CPAC: Consevatives Vote for Ron Paul

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Semantics. If a judge commits actual misconduct, there is a procedure for his removal. If a judge makes a legal ruling that congress doesn't like, Congress has the authority to re-write the law. Amending the constitution is almost never necessary, since most legal decisions are based on precedent, case history, and an interpretation of laws passed by the legislature. If the legislature doesn't like the way one of its laws has been interpreted by the courts, it can simply rewrite the law.

You really have no idea how the judiciary works, do you? First of all, a justice can't be impeached for a ruling. A justice can only be impeached for misconduct. Second of all, most rulings are based on case history, legal precedent, and an interpretation of laws that are already on the books. If the legislature doesn't like the way at least five out of nine of the justices that they appointed interpret a law that they themselves wrote, the legislature has the authority to re-write the law in order to solve the "problem". They don't usually need to amend the constitution.

Now, in the rare instance that the Supreme Court does rule that a law passed by the legislature violates the constitution, the legislature then has the authority to amend the constitution. Yes, amending the constitution is "hard" -- it's supposed be -- but that hasn't stopped Congress from amending the constitution 17 times since the passage of the bill of rights.

...and my point was that you were knocking down a straw man.

 

So if Ron Paul had such a lead over the others, why was he mostly booed when his win was announced?

 

I had actually not thought of re-writing the law. It's a good point. It assumes the law would get a different interpretation and still get the same results, though. Not being familiar with these cases, how often does that happen?

 

It happens fairly often, and is quite simple to do. No law accounts for every possibility and eventually, so the courts are often forced to make judgment calls. In the rare instance that congress doesn't like the judgment, they can simply codify the desired interpretation. It does happen, but not very often. Most judges are competent people who make competent decisions. They very rarely get things "wrong".

 

How come half the discussions on these boards end up being about what the founders intended?

 

Because it's an incredibly common conservative talking point. Most of us liberals really aren't terribly concerned about what the slave-owning, white, land-owning men that fought to grant equal representation to all slave-owning, white, land-owning men would think about issues like abortion, gay rights, or mandating auto insurance. Nevertheless, we are still forced to address founder intent on a regular basis because the conservatives tend to favor making as few changes as possible to our government, usually citing "founder intent" as their reason. In principle, of course, this isn't a bad thing at all. Too many changes to our social and regulatory structure too quickly can at times lead to great civil and economic unrest. When conservatives try to slow down or moderate progress, they are often doing progressives a favor. When they try to grind government to a halt, putting blanket holds on non-controversial nominees and filibustering even bills that they intend to vote for, that's a different story entirely.

 

The issue is the classic debate between whether the Constitution is a 'living document' or a static one. Drew's account is severely biassed, but not inaccurate. The liberals tend to see it as a 'living document', to be re-interpreted by each generation as they see fit, while the conservatives tend to see it as a static thing that needs actual changes to have a change in meaning. This is just a further reflection of the typical division: liberals want change for the sake of change while conservatives want continuity for the sake of continuity.

And Drew, many of the Founding Fathers (especially those from the North) never owned slaves and were vastly against slavery.

 

Because we know how much you enjoy reading about them, Joac.

There is a lot of mythology regarding the Founders and poltical theater to go along with that mythology, as you point out, Drew, including the dress-up charades of the Tea baggers. These frauds misrepresent the Founders, largely for their own political agendas. It used to be the Founders were the source for liberals, mostly regarding individual rights in protesting the conservative institutions and establishment, particularly in the 1950-60s, during the monolithic and rabid, anti-communist regimes and abuses during the McCarthy and Civil Rights era.

At some point, the Founders became the "white, land-holding, slavers" for liberals and were declared irrelevant by them, as you suggest in your post, (probably because they had served their political purposes for liberals and were now starting hold back their own agendas in some regards, like the reverse discrimination practices of some Affirminative Action programs, just as an example).

The conservatives were more than glad to pick-up the discarded Founders and co-opt them, and the Founder's writings into their attacks, not only on poltical opponents, but against those features of government and society they despised the most. But much like the Bible, the quotes and actions that are used to represent "the Founder's intentions," are often taken out of context to support a specific set of agendas. This is not exclusive to just conservatives at this point, since it is common in all stripes of politics and religion to do just that, as I pointed out. The real question in such an argument is "which Founders and which intentions?" Since the Founders disagreed on many points of policy and government, that would be the more difficult to use in supporting an ideological or party-line agenda, rather than by just declaring, "that's what the Founders intended." That would actually require knowing something about the Founders and their writings (like having read them).

