In discussions like those on this board, being right is a means; you seem to think it’s an end. If I didn’t know better, I would think that your sole purpose for posting here is to make sure that no one reading the threads becomes a libertarian. I know that when I realized I was becoming one, I hoped that I would be in good company.
You have a tendency to make it sound like a religious cult.
Whose purposes could that possible serve?
-VM
On a simple nuts-and-bolts level, I’d:
Give each state three senators, so that each state has one up at each biennial election.
Put a number (fifty years, give or take) on the “limited terms” language of the Copyrights and Patents Clause.
Not so. It was the founders who rejected a legislatively dominated central government. Not those who wrote the Constitution but the larger group that fleshed out its skeleton into a working government. The Framers were seeking a seperate but checked government but that doesn’t imply coequal branches as Gary Wills points out in A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government. The nationalists in the federal convention were seeking a strong and independent single executive but had to use discretion to avoid the appearance of monarchy. The convention produced a presidency strong enough to check Congress. Not necessarily its equal though ambiguous enough to become so and more. If things had gone differently…
… the Senate might have not backed down on the President’s right to remove officials appointed with its advice and consent. Instead the cabinet developed slowly with no dependence on the Senate nor independence from the President.
… the Congress might have taken the lead in international affairs. This today is a bastion of presidential power but the records we have from the federal convention don’t show that was the intention. The war powers were are invested in the Congress. Only they could declare war. The president could make war but basically only if necessary to defend the country. Offensive military adventuring, quasi-wars, were undertaken with privateers and only Congress could issue letters of marque.
…the Senate, or a committee thereof, might have involved itself directly treatymaking. The power isn’t explicitly executive. In the federal convention the president was spoken of as checking the treatymaking power of the Senate.
…the House, via the power of the purse, might have injected itself into treatymaking.
…the House might have end up selecting the president ( with no term limit ) in most elections as so many in the convention and ratifying conventions believed.
I think Lib’s point was that, once you have laws in place to protect individual rights, there should be little need for additional ones. The rules of the country would already be shaped, as it were.
With respect to the OP, I think I would institute term limits for all government positions, including Supreme Court justices and both houses of Congress. I think that a lot of the more egregious examples of corruption are a result of the power of incumbency and the mini kingdoms that some of these politicians are able to create. People like Strom Thurmand and Teddy Kennedy should not be able to turn legislating into a lifelong money-making machine for themselves and their cronies.
Not only do a lot of these guys spend way too much time in office, they also turn the whole process into a contest for seniority, with important positions going to people who have been there the longest. To me, that means giving more power to people who have had more time to become more corrupt.
Oh, and I think that the electoral college is a ridiculous insult to the citizens. If we’re gonna vote on an issue, then the popular vote should decide the outcome. On the same note, I would much prefer a proportional voting scheme, so that people could vote for first and second choices. Such a scheme would loosen the grip that the Reps and Dems have on power in this country and open the door for some candidates who were not so much a part of the “system” (like, say, libertarians, for instance).
Of course, all these tweaks are assuming that I can’t just make it “libertopia”.
-VM
I don’t completely disagree. I think it entirely appopriate to, say, look at the framer’s concept of free speech when intepreting the first amendment. I only object to the judicial insertion of rights that aren’t already in the text, and I think the founders would agree.
I also hardly think I’m proffering a strawman by talking about judicial legislation. You know, or should know from our past discussions, that my beef is not with vigorous enforcement of the individual rights actually mentioned in the constitution’s text; rather, it’s with the establishment of rights not found therein. And what is “judicial legislation” if not the de facto writing in of new provisions to the constitution by judicial decree?
It does? Really? How does that work, exactly?
Or is this just more content-free snark from you?
Is that a “no” then?
Also, what **Smartass **said.
Bizarre. Your contribution in its entirety is, “No, but your proposed system still requires men to be angels.” When a comparable response is given, your own profound insight magically becomes “content-free snark”. It’s like the guy who can’t smell his own BO.
Perhaps you could regale us with another logical fallacy.
Well, is it? What is your answer to the question of whether there is any government that honors your consent as a man?
I must say that I am stunned. I appreciate that token of generosity. Yes, he summed up my position nicely when he said, “I think Lib’s point was that, once you have laws in place to protect individual rights, there should be little need for additional ones.” And I’m thrilled to see you finally at least make a pretense at understanding these simple matters.
Is your memory so short? My brief rejoinder was a reference to a prior criticism I’ve made of your position.
Your response, on the other hand…well, I really would like to see you flesh that point out.
I’m going to read that as a “no.” I’m also going to read it as showing you incapable of giving a simple, straightforward answer.
:rolleyes:
You really should read Smartass’ response to you and take it to heart.
At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, women had the right to vote in New Jersey.
