Yes. I was assuming you meant something far different and a bit darker.

Why did you remove the middle class from the common good? the idea that tax dollars should go for services they need is still broadly the same principle--the belief that public funds should be used to enhance and stabilize the lives of citizens. Debating where we spend our money and how wisely we spend it is a conversation worth having. I'm not going to argue that the middle class doesn't get screwed by our increasingly oligarchic regime. Of course they do. Unfortunately the solution to that problem in many cases is not no government, but better government.

The problem is that government, in many ways, is not currently working effectively for many of our working and middle class citizens. But the problem is not the existence of law and legislation, as much as it is the existence of bad law and legislation. I'm arguing against the former position that invalidates a positive role for democratic government in people's lives, especially in terms of providing the basic security that lets us develop human capital and preserve a dynamic society.

And when the conversation gets bogged down over questions of whether or not government can do something we don't have the conversation about how we can do it well.

well now i'm curious...

Have you ever read the Federalist Papers? It's essentially 500 pages of Hamilton explaining how he doesn't want a king. Again, you're a professor being extremely disingenuous...

It's even worth continuing this debate with you either attempting to rewrite history, thinking I don't know anything about history, or pretending that history didn't exist?

What the fuck? Have you too not read the Federalist papers? To argue that Federalist Hamilton was consistent with Treasury Secretary Hamilton is absurd to nth degree. The two men have nothing in common with one another.

No, my problem is with authoritarianism. That is what makes this type of top down governance Draconian.

Not to mention that Hamilton was a d-bag. Madison and Burr totally agree with me.

Aren't there many types of authoritarianism in America that you have no problem with, though? What makes this one different?

Alexander Hamilton does not have a mystical conversion experience in between the federalists and become sec. of treasury. The federalist papers are propaganda (certainly the ones he writes). They are written to try and convince people who were worried about the expansion of federal power that would be ushered in by the Constitution that it isn't really going to happen. He is often evasive or slightly disingenuous. Don't reify the stuff you read.

most of the founders who became federalists were not necessarily afraid of power (although they were to a degree) as much as they were afraid of democracy and what the mass might do with that power.

So under what possible set of circumstances will you consent to laws that you don't like?

regardless of all the rest of this stuff, however, I don't think we should be bound to the founder's interpretation of this stuff even if a definitive one did exist.


this is probably one of the reasons why I didn't go to law school.

If the federal judiciary is anything to go by, its not like law school promotes anything near a strict constructionist viewpoint. Its quite the opposite that seems predominant in all levels of the federal government, judiciary or otherwise. I doubt law school would have challenged any of your views on the matter.

perhaps not. All my lawyer friends get really pissed off by my view on this, though

List one.



Under what possible set of circumstances will I consent to laws I don't like? When the circumstance involves me being incarcerated for not consenting to the law. It's not a matter of me not liking a law. It's a matter of unjust law.



Of course he didn't. He was a political opportunist. In order to create his American King he first had to secede from the yoke of England. Once the yoke of England was shed the federalists of the north were free to start pursuing their own centralized government and subjugate the agrarian south. The federalists were federalists because it allowed government to favor their states and their economic interests. Sound familiar?



Don't reify? LOL! You, the perfesser, just said that the federalist papers are propaganda. They are an incomparable exposition of the Constitution, a classic in political science unsurpassed in both breadth and depth by the product of any later American writer.



No. Federalists like Hamilton were federalists because it was the best way to leverage power in their favor and their constituents favor. Sound familiar?



Perhaps we shouldn't be bound by the founders interpretation of this stuff. That's why they left us an amendment process that wouldn't fall prey to tyranny of the majority. Ya know, like paying off congressmen and women, using a "Slaughter Solution" to narrowly push through a massive piece of legislation that impacts all of our lives that has widely unpopular with the people. Stuff like the AHA is what the amendment process was meant for. The general welfare clause was not. Because, as we know reading our federalist papers, the powers of the federal government are clear and defined, and the powers left to the states are indefinite.

