It's the single thing that bothers me most, and it's the primary reason I want to kill their cattle and set fire to their houses. (I watched Deadwood last night; sue me.)
It was a crazy, inspired, wonderful idea to try to build a Republic on the ideals I just mentioned, and the astonishing thing is that our founders not only had this idea, but managed to write a Constitution capable of making it work, and then lived by that Constitution consistently enough that it stood the test of time.
Has it? Less then 100 years to a civil war, and a little more than 100 years from that to where we are now. Three long lifetimes. It's too soon to tell, but it might just as easily turn out to have been a crazy, glorious failure.
Aren't we the second oldest country, defined as a continuous form of government, in the world? (After the UK?) This might not be the case -- I'm pulling it out of the mighty stock of 'things I read somewhere' -- but I can't offhand think of another country that's older. Even if you think of the US as dating back only to the end of the Civil War, which is on many levels a reasonable thing to think, that's still an awfully long run of internal peace and decent government by worldwide standards.
But as systems of government go that's not a bad run, anyway. If a democracy last for three long lifetimes, that's three long-lived people who lived under a democracy. (Or one short-lived black person, counting from 1964.)
And I truly believe that where we are now isn't so awful--yet--and that we're going to pull out of it. The GOP is completely insane and shouldn't be in charge of a tea-party, but they won't be around forever--and when they leave they won't have razed the place to the foundations, I don't think. We got the deficit under control before, we can do it again, and we can bring civil rights back, I hope.
If a nuclear bomb goes off in the US all bets may be off. Even I am not cynical enough to think that the GOP's failure to do anything about this possibility is connected to this calculation. They're not one-hundredth that evil.
I think we all posted on this and related themes of Torture and Extraordinary Rendition back in the day. I know I did. I also remember at the time Bob Herbert wrote the Op Ed "Its Called Torture" etc.
The thrust of my thoughts, then as now, is that it is just unbelievable how our sense of history is so myopic. It was an election in Germany that brought the Nazis to power. How is it possible for a nation to re-elect a government with such blatant contempt for the very principles of justice? We really are only ever one election away from barbary.
I am reminded of Robert Bolt's "A Man For All Seasons"
" This country is planted thick with laws from end to end. If you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you think you could stand in the winds that would then blow..."
Thomas More was beheaded essentially for defending the rule of law. I wonder who will play More to Bush's Henry?
I take those ideals to be: that we are a nation of laws
That faction certainly did win out, no small thanks to John Jay. But others, such as Jefferson, would have preferred, I think, to think of ourselves as a nation of principles. (certainly one can't completely seperate the two, but the test I think is in situations when one contradicts the other, which side would one support. Washington/Adams/Jay would support the law, Jefferson/Madison would have been more likely to support the principle.)
that our government should leave us free to debate political and social questions and decide them for ourselves,
The first part of this statement I think is fairly true, despite the Alien and Sedetion Acts (1798), but the second one I believe implies a political power in the people which I don't believe existed. The Federalist Papers instead are rather clear that the purpose of the republic form is to block democratic power.
the 'we' I speak of should encompass all competent adults, not just members of some privileged group.
Really, I think it's obvious, (to the writer as well) that this was a minority opinion not only at the founding of our country, but until fairly recently. And that's the thing I suppose leaps at me about this list: it seems to eschew the always-controversial nature about these ideals.
A little Googling goes a long way: There was a 45 year interregnum from 1800 onwards. So it's up for grabs, but I think it was tradtion we were edging towards, so maybe you'll all let it stand?
and that was me demonstrating my lack of familiarity with html anchors done manually, sorry. Was trying to reference this :http://www.althingi.is/vefur/upplens.html
I think though the claim that Lizard referred to is that the US Constitution is thought to be the oldest document of supreme political authority which is currently around.
This is exactly the point at which baa would normally enter and say (rightly), "Settle down, everybody." We don't, as a country, agree on base cases. But there have been a number of times that has been true in the past. At a minimum, we've disagreed about slavery and Jim Crow. I'm hard pressed to think of something more fundamental to American democracy than the right to trial, but I'm even harder pressed to argue that equal protection of an entire sub-class of our people is less fundamental.
