As Scott Lemieux says there is a real obstacle to "getting things done" legislatively in the United States, and it's not partisanship, it's the institutions of American government which are specifically designed to operate in a small-c conservative manner. Many people think this is a good thing. My view is that it's a bad thing. But either way, it's a fundamental aspect of our politics -- we operate in a system with many more veto points than exist in many other countries. If you worry that not enough "gets done" that's where you need to point the blame.
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Blame the Constitution
31 Dec 2007 01:52 pm
Comments (33)
If you worry that not enough "gets done" that's where you need to point the blame.
And yet Republicans are still able to get done their Supreme Court nominees, their pro-torture bill, their war funding bill, and their preferred SCHIP bill despite these potential roadblocks. How come?
My problem with the American system: It's defenders talk a lot about defending minorities from the tyranny of the majority, etc. etc., but the system doesn't give minorities adequate political representation. The same people who will defend the Senate fillibuster will get the vapors if you recommend a proportional representation system in the House. (IIRC, when Lani Guinier suggested such a thing, Bob Dole called her "un-American.") If it wasn't for the Warren Court America's record on "minority rights" would be a cruel joke.
No, its both. There are lots of veto points in the American structure of government. But for those to affect anything, you need a sufficient number of people who are willing to exercise those veto rights. And that's where the partisanship comes in - if things were more bipartisan, there wouldn't be a sufficient number of people to exercise those vetos, so things would get done despite the existence of the veto points in the strucuture of our government.
Matt, I agree with you that our Constitution and the institutions it has engendered can be blamed for the failure to "get something done." You say this is a "bad thing." Could you elaborate on your substantive reasons why?
Certainly there are changes, reforms, programs, etc. that you would like to see. Lowering the obstacles to achieving those things would be good. But are you willing to obtain such changes and reforms at the cost of, down the road, other changes and programs being foisted upon you despite your vehement opposition?
Like you, I'd love a broad progressive majority to have the power to make sweeping (positive!) changes. But with the inevitable ebb and flow of electoral politics don't we risk a future reactionary majority able to use the same lack of institutional obstacles to enact changes that are anathema to progressive ideals?
I'm not saying your wrong. I'd just like to hear you elucidate your thoughts on why the small-c conservatism of our institutions is a bad thing in both the short term and the long term.
Thanks.
Matt, I agree with MBinNC; despite the fact that I disagree with you on a lot of specific policy issues, I think this is the core of my political disagreement with you, and I'd love to see a coherent and articular defense of the position.
Matt - The system is not designed to prevent things from happening - it's designed to prevent a majority in government from creating much change without deliberation - that is, it's designed to make office holders accountable to rest of us.
The reason we miss this now is partly because we don't remember what the veto was for - not just to give the president a chance to stop legislation, but rather to have the president send a bill back with stated objections, forcing Congress to debate it again. This process is supposed to empower the rest of us, who would be alerted to the dispute, pay greater attention, and it we disagreed with how it was resolved, side with one side.
It's these kind of veto points that the Constitution is meant to create - not the kind we have now, where various groups can quietly kill initiatives without any accountability.
Plenty of things are being done, again quietly, without accountability. The system is designed to prevent that, but only if we appreciate how it's really supposed to work.
Re: "getting things done"
Oddly enough, I think it might be pertinent to consider what sort of "things" are or are not "getting done."
Eg:
- Highway safety?
- Torture?
- Healthcare?
- For "the children"?
- For "the elderly"
- For - cripers - me of all people?
Depending upon how one might feel about these or other such matters, it would make a great deal of difference whether or not government "got them done."
I've always wished it took 67 votes to end a filibuster.
I like the Madisonian roadblocks. I don't like the two party system - at all. Madison recognized that political parties were evil, but he failed to devise an effective solution. I think a solution would probably be easy to devise on paper. But implementing a near revolution like that would be tricky.
I've always wished it took 67 votes to end a filibuster.
Posted by Shinyk | December 31, 2007 4:12 PM
If I recall correctly, it originally took 100 votes to end a filibuster. But then our neocon granddaddy Woodrow Wilson came along and changed that.
...er, 26 votes I guess.
The system is not designed to prevent things from happening - it's designed to prevent a majority in government from creating much change without deliberation - that is, it's designed to make office holders accountable to rest of us.
And yet it combines that with two-year House terms. Even discounting the modern political reality that means 21 months of those two years are devoted to raising money, then campaigning for re-election, that's no time at all.
