Originally Posted by spence
It begs the question if sometimes the original "constitutional form of government" hasn't been over romanticized as well. If I remember correctly it didn't last all that long...
Actually, it lasted, in the main, for about 150 years. Toward the latter part of that time, the last twenty or thirty years, which also included a strong period during the Coolidge and Harding years, it still held sway but was beginning to be eroded by progressive strengthening of the office of President, especially by Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Presidential power grew from there to a near imperial strength with FDR. But even through those years, the "original" Constitution was still a powerful force of law. But what was gaining, if not in strength, but in progressive, anti-originalist influence, was the Supreme Court. This was a part of the "brilliant" (I would say nefarious) strategy of the progressive acolytes--to pack courts with progressive minded judges who favored unhampered centralized administrative solutions for (what they considered) societies ills rather than leaving it to less regulated and (in their minds) unpredictable evolution.
And, though it is hanging in by a bare thread, the Constitution still lasts today.
Another part of that strategy, of course, was to transform, first, higher education to their way of thinking, and eventually the entire educational system. The federal government's intrusion into the educational sphere used early land-grants as models. Government largesse was carrot for the stick of government regulation. The Federal government has nearly continuously expanded its role in education with "investments" accompanied by regulations well beyond anything imagined by the original Founders, nor provided for in the original Constitution. That effort continues with, for example, the current drive to implant Common Core.
From the educational system comes the judges and lawyers and politicians and the progressive (radical) community organizers, and all the know-it-all "smart" thinkers, academics, journalists, media propagandists, and just plain regular folks who have been convinced that they, The People, are helpless flotsam who must be protected from the powerful one percenters or ten percenters, or from the vicissitudes of the inevitable events of history against which they have no influence.
But progressivism has progressed well beyond even what the original progressives intended. Centralization of power has become so nearly absolute that government is as much the big, bad, boogeyman that they feared, and less of the solution they envisioned to the boogeyman problem.
This was predictable. They had reckoned that weakly regulated evolution would be unpredictable, and all-powerful centralized administration as the method to predictable solutions. But it was the Founders who saw that centralized power would predictably lead to despotism, tyranny, and absolutism. The Constitution they created was the safeguard against the very tyranny to which progressivism evolves, but against which it claims to fight.
So, in short, the Constitution has not been over romanticized.
Quote by detbuch in previous post:
But that has little to do with discrimination. In my opinion, Indians have every right to discriminate in who they hire, or to whom they sell, or with whom they associate. I think African Americans, Asian Americans, and European Americans, also have those rights. And when government decides with whom and how we associate, and do business with, outside the restriction of anyone denying another those same rights, it is as dictatorial, unconstitutional, unethical, and immoral, as resettlement of Indians from their home to reservations. And it is as destructive to the human spirit in general as it was to the native American spirit. I don't make that as a material comparison, but as a political, philosophical, and ideological one.
Good you recognized that. In theory piece of paper is the same as a pizza, from a certain perspective...
I am not aware of a theory wherein a piece of paper is the same as a pizza. And unless this theory is fleshed out, it sounds stupid, and doesn't interest me. If it is expounded on and makes internal or external sense, it would be interesting and maybe even worth of discussion or admiration. And, sure, as in all things, especially in your relativistic world, everything depends on perspective. If you're referring to what I said in the above quote as a peace of paper being the same as a pizza, you need to flesh that out for it to be relevant to this discussion. And if the perspective is from that of a fool, then so what? And between a piece of paper and a pizza, per se, it depends on if you're hungry or in need of information. They both could be entertaining. Or make you sick. And so on . . . . . . Benghazzzzzzzzziiiiii . . . . . . . .
I think the Native American situation is a bit different in that there's some level of sovereignty still in effect. I have the understanding that tribes have some latitude under Federal law to protect the economic interests of the tribe. At this point I'm not sure how it's discrimination rather than a matter of internal affairs.
-spence
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