partial groups at the expense of others. Although such an approach is not overtly unconstitutional, I suspect it is the reason why so many conservatives and libertarians regard it as wholly against the spirit of the Constitution, and why they see it as a destructive force dissolving the American way of life.
It’s been a few weeks since I contributed to this thread–been busy–but I’m ready to delve into the Amendments.
Now, I treated this the same way I treated the rest of the Constitution–I used wiki as a guide and the source documents as the formal object of the investigation. This time, however, that source is The Heritage Guide to The Constitution, not the wiki original source (which doesn’t exist as far as my searches go).
Let’s go through the main points that the wiki intro to the Amendments goes through. Here’s what it says:
Keep in mind that this intro to the Amendments focuses on the ratified Amendments. The wiki article states that, on average, for every 2 year term in Congress, Senators and House Representatives propose around 200 amendments, 27 of which, since the Constitution’s inception, have been ratified and 6 of which have been approved by Congress and presented to the States but have not been ratified (4 of which are still pending only in virtue of no time limit being set on them).
But anyway, going through the wiki quote above, I find the following points to be salient:
The Amendment process does not allow changes to the original text of the Constitution, which to me seems like a no-brainer–of course, you don’t change the original text!
The first 10 Amendments to the Constitution (out of the 12 which were originally proposed) were ratified in one batch–and they are collectively known as the American Bill of Rights.
Amendments 13-15 are known as the Reconstruction Amendments and were a response to the Emancipation Declaration and the Civil War that followed–essentially amending the Constitution such as to address and deal with the outlawing of slavery and providing for the men and women who were consequently freed by it. On this note, I find it interesting that out of all the Amendments, the wiki article only bothers to mention the first 10 and 13-15 as grouped together. Is this a shortcoming of the wiki article or do Americans in general not group any of the other Amendments into additional groups? More research on my part will tell (either that, or someone here will pipe up and answer this question).
With the exception to the 27th Amendment, the period during which the ratified Amendments were pending is relatively short–between 100 days for the shortest period and almost 4 years for the longest. Now I must say, with that brief a time span for ratifying pending Amendments, the 27th certainly stands out like a soar thumb, blowing the others out of the water by almost 200 years, putting its ratification date at 1992. Makes me wonder what happened just prior to 1992 that all of a sudden, after 202 years of collecting dust, drew Congress’s attention to it and and made it acceptable to the States. Might it also have something to do with the 26th Amendment, the previous one to be ratified in 1971, taking the shortest amount of time to be ratified?
The second paragraph in the quote above goes into the Amendment process, which we went over in our analysis of Article V, and doesn’t really add anything new… so neither will I.
Before we actually get into the Amendments, I want to briefly list out the major milestones along the timeline during which the Constitution was being developed and finally put into action–that is, from its first draft to the ratification of the Bill of Rights:
1787 - First draft of the Constitution written up in Philadelphia, PA.
1787 (later) - Federalist Papers begin to be written explaining the reasoning behind the decisions made at Philadelphia. (I’m in the middle of listening to an audio recording of the Federalist Papers right now, so it’s foremost on my mind as an important stepping stone to landing the Constitution upon America).
1788 - New Hampshire becomes the 9th State to ratify the Constitution (but not the last), thereby making it official and legally binding over the nation in accordance with Article VII. (It’s interesting to pondering the self-referential aspect of this Article–any State who might have chose not to ratify it would not recognize its legal legitimacy, and therefore Article VII itself would not count as sufficient justification to accept it as ratified–but history is written by the winners).
1791 - Bill of Rights ratified as the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution.
So given that the wiki article divides the first 10 Amendments into 3 groups–Safeguards of liberty (Amendments 1, 2, 3), Safeguards of justice (Amendments 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ), and Unenumerated rights and reserved powers (Amendments 9, 10)–I think it convenient to start with the Safeguards of liberty:
This has always stood out in my mind as an almost impossible Amendment to uphold–how do you allow a people to practice their various religions in complete freedom when some of those practices may involve breaking the law or harming others?
We’ve discussed this Amendment at length way earlier in this thread–I think the main confusion over it, at least for me, has been settled thus: its purpose is not just to uphold the freedom of Americans to have and use guns just for shits and giggles, but to defend their freedoms against potential tyranny on behalf of the government or foreign invasions (and also how impotent such a Constitutional power may in fact be now-a-days).