You could argue that the reason House members essentially devote most of their time to their re-election is that there's little chance to achieve much of anything else.
What country are you trying to model us on? One central government with swift legislative authority to regulate both business and personal behavior...The only examples I can think of are the U.S.S.R. and China.
If you're thinking of anything in Europe, you'd have to recognize it as a state in a federation and consider the power of Brussels to enact legislation to the power of Washington D.C.
If you want to make America look like the E.U., get back to the constitution that puts huge limits on the federal government. If you want to make it look like the old U.S.S.R. go ahead and give career political dynasties like Bush and Clinton even more power.
This is correct. The upshot is that the system needs to be changed. So much so that if internal change does not happen, by the middle of this century change will be brought about from outside the government, and it won't be pretty.
I don't think it's the Madisonian system per se that's broken, but that it's been undermined, probably quite deliberately.
Madison may have been against partisanship, but what gets smeared as un-American partisanship (e.g. especially when the Dems. do it) is actually exactly what Madison wanted to occur.
The idea behind our system is that no one group or person would become too powerful (either in pushing a legislative agenda, or -- in the case of the GOP -- blocking legislation -- and then trying to make it look like the Dems can't get anything done) because it would be in the interests of other people to "play politics" and challenge the powerful group or individual in order to raise their own political standing.
The problem is that the Kewl Kidz (and the pre-millenialists) have convinced everyone that "politics is bad" and that if someone does something that promotes their political ambitions, that is to be dismissed. The very safeguards that Madison, et al., imagined would have stopped Bush dead in his tracks failed to operate, because too many Dems. knew that if they opposed Bush, rather than benefiting politically, they would have been raked over the coals for "playing politics", even though that is what they were supposed to do, according to Madison. And now, if the Dems. were to try and really oppose Bush and start ramming through legislation, they'd similarly get dismissed as "trying to look busy for political gain".
If people understood how our system is supposed to work, they'd say "nu? the Dems. are 'playing politics' and that's bad how?". But the Kewl Kidz have convinced them that "playing politics" is teh evil (of course, the attrocious behavior of the GOP during the Clinton administration helped make sure people were dismissive of "playing politics" -- methinks that was not a bug but a feature of the whole Clinton impeachment fiasco, but I may be paranoid here)., so they say "if even the Washington insiders think that people shouldn't play politics, then they shouldn't play politics" ... so now we have a system where "ambition is being made to support ambition" rather than to challenge it.
That our system is small-c conservative is, by and large, a good thing (I guess I'm a small c-conservative albeit a big-L Leftist Moonbat). The problem is that the Kewl Kidz and the GOP have subverted our system because ambition is no longer made to check ambition due to their ensuring the public remains ignorant about and dismissive of the role of political ambition in our system.
And, call me paranoid, but I don't think this subversion has occured by accident.
My problem with the American system: It's defenders talk a lot about defending minorities from the tyranny of the majority, etc. etc., but the system doesn't give minorities adequate political representation. The same people who will defend the Senate fillibuster will get the vapors if you recommend a proportional representation system in the House.
Crazy christianists and neocons are distinct minorities in America, even if you add them together. They'd have a lot less power under proportional representation. Minorities that manage to gain a measure of control within a major party in a two party system become extremely powerful, far in disproportion to their population.
Proportional representation allows minority political viewpoints to easily achieve representation without sacrificing ideological purity, but representation isn't power. Proportional representation can cut either way when it comes to getting a government that actually takes notice and account of minority views, and neither way is inherently good or bad. Remember: crazy people are minorities too, and probably a bigger one than your political minority.
Although, you do have me wondering now: what would a bicameral Congress, with one house of single member districts and one of proportional representation end up looking like? Are there any examples like this elsewhere in the world?
I rather expect that Matt's "It's a bad thing" theory would have been on vacation between 2000 and 2006 - because in the kind of Parliamentary system he seems to want, there would have been massive change of the sort he would hate. A lot.
Al - There are lots of veto points in the American structure of government. But for those to affect anything, you need a sufficient number of people who are willing to exercise those veto rights. And that's where the partisanship comes in - if things were more bipartisan, there wouldn't be a sufficient number of people to exercise those vetos, so things would get done despite the existence of the veto points in the strucuture of our government.
We actually have bigger problems as time goes by with this 18th century thinking - of "all things in leisurely discussion, anyone can block stuff, central government is not important except in matters of security".
