The American Creed: Our Founding Fathers:

[Crafty_Dog]

And an even more important preamble and part of the Constitution that pertains more to us today: The preamble to the Bill of Rights. (Please note the second paragraph that 'explicitly' states the reason these rights are being added to the Constitution before final ratification by the States.

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Congress of the United States
begun and held at the City of New-York, on
Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

[Crafty_Dog]

"The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21, 1787



9508

[Crafty_Dog]

"The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained." --George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

[Crafty_Dog]

Catching up!

"[W]e still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute." --Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

"With those who wish to think amiss of me, I have learned to be perfectly indifferent; but where I know a mind to be ingenuous, and to need only truth to set it to rights, I cannot be passive." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Abigail Adams, 1804

"How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?" --James Madison (1788)

[Crafty_Dog]

"Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech." --Benjamin Franklin, writing as Silence Dogood, No. 8, 1722

[Crafty_Dog]

"I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Noah Worcester, 1817

[Crafty_Dog]

"f industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out." --James Madison, speech to Congress, 1789

[Crafty_Dog]

http://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/current?hsCtaTracking=91f6f006-b1e0-48e4-92c9-ee54f541ec40|a1273ad3-9cbf-4db5-b513-672aecee09f2&utm_campaign=Imprimis&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-81maHb_Aa2ZclxHsMWFMpxU-CyhixURUFnK94JSArKjqddCZZ39lBZ355x425jIxuY5lH2TwioBk9f_C3u8LY1Wuv7Ow&utm_content=14325273&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=14325273

A good starting point for discussing this extremely important issue, but IMHO quite lacking in that it fails to discuss the SCOTUS jurisprudence justifying bureaucratic action, be it quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial.

[Crafty_Dog]

"The people of the U.S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching agst every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings." --James Madison, Detached Memoranda, 1823

[Crafty_Dog]

There is not in the whole science of politics a more solid or a more important maxim than this -- that of all governments, those are the best, which, by the natural effect of their constitutions, are frequently renewed or drawn back to their first principles." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

[Crafty_Dog]

"No compact among men ... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other." --George Washington, draft of first Inaugural Address, 1789

[Crafty_Dog]

"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous... In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, 1823

[Crafty_Dog]

"In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1, 1787

[Crafty_Dog]

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Smith, 1822

[Crafty_Dog]

"Let us by wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties." --James Monroe, First Inaugural Address, 1817

[DougMacG]

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.      - John Calvin Maxwell

[Crafty_Dog]

"When we say, that all men are equal; we mean not to apply this equality to their virtues, their talents, their dispositions, or their acquirements." --James Wilson, Man as a Member of Society, 1791

[Crafty_Dog]

"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Melish, 1813

[Crafty_Dog]

"Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution." --James Madison, Federalist No. 39, 1788

[Crafty_Dog]

"[In a democracy] a common passion or interest will, in almost every case , be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

[Crafty_Dog]

"It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it." --James Madison, Federalist No. 48, 1788

[DougMacG]

Please give The Gipper 5 minutes of your time this election season:

http://radixnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Reagan-Farewell-Address.mp4?_=1

http://radixnews.com/2014/11/02/ronald-reagan-meant-change-nation-instead-changed-world/

[Crafty_Dog]

Doug:

I need those words today.  Thank you.

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"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

[Crafty_Dog]

"On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves." --Joseph Warren, Boston Massacre Oration, 1775

[Crafty_Dog]

"A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power." --John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

[Crafty_Dog]

"The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII, 1781

[Crafty_Dog]

"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 15, 1787

[Crafty_Dog]

"There is in the nature of sovereign power an impatience of control, that disposes those who are invested with the exercise of it, to look with an evil eye upon all external attempts to restrain or direct its operations." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 15, 1787

[Crafty_Dog]

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." --Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, 1775

[Crafty_Dog]

"[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established ... are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge William Johnson, 1823

[Crafty_Dog]

"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt." --Samuel Adams, essay in The Public Advertiser, 1749

[DougMacG]

William Bradford, Governor of the Plymouth Colony, reports that, at that time, he and his advisers considered “how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery.” And “after much debate of things,” he then adds, they chose to abandon communal property, deciding that “they should set corn every man for his own particular” and assign “to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end.”

The results, he tells us, were gratifying in the extreme, “for it made all hands very industrious” and “much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Even “the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

Moreover, he observes, “the experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years . . . amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times . . . that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing.” In practice, America’s first socialist experiment “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”

Professor Paul Rahe, writing at Powerline, 2009
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/11/americas-first-socialist-republic-3.php

[Crafty_Dog]

"How much more do they deserve our reverence and praise, whose lives are devoted to the formation of institutions, which, when they and their children are mingled in the common dust, may continue to cherish the principles and the practice of liberty in perpetual freshness and vigor." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833 

[Crafty_Dog]

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823

[DougMacG]

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823


This is why I don't hold the views of the experts much higher than our views on important Supreme Court cases.  For one thing, the experts do not always get it right.  Often they attempt to use "metaphysical subtleties" to arrive at contorted opinions of the law or constitution.  Tests like strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, rational basis, and adhering to precedent are useful to a point.  Also valid is for a citizen to read the facts, law, article or amendment in question and apply common sense to it.

[Crafty_Dog]

"The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our people, in a great measure, than they have it now, they may change their rulers, and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty." --John Adams, letter to Zabdiel Adams, 1776

[Crafty_Dog]

"To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity would be to calculate on the weaker springs of human character." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 34, 1788

[Crafty_Dog]

"[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore ... never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge William Johnson, 1823

[Crafty_Dog]

The prescience of our Founding Fathers was truly extraordinary.

"The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I think it would be well to provide in our constitutions that there shall always be a twelve-month between the ingross-ing a bill & passing it: that it should then be offered to its passage without changing a word: and that if circumstances should be thought to require a speedier passage, it should take two thirds of both houses instead of a bare majority." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787

[Crafty_Dog]

"It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. After discriminating, therefore, in theory, the several classes of power, as they may in their nature be legislative, executive, or judiciary, the next and most difficult task is to provide some practical security for each, against the invasion of the others." --James Madison, Federalist No. 48, 1788

[Crafty_Dog]

"It behooves you, therefore, to think and act for yourself and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail." --Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1775

[Crafty_Dog]

"It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Query 19, 1781

[Crafty_Dog]

"If this spirit shall ever be so far debased, as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty." --James Madison, Federalist 57, 1788

[Crafty_Dog]

"To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of the declamations and by the bitterness of their invectives." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1, 1787

[Crafty_Dog]

"Power in any form ... when directed only by human wisdom and benevolence is dangerous." --John Adams, An Attempt to Land a Bishop in America, 1769

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs

[Crafty_Dog]

"We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power." --Thomas Paine, Serious Address to the People of Philadelphia, 1778

[Crafty_Dog]

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803

[Crafty_Dog]

"Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency." --James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

[Crafty_Dog]

"Besides, to lay and collect internal taxes in this extensive country must require a great number of congressional ordinances, immediately operation upon the body of the people; these must continually interfere with the state laws and thereby produce disorder and general dissatisfaction till the one system of laws or the other, operating upon the same subjects, shall be abolished." --Federal Farmer, Antifederalist Letter, 1787