Tom W sent along a piece from Belmont Club and asked if I had thoughts on the subjects it tackles. I answered him back via email, but I figured I may as well go ahead and post my brief reply here, as well. Because why not, right?
First, Richard Fernandez, PJM, “The Third Party”:
William Galston, writing in the Wall Street Journal warns that the institutional Republican Party — the political equivalent of the Washington Generals — may have lost its audience after the longest losing streak in history. A large part of the GOP base is walking out — led by an “aroused, angry and above all fearful [Jacksonian America] in full revolt against a new elite”. They’re no longer entertained, no longer spellbound by suspense after finally being convinced that the Washington General’s secret job is to lose every exhibition match against the Democratic Party Hokum Globetrotters.Galston has impeccable liberal credentials. “A former policy advisor to President Clinton … his current research focuses on … the implications of political polarization”, he should be celebrating the crackup of the Republican Party. But instead he is worried because the Mighty Wurlitzer is broken. Galston writes, “it’s hard to see how the U.S. can govern itself unless corporate America pushes the Republican establishment to fight back against the tea party—or switches sides.”Translation: who’s going to keep the gravy train running if people stop making gravy? His immediate concern is that “defeating” John Boehner in the showdown over Obamacare may have put consensus out of reach. ‘Persuading’ the GOP establishment to turn on its base destroyed the mechanism the establishment used to bring skeptical parts of the electorate into the fold. Those skeptics are now out the door, having finally figured out the game is fixed.
This is more than a columnist’s speculation. Stan Greenberg, a Democratic survey researcher whose focus groups with Macomb County Reagan Democrats in Michigan transformed political discourse in the 1980s, has recently released a similar study of the tea party. Supporters of the tea party, he finds, see President Obama as anti-Christian, and the president’s expansive use of executive authority evokes charges of “tyranny.” Mr. Obama, they believe, is pursuing a conscious strategy of building political support by increasing Americans’ dependence on government. A vast expansion of food stamps and disability programs and the push for immigration reform are key steps down that road.
But ObamaCare is the tipping point, the tea party believes. Unless the law is defunded, the land of limited government, individual liberty and personal responsibility will be gone forever, and the new America, dominated by dependent minorities who assert their “rights” without accepting their responsibilities, will have no place for people like them.
For the tea party, ObamaCare is much more than a policy dispute; it is an existential struggle.
Galston is running ahead to warn his bretheren about the new threat, the better to defeat them. He can see the torches and pitchforks in the distance coming closer and closer. Nor is he alone in noticing the trend. Gallup reports that “60% of Americans say the Democratic and Republicans parties do such a poor job of representing the American people that a third major party is needed. That is the highest Gallup has measured in the 10-year history of this question. A new low of 26% believe the two major parties adequately represent Americans.”
The results are consistent with Gallup’s finding of more negative opinions of both parties since the shutdown began, including a new low favorable rating for the Republican Party, and Americans’ widespread dissatisfaction with the way the nation is being governed.
The prior highs in perceived need for a third party came in August 2010, shortly before that year’s midterm elections, when Americans were dissatisfied with government and the Tea Party movement was emerging as a political force; and in 2007, when the newly elected Democratic congressional majority was clashing with then-President George W. Bush.
Taken together they suggest that the old consensus model may be collapsing. Why then should only the conservatives be in revolt? For at the heart of the crisis is money. The system of hitting up The Man in order to buy votes from a captive electorate dependent on the federal government, so successful during the postwar boom, has finally stopped working.
The very issues over which the shutdown was bitterly fought underscore this. The establishment “won” not because it was rich and powerful but because it was so poor it resorted to hair-pulling, eye-gouging and and ear-biting. The elite can only continue to sustain itself by borrowing. That was what the crisis was about, borrowing. Obama’s basic demand was simple: let me borrow and borrow without limit. His ‘victory’, if so it can be called, is the victory of a bankrupt who has compelled his relatives to mortgage the farm so he can return to his losing streak at the casino.
But the assumption that Third Party must only come from conservative ranks bears closer examination. For the Democrats need money too. In fact they need it more than anyone else, a fact underscored by their obsession to lift every limit on their credit cards. The truth is they are only one step ahead of disaster; for if once the EBT system stops working, even momentarily, there is a drastic disturbance in the force.