Before moving on, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the wikipedia article’s take on the Safeguards of Liberty. I forgot to do that. I usually read the wiki’s brief summary on the article, clause, amendment, section, whatever, before I delve into the source material but, and if it stirs any thoughts, I’ll typically post that first before hashing out the actual source material. This time I did things in reverse order, but that’s no problem–today we’re doing things in reverse order:
Well this sort of addresses my comments in the last post: how can such an Amendment as the first possibly be upheld if it means potentially plunging the nation into a civil war on religious grounds and rending the unity of the States? This point brought up in the wiki article suggests that it isn’t so much the express intent laid out in the Amendment that matters but the function or the effect it has–namely, to allow as much freedom of expression as possible… which to me seems like a good thing (no matter how “offensive” such expression may be to some).
As for the “free exercise” clause, that still stands in need of a bit of scrutiny as I’m sure everyone will agree that there is a difference between expressing your view and exercising your views. ← It’s this latter point that I question. How can you exercise, in all your God given freedom, your religious belief to, let’s just say hypothetically, fly a plane into a building, without harming others, violating the supreme law of the land, infringing on the rights and freedoms of others, and not to say the least, performing an unconstitutional act?
What the wiki article is here suggesting is that this Amendment was not meant to allow people to fly planes into buildings or allows for religiously based mass murders and other such human atrocities, but to permit free speach and self-expression. What I think it is getting at is that any maneuver to use this Amendment beyond this purpose will inevitably be met with the enforcement of the supreme law which will unquestioningly work against it. And that’s fine. It is basically open to the possibility of conflicting rights and freedoms such that one may be allowed to exercise some freedom X given that such a freedom may be exercised in the face of other conflicting freedoms, such as that held by others (the community, the State, society at large) to exercise their freedom to defend their liberties, rights, and lives. In other words, you are free to exercise your rights to your own religious practices so long as you accept or understand that this exercise may be met with the consequence of the law should such a religious practice work against it.
I think it was this above quote from wikipedia coupled with this thought I had in Amorphos’s thread ‘I am the law’ that spirred this synthesis between the first Amendment and my questioning it.
It’s really only the first part of this quote that I find interesting, and only because it mentions the “Constitutional ratification debates” ← Something for me to research… I may get back to you.
Yeah, that would piss me off too. And there’s that phrase again: “Constitutional ratification debates” ← Must research!
Makes me wonder: the clause only speaks of “peacetime”. What about in war? What about in war today? It would be interesting, as a Canadian pearing into the lives of Americans, to ask whether certain Americans have experienced soldiers or other military personel lodging themselves, without your consest, in your homes, particularly during periods like, let’s just say, Desert Storm or the “War Against Terror”?
In addition to all the above, I want to drop a few thoughts on the “Bill of Rights” as the first 10 Amendments are called, and specifically the christening of them as the “Bill of Rights” ← From what I’ve read, although I can’t remember the sources or the authors who said this, the “Bill of Rights” came across as a joke to the framers of the Constitution. Why, they asked, spell out the rights of the individual citizens of the United States, as it should be plane to everyone that the citizens have as many rights as there are possible ways to live or conduct one’s self in civil society? In other words, the notion of enumerating a list of rights was tantamount to listing out a limited set of opinions or views one could have on, let’s say, religion or philosophy, or some intellectual topic–like saying: philosophers have the right to be Atheists, Marxists, or Dualists ([size=50]and maybe we’ll add more when the need arises[/size]). Why make such a list when it should be implicit in the intent or the spirit of the Constitution that the people have as many rights to do as many things as they want, and the task of the Constitution is to enumerate, not what their rights are, but what their rights are not. In other words, you don’t have the right to do X, Y, and Z, but other than that, anything goes.
Some, from what I recollect from my past research, even thought that a Bill of Rights, enumerating the ten rights that all American citizens have was not only unnecessary but dangerous–in that it might function as a precedent of enumeration in and of itself–that is, it might leave the impression on American citizens that a “right” was something for the Constitution, if not the federal government, to grant–as opposed to something every human being has by nature and in inemurable quantity.