If the present diagreement comes to something important, it'll be because we have available a conception of federalism that allows us to minimize the importance of these diagreements. I'd be happier that way, but I doubt a lot of the rest of the Dem Party would be.
SCMT--it would make me happier if there weren't people (well, carbon-based life forms) calling for internment of Muslims, and if the government weren't laying the foundation for something that could turn into exactly that. I said in 5 that I don't think it's so bad, but one nuclear terrorist attack and we could be well fucked.
Thanks for the props. For some reason the backend of my log uses the rendering of Title="xxxxxx" after the actual reference and, of course, I was cribbing.
I just meant that the biggest change that I can conceive happening is that we really do devolve power to the state or even local level. I'm OK with that, because I think that (a) we've (centrist Dems) got the methodology for improving life in the US roughly right, but (b) I don't think we've got the electoral power to hold the national govt. for lengthy periods of time. Short of a consensus on devolution, we (as country) will just continue to muddle forward and back as each side overreaches and loses power. It's not ideal, it means a lot of wasted time, and there will probably be some tragic outcomes, but I don't think that the net result will be the parade of horribles that I admit I sometimes worry about.
OK. I can't really conceive of that, actually, because I don't see how decentralization comes into being. As has been observed, the GOP doesn't really want it.
Sadly, I can much more easily envision permanent powers of shipping people off to prison on the government's say-so. I mean, Americans who aren't Muslims or something, since other people can already have that happen anyway--I can envision that becoming more a part of American life. If there's a nuclear explosion and the wrong people are in power, anything might happen.
Did anyone else see Colin Powell on the Daily Show last night? I was surprised by how angry it made me to watch him sanely and reasonably and pleasantly deny that the Downing St memo had any relationship to reality, and defend his performance in front of the UN by saying that Clinton had thought there were WMDs in 1998, and of course because the inspectors had left at that point there wasn't any way to update the intelligence. What a piece of work.
Seems to me from afar that Colin Powell is that rare political beast: A man capable of simultaneously alienating the Moon Bats, the Wing Nuts and every notch on the spectrum between. That takes skill and dedication.
Powell has always been a lying, brown-nosing hack. The willingness of Democrats to overlook his long, long history of covering up abuses has always amazed me. I wouldn't trust him to feed my cats.
the 'we' I speak of should encompass all competent adults, not just members of some privileged group.
Michael:
Really, I think it's obvious, (to the writer as well) that this was a minority opinion not only at the founding of our country, but until fairly recently. And that's the thing I suppose leaps at me about this list: it seems to eschew the always-controversial nature about these ideals.
But what's changed is our understanding of what makes a competent adult, not that all competent adults should be able to participate in the government. The framers of the Constitution hoped to create a political structure that would allow the elite and talented to naturally rise to the top and run the country but they didn't want to grant privileges to any specific group (such as an inherited aristrocracy) because that would have the effect of blocking the rise of the talented. In practice this was an elitist idea, not least because restrictions on voting rights limited who was considered "competent" to participate in politics, but in theory anyone could become part of that elite (with the obvious exceptions, until recently, of women and non-whites).
Seems to me from afar that Colin Powell is that rare political beast: A man capable of simultaneously alienating the Moon Bats, the Wing Nuts and every notch on the spectrum between. That takes skill and dedication.
Mmhm. The enraging thing about him is tht hs presentation is so decent and reliable and sensible -- having someone who talks like that lying to you is somehow more maddening than someone transparently slimy. He wouldn't piss me off nearly so much if he didn't remind me of my dad.
it's true that the constitution did away with bare heredity political power, but the setup is economically biased (especially in the beginning), and therefore there's no real denying that there is a "privledged class." Although, I of course understand that the constitution weakened the strength of such a class compared to other nations.
But I think hilzoy has somewhat mischaracterized the debate. On one hand, there have been proponents of requiring "competency" in order to vote (and thus always creating a privledged group) and on the other, those who argue that all legal adults should be given the right to vote. These are different ideas, even if the concept of "competent" has grown broader these days.
