An Email from a reader/listener in reference to a recent episode of Constitution Study Radio (second response):
Doug,
You did not hear what I said. There were alot of things in the beginning that are still here and plus some. We ain't studying those things. We can, but it is the Constitution you are teaching. I am listening in to learn what the ink on the paper in the Constitution says. Communism is out there but I can not find it in the Constitution. So it should not be on my mind as apart of thinking of what it says, unless it's an exercise of comparison. People tend to draw conclusions on what is said and not on what is read. This is why we have made major life decisions at every level on things like "electoral college" and "separation of church and state" and it's hard to tell people this was information that is NOT in the Constitution once they hear it. But they were turning points in our experience and direction. These things gets in people's soul and it is real to them.
Please re-read what I said. Read Article 1 section 5 without party or parties and the application of what it says can be done? How would it be if the room was not made up of 2 teams with different goals competing, but rather a room full of members voting according to the rules laid out. What would it look like if it was not about 2 teams and making deals? I don't know because we have not seen it because it is not our experience.And we have to not let out experience determine the rules. Amnesty is a great example of experience being the rule. The result is no respect for the rule. Rules is what put purpose in it.
I hope you see this as a challenge and not critizism in the negative sense?
My response:
XXXXXX,
What is in the Constitution is not just what was inked, but what was debated during those four months. The reasons for what was inked include guarding against things like communal systems (a.k.a. Communism). The reason for making it difficult to do things, for the wheels of Congress to move slowly, or at least one of the reasons, was the possibility of tyranny, the possibility of big government political ideas seeking to bring down our system, the very existence of a school of thought that supported centralized government as we see being perpetuated by the Democrats. The ink is one thing, but understanding what they meant in the context of the times is another. And there was two teams competing. Read more about Alexander Hamilton, and this becomes abundantly clear. Also, read Madison's notes on the Constitutional Convention so that the debates are more clear to you.
And yes, the Founders preferred no parties, preferred that candidates were elected based on their individual platform. That is what George Washington was all about. . . and he is the only President to belong to no party. What the Founders hoped for, and the reality of the presence of two schools of political thought, unfortunately, are two different things - and they weren't so naive to believe that a two-party system would not emerge and become the crux of the problems. . . hence the reason for many of the safeguards they put into place.
Douglas V. Gibbs
www.politicalpistachio.com
www.temeculaconstitutionclass.blogspot.com
Added note: There were two teams making deals, with a third team in the corner. The teams making deals were the anti-federalists and the federalists, with Hamilton's big government monarchists paying close attention.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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