Nor is this surprising. It has been argued and proved by natural disasters that the entire fabric of civilization is but nine meals from anarchy. After 3 days without food most people are willing to do anything to anybody to get a meal. The hard reality is that the current deficit system will inexorably create a situation when the grub literally runs out.
[…]
[…] members of the Democratic Party should also rise in the ‘name of their pensions, jobs and other expected benefits’. Without reform those ‘gains’ are toast. Lincoln Steffens once said of Soviet Russia, “I have seen the future and it works.” People with pensions should visit Detroit. That is the future and it doesn’t work.
Galston’s argues that the conservative insurgency is rooted in some kind of atavism; that it arises from a nostalgic hankering after an America long past in the face of new demography. Nothing could be further from the truth. The hell with demography. People would be just fine with changes in demography if only times were good. When times are bad homogeneity is irrelevant. Rats of the exact same breed will fight to the death over the last piece of cheese.
It’s the cheese that matters. The conservative insurgency is rooted in a lack of money. And so will the coming liberal one. The unrest is not driven by a desire to return to the past. On the contrary it is propelled almost entirely by the growing belief that there is no future.
I have not much really to add here but to reiterate what I’ve been writing now for nearly 5 years: The whole outlaw idea — which has been mocked by some entrenched “conservatives” who sneer at its supposed self-importance — was based around the rise of a third party mindset that would, I argued, draw significant support from Democrats who weren’t actual leftists. These were the people whom Reagan won over with a message that liberty breeds prosperity, while governmental dependence crushes the soul and bankrupts the nation, not only fiscally but existentially.
To me, it no longer matters what the specific appeal is. We need to work from the grassroots to take over state legislatures and circumvent DC — starve it by way of state amendment conventions and a renewal of federalism — until the rats on the Potomac are reduced to eating each other rather than feasting on us.
To some, this whole attempt at spawning a movement seemed ludicrous and unhelpful. After all, Obama was just a garden variety liberal, a good man who had different ideas about what is best for the country — and rather than resort to broadsides on such an “historic,” transformative figure, people like me were cautioned to watch our words, to temper our outrage, to quiet our criticisms, lest we lose forever the very moderates our Republican cheerleaders constantly chase.
But what the “smart” Republicans — the “pragmatists,” the “realists”, those who mocked us then and continue to mock us now for our firm convictions and who dismiss us as True Believers demanding “purity tests” — missed was that the TEA Party movement, itself an outlaw movement based around the very same notions of smaller government, a return to constitutionalism, and individual liberty, had already begun coalescing around its rejection of the big government “compassionate conservatism” that reached its peak with TARP bailouts and the notion that we must circumvent capitalism in order to save it.
These very same types never left when McCain was soundly thrashed by a Marxist — and they today still control the Republican Party.
They openly deride us. They represent their own interests. And they rely on phalanx of opinion-drivers to couch their strategy and tactics — which are a mirage to begin with — as the strategy and tactics of a politically savvy, experienced, and road-tested group of “adult” lawmakers — distinct from those corny, idealistic citizen legislators who have presumed to come to DC and take different tacks. Because those kind just don’t understand how DC works, we’re told. It’s not about conviction and principle or other hokum. It’s about the “art of the possible” — even though the possible is constantly undercut by preemptive surrendering and constant backbiting from the professional political class.
The new word we’re hearing a lot from our betters is “populism.” This was the same kind of attack that was leveled at Sarah Palin, and it is now one phase of the attack on uppity Senators like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, both of who run intellectual circles around the old guard and their guards in the “conservative” media.
After McCain’s defeat, it was Mitch McConnell, not surprisingly, who told us that the “era of Reagan is over” — that if we wished to remain something more than a “regional party” we would embrace the reality of a New Deal nation. This was self-serving fatalism then, and in 2010 it was shown to be a serious misreading of the electorate.
The truth is, people have lost all faith in both parties, and they view government with horror and disgust. They just haven’t figured out a way yet to defeat a ruling class that has rigged the game in their favor.