1. We actually have added more veto points with organized special interest groups and foreign powers with ability to legally lobby and throw huge sums of dollars in the system to block change like wrenches thrown into gears. We have added endless, leisurely lawsuits with endless appeals into the process that can take decades to resolve matters like building a bridge or modify teachers contracts to include performance pay levels.
2. We are no longer the nation that could afford, protected by 2 oceans to accept Madison's vetos, to navel-gaze and slowly if ever get anything done by government. Frankly because until FDR's time private enterprise ran at breakneck pace with almost no regulation hindering them from being the low-cost, high tech best at what they did. They had the power to tell government to back off in almost anything except national secirity or maintaining monopolies. No longer.
3. We are no longer the nation that had its own locked up domestic market, own indigenous industry and technology and could make changes at our own sweet time in matters of competiveness. Now we must compete with nimble EU administrators, nimble Asian governments accustomed to rapid change and implementation of critical policy with no years or decades delays for people like Americas Sanhedrin, our high priests in the guise of lawyers dressed in robes - to say "make it so". We don't get LNG ports on time, we lose jobs and markets to others. We don't have control of our borders, we lose our culture and native population mix to outsiders influence. We fail to have an energy policy after 35 years of warning - we will suffer tremendous consequences of America and it's government's paralysis and inability to serve The People.
We are in competition that could make us even better off, or turn us into a defeated, uncompetitive backwater with a sharply lowered standard of living compared to it's past - like Argentina. Right now, the ossified government and rule by lawyers on a lawyer's desire to stretch all things out makes us more likely to be growingly uncompetitive.
4. Partisans over the years have simply accumulated better tools to destroy unwanted initiatives and changes. To identify like-minded people who can be formed into cabals. Technology allows them to organize to block things, obtain ready funding through national donor drives - even those things desperately wanted by a vast majority of Americans - in a way Madison with his "no matter needs urgent change, plenty of time exists" veto philosophy never anticipated.
5. Slowness or partisan gridlock in debate, ability of a minority to blackball without accountability and only back off when promised more taxpayer pork is a bad thing. Reliance on the Jewish legal tradition of legal intrusion into all spheres of life, and of endless due process and appeals is a bad thing. The tremendous disproportionate rise in power of the Federal Government grasping so much away from the States is a bad thing.
Not unsurprisingly, people outside the powerful special interest groups believe their vote now doesn't count like it used to in America. That their State cannot make any changes in their lives without the Fed blessing it off. That Congress is worthless because anything important is blocked by partisans.
Now the only faith they have is the two institutions with power that have escaped the partisan gridlock and inadequately updated US Constitution. The All-Wise High Priests of the Sumpreme Court with their lawyerly selves in robes and their power from being "the Final word". And of course, the US President, capable of effecting change without months or years of debate and fat envelopes of cash exchanging hands.
"Madison may have been against partisanship, but what gets smeared as un-American partisanship (e.g. especially when the Dems. do it) is actually exactly what Madison wanted to occur." - DAS
I think you're confusing parties, or "factions", with branches of government. Madison definitely wanted the branches of government to compete vigorously.
But Madison didn't want factions in the government. He tried to think of a way to prevent them from arising or at least a way to prevent them from distorting or corrupting democracy. But he couldn't think of a way and, I've always thought, just threw up his hands and rationalized: Well, at least we'll only have two of them.
Robert Johnston,
Although, you do have me wondering now: what would a bicameral Congress, with one house of single member districts and one of proportional representation end up looking like? Are there any examples like this elsewhere in the world?
You could try looking at Australian Parliaments, both State and Federal which similarly organised - but use a single member preferential voting system in the Lower Houses, with the exception of Tasmania which reverses the Upper & Lower House system.
It all depends on whose ox is being gored. Madison was against partisanship, unless the target was Federalists - in which case he and Jefferson got as actively involved in partisan activity as anyone.
The founders said a lot of nice things against partisanship before the first post-Washington Presidential election. At that point, it all went out the door.
This strikes me as one of Matt's throw-away, hand-waving, fuzzy "Big Picture" comments that quite frankly are both irrelevant and meaningless.
Hey, Matt - what are you going to do about it?
Nothing.
Right.
So who cares?
Anybody who thinks any state is going to end up differently just hasn't looked at history.
Matt just wants the state to enact HIS policies quickly.