From today's vantage point I think you're right that hilzoy's post gives the impression that debates over voting rights and political participation were resolved a long time ago rather than worked out through centuries of struggles, but from the point of view of the 18th century, which is what I think hilzoy was trying to capture in the early part of her post, the Constitution did quite radically expand people's control over their own government.
(Anyway, I suspect that we agree on most of this, but we're just phrasing things differently.)
And there's also a tension here between what's a "right" and what's a "privilege" that likely never will be resolved. How can someone be given a right that's supposed to be natural? And if something like a right is given, isn't it really a privilege that can be stripped away by the entity that granted it?
eb, yes, I just also wanted to emphasize that the founding fathers were far from united in agreement on the ideals this country was founded on. I've been reading a bit on this, and the feuds on what our government was and where the power was invested were heated and bitter. Partisan politics seem to have been as bad or worse in 1795 as they are today. The ideals that won out were the victors through political battle, not intellectual, which is worth remembering.
(the rights/privledge thing is too big for me to discuss...)
It's the single thing that bothers me most, and it's the primary reason I want to kill their cattle and set fire to their houses. (I watched Deadwood last night; sue me.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 6:55 AM
She's good, isn't she.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 8:27 AM
That is good. But I'm not sure about this.
Has it? Less then 100 years to a civil war, and a little more than 100 years from that to where we are now. Three long lifetimes. It's too soon to tell, but it might just as easily turn out to have been a crazy, glorious failure.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 9:14 AM
Aren't we the second oldest country, defined as a continuous form of government, in the world? (After the UK?) This might not be the case -- I'm pulling it out of the mighty stock of 'things I read somewhere' -- but I can't offhand think of another country that's older. Even if you think of the US as dating back only to the end of the Civil War, which is on many levels a reasonable thing to think, that's still an awfully long run of internal peace and decent government by worldwide standards.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 9:25 AM
But as systems of government go that's not a bad run, anyway. If a democracy last for three long lifetimes, that's three long-lived people who lived under a democracy. (Or one short-lived black person, counting from 1964.)
And I truly believe that where we are now isn't so awful--yet--and that we're going to pull out of it. The GOP is completely insane and shouldn't be in charge of a tea-party, but they won't be around forever--and when they leave they won't have razed the place to the foundations, I don't think. We got the deficit under control before, we can do it again, and we can bring civil rights back, I hope.
If a nuclear bomb goes off in the US all bets may be off. Even I am not cynical enough to think that the GOP's failure to do anything about this possibility is connected to this calculation. They're not one-hundredth that evil.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 9:28 AM
Iceland's parliament, "The Thing" dates back to before the end of the first millenium.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 9:29 AM
"The Thing"? That has to be the bitchinest name for a parliament ever.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 9:37 AM
I think we all posted on this and related themes of Torture and Extraordinary Rendition back in the day. I know I did. I also remember at the time Bob Herbert wrote the Op Ed "Its Called Torture" etc.
The thrust of my thoughts, then as now, is that it is just unbelievable how our sense of history is so myopic. It was an election in Germany that brought the Nazis to power. How is it possible for a nation to re-elect a government with such blatant contempt for the very principles of justice? We really are only ever one election away from barbary.
I am reminded of Robert Bolt's "A Man For All Seasons"
" This country is planted thick with laws from end to end. If you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you think you could stand in the winds that would then blow..."
Thomas More was beheaded essentially for defending the rule of law. I wonder who will play More to Bush's Henry?
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 9:48 AM
I like to nitpick and be pedantic:
I take those ideals to be: that we are a nation of laws
That faction certainly did win out, no small thanks to John Jay. But others, such as Jefferson, would have preferred, I think, to think of ourselves as a nation of principles. (certainly one can't completely seperate the two, but the test I think is in situations when one contradicts the other, which side would one support. Washington/Adams/Jay would support the law, Jefferson/Madison would have been more likely to support the principle.)
that our government should leave us free to debate political and social questions and decide them for ourselves,
The first part of this statement I think is fairly true, despite the Alien and Sedetion Acts (1798), but the second one I believe implies a political power in the people which I don't believe existed. The Federalist Papers instead are rather clear that the purpose of the republic form is to block democratic power.
the 'we' I speak of should encompass all competent adults, not just members of some privileged group.
