Second verse, same as the first.
In this episode, we answer the burning question, whose fault is it that the we don’t have Panda Cam? And the answer? James Madison’s, that’s who.
Dylan Matthews, “The shutdown is the Constitution’s fault”:
This week’s shutdown is only the latest symptom of an underlying disease in our democracy whose origins lie in the Constitution and some supremely misguided ideas that made their way into it in 1787, and found their fullest exposition in Madison’s Federalist no. 51. And that disease is rapidly getting worse.
[…]
It’s hard to discuss these issues calmly, given that the Constitution and the Federalist Papers have taken on a Holy Scripture-like role in American political debate. One does not debate if they’re right, but only the proper way to interpret them on a given matter, which is then presumed to be correct.
We’re basically the only country that does this. Angela Merkel does not stay awake at night, asking herself, “What would Bismarck do?” Camillo Benso and Giuseppe Garibaldi are not assumed infallible when Italians discuss politics. Canadians do not cite John Macdonald when discussing tax policy. The only parallel that comes close is Venezuela and Simón Bolivar, which probably isn’t a comparison most Americans would embrace.
But obviously the Founding Fathers were wrong about all kinds of stuff. Today, few Americans think it’s acceptable to kidnap African people, ship them to America and then compel them through torture and beatings to perform agricultural labor.
Madison is also wrong about how best to safeguard democracy in a diverse republic. The thesis of Federalist 51 is that elections alone are insufficient to guard against the possibility that a government will encroach upon the rights of citizens, either by a majority faction oppressing others or through all-out tyranny. “A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government,” Madison writes, “but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
Subsequent experience, however, has shown Madison to be incorrect. New Zealand, Norway, Israel and Sweden all have unicameral parliaments whose leader serves as the executive, with only a weak monarch or powerless president and (in some cases) the judiciary to check them. None of those countries have collapsed into despotism as a result. The UK, Japan, Germany, Spain, Canada and the Netherlands have upper houses of parliament that are formally much weaker than the lower houses, and each has the leader of its lower house serve as executive. No coups d’état ensued in those places either.
[…]
But it’s not just that Madison’s system is unnecessary. It’s potentially dangerous. Scholars of comparative politics have shown that presidential systems with a separation of executive and legislative functions, like America’s, are considerably more likely to collapse into dictatorship than are parliamentary systems where the executive and legislative branches are merged. That’s because there are competing branches of government able to claim democratic legitimacy and steer the ship of state at the same time — and when they disagree profoundly, there’s no real mechanism for resolving the dispute.
[…]
The obvious question here is why, if America’s form of government is so precarious, it’s worked so well for so long. The answer is that America’s party system has been unusually weak and diffuse. Through much of the 20th Century, both the Democratic and Republican parties provided a home to both liberals and conservatives. Since the parties didn’t agree internally it was easier for them to come to a deal and much, much harder for them to threaten brinksmanship. The Republican Party of the 1960s wouldn’t be threatening a default over Obamacare because many of them would’ve voted for Obamacare — just as they voted for Medicare.
But those days are over. The parties are polarized, and they’re only getting more so. American politics is beginning to exhibit the exact symptoms scholars have seen in other presidential systems: highly disciplined, highly unified parties that both believe they truly represent the people and that both control crucial levers of power at the same time. The result, as you’d expect, is more brinksmanship and more high-stakes showdowns.
It’s important to be very clear about what’s scary here. It’s not any one instance of disagreement or brinksmanship. It’s the emergence of the sustained, structural problems that have harmed other countries with similar presidential systems. To believe that the U.S. won’t eventually face terrible consequences from the mixture of polarized parties in a presidential system is to believe that the clear trends in our political system will, for reasons that are currently unclear, reverse themselves. That would be nice, but as they say, hope is not a plan. And the problems of our politics have something of a built-in defense mechanism against meddlesome voters trying to impose sanity on the system.
Max Weber, in conversation with Gen. Erich Ludendorff, advanced my personal favorite theory of democracy: “In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, ‘Now shut up and obey me.’ ” People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business. …Later the people can sit in judgment. If the leader has made mistakes — to the gallows with him!”
Hanging leaders rather than failing to reelect them seems a mite harsh, but the overall idea here is exactly right. For a government to be truly accountable to the people, it needs to actually control the circumstances over which the people will judge it. And in developed countries, the people judge it in large part based on the state of the economy.