It's one thing to have read the Constitution, but quite another to have read the DoI, "Washington's Farewell Address," and Jefferson's "First Inaugural Address," The "Federalist Papers," AND their rebuttals, "The Anti-Federalist Papers," just as a few examples of important Founding documents.

 

That's very true, DMC. And no, I can't name two real statesmen in government today.

Alexander Hamilton* and John Adams come to mind, instantly. Ben Franklin opposed slavery, but did own and he sold slaves in his younger years, but became president of the Anti-Slavery Society in Pennsylvania in his last years.

* Some historians have sought to prove that AH owned slaves as servants at his residence in NYC, but that has never been proven, especially since the records show that his servants were paid, but nevetheless, MAY have still been "indentured" slaves. But as I've said, that has never been proven.

 

Incredibly biased? Was I biased when I suggested that Conservatives were right to try to slow down the process of altering our regulatory and social systems or was I being biased when I suggested that most liberals aren't terribly interested in discussing founder intent where they feel founder intent simply doesn't apply? It is a given that the founders, by and large, would have looked askance at women's suffrage, the abolition of slavery, de-segregation, extending voting rights to the unwashed masses or the de-criminalization of homosexuality. I am not biased in pointing this out, or in pointing out that both liberals and conservatives tend to pick and choose when it comes to discussing founder intent. That is a pretty basic observation that everyone should be able to agree with regardless of partisan affiliation.

If you want "bias," I'll gladly give it to you -- Our founders are dead, and these are different times. Most of the founders owned slaves or supported slavery, Patrick Henry kept his wife locked up in his basement, and sexual deviance was punishable by death. Their worldview is incompatible with that of our modern society. Our founders didn't account for modern medicine, globalization, the green revolution, climate change, the exponential growth of our population and the challenges that brings, airplanes, automobiles, dwindling fossil fuel resources, the hydrogen bomb, nuclear power, and a whole host of other issues that we now face. "What would the founders have done?" might make for a rousing academic debate, but such a debate has little to no real application to our daily life.

I know my history, too, NOG. That some of our founders didn't own slaves is an established fact. The number of true abolitionists, on the other hand, is far fewer than you imply.

 

This:

Was the biassed part. And yes, increadibly biassed.

The last one I'll give you. On the rest, I think you're flat wrong. I know at least that John Adams respected his wife's opinion greatly and, though I don't know his opinion on women voting in general, probably sought her council on every vote he threw. The abolution of slavery was an issue of great debate at the time. That it wasn't accomplished doesn't show that the founding fathers, as a whole, would 'look askance at it'. Likewise with segregation and general voting.

 

How is it biased? The founders were slave-owning, white, land-owning men that fought to grant equal representation to all slave-owning, white, land-owning men. This is not up for debate.

Sure, not every single founder owned slaves, but when speaking of "founder intent," we should be speaking about the majority opinion -- and the majority opinion was pro-slavery, against extending the right to vote to the unwashed masses, and definitely against extending the right to vote to women. How do we know? If a plurality of the founders were against slavery, they would have banned it. If a plurality of the founders wanted to extend the right to vote to all citizens of legal age regardless of race, gender, or financial status, they would have extended the right to vote to all citizens without regard to race, gender, or financial status.

It was no accident that slavery wasn't abolished. It was no accident that only landowning males were granted the right to vote. You don't "forget" to guarantee more than half of the people living in your nation the right to vote. To argue otherwise is to delude yourself. We can't judge "founder intent" by what some random idealized statesman could have or would have said. We don't judge "founder intent" by the exception or the minority opinion. We judge "founder intent" by what the founders ultimately did.

 

Drew - I don't think they would have cared much over the issue of gay marriage. They were largely pragmatic and not especially religious, despite the mythology of the founding of a "Christian nation." Really, they would have been intrigued by the issue, in private. From a public standpoint, yes they would been critical of the notion, because it would have been the respectable public face to have and that mattered greatly in those days.

Regarding slavery - It's pretty even: Adams, Hamilton and Franklin were opposed to slavery and were members of anti-slavery movements. And even though all the Founders complained of slavery, Washingtion, Jefferson and Madison continued to own slaves during their lifetimes. But that's the Pantheon. There were certainly others, such as Aaron Burr, Thomas Paine, John Jay, John Marshall, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams and James Monroe who present a mixed bag regarding the issue.