Yeah, about the time you get your pony, Matt.
If you want the state to enact YOUR policies quickly, bring some cash. Otherwise, "your" politicians are going to tell you to fuck off.
This guy gets to be considered a "pundit" (or at least a wannabe) with this kind of throwaway nonsense?
My view is that it's a bad thing.
This is one of those statements that you make repeatedly and I find completely baffling. As a liberal living under years of the most conservative Congress and president in history - you wish the constitution made things easier to get things done!
The problem isn't that it's hard to get things done, it's that the Democrats have refused to use their ability to derail more of the Republican agenda. The worst of the offenses of the Bush years occurred when Congress rubber stamped Bush's bills.
The Patriot Act, the Iraq war, repeated rubber stamping of Bush's war funding requests, even suspension of habeas corpus were accomplished because Congress abandoned it's role of deliberating before acting. They streamlined the process.
Those are the things you get when you make it easier to get things done.
The one highlight for Democrats? Saving Social Security. The only time I can remember them using their ability to throw sand in the gears of his agenda.
My view is that it's a bad thing.
This is one of those statements that you make repeatedly and I find completely baffling. As a liberal living under years of the most conservative Congress and president in history - you wish the constitution made things easier to get things done!
There's nothing much you can do to keep government from fucking things up, but it's nice to be able to fix the last guy's screw-ups without having to play dirty pool.
As for Bush: the only way to stop him short of a bullet between the eyes--which would have undesirable side-effects--was to impeach back in 2001. That, however, was never going to happen. He's a determined crazy man on a mission from god who doesn't care about the law at all, and we've all known it since day one. You can't derail a man who won't stop no matter what. Bush would have done the exact same things with or without the rubber stamp.
Don't blame the written Constitution
It can be faulted for leaving logically irresolvable divisions of sovereignty between the federal govt and the states. In this, the unwritten consitution has served us well, in that practically, the federal govt is now the undisputed sovereign.
But withn the federal govt, the written Constitution makes it very clear that the House is the undisputable master. It controls the money, should it, or rather, as little as a majority of the majority that controls its agenda, choose to exercise the power of the purse. It can let itself be vetoed by the Senate or the President, if it chooses to defer to either in a game of budgetary chicken, but it has to choose to let others usurp its role at controlling the raising and appropriation of the money on which all that the govt does depends. That it has consistently so chosen for generations is a function of the unwritten constitution, the shared belief that what sure looks in the written version like the power of the purse is actually a duty of the purse, the duty to give the President "clean" bills funding whatever mad scheme he has Decided is best for the country.
Sure, the non-system we have now is all effed up. But it's effed up because we ignore the Constitution, not because we follow it.
What you call the "unwritten constitution" is nothing more than politics in practice. Congress has closed the purse when it thought it had popular backing; 1975 and the cutoff of funds for support of South Vietnam comes to mind.
The House hasn't done anything like that to Bush because they don't think they have popular backing sufficient to do so. Given the relatively slim majority the Democrats have in the House, and the one seat majority in the Senate, they are probably correct.
"popular backing"
I don't disagree with you about the lack of popular backing for the Congress to end the war in Iraq. This is the reason that I don't consider the current majority to be wilful cowards, failing to act to end a war they believe foolish and destructive, despite their majority, when this majority supposedly gives them the power to end the war. It's just that I see this as one instance of the general lack of backing for Congress to do anything that opposes the President, not just this one thing.
If it were just a question of this one thing, then it would be obviously untrue that Congress lacks popular support for ending the war. Poll after poll shows just the opposite. Nor did they lack a majority in both chambers willing to vote continued war funding only with a timetable. What they lacked, once the Presdient vetoed funding with a timetable, was the belief that they had any right to deny the President a "clean" bill, giving him funding without the timetable. Somehow, as I say above, the power of the purse has become merely a duty of the purse. Yes, it's practical politics for Congress to fulfill this duty of the purse, but this is a duty, and not the power of the purse, entirely because the general public, all of us really, accedes to the conventional wisdom of the past sixty years that the President is the Decider. It think that it is more reasonable to describe this fixed and continuing general belief that the President, and not, as the written document says, the Congress, is the master, as an unwritten constitution, rather than just a momentary political accident. Look, absent a change in the belief system that makes the President the Decider, if a majority in Congress that believes a war to be counter-productive, backed by large majorities in the opinion polls, cannot see its way clear to taking control of a war that no one, not even its backers, thinks this President is managing particularly well anyway, then no Congress will ever have enough "popular backing" to take control of anything from any President.