Where I live, Montgomery County, Maryland, a significant portion of our state tax revenue goes to Baltimore city. The most recent tax increase passed by our governor Martin O'Malley (remember this name, he has White house aspirations) while derive 40% of it's revenue from MoCo while only 4.2% will come from Baltimore City, with nearly half of the revenue from the tax going to projects around the city. The question people are here are asking more and more is why should we suffer staffing cuts in our schools (possibly the best public school system in North America) and safety programs to fund the irresponsible leadership in Baltimore? The reason I made the separation is that people in the middle class are starting to make that separation and is that there is a tipping point at which the people whose income is being redistributed begin to feel the impacts of that retribution in their daily lives, and they don't much care for it. The responses will vary from mindless overreaction (the Tea Party) to increases in racism (see the comments section of any online article about a crime with a black perp) to internalized resentment, but it's all there, and these people in these uncertain economic times increasingly do not view themselves as being part of that 'common' in the 'common good'.

Now you say 'better government', but is that anything other than a textbook theory? We already have a huge, young, high educated, and diverse government working for us with what is essentially unlimited funds and our standard of living is getting worse along with a drop in the marginal effectiveness of each tax dollar spent.

I'm generalizing a bit here, but Hamilton favored national interests, not parochial state ones. And our amendment process is profoundly ill suited for actual governing. We basically still have a country because our leaders, throughout much of history, have had the good sense, in times of crisis, to ignore people like you

Don't reify? LOL! You, the perfesser, just said that the federalist papers are propaganda. They are an incomparable exposition of the Constitution, a classic in political science unsurpassed in both breadth and depth by the product of any later American writer.

I like the federalist papers as much as the next guy, and quite a few of them are brilliant and insightful looks into the logic of the Constitution. But, my friend, they were as much propoganda as anything Thomas Paine ever wrote. Something can be intelligent while still trying to affect a particular political outcome. But you are abstracting what was written out of what was quite possibly the single most politicized moment in American history.

Yeah, there's a reason for that... It's that whole tyranny of the majority we're talking about. 51% want healthcare so let's just force it down the throats of everyone else!



This is ridiculous. We would be much better off with a strict constructionist viewpoint with strong state's rights and a weak federal government. You are falling into the trap of an "is ought" fallacy. We have an overbearing, over-reaching, way too powerful federal government, and we have a continental nation thanks to the leaders that gave it to us. so that''s the way it should be. Sorry, but this is really an ignorant position. We'd all be more content, and have a far more unified nation if we weren't essentially dictated to from 10 square miles along the Potomac River.

You can no less justify them as propaganda than you could the Second Treatise of Government or Politics. The vast majority of our current population could not follow the Federalist Papers, Common Sense, or The Rights of Man. Robert Reich is propaganda. Paul Krugman is propaganda. Joseph Stiglitz is propaganda. Glenn Beck is propaganda. Reducing seminal works of politics and philosophy down to propaganda simply because it doesn't acquiesce to your worldview is exceptionally telling. You belong in academia. Simply because you try to affect a particular outcome DOES NOT mean that you are writing propaganda. To this end there isn't a political or philosophical piece of writing that is propaganda. To that end, the term propaganda as a derogatory term means nothing.

I am not abstracting what is written. YOU are the one that is abstracting what is written. Remember, you're the one muddying the waters in an attempt to justify our current form of government in its reference to its founding.

I always find it interesting that in all the debate about what the founders really meant when they said or wrote X, this simple point is often lost. Pay attention to what people do, not what they say. It really begs an interesting question: why would they have created such an unwieldy process to change the document if, as some claim, they in fact wanted it to be changed to reflect contemporaneous political necessities?

For better or worse, this describes 99% of the stip account's N&D posts.

Why are you less concerned with the consequences of the particular political outcomes you favor than you are where those outcomes reside in the context of modern political thought? That is, why is it more important to you that we have, say, a minimum wage than it is that we actually analyze the relevant tradeoffs and consequences it introduces for the constituencies it affects (both directly and indirectly)? Why is, say, the minimum wage an end in and of itself? And why are means more important to you than ends, objectives more important than results?

Yup. The frustrating thing is that it doesn't matter who you read. Jefferson, Madison, Henry, Mason, John Taylor of Caroline, Adams, Jay, all acknowledged that they wanted the constitution to have some flexibility to mitigate the chances of revolution, but all ALSO acknowledged that it was imperative to the efficacy of our union of states as a Republic to have a rigorous amendment process to avoid fickle political decisions at the federal level and imposition of tyranny of the majority.

It's like a I said earlier in the thread. The constitution is "flexible" to people like Stip simply because a "flexible" constitution is convenient to what they're trying to achieve/impose.