As much as this may be the case, I actually agree with the canonization of at least some fundamental rights into the Constitution. Why? Because unless you’ve been living under a rock all your life, you’d realize there are certain inalienable rights that one has just in virtue of being alive that, despite being natural or God given (take your pick), have been treated by governments worldwide and back through history as things that can be appropriated from the people or switched on and off at their discretion. What I think the Bill of Rights represents is a “Top 10” list of the most frequently government-violated human rights worldwide and back through history. The proactive enforcement of these rights in the form of Constitutional Amendments represents the voice of the people stating that they will not stand for a violation of these rights should the federal government make a move to encroach them, and that they demand that this stand which they take go so far as to be established as supreme law. Note that nowhere in the first 10 Amendments does it say that these rights are limited to only these 10–as though they were enumerable at all–and so I think the implication that these Amendments will set a precedent for such treatment (that is, of rights being enumerable or quantitatively limited) is unfounded, at least insofar as the logical analysis goes. Certainly, some may misinterpret that this implication really does follow, but I think those who do misinterpret these Amendments in this way are mistaken. Such a misinterpretation may happen, of course, but I would like to think it could be countered quite easily by a thorough and rational analysis of the actual content of the Bill of Rights.
As I said before, I will be using the wiki article as a guide, but here are the original texts for the Safeguards of Justice, Amendments 4 through 8:
4:
Sounds good on paper, but there’s obviously much room for getting around it. All one has to do is convincingly show that a search and seizure is “reasonable”.
The wiki article says “A search can mean everything from a frisking by a police officer or to a demand for a blood test…” ← So think about that the next time you get frisked by the cops.
“It also imposes certain limitations on police investigating a crime and prevents the use of illegally obtained evidence at trial.” ← Good deterrent.
5:
“The Fifth Amendment (1791) establishes a requirement that a trials for a major crime may commence only after an indictment has been handed down by a grand jury;” ← What does this mean? How does a jury hand down an indictment before a trial has commenced?
6:
“In 1966, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fifth Amendment requires what has become known as the Miranda warning.” ← One question: I’ve always wondered why in the Miranda Warning they say “Anything you say can, and will, be used against you”? How does anyone know that anything one says will be used against one. What if I say “I like chocolate”? That’s guaranteed to be used against me?
7:
^^ This last clause almost sounds like a repeat of the clause from Amendment 6: “nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb;” but I guess adapted to common law. Makes me wonder: why did they say “twice” rather than “more than once”? Is it constitutional to try someone three times? It might be, according to this, but how would you get there without going through the unconstitutional second trial?
“The Seventh Amendment (1791) extends the right to a jury trial ← So another rehashing to federal civil ← Is ‘civil’ in any way equivalent to ‘common law’? cases,”
“Although the Seventh Amendment itself says that it is limited to ‘suits at common law,’ meaning cases that triggered the right to a jury under English law, ← There’s our answer the amendment has been found to apply in lawsuits that are similar to the old common law cases.” ← Uh… what’s the difference?
“For example, the right to a jury trial applies to cases brought under federal statutes that prohibit race or gender discrimination in housing or employment. ← Oh, so they must mean that though discrimination charges weren’t ever involved in old English common law, such charges are considered to fall under the category of ‘common law’ today. Importantly, this amendment guarantees the right to a jury trial only in federal court, not in state court.” ← I didn’t get where the Amendment says that, except perhaps for “no fact… shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States” ← Does “United States” refer specifically to the federal level? Either that, or “common law” explicitly denotes federal laws.
8:
“Although this phrase originally was intended to outlaw certain gruesome methods of punishment, it has been broadened over the years to protect against punishments that are grossly disproportionate to or too harsh for the particular crime. This provision has also been used to challenge prison conditions such as extremely unsanitary cells, overcrowding, insufficient medical care and deliberate failure by officials to protect inmates from one another.”
^^ Just thought this was relevant/interesting. Also reminds me of Zoot Allure’s Adventures in Prison.
The 9th and 10th Amendments, the “unenumerated rights and reserved powers” according to wikipedia, are relatively simple:
Amendment #9:
Redressing the fear most federalists had about enumerating a list of rights in the Constitution (i.e. that such enumeration would be interpreted as exhaustive). This Amendment makes it clear that such an interpretation would be erroneous.
Amendment #10:
So the only powers that the Constitution grants to the federal government are limited to those that are explicitly laid out in the Constitution, and anything left over is reserved for the State governments or the people.
And yet, American democracy has outperformed virtually all other systems on earth, and the only systems that perform “slightly” better, are small social democracies, which incidentally are also representative democracies (so IMO it’s pretty hard to support the idea of autocracy).
I simply think we’re suffering from over-centralization and (in agreement with the OP) our checks and balances are beginning to break down.
In terms of centralization, I’m primarily concerned about the over-concentration of corporate power. With respect to checks and balances, regulatory agencies have become clearinghouses for corruption (and congress, along with many of our statehouses, has become a cesspool).
