Thursday, December 2, 2010

The Constitution? What's that?

NYT editorialist tries to grok it and fails.

22 comments:

Pat H. said...

The author editorializes as he writes, making the whole piece nothing more than a progressive/fascist screed.

Nothing new there, folks, move along.

EJR914 said...

It needs a user name and password, how about giving us the title of the piece and then we can search for it and find it where it doesn't need a user name and password.

Anonymous said...

Fails? Nah, he's got you gang dead to rights.

"It makes no mention of “We the people,” of forming “a more perfect union” or pursuing “the general welfare” — of equality arm in arm with liberty. It seems based on nostalgia for an inadequate version of the country’s past. Like many slogans, it doesn’t bear close examination."

Not a single one of you would know history if it came up to you, shook your hand, and introduced itself to you by its first name. When you say the word, you are invariably talking about fairy tales, and not even very interestingly constructed ones. "The Founders" you talk about have as much basis in reality as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four (and many of the same powers).

Anonymous said...

"The challenge lies in understanding what, if anything, it actually means." That quote from the article shows how far apart WE are from THEM.
They are calling it a challenge to under stand what the Constitution means, and these a$$holes consider themselves educated, and our "betters" May God help us all.
Wayne B

Defender said...

"But the [conservative Constitutionalist] statement is a vague, highly selective catchall.
... It seems based on nostalgia for an inadequate version of the country’s past. Like many slogans, it doesn’t bear close examination. Which Americans don’t want liberty, or support tyranny?"

We discuss those people here every day.
We have the chance to finally get it right. The Founders' vision, but with the baggage of the previous centuries jettisoned. Slavery gone. Women able to vote and hold office. Racial minorities able to participate on an equal footing in the entrepreneurial and politicial processes.
The Constitution was meant to be a chain on the beast the Founders knew government -- any government -- eventually becomes.
The New York Times may be a megaphone for the forces of the left now, but what if the left wins the endgame? A free press then becomes so inconvenient. Without conservatives and libertarian enemies to roast, they'll need new targets.

III more than them said...

The attempt at equating Liberal ideology and Constitution conservatism, with regards to the question of "who doesn't want liberty?" fails as soon as it is attempted. Their ideas of liberty and equality don't have a damned thing to do with the founder's timeless ideas. We can have all the liberty we want, as long as it is socialist.

pdxr13 said...

"It makes no mention of “We the people,” of forming “a more perfect union” or pursuing “the general welfare” — of equality arm in arm with liberty. It seems based on nostalgia for an inadequate version of the country’s past. Like many slogans, it doesn’t bear close examination. Which Americans don’t want liberty, or support tyranny?"

It's as if he can't read a copy of the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence in the plain language it's written in. It's as if his mind is paralyzed by the kind of thinking brought on by EULA for software where all contingencies must be spelled out in black letters or "there's no law on that!". His parents probably paid the price of several houses for that kind of education.

The USC and the DoI are not suicide pacts agreed to by our forefathers: they can't obligate me for such a thing. It's a framework for limiting the inevitable wish of Government to become larger and more powerful at my expense without asking me and my children and grandchildren if we would like to be slaves or bond-servants.
His editor must find a way to get him to read and understand a 1950's annotated US Constitution as well as a 1900 annotated Constitution. It's obvious even to public school graduates that the current Gov't is giving -at best- lip service and pretending to be a legitimate gov't following the 18th Century origins of our Nation.

I've long suspected that the last legitimate act of the US Congress was the admission of Hawaii to the Union.

Cheers.

Defender said...

They just totally ignore that other founding document. What is it again? "The Decoration of Indian Pendants"? Never came up at all in journalism school.
A political columnist I knew couldn't summon a phrase from the Declaration at all, not even "When in the course of human events," much less "alter or abolish."

Rhodes said...

Like having a 2 year old describe how planes fly.

We know very well exactly what the founders intended, they were very prolific putting it down in writing in scores of letters and debates. Doesn't surprise me a a sitting Justice would claim otherwise after all he has little to do when things are kept simple.

Anonymous said...

Oh, wow, quoting a couple of commie shitheel "justices" makes it alright.

New York, ladies an gentleman.

Skip said...

Kinda stepped on his own dick.