In country after country, leaders who preside over bad economies do worse electorally than those who preside over good ones, as Iowa’s Michael Lewis-Beck and Missouri’s Mary Stegmaier’s review of the literature makes clear (thanks to our friends at The Monkey Cage for the pointer). “Although voters do not look exclusively at economic issues, they generally weigh those more heavily than any others, regardless of the democracy they vote in,” Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier conclude.
If voters expect their leaders to deliver favorable economic outcomes, then those leaders should actually be able to control favorable economic outcomes. That’s how the United Kingdom works. David Cameron and George Osborne have complete control over the government’s fiscal policy lever, through the coalition’s total control over the budget and tax rates, and have a great deal of control over monetary policy through their ability to appoint the governor of the Bank of England and members of the Monetary Policy Committee without a U.S.-style confirmation conference. Leaders before 1998, when the Bank became formally independent of political control, had even more power.
For all its facade of scholarship, what Matthews’ piece brackets — and it necessarily must — is that the two party system only breaks down when the Constitution itself is breached. And that only happens when one ideological position — in this case, the one alien to this country’s founding principles, pretends that a vote for a political party is a vote on the validity of the Constitution.
So long as the Constitution isn’t up for vote, “brinksmanship” and “gridlock” are healthy checks on a society that is increasingly becoming indistinguishable from its government.
We here don’t believe that the government is society. We believe that it is a necessary component of a society that is otherwise left to operate by markets and contracts and social mores, etc.
That Mr Matthews, like the Salon racist before him, would cite nations that have essentially kept their citizens as government subjects as a model to strive for, is why it is clear to those of us who’ve been paying attention that the whole feel-good, Colin Powellesque bromide of “compromise” as an end rather than a means, is ludicrous: the reason the left wants checks and balances removed — and gridlock halted — is because it throws up roadblocks in their race toward progressive authoritarianism.
It’s no accident that, though this author avoided it (intentionally so), so many left-leaning “intellectuals” (and some, no doubt, on the right) admire the Chinese system, and have openly stated as much.
The rest is smoke and mirrors: they want full control over the masses, and a society that is built around government rather than its inverse. They assert that a government shutdown is necessarily a bad thing rather than a potential corrective.
To which I say, fuck them.
1:19 – TX Congressman Explains Why CNN Anchor Lied to Viewers: ‘Essential Obama’ Employee’
– Apparently CNN just cannot help itself at this point. Its simply too far gone to even care.
I reiterate what I said in comment to your earlier post on the same topic. While there are those who understand the limitations upon governmental power placed in our system and loathe them, working to destroy them at every opportunity, the vast majority of our fellow citizens do not understand the genius of our system. They have not been taught the glories of liberty and personal autonomy, even if such liberty and autonomy leads to adverse, purely personal outcomes. Such lack of understanding must be taught. Combine an educational system designed to manufacture subjects with the promise of free stuff, and here we are.
That Weber link within the quoted piece is kind of funny, if I read it (or translate it) aright, for it seems to say: *** Weber’s science [scholarship] got the better of his values [join the proletariat] which had got the better of his science [the fact-value distinction] ***
Or, another way to put that is to say, there is no fact-value distinction, and hence, Weber’s science is bullshit. But hey, welcome to charisma!
Well, it is the Chicken Noodle News BBH.
– Poker is easy when yiur opponent is a predictable liar.
– This is the reason the Reps should stand their ground until the Dems fold. The Rino’s have the winning hand, just no backbone.
Max Weber, in conversation with Gen. Erich Ludendorff, advanced my personal favorite theory of democracy: “In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, ‘Now shut up and obey me.’ ” People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business. …Later the people can sit in judgment. If the leader has made mistakes — to the gallows with him!”
Scratch a progressive, find a totalitarian. Honestly, I’ve never undertood the perverse contradiction progressives can maintain between the belief in the great man theory of history and the historical inevitability of Marxism.
Inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out.
You know what else was the Constitution’s fault?
A little tussle sometimes called the American Civil War.
If America, and the Constitution could survive that event then surely it can get through this temporary, partial suspension of some government services.
But Matthews and his ilk do not see it that way. They see it as a direct threat to Barack Obama and his efforts to transform this nation. And they are concerned because Obama cannot beat this, a most minor of budgetary kerfluffle.
Thanks entirely to the Constitution they so deeply despise.
Insty’s been predicting for years that we will again see the meme that America has become ‘ungovernable.’
This is entirely of a piece with that.