I think we need agencies like the EPA, SEC, FCC, FDA, etc. However, the problem is … these agencies have become a one stop shop for corporate lobbying, and when you factor in the revolving door (e.g. between agency attorney’s and the corporations they regulate and of course lobbying firms), it has created a recipe for disaster. So I think we need legislation that once again allows state courts to hear cases, like negligence suits, even where federal regulation dominates the field (and the tortfeasor is in compliance with federal regulation), which for the most part they won’t do (citing the supremacy clause). This way, every judge, jury, plaintiff, and lawyer in the country becomes a potential regulator (and you can’t bribe everyone).
With industries like banking, under Dodd Frank the big banks actually became larger, while small community banks are under attack (we see huge amounts of consolidation in the community banking sector, because they can’t afford compliance costs). This is exactly the opposite of what should have happened in the aftermath of the financial crisis (and this is because of political corruption, Bill Moyers did a great documentary showing the absurd levels of corruption in the Clinton administration, and how that led to the repeal of Glass Steagall, we just saw Eric Holder skip his way back to his cushy lucrative position representing the very people who helped to create this mess). It’s gotten so bad, they don’t even bother to try and hide the cronyism anymore.
Public financing of campaigns would also be great. People fixate on Citizens United, but the fact is … NAFTA, WTO, the repeal of Glass Steagall, the Iraq war, etc. all happened before the decision in Citizens United. Moreover, we need more robust anti-corruption laws. And it would be great if democracy could be more participatory, but that takes a real culture shift (and it has to be initiated from the bottom up).
Obviously, we need a smarter people (along with a long laundry list of other reforms). But unless we tackle the structural problems in our system, we’ll never get to the other stuff (we will just continue to slide towards the abyss). I’m personally supporting Bernie Sanders (and honestly, I don’t want to hear about his chances or whatever, I would saw my arm off before voting for Hillary). But even if a good guy like Bernie does become President, we can’t just go back to complacency. Indeed that’s when the real work begins (which is a point Bernie is emphasizing).
I’m a newbie … didn’t realize this was an old thread. But hey, I’ll talk to anyone who’s willing to check out Bernie (yes shameless plug, but I’m no political hack, just a dude who hopes our country doesn’t go down in flames)
My apologies for not responding to your comments sooner. Although this may be an old thread, for me it’s a very important subject. I’m not sure how saying US democracy has “virtually” outperformed all other systems (with the exception of a few small social democracies) would qualify as an oxymoron? I did include the qualifier “virtually” (synonymous with almost or with only a few minor exceptions etc.) for just that reason.
Additionally, our agencies are clearinghouses for corruption in the sense that they aggregate regulatory authority in one place and there’s a revolving door between government regulators and the industries they regulate (or the law & lobbying firms that represent those industries), so it creates an incentive to be a less potent regulator (after all, you not only have to concern yourself with adequate performance as a regulator, but also your future job prospects). Quite frankly, I doubt anything can be done to eliminate this completely, but fortunately, there are other ways to make sure our system is properly balanced. That is … more checks and balances. In this context, we would want regulation and oversight of industry to come from more than just a single government agency.
Someone mentioned autocracy as the best possible system. I responded by noting that autocratic regimes generally under-perform relative to representative democracies (at least western democracies). There’s always been this debate between the ideas of participatory and deliberative democracy, but I don’t think the two concepts are mutually exclusive. Here in the US our checks and balances system makes sure that public policy decisions are made very slowly (to the frustration of many, but there is some logic to this framework). Under more ideal circumstances (where you have good checks against corruption), slow decision making generally correlates with more deliberation. So you can solicit public participation at every level of government, but with robust checks and balances, also create a highly deliberative process that produces high quality results. But there’s also a less tangible aspect to this. Some of the best performing democracies solicit very high levels of citizen participation (Switzerland is my favorite example). Of course they also invest heavily in their people, so they have an extremely well informed population. There’s many benefits to this approach. When a citizenry feels enfranchised and involved in public policy, you see much more national unity, civic participation, etc. (all things which highly correlate with good national performance in the typical socioeconomic metrics we use to assess the quality of nations).
So I would argue that US democracy could be improved by even further enhancing citizen participation, but we also (and probably most importantly) need more checks and balances to foster both integrity in the process and intelligent decision making.