As I’ve been a bit under the weather today I haven’t had a chance to check to see if the reports from last evening were correct — that Congress affirmatively signed a deal that would hand de facto spending power to the imperial Executive by making debt ceiling raises automatic, while relegating Congress to votes of approval or disapproval that the Executive could then veto, requiring Congress to muster a 2/3 majority to stop the piling on of debt as determined not by the People’s House, as the Constitution demands, but by a king.
This wouldn’t be the first time Congress has elected to surrender its power to the Executive in order to avoid messy battles that could harm their members’ reelection chances — we have far more regulations with the force of law passed by unelected bureaucratic agencies created and funded by Congress than we do actual laws coming out of Congress, with no way of addressing those writing them — but it may just be the last.
Because the center will not hold. And I don’t think when we’re living in the ruins, we’re going to show any special deference to the rats who have worked their entire careers to insulate themselves from the very laws — and the attendant suffering — they’ve visited on us, all of which drove the collapse that must certainly come.
This is the sound of gnashing of teeth. This is good. Next, rending of clothes. That is good too.
a pork-slurping kentuckyslut like Mitch McConnell needs to remain the face of the republican Party for many moons to come, with Meghan’s coward rage-monkey daddy at his side
this will help people find a more better party more faster than they otherwise would
Isn’t California kind of pork choked too? I’d guess Texas gets their pork delivered on time. How is pork fed going to cuss out pork fed without there being a bit of a ricochet effect?
we will send porks to texas on our fancy high speed rail any day now
you’ll see
it’s gonna be MAGNIFICENT
Huh. “The center can’t hold” brought back something to mind, but it had to do with a work-around. Sure, it’s techno-geek stuff, but …
http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/
Er… more specifically, this:
http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/2007/09/28/mob-rules-web-directions-south-2007/
The elite can only continue to sustain itself by borrowing.
“The elite . . . ”
Again with me, not an accurate appellation (like liberal), since not only are these so-called elite nothing like elite; don’t have any concern with human excellence or virtue, but spend their lives learning to pretend to these bona fide human characteristics without ever being pressed to fulfill them: they’re in fact incompetents of the highest order, if yet skilled practitioners of the sham arts.
So, in preference, let’s describe them accurately, as pseudo-elites, or pretend-elites, or ersatz-elites, or what have you.
or what have you.
the ruining class
Unless the law is defunded, the land of limited government, individual liberty and personal responsibility will be gone forever . . .
“. . . gone forever . . . ”
How about gone in fact, de facto, without our having any necessity to project a future universal? It’s bad enough that it’s gone in fact, imposing all manner of injustice on us and our progeny now and in the near term.
I mean, I do think the country as founded and framed is gone, but don’t think I find the basis to make claims for all future times regarding this contingent circumstance. Politics is about both preservation and change, after all, with a view to the good in each case. Or at least, we don’t normally say we’re setting out to make things worse.
A commenter at Insty’s provides a chronological list of the GOP’s excuses for not actually doing anything.
1981-1986: We can’t reduce government because we only have the White House and the Senate but the Dems have the House.
1987-1992: We can’t reduce government because we only have the White House but the Dems have Congress.
1993-1994: We can’t reduce government because we control nothing.
1995-2000: We can’t reduce government because we only have Congress but the Dems have the White House.
2001: We can’t reduce government because we only have the White House, The House, and half the Senate with a tie-breaking VP. Because we only have half the Senate we have to be nice.
2001-2002: We can’t reduce government because we only have the White House and the House but the Dems have the Senate.
2003-2006: We can’t reduce government because we only have the White House, the House, and Senate while the Dems have nothing.
2007-2008: We can’t reduce government because we only have the White House but the Dems have Congress.
2009-2010: We can’t reduce government because we control nothing.
2011-Now: We can’t reduce government because we only have the House but the Dems have the Senate and the White House.
There are eight combinations possible with two parties and three institutions. The only one we haven’t tried is a GOP Senate with Democratic House and White House.
None of the seven combinations tried have reduced government.