“Cry me a fuckin’ river, babe.”
— James Madison
Oh, and if the counter revolutionaries of the left are so gung ho to dismantle our system of governance I’d suggest they head on down to the WWII Memorial and man the barricades.
If they really want to get it on, let’s get it on.
Let us never lose sight of the fact that the federal government’s scope and reach is supposed to be so limited that most of us don’t give a pair a fetid dingo’s kidneys whether there’s deadlock in Washington. The fact that this “shutdown” is front-page news stands as a stark reminder of just how far out of hand things have gotten.
– Wonder man blinks?
– This stinks to high heaven of “setup”. Best guess is the GOP offers to fund everything but OCare has forced the Dems to try some angle to escape the corner they’re in.
– The squishies will probably fall for it as usual.
– Hunt for the The REDs in Congress in October.
– The mask isn’t slipping any more, its on the floor and people are tripping over it.
2:18 – Harry Reid on Saving One Child Through Funding NIH: “Why Would We Want to Do That?”
After Harry Reid asked “Why would we do that” after being asked about saving a child from cancer, Reid then questioned the intelligence of the questioner, CNN’s Dana Bash.
2:01 – CNN Unthinking Panic: ‘Risk of Outbreak of food borne illness up’ Due to shutdown.
When it comes to CNN, you get the sense that you are either watching the dumbest people on the planet or the most biased. Sometimes it’s a mixture of both.
– Couple this running embarrassment of a “news outlet” with the Vets threatened with arrest and some private parks being shutdown out of pure spite by the Lefturds in the FED, and I’m thinking this shutdown may have been the best thing to happen in a long time.
I checked out on this at the point where cultural acceptance of slavery got brought up as a valid objection to the utility of the Constitution.
Nothing says “I have no arguments but I want to make you ~emotional~” like the “old dead white slaveholders” ploy.
– Link.
– Palin impales Bumblefuck.
Gotta say, if I was going to be building a new country and was taking applications for consultants, I’m taking Madison, all 5’4″ of him, and telling Dylan Matthews to apply at the Starbucks down the street.
By the way, Dylan — it’s not that we think the Constitution is a sort of Holy Scripture. It’s that we think it’s the fucking Constitution and as such is the most fundamental law of the land.
If you want to change it, then propose some goddamned Amendments so that we can get this party started. But don’t think you can just wish it away and expect the rest of us to go along with you.
Some were paid to do so today.
Yeah Pelligri, this is complete bullshit.
Point one- The vast majority of blacks shipped to the Americas was done before the US Constitution by various European subjects. Slavery was a worldwide practice that only ended AFTER the US Constitution made slavery an untenable practice.
Point two- Slavers didn’t go to Africa and kidnap African people, the purchased them from other African (or Arab) people. I’d be willing to make a large wager there were more blacks bought and sold in Africa by black people than there ever were by whites in the USA.
The subject of slavery is one of progressivisms great victories in inverting truth. They have the world believing slavery was a particularly American sin, when the truth is slavery was a universal condition, only ended by and through the American experience.
And I sometimes wonder, in my darker moments, if future historians* will mark the blocking of the World War II memorial as one of, if not the “tipping point” for the Second American Civil War.
(*Written in Mandarin Chinese, most likely…)
LBascom:
Pretty much. (Along with lots of other associated things about how slavery in America was NOT a uniform rape-and-torture factory for slaves, how one of the first American slaveholders was himself black; not to mention the complicated overlap with indentured servitude and the permissibility of buying out one’s contract, the use of the Irish [who were not seen as “white people” until relatively recently in the historical scheme of things] as slave labor as well… No. WHITE PEOPLE STOLE BLACK PEOPLE FROM AFRICA AND THEN WORKED THEM TO DEATH.)
I find that disgusting bit of historical revisionism often goes hand-in-hand with “the Bible says slavery is good; Christianity encourages slaveholding!” when in fact what the Bible–the OT, more specifically–actually does is lays down restrictions on what was then a widespread cultural practice and made it more humane.
Not to mention William Wilberforce’s conviction to end the slave trade not being founded in secular humanism but his own evangelical Christian beliefs.
I’m really trying not to care anymore about people revising history to fit their own narrow little narratives about the present but it’s hard and probably dangerous to not care.
Dale ought to spend his time getting worked up about the active slave trade in North Africa.
Of course, he’d have to shake his finger at Arab toughs, so that won’t happen.