I reread this paragraph and somehow it made perfect sense this time around–don’t know why it didn’t the first time–and yes, it would be nice to know that the people can try regulatory agencies for things like negligence. From what I understand, the US government is tightening the belt around what kinds of cases can be tried and what kinds can’t–way different from the policies you guys had in the early days of your country–when it actually belonged to the people. Now it’s like the people are taking their instruction from the government and other agencies in power; indeed, the government today is looked upon as the “boss” and people are apt to ask “What am I allowed to do? What can I not do?” It use to be: “What will we allow the government to do?”
I did some research into the Dodd-Frank act and it’s still way over my head (although I could stand to do more research). The gist of it that I got from the wiki article is that it was Obama’s response to the financial crisis of 2008, and it was intended to “add stability” to the American economy. But like all other government responses, it’s just another layer of regulation and interference into the market.
The main points of it, according to the article, are as follows:
While I can’t say I completely understand all this in full (for example, what’s the national thrift charter?), I recognize the pattern–more regulation and grip tightening over key industries.
When I read Obama’s quote about the purposes of the act being a “sweeping overhaul of the United States financial regulatory system, a transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression,” it made me wonder: does every manner of hardship the US goes through have to be met with “sweeping overhauls” or “transformations on a scale not seen since…” the invention of sliced bread (or some such nonsense)? Isn’t this just the President responding to an event because, well, because the people expect a response period? Or maybe it’s the typical maneuver of: crisis occurs → slip in reforms for more government centralization.
To me, it seems like FDR all over again.
I’d like to see that documentary. Any chance you remember the name of it?
This hints at an answer to my earlier question.
So my research on Bernie tells me he’s a Democrat (although there was mention of his being an independent). How do you view Bernie, liber8? Is he mainly left-leaning or would you call him an independent. Do you personally partake in this war between liberals and conservatives, or do you call yourself an independent?
Not grey or black really. Dog shit dark brown where the entire world is shit. There are varying degrees of shit but it is all shit nonetheless.
To see how easily democracy has become susceptible to oligarchic influences transformed into a full blown tyrannical system one can see how the birth of democracy was doomed from the start.
Until people start taking a serious look into human nature all system abstractions like democracy or whatever will always be doomed from the start.
Is there at least anything interesting to talk about, even if only philosophically as opposed to inspiring some hope? Do you at least like to talk about the varying degrees of dog shit dark brown? Are there shades of shit brown that are “less awful” than other shades, or at least different in quality?
I’m wondering if there’s any room here for a discussion without you repeating ad nauseam that it’s all the same hopeless shit.
So are you saying that in principle at least, there is the possibility of democracy (and other system abstractions) not being doomed from the start–when people start taking a serious look into human nature, that is? What would we see when we take a serious look into human nature? You must know what that is since you expect the rest of us to see it upon taking a serious look, and you must know how seeing it might prevent system abstractions from being doomed from the start.
Going in the order of the Amendments presented by the wiki article, the next four in line are the 11th, 16th, 18th, and 21st. Note that at this point in the analysis, we are breaking from chronological order. At least the first ten were introduced into the Constitution all at once and so one could rightfully go through them in numerical (if not chronological) order. But as we are using the wiki article as a guide, which breaks from this order after the first ten, so will we. The wiki article seems more bent on going by category, or by the content of the Amendments, and with respect to the 11th, 16th, 18th, and 21st Amendments, the wiki article (and perhaps other sources) places them into the category of “Government Authority”.
It’s interesting to note that even within the first ten–the Bill of Rights–there was a classification scheme, at least as far as the Wikipedia article goes–whereby the first 3 are placed into the “Safeguards of Liberty”, the next 4 are placed into the “Safeguards of Justice”, and the last 2 are placed into the “Unemumerated Rights and Reserved Powers”, yet the article didn’t lose track of the chronological order. What this means is that the Amendments themselves fall quite naturally into these categories. This would make sense given that they were all introduced at once–and so really, there is no chronological order–which means that the authors of the Constitution, or at least those charged with amending it for the first time, got to choose what order they appeared in, and so maybe the classification scheme is not a coincidence.