As for the events of 1975... For one thing, we are now a generation further away from even the memory of the possibility that Congress can legitimately oppose the President's will. But the withdrawal of funding in 1975 wasn't really done in opposition to the President. Nixon came into office in 1969 already convinced that the war in Vietnam was a counter-productive waste, and pledged to ending it. He only kept it going, and even expanded it into Cambodia and Laos, because he found it a useful club with which to beat the Democrats. Despite comfortable Dem majorities, they never denied him a thing he requested for these mad escalations, whose only point, like the invasion of Iraq, was to win elections against them. He sucked everything he could use to his domestic political advantage from continuing and expanding the war, until he had used it successfully to wipe the floor with McGovern in his re-election fight. He lost interest after that, and let Kissinger conclude a peace with the North that essentially let them win. The North proved in 1972 that they could win unless US troops returned in strength, and Nixon, by not returning US troops in strength, let them know that they were welcome to take the South at their next convenience. This they did in 1975, after Nixon was OTD anyway. I am well aware that plenty of doves patted themselves on the back for their supposed great victories over the imperial Presidency as evidenced by various votes, including the ridiculous WPA, and the 1975 vote, during this time, but none of these votes did a damn thing that Nixon wasn't perfectly content to see happen. Nixon never lost complete control over the war, and foreign policy in general, until the day he stepped on that helicopter. Unlike the doves of that time, at least Don Quixote didn't think, after the event, that he'ld actually bested the windmill.
It's breakfast time ... and before you feed yourself according to the Jewish law that Chris Ford so fears, you're supposed to feed your livestock. Are trolls livestock?
Anyway, troll feeding time:
Frankly because until FDR's time private enterprise ran at breakneck pace with almost no regulation hindering them from being the low-cost, high tech best at what they did.
And that worked out so well, didn't it? Note what we didn't have 10 years after the end of WWII like we did after the end of WWI ... note the relative lack of business cycles until the 1970s (which coincides with the rise of conservatism) ... if you wanna return to the gilded age, suit yourself. But leave me out of it. You may think you would end up a Captain of Industry, but just probabilistically you'd end up a wage slave. Do you really want that? WWRD? (What would Rorty do?) ... I think posit that going back to pre-New Deal America (as we seem to be doing) is not a good idea.
Reliance on the Jewish legal tradition of legal intrusion into all spheres of life, and of endless due process and appeals is a bad thing.
Maybe it's 'cause I'm Jewish, but I think we need to rely more on the Jewish legal tradition. E.g., why don't we have stricter laws against price fraud? tougher anti-usury laws? and stronger due process and appeals from the get go so that we don't have all these near misses with (almost) executing people for crimes they didn't commit? It sounds like a good deal to me, this Jewish legal tradition.
I promise ... no matter what, we'll still let you eat pork. ;)
What they lacked, once the Presdient vetoed funding with a timetable, was the belief that they had any right to deny the President a "clean" bill, giving him funding without the timetable. Somehow, as I say above, the power of the purse has become merely a duty of the purse. - Glen Tomkins
And where did they get that belief? Could it be from a constant barrage of media, etc., commentary about how Congress should support the President? If Congresscritters believed they could benefit politically from showing backbone, they would. They have the belief that they have "merely the duty of the purse" because that's the belief that they think benefits them to have.
Really, imagine what would happen if Congress did actually exercize the power of the purse? The media would be all over them about "how dare they oppose the President in a time of war?" And the unwashed masses who now oppose the war would say "well, I oppose the war, but the fact is that we are at war and the Congress should support the troops by supporting their Commander in Chief" and say "even the liberal media(*) thinks, the Dems. in Congress have gone too far" etc. It might very well have proven to be politically disastrous for Congress to exercise their power of the purse because it has been, everywhere in the media and people's perceptions, reduced to a mere duty.
Congresscritters are politicians -- they know on which side their bread is buttered. I still say the problem is that the Kewl Kidz have made sure the bread is buttered on the wrong side. Ambition no longer checks ambition: an ambitious person plays along nowadays. That's how the system is broken. And I think the Kewl Kidz (and possibly a calculated strategy by the GOP to discredit Congressional opposition -- see Impeachment, Clinton's) are behind this.