Regarding democracy - The Founders knew the course they were setting, and they at least suspected that at some point, slaves would be free, women would vote and representative government would be greatly enhanced beyond the scope of where they had begun and what they had set into motion. Even a casual look at their private notes and letters are revealing on this issue. They knew what they were doing. By the election of 1800, which included John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, representative government was already moving forward because defects in the original Constitutional process were already being exposed, largely by the selection process of the Vice President.

But are they still relevant today? I believe they are, and much like DMC, I believe that we need a "good dose" of them at the moment in Washington.

That was because they wanted to craft a unified nation first. Unfortunately, only the Civil War could resolve that issue, and if you read their documents it was something they greatly feared. The Civil War was a terrible, but in the end a great event for liberty in this country. We almost didn't make it, as I'm sure you are well aware.

 

As Chandos pointed out, it wasn't that simple. The Constitution was not written by popular vote. It was written to appease everyone as much as possible. Had it outlawed slavery, as some intended, the southern states wouldn't have signed, and we wouldn't have a union today. Had even one colony refused to join, the union likely wouldn't have survived the War of 1812*. The issue was one of balancing each state's positions and desires with the commonly recognized reality that they had to stand together. What would they be willing to sacrifice to achieve that and what wouldn't they. A plurality had nothing to do with it.

*I say this because I'm fairly certain that our political and economic alliances would have heavily suffered from any visible dissent or disunity.

 

I do. Jefferson, for example, didn't favor de-criminalizing sodomy (which at the time included more than just homosexuality). To his credit, Jefferson did advocate reducing the sentence.

As I'm sure you know, this bill is usually brought up outside of its proper context. At the time this bill was proposed, the punishment for rape or sodomy was death, so Jefferson was actually advocating a reduced sentence.

I nevertheless have a hard time imagining that a man who pushed for such a harsh (by modern standards) criminalization of "sexual deviance" (historically, "sodomy" was used to define any sexual practices beyond male/female missionary position intercourse) and placed it on the same level as rape would favor gay marriage. A modern Jefferson might, but Jefferson didn't live in the modern world. He lived in a time where getting or giving a blow-job was a crime, and getting castrated for it was getting off easy (heh). Sure, we can speculate that Jefferson was merely pragmatically dealing with the political climate in which he lived and that he really did believe that the government shouldn't be legislating what happens in the bedroom, but speculation is all it would be. I have no interest in speculating about what a man who's been dead for 200 years thinks about my sex life.

 

This probably explains how little you know about it. The idea that the missionary position was the only legal form at the time is both archaic and wrong. This may have been true in the strictest puritan communities, but that's it.

More to the point, though, how interested are you in their thoughts on representative government, the power of the courts, jury trials by 'peers', and the importance of guns?

 

*Sigh* You know, NOG, I do my research before I post.

This is just one example -- and this law is still on your books unaltered. It was last challenged in 1975. The challenge failed. In passing down its decision, the court read Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13, citing them as justification for the law. As I'm sure you are aware, Virginia no longer enforces this law in its entirety (through salutary neglect), but in our founders' day, this law was enforced. Most states repealed their sodomy laws in the '70's, but they all had them in one form or another. If you really insist, I'll keep bringing in the exact text of other early sodomy laws to drive home the fact that sodomy enjoyed a much broader definition than it does today -- but I'd prefer that you not waste my time. Please do a little research of your own before you accuse me of making **** up in the future.

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In all honesty? Not very. The founders are dead, and while I think it is important to be informed by their work, I also think it's important to realize that these are different times. The electoral college made sense in 1787. It doesn't make so much sense today, no matter what the founders intended. I think our judicial system should work the way it does not because that is how the founders intended it to work, but because no one has devised a more equitable system yet. If someone develops a better system, we should embrace it instead of using "founder intent" as a straight jacket.

 

Do more:

I don't think any of our founding fathers helped craft the law in 1916.

What you missed is that they were written in the early 1900s, not the late 1700s. Prostitution was even legal in most states in the US until the early 1900s.

So basically you think every generation should all but re-write the Constitution as they see fit? It's the typical liberal position, and it makes a certain sense, but it also leads to problems with continuity. How would you judge a man born in 1920? He's lived his entire life under a different interpretation of the Constitution. Would you potentially imprison him because the Powers that Be essentially changed their minds at a whim? And, furthermore, what if the people don't agree with the change? Not the Legislature, mind you, the people. Should we run our elections primarily based off of who agrees most with our own interpretation of the Constitution?

Of course, as you pointed out before, the best course is the measured line between the two extremes of change at a whim and change that has to be codified and documented. That does require a certain concern for what the Founding Fathers said, though.