(This certainly makes more sense than my other theory, which was inspired by some late night psychedelic intoxicants during which time I was reading the Wikipedia article and misread the first “ten Amendments” for the “Ten Commandments”–and suddenly had a psychedelic epiphany according to which this was no accident. It is said, if you study ancient Hebrew scholarship that the ten commandments can be divided into two groups: the first four dealing with man’s relation to God, and the last six dealing with man’s relation to man (they further say that the first four can be divided up into 206 “mini-commandments,” the number of bones in the human body, and the last six can be divided up into 365 “mini-commandments”, the number of days in the year–which some have interpreted to mean: obey these laws with every bone in your body, every day of the year). But it seems there is a much more rational explanation for the categorization scheme for the Bill of Rights the wiki article presents to us than some space cadet’s psychedelic insight: the authors had the opportunity to categorize them thus–not to mention that the categorization scheme is hardly the same: 3 categories vs. 2–the only thing shared in common being that there are ten of them, and the words “amendment” and “commandment” sound the same… oh, and they both constitution the supreme law of the land for a certain people).
Anyway, Amendment #11 (1794 ← I’m going to start dating these just to preserve something of the chronological order):
So this says, not so much that citizens can’t engage in a law suit against State governments other than their own, but that the Federal judicial branch cannot get involved.
Fair enough.
The interesting thing about the Amendment, however, is that it was prompted as a response to a court case in which a South Carolinian successfully sued the State of Georgia for debts that Georgia owed to him. Although this suit was successful, the 11th Amendment made all subsequent cases in which a citizen (American or otherwise) sued a State other than his own the exclusive jurisdiction of the States themselves–again, not stripping the citizens’ legal entitlement to do so–such that the Federal courts could not Constitutionally involve themselves. I say this is interesting because it would be the first Amendment to restrict the freedoms and legal rights of the people*, and particularly in response to a judicial outcome that some people didn’t like–in fact, it is the first Amendment period after the Bill of Rights (even chronologically–which is again interesting, if only because though the rest of the Amendments after the first ten break from chronological order, this one seems to still stick–this too is probably explained by the fact that with the first Amendment after the Bill of Rights, you get to invent the first category (other than the Bill of Rights), and as far as a collection of categories goes, why not make the first one invented the first in the order they are presented).
This Amendment also overturned the first clause of Article 1, Section 2, which states in part:
“The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases…between a State and Citizens of another State…”
This is very telling of the Amendment process–it appears that Amendments may not only add to or modify the original content of the Constitution but may outright nullify certain clauses therein. I mean, if the original content of the Constitution states that the Judicial Power of the United State may extend to all cases between a State and Citizens of another State, and the 11th Amendment says: no it can’t–then the Amendment process has the power to overrule the Constitution itself in its then-current form.
Amendment #16 (1913 ← Wow, 117 years for 6 new Amendments to appear–compare that with the following 11 new Amendments in the next 79 years ← Is this a significant difference? Could it be because of the faster or more erratic pace of progress in the twentieth century?):
Again, this Amendment appears to be a reaction to the outcome of a court case: Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co.
The court case ruled that taxes on rent, dividends, and interest were to be considered “direct taxes”, of which Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 says “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.” Because the taxes being laid on rent, dividends, and interest were not “in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration” as stated in this Clause, and because the court ruled that these taxes were indeed “direct taxes,” therefore falling under the purview of this Clause, the court ruling, in effect, declared these taxes unconstitutional (if only indirectly). Amendment 16, once again, undid this, permitting the Federal government to waive the proportionment law in regards to taxes on rent, dividends, and interest.
Amendment #18 (1919):
Ah, an expiration date–or rather an “inspiration” date, if you will–meaning that the States have 7 years in order to put it into effect–by this wording, it wasn’t operative until the States ratified it, and only before the 7 year period.
So that means that at most, 7 years plus 1 more, are given by this Amendment to outlaw alcohol, making 1927 the absolute deadline.
I don’t think there’s much else to say on this Amendment–we’re all familiar with it’s history and its aftermath–the black market, the rise of organized crime, and it’s repeal in 1933 (6 years after the absolute deadline) by the 21st Amendment:
So basically a counterpoise to the corresponding Section in the 18th Amendment.
It might be interesting to note that the 21st Amendment is, according to the Wikipedia article on The Twenty-first Amendment to the United State Constitution, “…unique among the 27 amendments of the U.S. Constitution for being the only one to have been ratified by state ratifying conventions,” which is one of the two methods authorized by Article V for ratifying proposed Amendments. I wonder what the impetus for this was. I suppose research will tell.
as I re-read this, I’m already second guessing my statement. It sounds, on this second reading, like a restriction on the Federal government–that is, on what kinds of cases they are permitted to hear and which they are not. As far as the freedoms and the rights of citizens, nothing is infringed–citizens remain just as free and entitled by right to sue any government they want–it’s just that they don’t get the support of the Federal government, but that would count more as a privilege than a right.
