#founding principles

This Day in History: Jefferson on Federalism

On this day in 1816, Thomas Jefferson writes a letter. He speaks of the need to keep power separated between the national and state governments. Dividing power in this manner, Jefferson notes, protects liberty.

Hmm.  We increasingly pretend that our Constitution does not demand such a separation of powers. We pretend that one-size-fits-all solutions can be created for the whole country. Perhaps the current state of things is unsurprising?

Jefferson’s full quote is here:

Salena Zito, a Washington Examiner columnist and co-author of “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics,” said the most important thing that she’s learned through her reporting is that “what happened in 2016, Donald Trump did not cause. He is the result of it.”

Party leaders, the media, and America’s elite entirely missed the warning signs that a huge electoral shakeup was coming.

...“The net effect of this relentless identitarian propaganda is to encourage passive resignation in the American people,” Azerrad said. “The goal is to get us to believe that identity politics is the engine that drives history with a capital ‘H,’ and that we must all submit to it.”

“To put it simply, identity politics is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of a nation,” Azerrad said

...Hazony defined “national conservatives” as people who are “united in rejecting the idea of universal liberal empire,” and who reject the lens that views the world in terms of an economics of individualism, where political problems are reduced to economic theory.

The real political world, according to Hazony, is not simply comprised of atomized “free-choosing individuals.”

...To defeat this progressivism, America needs not just a tribal or national identity, but a cultural one.

“The American creed is the capstone of American identity, but it requires a culture to sustain it,” Kesler concluded. “And our task as national conservatives—nationalist conservatives—is to recognize the indispensability of the creed but also the absolute necessity of a hospitable culture, which combined with political wisdom can help shape a people to live up to its own principles.”

this is playing with a lot of fire, but there is no choice. I looks they are tilting away from the individual, something i have begrudgingly accepted, to a Christian formulation of culture, imposed by ????. 

They think they have all the big picture answers. At the moment maybe they have enough of them. In a decade? In a century? They seem to be building something ripe for abuse. If you build a system or a philosophy that assumes you have the answers it is to rigid to survive. If these things played out over multiple decades as they have done, they could adjust as they went. I doubt they would. ( the voice of Tucker telling a atheist the he was truly sorry for her still screams in my head)  What worked in the past will work in the future is the highest form of ignorance and believing God is at your side while doing so, well....

Asking Congress to promote science and literature, he said, "Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness...The welfare of our country is the great object to which our cares and efforts ought to be directed, and I shall derive great satisfaction from a cooperation with you in the pleasing though arduous task of insuring to our fellow citizens the blessings which they have a right to expect from a free, efficient, and equal government."

Happy Constitution Day!

On this day in 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention sign the Constitution. Perhaps you’ve heard what Benjamin Franklin did immediately afterwards?

He’d been spotted by a Philadelphia matron as he emerged from that meeting. She was curious. What had delegates been doing behind closed doors? “Doctor,” she reportedly called out, “what have we got, a Republic or a Monarchy?” Franklin’s response was brief: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

The tale is simple, yet Franklin is often misquoted. Some think Franklin responded: “A democracy, if you can keep it.”

Modern Americans easily believe this misquote because the foundations of our Constitution are not taught—and thus are not understood. But Franklin and other Founders knew better.