Actually, yes, they did. Susan B. Anthony was arrested in New York in 1872 for attempting to vote on the argument that the 14th Amendment granted her the right to vote. She was prohibited from testifying at her own trial and convicted without the benefit of a jury and fined $100 (which she refused to pay). In 1874, a unanimous Court held that the 14th Amendment did not extend the right to vote to women by upholding a conviction against Virginia Minor, a suffragist who “illegally” attempted to vote in Missouri (Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874)). This led to an effort by suffragists to obtain state and eventually federal law granting them the right to vote.
There was no question amongst suffragists that women should have been afforded the right to vote without amending the Constitution. The only debate amongst suffragists was whether it was strategically worthwhile to attempt to convince the men of the nation of this obvious truth, or if they should assume that such a goal was hopeless, to accept the men’s incorrect understanding of the law, and proceed on that basis.
You are, as usual, failing to recognize an important distinction. Striking down legislation is not legislating. Requiring that the government not exercise any authority over a sphere of activity is not co-opting authority over that sphere, it’s remanding the authority over that sphere to the people individually. This isn’t rule from the bench. It’s rule of personal autonomy.
Poppycock. Writing new provisons into the constitution is an act of legislation, and that’s what activist courts are de facto doing.
KellyM: Minor was a Hail Mary pass that failed in every court it was heard in, and while the suffragettes co-opted the language of equal protection as part of their political rhetoric, they surely were aware that as a matter of law such a claim was doomed to failure. Oddly, plaintiff in Minor relies principally on the privileges and immunties clause, not equal protection.
So if I were a monarch, you wouldn’t see any difference between me saying “I have direct authority over this sphere of activity, and you may only behave thus and so in it,” and “I have no business telling you what to do here; you may make your own decisions within this sphere of activity”? Each is the same with regards to asserted authority? The two positions are equally monarchist?
Whether you like it or not, there is a distinction here. You want to describt the courts throwing a type of legislation out as a power grab by the courts, usurping the rightful authority of the legislature. This is the gist of your entire argument. But it doesn’t hold much water when in fact the courts are not, in their “power grab”, actually asserting authority over the issue. In Lawrence they are not abrogating the authority to dictate what consenting adults do in private. They are returning the authority to make those decisions to the people. You can call “There shall be no legislation on this matter” legislation if you like, but it’s a different sort of legislation that restricts the authority of government rather than excercizing it.
Yes, because you’ve misstated the second part. What the court is doing is taking away the ability of localities to shape the kinds of societies they wish to become.
I’m confused. You’re saying that local societies have a right to shape themselves? Where is that in the constitution, pray tell?
I was careful not to use the word “right,” and further, this was a response to your notion that when the courts make activist decisions, individuals aren’t constrained. I say they are. They are constrained from shaping their own societies.
They’re constrained from excercising authority over others, and not constrained from anything else. Can we agree on that much?
Your brief rejoinder was, as I pointed out, a logical fallacy. I am not surprised that it represents a summation of your prior criticisms.
I don’t believe you. What I believe is that you would have me compose twenty paragraphs of expository (the gist which you could read on the Internet anyway if you wanted to), and then respond with some copied/pasted quip about men not being angels.
Not incapable; unwilling.
I respect Smartass’s opinion. I do not respect yours.
Except in the case of desegregation. The court started by ruling that deliberate segregation was illegal. Then it ruled that de facto segregation was illegal. Then it mandated that fully integrated equal education must take place. Then it took the position that unequal outcomes, such as a persistent pattern of lower test scores by minorities, was in and of itself prima facie evidence of unequal education. In some locations the courts took over administration of school systems.
Admittedly this is a case where the government already had “authority over a sphere of activity” (public schools), but it’s a demonstration of just how far judicial activism can go. If we had a national health care system, the court would probably have ruled not only that blanket laws banning abortion were illegal, but that the government health care system was obligated to make sure abortion services were available.
In my opinion the Senate has too much power, and there are too many states with too much land and too little population to justify the power that their senators hold. I’d support an amendment adding a senator to states once they reach a certain population.
A minor problem illustrates the point. In my opinion, legislation should be enacted to prevent the rich professional sports leagues and billionaire team owners from extorting taxpayer paid stadiums from the populace. YMMV. Regardless of whether this is a good idea for legislation or not, it hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of ever passing. Of the 100 senators in the U.S. senate, half come from states that don’t have sufficient population to support a team so there is no constituent pressure on them for reform (ie, the taxpayers there aren’t being asked to shell out for new stadiums, so what do they care?) The team owners and leagues can buy these Senators’ votes blocking reform through campaign contributions and stifle any chance at passing the legislation.
As I say, in the great scheme of things this isn’t a major legislative goal, but it’d be a good reform and it’ll never happen under the present setup. I’d argue that there are many similar measures that could help population centers that get stillborn in the Senate.