Anonymous said...

writer is obliviously unable to read.

constitutional conservative,

congressional duties:
article 1, section 8

if it ain't there, why is cong spending that money?

'general welfare is under Promote, not provide'

woerm/THR

Sean said...

Nothing matters to the NYT, as long as they can vaguely refer to the Constitution, and just as vaguely dismiss anyone and all who attempt to use it as a frame of reference. That's the game, you see. Blah,blah,blah. You don't support the commie policies of the first black, blah,blah,blah, racist, blah, bad ideas, blah.

Dedicated_Dad said...

Anon demonstrates the courage and lucidity we've come to expect from his ilk.

I'd try to educate him, but... I've got better things to do with my time.

I keep praying that (to borrow a phrase from their monstrous world-view) it will be possible to open minds so We The People can avoid having to open heads. It looks daily ever more likely that His answer is "No."

God help us - and God Save Our Republic!

Anonymous said...

"Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them."
Thomas Paine

"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." -- Tench Coxe in "Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution," under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789.

History, OUR HISTORY, is always relevant.

But, to those enamored with tyranny who beg the State to suckle them, our history is an inconvenient truth.

Anonymous said...

“The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.” -Thomas Jefferson

Pat H. said...

Anon 7:14 wrote:
Not a single one of you would know history if it came up to you, shook your hand, and introduced itself to you by its first name. When you say the word, you are invariably talking about fairy tales, and not even very interestingly constructed ones. "The Founders" you talk about have as much basis in reality as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four (and many of the same powers).
While my family has been in North America for nearly 400 years, and by your syntax and ideology, you appear to have been from a late 19th or early 20th century eastern European immigrant family, the idea that I, and others, don't know history is nothing more than silly hubris.

That and the fact that your 100 year old progressive/fascist experiment is over. Completely and utterly, over.

TJP said...

"'The Founders' you talk about have as much basis in reality as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four (and many of the same powers)."

Holy shit! A new argument. Why, they simply never existed! Why didn't I think of that?

Gentlemen, it seems we have no argument with which to counter, on account of the fact that we'd simply be discussing things which have regrettably unhappened. And all those books we've studied? Imaginary. Check the pages--bet they're blank!

We now have available to us only a history of convenience. A century of social engineering failure was a rumor. The victories in the battle for freedom were but dreams, and those philosophers that prompted them phantoms. History is henceforth filled only with examples that justify the modern state's unlimited power to dictate and do violence--even the history that occurred before the existence of the modern state.

This revelation has made me a believer of the divine nature of the unreasoned and clumsy destructiveness of the state. I am a changed man! Furthermore the place where you read this cannot exist, as Mr. Vanderboegh of Alabama does not exist, and the existence of Alabama is likewise a dubious proposition.

III more than them said...

TJP!! LOL!!

That was great. 'scuse me please, whilst I go change my underwear. No need for a potty break after that!!

I needed a good laugh. Thanks!

Defender said...

Sometimes I open "1984" to a random page just to see what I find. Two nights ago, it was something like:
"Syme was not at the office the next day. No one mentioned him. Winston checked the bulletin board and saw a notice about the chess club, of which Syme was a member. Nothing was crossed out, but the list was shorter by a name. Syme was not on it. Syme had never existed."

Anonymous said...

You obviously have problems reading, eh, TJP? "The Founders you talk about" does not mean "the actual human beings whose names are on the Constitution," it means your wholly *mythological version* of who they were, what they might have thought about social policy 200 years later, and indeed even whether they believed that 200 years later people should be running around trying to read the minds of men long dead in order to formulate that policy. A not very difficult distinction to make, unless one is either very, very stupid or very, very disingenuous.

The very certainty you Threeper Creepers have about how simply we can know 'the intentions of the Founders' is an indication of simple-mindedness.

Anonymous said...

By the ingenious logic of Pat H., those who have been here longest should know American history best, so I imagine he defers to the historical knowledge and consequent policy judgment of the indigenous peoples who were here long before his family or mine. But that would be consistent, and consistency is probably too much to expect from someone like Pat H.

People with fully functioning brains recognize that knowing history is not a matter of how long your family has been somewhere; it's a matter of reading more widely than the blogs of a few half-literate gun nuts.