That is the philosophical meaning of elite, which has no application in a sophistic bubble like D.C. The word is French, and if I’m not mistaken has the literal meaning of “elect” as a class. Which raises the question, elected by whom?
Among the philosophically inclined (and the members of said class, of course) it is assumed they are elected by “the gods” and thus more virtuous. We more grounded know that the gods first exalt those whom they mean to destroy…
Oh, I dunno. Seems to me the birth of philosophy was poised precisely to apply to places like DC, though in those days the places were known by other names. And sure, philosophy wasn’t victorious then (had to wait for the likes of Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Adams, et alia to arrive on the scene), but it doesn’t disappear just because of a stupid mug of hemlock either.
Here you go, sdferr:
“My dear friend, clear your mind of cant. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, ‘Sir, I am your most humble servant.’ You are not his most humble servant….You tell a man, ‘I am sorry you had such bad weather the last day of your journey, and were so much wet.’ You don’t care six-pence whether he was wet or dry. You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in society: but don’t think foolishly.”
—Dr. Samuel Johnson
If this is screwed up, I blame lack of preview.
Hey! It worked.
I’ve just been informed that “Quarantine Washington” is crazy talk.
NO, IT HAS TO BE PRACTICAL, WORKABLE.
Because the phrase can’t mean anything else but running a yellow tape around the beltway.
Samuel Johnson was a smart guy, but probably not much fun at parties (other than for his groupie, Boswell, anyway).
Surprise: Obamacare success story “Chad” (if that’s even his real name) is a) an OFA footsoldier and b) a liar.
http://reason.com/blog/2013/10/04/reported-obamacare-enrollee-chad-henders
“On MSNBC, Orrin Hatch Whacks Heritage Foundation ‘Radicalness’”
I called out Duane Patterson on this. He had defended Hatch before the election as someone who “votes my way 80% of the time, so why turf him?”
So today when I posted that link on the Tribble feed, I got told to quit my bitching and offer solutions. Stop with the delusional talk of third parties and walling off Washington.
This on the same day that Mark Steyn made a return visit to the Hewitt show for the first time in weeks. Triumphant and delighted, all, at hearing from Mark Steyn, who has written book after book detailing the ways in which we’re screwed, including ample criticism of the GOP and their desire to be in office but not in power, and to hold the reins of Leviathan instead of slay it.
Me, however, I’m the bitch.
People will often forgive you for being wrong, but they’ll never forgive you for being right.
NO, IT HAS TO BE PRACTICAL, WORKABLE.
what’s yer end game?
My end game?
Spray the field with a machine gun, just to be sure.
Me, however, I’m the bitch.
listen nice lady in utah only a select few may broach the subjects you speak .
The guys worried about mere talk of a so-called third party seem to me akin to the little fella who thinks he’s going to hold back the flood by sticking his finger in the levee. That ain’t the way these things work. Political parties don’t grow on trees like natural fruit, apples, say. Or circle round the earth like the moon.
They’re the creations of people who build them to serve their purposes. The political party which ceases to serve the purposes of the people who had formerly adhered to it will find itself without a constituency, replaced by a new creation of the people so abandoned. What in the world would stop such a motion? We can think of one thing anyhow. But does anyone — anyone!? — see that one thing on the horizon? Ha.
The Republican party replaced the Whigs because the Whigs joined the Democrats in their support of slavery.
That left the Abolitionists with nowhere to go. If the GOP successfully expels the Tea Party from their ranks — and there’s every reason to believe they’re doing their damndest to do so — a LOT of disaffected conservatives, both among the elected officials in DC and the states and in the fundraising infrastructure, will start up their own thing, just as you say, sdferr.
They act as if forming a third party is starting from scratch. Instead, it’s Glenn Beck leaving Fox and actually forming his own Internet/cable/TV network.
nd succeeding wildly. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Forbes lists his earnings in 8 digits. That wasn’t supposed to happen. It was impractical and impossible and crazy.
And yet, Glenn Beck was just crazy enough to pull it off.
listen nice lady in utah only a select few may broach the subjects you speak .
I forgot my place. It won’t happen again.