Really, I think it's obvious, (to the writer as well) that this was a minority opinion not only at the founding of our country, but until fairly recently. And that's the thing I suppose leaps at me about this list: it seems to eschew the always-controversial nature about these ideals.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 9:53 AM
Yeah, one gets images of Vikings standing around scratching their heads: "What is this Thing we created?"
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 9:53 AM
A little Googling goes a long way: There was a 45 year interregnum from 1800 onwards. So it's up for grabs, but I think it was tradtion we were edging towards, so maybe you'll all let it stand?
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 9:57 AM
Damn, I knew about the Thing, and how long it had been around. (A time-honored name for a government, say the SPQR.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 9:59 AM
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:01 AM
and that was me demonstrating my lack of familiarity with html anchors done manually, sorry. Was trying to reference this :http://www.althingi.is/vefur/upplens.html
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:02 AM
<a href="http://www.althingi.is/vefur/upplens.html">The thing</a>
(The '<' and '>' are made by writing '<' and '>' respectively. The '&'s are made by writing '&'. Props to Wolfson.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:08 AM
I thought the SPQR was "our thing." Like Cosa Nostra.
Posted by SloLernr | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:10 AM
I think though the claim that Lizard referred to is that the US Constitution is thought to be the oldest document of supreme political authority which is currently around.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:11 AM
So, by that measure, Iceland's constitutional form began in 1874.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:12 AM
This is exactly the point at which baa would normally enter and say (rightly), "Settle down, everybody." We don't, as a country, agree on base cases. But there have been a number of times that has been true in the past. At a minimum, we've disagreed about slavery and Jim Crow. I'm hard pressed to think of something more fundamental to American democracy than the right to trial, but I'm even harder pressed to argue that equal protection of an entire sub-class of our people is less fundamental.
If the present diagreement comes to something important, it'll be because we have available a conception of federalism that allows us to minimize the importance of these diagreements. I'd be happier that way, but I doubt a lot of the rest of the Dem Party would be.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:15 AM
Measurement problems aside--at the Mineshaft--I think we can agree that the US has had a pretty good run as governments go, that that run should continue, and that it's a damn shame that one of the grandest, most noble experiments in human political history has been hijacked by a band of evil lunatics bent on world domination.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:15 AM
What'll we do tonight, Cheney?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:17 AM
SCMT--it would make me happier if there weren't people (well, carbon-based life forms) calling for internment of Muslims, and if the government weren't laying the foundation for something that could turn into exactly that. I said in 5 that I don't think it's so bad, but one nuclear terrorist attack and we could be well fucked.
I'm not sure I understand your second para.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:19 AM
Before I followed Weiner's link in 20, I thought he was asserting that apostropher was hijacking the government.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:23 AM
I'd be for that.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:25 AM
Thanks for the props. For some reason the backend of my log uses the rendering of Title="xxxxxx" after the actual reference and, of course, I was cribbing.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:44 AM
To the ramparts, comrades! The time has come for the vanguard of the lumpenproletariat to advance the apostrevolution. Free weed and cable for all!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:44 AM
the backend of my log
<inner Beavis>Heh heh uh huh heh.</inner Beavis>
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 10:49 AM
Weiner:
I just meant that the biggest change that I can conceive happening is that we really do devolve power to the state or even local level. I'm OK with that, because I think that (a) we've (centrist Dems) got the methodology for improving life in the US roughly right, but (b) I don't think we've got the electoral power to hold the national govt. for lengthy periods of time. Short of a consensus on devolution, we (as country) will just continue to muddle forward and back as each side overreaches and loses power. It's not ideal, it means a lot of wasted time, and there will probably be some tragic outcomes, but I don't think that the net result will be the parade of horribles that I admit I sometimes worry about.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 11:01 AM
OK. I can't really conceive of that, actually, because I don't see how decentralization comes into being. As has been observed, the GOP doesn't really want it.