(* that perception is the gift that keeps in giving for the GOP)
*
I think you're confusing parties, or "factions", with branches of government. Madison definitely wanted the branches of government to compete vigorously. - Gary Sugar
Maybe I made my point in a confusing manner, but I'm not confused. My point is that Madison wanted branches of government to compete vigorously, and that he counted on political gain as the motivation to compete vigorously. The problem is that when people who happen to have a D-attached to their name actually do compete vigorously, rather than gaining politically, they get disparaged as "only trying to gain politically" (*) or as "being partisan" or some combination thereof.
Indeed, if we have any faction it is the GOP, but because they know how to coordinate things, they ironically do not appear to be "partisan".
And as to the ox being gored, I agree ... even in Madison's day, people were more than capable of double standards. Actually, certain aspects of Madison's and Jefferson's lifestyles are testimony to that.
(*as if that's a bad thing in our system? the Kewl Kidz are either un-aware of the Federalist Papers or they really don't like democratic politics because they are fundamentally neo-manoralists ... I vote for the latter ... the Kewl Kidz can't be this ignorant by accident, can they?
The polls you cite for "large majorities in favor of ending the war" are classic instances of "mile wide and an inch deep". The public simply isn't that concerned with the war; witness the utter lack of popular protest over it. That's very different from the reactions to the Mexican war (1846), WWI (1917), the Civil War (1863 in particular), and Vietnam. With the Mexican War there wasn't even a draft to rile people up.
What the left fails to accept is this: most people just don't care that much about the war. Whether they should or not is irrelevant; they just don't. The Dems in Congress recognize this, while people like Matt and most of the commenters here completely miss it.
The Congress won't act unless they know they have popular backing (eg: social security). On Iraq, they simply don't have it.
As to the comments that things declined once conservatives took power (as opposed to the liberal heyday after WWII) - learn some history. Between 1945 and 1960 or so, the US economy was going to boom almost without regard to policy. Every other advanced economy on the planet had been knocked flat by WWII, so we had the field to ourselves. By 1960, Europe and Japan had reconstituted themselves and started to offer some economic competition. Wow - it's a whole lot harder to sell anything to anyone once other players show up on the field to make their own offers, hmm?
"It can be faulted for leaving logically irresolvable divisions of sovereignty between the federal govt and the states. In this, the unwritten consitution has served us well, in that practically, the federal govt is now the undisputed sovereign."
There's nothing "logically irresolvable" about the Constitution's division of power between state and federal governments. The unwritten constitution is actually a clear violation of perfectly resolvable divisions.
The rights of rebellion, nullification and secession
Brett Bellmore,
Combine Art IV, sec 4 and the 2d Amendment, and you have a right of rebellion, at least if you can get your state legislature to support your rebellion. The federal govt is not allowed to intervene with federal forces to suppress a militia unless the state govt involved agrees that the militia is in rebellion, and asks for federal help. The federal govt can intervene, and has the duty to intervene, if foreign armies invade a member state of the Union, but the states are left to decide whether internal armed forces, the militias, are in insurrection or not. That Lincoln's call for volunteers after Ft Sumter violated these clear provisions is what led to the second wave of secessions in 1861.
Yes, we have a supremacy clause, that makes federal law the supreme law of the land. But if state militias can block enforcement of federal law within their states, should the state legislature fail to declare that action to be insurrection, then the federal govt is left with no recourse, no means of enforcement to reduce the state to obediance to the federal govt's interpretation of what is Constitutional. Thus nullification, which would be what happens if a state claims that a given federal law is unconstitutional; and thus secession, which is what happens when a state decides that all federal governance has become intolerable.
Enshrining a right of rebellion in our Constitution was an objectively terrible idea. But given that the Founders made their mark in history by leading a rebellion against King and Parliament, it was almost an inevitable mistake. They couldn't leave their "treason" against the King stand as a necessary, but unfortunate, crime, one that resulted in much death and destruction, but had to transform it in retrospect into something inherently fine, noble, and principled. The other explanation is that they might well not have been able to get a Union without leaving this important attribute of sovereignty, the definition of insurrection, to the states. But, whatever the necessity, this aspect of sovereignty is logically indivisible, and cannot be left in many hands without enshrining disunion, as opposed to union.
Comments closed January 14, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
I disagree. But since you're simply pointing people to Lemieux, I will simply note that I've indicated my disagreement in the comments to his post.
Posted by Bloix | December 31, 2007 2:01 PM