Today.
for marco rubio
UK Rolls Out “Go Home” Vans Warning Illegal Immigrants to Get Out
I had “The Five” on this afternoon while I was folding laundry and there was actually a very pleasant segment on. Bob Beckell was ranting about the TEA Party and how their poll numbers suck out loud and that no one has any respect for them and their foolish government shrinking ideas. The other four (Eric Bolling, Andrea Tantaros, Dana Perrino and Gregg Gutfeld) turned to him almost as one and said “Don’t you understand that the TEA Party doesn’t care what you or any other big government type thinks!” He looked positively pole-axed.
Heh.
Their philosophy, too, was better grounded than that which conceived of “the elect” as a more virtuous class. Which is why their writings included such notions as, “all men are created equal,” and “unalienable rights.”
The very idea of a more virtuous class places those outside that class essentially at their mercy — which does not end well for the hoi polloi when the presumption of superior virtue proves, as it inevitably does, false.
I submit therefore that to speak of our present self-appointed betters as an elite is perfectly apt.
potpl page 82
They do not assume a messianic role; they are not
social ‘avant-garde’ or ‘elite’ that alone knows best, and whose t
it is to ‘raise the consciousness’ of the ‘unconscious’ masses (t
arrogant self-projection is, once again, intrinsic to an essenti
different way of thinking, the kind that feels it has a patent on so
‘ideal project’ and therefore that it has the right to impose it
society). Nor do they want to lead anyone. They leave it up
each individual to decide what he or she will or will not take fr
their experience and work.
Weird line-breaks nr.
What is that, an optical scanner?
I submit therefore that to speak of our present self-appointed betters as an elite is perfectly apt.
Where’s our Voltaire or Moliere when we need him? If ever there was an administration ripe for mocking, this is it.
>What is that, an optical scanner?<
sorry yes
I don’t. If only because in a simple sense we don’t maintain that there is no such thing as excellence, though the question of excellence is often narrowed to a question of an art, like picking an elite corps of 10 riflemen from a larger collection of 500 riflemen.
Don’t we often think of those founding and framing men themselves as an outcrop of human excellence? Seems to me we do, if, again, somewhat simply so. And I find no special harm in that. They, at least, were tested by their fellow men, and tested one another.
As to the particulars of “their philosophy”, it seems to me we’re in a bit of a quandary, since “their philosophy” isn’t a simple matter of a “school” on which we can place a finger (even while with great care we can trace the origins of many of the political ideas propounded in the Convention), since it isn’t the case that “their philosophy” dis-includes Aristotle, say, or Cicero (though Jefferson had the gall to create a school, Madison helping him), or the wider philosophical enterprise beyond mere political philosophy. And choosing for excellence is clearly meant to be a part of the Republic they create — I mean, they speak of this quite often.
Again, though, recognizing excellence as characteristic of men isn’t tantamount to trusting men with every and all power. Which is why the care to make government check itself.
i sent mr. g a copy of the potpl. perhaps he might post his review.
” . . . that which conceived of “the elect” as a more virtuous class.”
It’s probable I don’t know who or what “that which conceived” here refers to. So then, I may be making a difficulty here that isn’t necessary, to the extent I mis-conceive this referent.
Were we speaking of earned merit, we would never be talking about political elites. In history, especially Western history, political elites belong to a class that inspects credentials rather than performance or ability; it’s become ascendant in our nation’s capital and in the centers of commerce and “the institutions” outside the Beltway.
The institutions default to credentials because they are their stock in trade; if one’s social pedigree (which has more to do these days with the perceived quality of one’s credentials than anything else) ceases to have value the institutions that trade in such become superfluous.
Wall Street defaults to credentials because judging the personal traits of individual applicants and colleagues takes intellectual effort — and even for those capable of investing such, is fraught with liability if one gets caught engaging in it.
The founders of our nation would not approve of a future in which “all men are created equal” has had appended to it, “…but some are more equal than others.”
potpl page 209
The sceptical ask: What has the Charter achieved? Hasn’t it in
fact made matters worse? Couldn’t we have waited to find another
way? There is no easy answer to these questions, above all because
they tend to be framed in the conditional (What would have
happened if. .. ?). What ought to be or ought not to be, our dear
Hamlets do not know, however. Therefore, it makes more sense to
ask what has been done by those whom the Charter roused; or
similarly, what has not been done by those who agreed with the
Charter, but have yet to take the plunge. Thus, it is not so important
who are the actual supporters of the Charter, but who are its potential
supporters.