Sadly, I can much more easily envision permanent powers of shipping people off to prison on the government's say-so. I mean, Americans who aren't Muslims or something, since other people can already have that happen anyway--I can envision that becoming more a part of American life. If there's a nuclear explosion and the wrong people are in power, anything might happen.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 11:08 AM
Apo, its like when Marylin moans about the fuzzy end of the lollypop.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 11:17 AM
Did anyone else see Colin Powell on the Daily Show last night? I was surprised by how angry it made me to watch him sanely and reasonably and pleasantly deny that the Downing St memo had any relationship to reality, and defend his performance in front of the UN by saying that Clinton had thought there were WMDs in 1998, and of course because the inspectors had left at that point there wasn't any way to update the intelligence. What a piece of work.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 11:44 AM
Seems to me from afar that Colin Powell is that rare political beast: A man capable of simultaneously alienating the Moon Bats, the Wing Nuts and every notch on the spectrum between. That takes skill and dedication.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 11:48 AM
Powell has always been a lying, brown-nosing hack. The willingness of Democrats to overlook his long, long history of covering up abuses has always amazed me. I wouldn't trust him to feed my cats.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 11:49 AM
hilzoy:
the 'we' I speak of should encompass all competent adults, not just members of some privileged group.
Michael:
Really, I think it's obvious, (to the writer as well) that this was a minority opinion not only at the founding of our country, but until fairly recently. And that's the thing I suppose leaps at me about this list: it seems to eschew the always-controversial nature about these ideals.
But what's changed is our understanding of what makes a competent adult, not that all competent adults should be able to participate in the government. The framers of the Constitution hoped to create a political structure that would allow the elite and talented to naturally rise to the top and run the country but they didn't want to grant privileges to any specific group (such as an inherited aristrocracy) because that would have the effect of blocking the rise of the talented. In practice this was an elitist idea, not least because restrictions on voting rights limited who was considered "competent" to participate in politics, but in theory anyone could become part of that elite (with the obvious exceptions, until recently, of women and non-whites).
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 11:52 AM
Seems to me from afar that Colin Powell is that rare political beast: A man capable of simultaneously alienating the Moon Bats, the Wing Nuts and every notch on the spectrum between. That takes skill and dedication.
Mmhm. The enraging thing about him is tht hs presentation is so decent and reliable and sensible -- having someone who talks like that lying to you is somehow more maddening than someone transparently slimy. He wouldn't piss me off nearly so much if he didn't remind me of my dad.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 12:26 PM
eb,
it's true that the constitution did away with bare heredity political power, but the setup is economically biased (especially in the beginning), and therefore there's no real denying that there is a "privledged class." Although, I of course understand that the constitution weakened the strength of such a class compared to other nations.
But I think hilzoy has somewhat mischaracterized the debate. On one hand, there have been proponents of requiring "competency" in order to vote (and thus always creating a privledged group) and on the other, those who argue that all legal adults should be given the right to vote. These are different ideas, even if the concept of "competent" has grown broader these days.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 12:44 PM
From today's vantage point I think you're right that hilzoy's post gives the impression that debates over voting rights and political participation were resolved a long time ago rather than worked out through centuries of struggles, but from the point of view of the 18th century, which is what I think hilzoy was trying to capture in the early part of her post, the Constitution did quite radically expand people's control over their own government.
(Anyway, I suspect that we agree on most of this, but we're just phrasing things differently.)
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 1:05 PM
And there's also a tension here between what's a "right" and what's a "privilege" that likely never will be resolved. How can someone be given a right that's supposed to be natural? And if something like a right is given, isn't it really a privilege that can be stripped away by the entity that granted it?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 1:10 PM
eb, yes, I just also wanted to emphasize that the founding fathers were far from united in agreement on the ideals this country was founded on. I've been reading a bit on this, and the feuds on what our government was and where the power was invested were heated and bitter. Partisan politics seem to have been as bad or worse in 1795 as they are today. The ideals that won out were the victors through political battle, not intellectual, which is worth remembering.
(the rights/privledge thing is too big for me to discuss...)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 9-05 1:48 PM