Democrat Lexicon:
Terrorism : Noun. The condition that exists when a chamber of Congress dominated by the opposition party refuses to sign off on funding a particular item in a continuing resolution offered in lieu of a budget.
Workplace Violence: Noun. An event in which an American muslim of Arab Descent shoots many of his unarmed colleagues on an Army base in the name of punishing the US military and furthering the spread of his religion by means of violence, crying Allahu Ackbar, confessing to the crime, and all of this after consulting with known militant islamic radicals via e-mail to seek advice on his rampage.
It is a key tenant of social justice to know which are the designated victim groups and how to rationalize their misbehavior as being simply a terrible, noble lashing out against their situation of historical disenfranchisement.
They just live there as renters, they don’t “own” social justice, as they don’t really own anything.
By the by, how far is downtown Sochi from Abkhazia again? How ’bout the international airport there?
[18 miles and 3 miles, respectively]
Oh.
Shutdown: Obama Tries to Trigger a Stock Market Crash
– The Dembulbs are now sitting in obstinant opposition to working with the House to pass any sort of restart bills for all portions of government except OCare, and every one can see they’ll die before they allow the door to be opened for one single modification to their widely despised socialism medical program.
– The comments from the Dems are getting more and more shrill and desperate as their agenda becaomes obvious, even to the low info electorate.
– This fight is the watershed. If we lose this we might as well pack it in. Bumblefuck is fighting for his political life at this point and if we let him lie and manipulate his way out of this clear Costitutional conflict we lose for good.
Obama Tries to Trigger a Stock Market Crash
I wonder whether Wall Street will respond as Bibi Netanyahu did yesterday, and tell him to go fuck himself? Sure would be instructive to the hoi polloi if the markets choose to go that way.
– Wonder how much the specific ideling bof 9 out of 10 IRS agents has anything to do with the Dem panic, seeing as to how the IRS is the way the gestoppo intends to enforce their Socialism.
Dear Dylan:
I am going to renew a suggestion that has been made in the past. How ’bout all you Constitution haters stay in one part of the country and we Constitution respecters take another. Peacefully go our ways. Whaddaya think?
I give it a week before they try to raid us for our light switches, thinking that’s how electricity works.
As I wrote to Dylan, his piece reads like a 10th-grader’s term paper, only without the joy of knowing that one day soon he’ll grow up and find the whole thing horribly embarrassing.
“If voters expect their leaders to deliver favorable economic outcomes, then those leaders should actually be able to control favorable economic outcomes. That’s how the United Kingdom works. ”
Wow. Looks like someone missed that whole fifties sixties and seventies “sick man of Europe” thing.
– Bumblefuck is meeting at the WH right now with Reid, Pelosi, McConnel and Bonehead. Expect a portico presser as soon as the meeting is complete.
– Red they can’t agree to something like that because they would lose the part of the country that funds all their bullshit.
– Any presser that occurs will be shown on CSpan when the meeting concludes.
– Rumors are filtering out of the WH meeting that Boner is angling for a “Grand fiscal” agreement, which could mean almost anything.
– House continues to vote on “gov countinuing resolution interum funding on specific operations”.
– Stay tuned.
The — scholar is it — lost me right off with founders being wrong about a lot of things. In that specific moment I thought, “Oh goodie gum drops! I want that. I do. I’m a bit evil that way. I want to see the warts.” I thought all that in moment because it happens a lot, and what does the scholar give? The thing about slaves.
*click*
So they were wrong about doing what they could in their day to steer away from a thing that has gone on since time immemorial and still does to this day? Or they’re wrong about not starting a country fresh with the answer to that that already fully solved? Piss off.
And that bad attitude I have made it impossible to read the rest with the same enthusiasm I started. It’s long. Why does it always take so goddamn long for intellectuals to make a point? Because their point sucks and they know it, that’s why.
I like the chart that speaks to party polarity; vertical scale “distance between 2 parties”.
Distance? Measured HOW?
cr 73 254 yea 171 nay rinos 1 dinos 25
“cr 73 254 yea 171 nay rinos 1 dinos 25”
I would like to think I deciphered that, but only at the conclusion you must be the laziest MF’in writer short of a 13 yo girl texting her bestest friend forever.
Are you paying by the character or what?
– Obama would never even consider meeting with Bonehead if he hadn’t been warned that each passing day will shove the DemoRats further into the blame corner, particularly with the debt ceiling vote coming up soon.