Bruce Springsteen – BORN IN THE USA – East Berlin, 1988
You said,
While the ancients did confer higher social status on many who had earned it through excellence in some form or other, there were schools of thought not significantly different from later European rulers’ “divine right of kings.”
Don’t you understand that the TEA Party doesn’t care what you or any other big government type thinks!”
and, leigh, our problem is that too many of the squishy GOPers care way too much. They want to have their face time with WaPo and Politico and Anderson Cooper and be applauded for their practical governing styles while decrying the “purity tests” of the “Taliban wing.”
Jaysus on a Pony, its the junior high girls locker room on steriods.
Self-selected elites, self-identified elites, self being the operative part.
To put it another way, the connotation of “elite” as any kind of exclusive distinction conferring higher status, earned or not, is no less ancient than one that expects such elites to care about excellence or virtue.
Third party? Hell, I’ll settle for a second one…
So these founders and framers were not exemplary men, politically or otherwise? It wouldn’t matter in any way who went to Philadelphia, because “all men are equal” in respect of every man having a right to his life, as demonstrated by Thomas Hobbes, for purposes of founding politics on the basis of fear of violent death? How come we’re capable of judging “their philosophy” as “better grounded” — i.e., more meritorious than some thus far unidentified alternative?
If they had considered their exemplariness indispensable to the republic, they would have bequeathed us a nation meant from the start to enshrine a permanent elite at its head.
In the event, wasn’t the selection of the men who went to Philadelphia made by others not themselves? Or at least, so I had thought. And if that is so, what were the criteria those “others” used, than that these were the men most fit to the task?
Darleen,
Ain’t it the truth? The thing that was so affirming to me about that segment I was reporting on is that it is exactly what we have been saying here for years: We don’t care about being popular. We care about doing the right thing and rescuing our country from these interlopers. The fact that they mock us and I believe truly misunderstand us leads to the derision from the Establicons and the Dems alike.
Bring it, bitches.
Their excellence was already demonstrated outside politics.
they would have bequeathed us a nation meant from the start to enshrine a permanent elite at its head.
they, founders, cobbled together a parchment using history about the best way to go forward. did/does it work?
“they would have bequeathed us a nation meant from the start to enshrine a permanent elite at its head.”
notice the proggtards took the senate 1st. sabotage methinks.
Their excellence was already demonstrated outside politics.
Sure, in many or some cases. But in others, they’d been among many men working their political desires for years, decades, and either demonstrating a capacity to the issue[s] or not, as the cases may have been. Competitively being pressed forward, or cast aside, as their capabilities came to light or didn’t, or their interests in pursuit of political outcomes waxed and waned (turning to private affairs, that is).
Still, though their certain determination to place ultimate authority in the hands of the people was firm, they wanted no part of a formal democracy. Nor, I reckon, do we. Yet the mixture devised seems to suggest careful selectivity of representatives (demanding a more strictly reasonable discernment in their view, I suppose, than we do in ours, so careless and slovenly have we become at our own election criteria), while maintaining a watchful and wary eye on accumulations of power in the hands of a few.
Nor of formal aristoracy — which is to say, a political elite.
I even wonder whether they would reconsider their placement of the judiciary beyond the reach of political accountability, given that it has in fact become a formal elite with considerable political weight.
Washington turned to private affairs, and was dragged back into politics, first for the Constitutional Convention, then the presidency. Note also that he was the unanimous choice of the Electors.
Nor of formal aristoracy — which is to say, a political elite.
Right. I don’t think the identification of human excellence alone implies the creation of an aristocracy though. I mean only, it’s one thing to recognize a selected number of proficients as proficients, and quite another to place power, even divided power, in the hands of those proficients permanently — and still less to place power in the hands of people who aren’t proficient in any respect save in the creation of one sham after another.
Note also that he was the unanimous choice of the Electors.
Moreover, the unanimous choice to take the Presidency of the Convention in 1787, yet professes to have found himself best off to preside without much offering of his own opinion in session as to the questions before the body (though we can imagine he had things to say in the pub after hours), until he could restrain himself no more on that last day of the enterprise.
I even wonder whether they would reconsider their placement of the judiciary beyond the reach of political accountability, given that it has in fact become a formal elite with considerable political weight.
Faced with the holdings of the last two plus centuries, I have little doubt they’d recognize their failure on that score, and act to correct the oversight — or in a Bushianism — misunderestimation of the power they thought the least dangerous, and hence gave the least careful consideration in the tripartite system they devised. They just plain fucked up, and didn’t live quite long enough to learn of it, though some of ’em may have had intimations in Marshall’s whooptydoos.
The point re Washington is, they wanted us to be able to choose excellence, while leaving it to us to find it and recognize it as such because they knew institutions that might find it for us were prone to capture.
I think that was their reason for disliking political parties. Before they formed them.
I’ve toyed with the idea that the Convention was itself already a political party, but haven’t gone very far with the idea as yet. But I mean it in this sense, that many people who didn’t attend the Convention yet were no less colonists than those who did attend — weren’t represented there at all, so far as I understand it — were Tories, politically committed to the Crown and authority of Parliament.
. . . they knew institutions that might find it for us were prone to capture.
If I’ve given any impression I favor an institution that finds human excellence, or have committed to any such thing, I’ve done a disservice to my sense of the matter. I can’t think of how such an institution would be conceived. In my feeble conception, it’s surely an haphazard endeavor for individuals to undertake in any case, as I think of it, finding excellence wherever it may lurk. Sometimes it strikes me as depending on fortunate happenstance, or even misadventure, and hardly subject to method, in the Cartesian sense of an algorithmic undertaking. Like the saying about pornography though, we know it when we see it, even if we can’t exactly explain where that comes from.
Arete is, and is to strive for if one is to live.
I hear often that SCOTUS being the last word on everything is Not How It’s Supposed to Be, but nobody ever explains what it WAS supposed to do, nor why the Founders imagined that it couldn’t be dangerous.
MARBURY VS. MADISON!
Yes, I’ve tried to plow through the minutae of that, but it never sticks in my head.
Simpler explanation, plzkthx
“So these founders and framers were not exemplary men, politically or otherwise?”
Given the strange fruit of revolution in practically every other time and place, either they were extraordinary men, or we were extraordinarily lucky.
dicentra, I’m guessing (only guessing, since I haven’t read Levin’s book and have had a similar experience to yours simply reading the decision), but suppose Levin’s Men in Black may be a place to start for a cogent contra-Marbury argument . . . at least, reckoning from the historical accounts I’ve heard him tell on the radio.
Which, I note, have seemed to fix Marshall holding a partisan interest in the outcome, calling up some vague recollection in me about a fundamental tenet of jurisprudence stating a man is not fit to judge in a case in which he judges his own interests [himself].
MARBURY VS. MADISON!
“If the Supreme Court has made a decision, let them now enforce it.” — Stuff Jefferson REALLY said, Vol. 2
One of the main problems I have with Marbury v Madison is that the new Chief Justice should have rightfully recused himself, given that it was his brother than failed to deliver the warrant to Marbury in the first place. Plus he was still acting as Secretary of State, and Madison was his acting replacement.
It was a political time bomb left for Jefferson and the new party that had just replaced the Federalists, and the Federalists had rigged the game by appointing lots of Justices of the Peace for DC (IIRC, they appointed 36 of them in a town where 5-6 was normal for the workload) in an attempt to influence how laws were enforced. Marbury never got his letter, so he sued Jefferson’s new SECSTATE to cough up. He somehow claimed original jurisdiction in the Supreme Court (not sure how), and it was a dog’s breakfast decision that no one had the balls to overrule.
But someone has to make the tie-breaking calls…
“We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.” — Associate Justice Robert Jackson
“But someone has to make the tie-breaking calls…”
Yes. If not them, who?