– Problem is we have a RINO on our side of the table, so even when we have the guns we don’t have the guts.
Bbh, I was only sort of giving them a choice in the matter.
Well, that went well.
I bet O’Jugears sat there with that pissy look on his face, checking his watch every few minutes and then announcing they were done because M’chelle says he has to be at the supper table in five minutes.
It’s hard to keep in mind that The Clown Disaster views his conduct as highly helpful to his cause, but harder still to reckon how he doesn’t.
the laziest MF’in writer short of a 13 yo girl texting her bestest friend forever
i’m sensing hostility
good allan levin is on fire tonight
Shut down fascism in the Smoky Mountains
US government shutdown: Barack Obama looks like a bitter, petty and partisan president
this is so proggtarded
Anonymous and Occupy React to Shutdown: #NoBudgetNoPants
ruled by stupid people
Best guess: in the vote on Continuing Resolution #73, the yeas are 254, the nays 171. One R voted against the R caucus, 25 D’s voted against the D caucus.
Or, 73,254 College Republicans cheered — but 171 of them whinnied, one charged, and 25 died and turned into petroleum.
I come down squarely either/or.
if we had a smart orangeguy his next cr is the 2014 budget they passed
Dino .
– When the moon hits your eye like a bigga pain in dah ass – thats our congress.
I see his eternal slavery butthurt and raise him the wisdom of an actual slave:
In the grand scheme of things, Dylan Matthews is zero or less.
weirton wva made dino
– Sure, sure Pablo, but if you limited the narrative to facts and truth where would we be now. Probably suffering under a one party system and…….wait.
I’m reading an historical novel that is taking place in antebellum NYC and abolition is a hot topic. The author keeps trying to insert 21st century sensibilities into characters in the 1850s. It’s annoying the shit out of me and it’s also taking away from the main plot topic.
I’ve found that historical fiction seems to either be very good, exploring some aspect of the past that I was previously unaware of or a good story with a lot of social justice shoehorned in. This one is shaping into the latter.
“I checked out on this at the point where cultural acceptance of slavery got brought up as a valid objection to the utility of the Constitution. “
Are you addressing me?
If so then I’ll be somewhat charitable and assume that your complete misreading of the point was not willful, merely ignorant.
It’s not about the cultural acceptance of slavery. The Constitution is not, nor at teh time of ratification was a cultural document. It is the foundational legal document of our Republic.
As such it’s recognition of slavery was legal. Only when the culture changed did that become a serious problem.
But, wonder of wonders, it was solved by -mostly- Constitutional means. Oh, and copious amounts of bloodshed thanks primarily to those who though the document had become untenable.
Mark Levin to Obama: You lay one hand on WW2 vets and I’LL BRING HALF A MILLION PEOPLE TO THAT MEMORIAL!
Whoa, let’s go back and revisit that part where Max Weber talks about “to the gallows with him”.
Tantalizing idea.
I believe it would only require a few hangings, and the rest of the bumble-farks in our beleaguered Government would have a sudden epiphany about what is required of them.
Lamp-posts exist already… I’ll bring the rope… let’s go pay a visit to the “I’ll negotiate with terrorists but not with YOU in the opposition party!” crowd.
Yes, Dylan.You’re quite right. No despotic governments have ever arisen in Spain, Japan, or Germany.
You’re also way smarter those old white guys. Your Marxist professor told you so. Because, slavery. Never mind that Marxism has produced the most horrific slave states in the history of mankind.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_founding_fathers.html
The dumbest one of these guys has at least 30 IQ points on Dylan.
Fucking idiot.
Only “The Wan” (pbuh) keeps you from having to call 800-Fuck Yo.
Anything you can get encoded in law is legal as long as you can get some Supreme Court justices to fail to disagree. Saying the Constitution is legal, though, is kind of like saying paper is papery. It’s tautological.
Which is not to say that it was a good idea, or even consistent with its foundational documents, as written. But that’s not a requirement, is it, when it is by definition the basis for law?
Hence, we now have the Commerce Clause ruling almost everything that happens inside the US. Possibly outside; I haven’t really been paying so much attention. Which is, in my opinion, fucked up.
The Commerce Clause is like baking soda: ain’t nothin’ it can’t do!
“Scuzza me,
Buta you see,
Back in old Wash DC,
O! same old story.”
Dino!
Fill ‘er up, please, with Ethyl.
Where, exactly, does it do that?