Nightmare-inducing thought before going to bed: what sort of Constitution do you suppose Boehner, Reid, Pelosi, McConnell, and Obama would give us?
god i hate white people
Parkinson’s The Evolution of Political Thought makes some interesting arguments for government by landed gentry/minor nobility, e.g., the system that evolved in the U.K. between, say, Elizabeth I and the rash of Reform Bills in the mid-to-late 19th Century.
It’s hard to argue with success: it gave a tiny island a worldwide empire.
Our guys came very much out of that tradition. For all the talk about the rigidity of the British class system, people could and did rise from the ranks to knighthood and even nobility under it. Contrast the situation on the Continent. To this day anyone who was ennobled in Germany later than about 1350 is considered a sort of “second-class” noble (Briefadel), in comparison to the “real” nobles (Uradel) whose titles predate that. Yes, Germany doesn’t officially take cognizance of titles any more, in theory. In practice it matters. A lot.
Oh, and hey: it’s out of copyright.
http://archive.org/details/evolutionofpolit00park
I need to reread this. It’s quite good.
these are the same people what think hip bones with perfect teeth comprise a quintessentially breed-worthy conquest worthy of the most rarefied inbred royal piece of shit
They haven’t actually paid much attention to their royalty since about the time of Dutch Billy (with a minor setback during the years of Crazy George, before they stopped paying attention to him, too).
Hamilton argued that the Senate should be something akin to the British life peer system.
It’s hard to argue that would be worse than what we have.
i applaud this
also I really liked my owl poem
I’m a go look for where i put that
found it
Darleen wrote: Jaysus on a Pony, its the junior high girls locker room on steriods
Perhaps this is the result of the generations from the Baby Boomers onward being told it’s okay to retain their adolescent behaviors?
Those damn Freemasons and their weird practices, eh?
“The alliances between people who aren’t really allies. The finger-pointing on the dais, [then] the arms around each other”
Bismarck. Sausages.
I think of you as a tough-minded broad with a lot of moxie.
If someone votes with you 80% of the time, but the 20% of the time he votes the other way are the votes that most impact you and yours, then what the hell good is he?
The solution is to replace the McCains and McConnells with Lees and Cruzes so the Hatches vote with you 95% of time.
What use is the equation of politics with an “art” of the possible when the result of that so-called “art” is the negation of those people represented into less than an afterthought, but to subjects as complete non-entities?
My, that’s some parlor-trick, that is right there. And to garnish the shit sandwich for service, the ruling set would bemoan the possibility of a natural human reaction of animal spirits in these thus negated as a consequent?
So, not only are we reduced to nothings, we’re supposed to be reduced to passive, quiet, obedient nothings. Why thanks, Jonah. We’ll remember our lowly estate while we sit silently in our cells, no doubt.
The retort to that art of the possible crap is “you never know what you can do until you try.”
And try, try again.
You know, like Democrats.
I suppose a retort amounting to mere speech acts (which can be ignored) would be far preferable to the ruling set than, say, the act of burying a hatchet in their foreheads. But of the two, which is the more useful?
Life is good.
And an outraged individual morality, absent.
This incident provokes the possibility of a test. Any such double compensated worker who doesn’t immediately surrender the over-pay of his own volition is fit for firing, instantly even, without appeal.
To the ruling class? The hatchet in the forehead of one of their more unfortunate (for the class) members. Good excuse to put the peasants back in their place, since showing them doesn’t seem to be working very well, don’t you think?
At present I think it’s more constructive to point out alternatives to narcoleptic bromides “our” side wants to serve a recalcitrant base.
No, not to the ruling class, of course, but to the world, full stop. Hatchets don’t distinguish classes.
So now you just want to see the world burn? (grin)
We have met the enemy and he is us? (smirk)
I get the frustration, and wanting to do something to scratch that itch, but not quite knowing what to do.
Ann Coulter’s made a considerable fortune writing a new back scratcher every other year.
I have an almost complete set!
Seems to me the ruling set is the entity with an urge to see the world burn, and the non-entity representeds merely grant them their wish, removing the fantasy world the ruling set would create and attempt to make “real”. But hey, their choice too.
I’m late to this particular party, but I have to say that this:
…is a really inspiring mental image.