RELIGION or POLITICS ??? Platform for a Constitutional Government.

Greetings good and intelligent people --  you have to be to enjoy my blog, but in any case today I am starting on the subject of the Constitution which is brought to you from the publication of Hillsdale College's monthly newsletter called IMPRIMIS, by Larry P. Arnn, President of Hillsdale.

Today, they read the Constitution to the Congress in Washington, but left out the 18th Amendment. Just Why, I don't know, but there must have been a reason, so why don't you check it out for yourself and see what the Amendment is about, then go figure. OK?


This was adapted rom remarks delivered on Sept. 17, 2010 at the dedication of Hilldale College's, Allan P. Kiby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washingto D.C., and the reason for launching the Center has to do with the times in which we live, and it has to do with the purposes of Hillsdale College. 

     The times are pretty easy to estimate.   I'll must mention two things about them that are astonishing and fearful.The first is that we have managed, in about the last 30 years of relative peace and umprededented prosperity, to pile up a debt that rivals the one we piled up while winning the Second World War, the most disastrous and largest war in human history.   And this debt is of a different character.   The Second World War was going to end at some point, and we were either going to win and go back to living and working and pay off the debt -- which is what happened -- or else we were going to lose and the the debt would never be paid.   In contrast, our debt today has become the ordinary way our government and our country operate.   As my father, a schoolteacher in Arkansas and a wise man, used to say, it is the kind of debt that means it really doesn't matter how rich we've become, because we can waste money faster. 

     The second sign of the times that I'll mention is this:  We have now a figure in the American government called the regulatory czar.  Not only is it shameful and wrong for anybody in America to let himself be called that, he takes the title seriously.   Indeed, he writes that some people should be allowed to regulate speech rights -- to redistribute them, much as the government redistributes wealth -- in the name of what he and his politial allies regard as fairness.   His is a far different kind of argument about speech than the one our Founders made, which was that speech is an individual right.   His argument not only opposes the prohibition the founders placed in the First Amenement, which says that "Congress shall make no law....abridging the freedom of speech."    It rejects the understanding of human nature that grounds the very idea of constitutonalism.    James Madison summarized that understanding when he wrote in Federalist 51 that because men are not angels, they need government, but that government must be controlled and limited for the same reason.  (is that beautiful or what?)

Because those in our governmment are men rather than angels, we must not allow them the kind of power that this regulatory czar desires and claims. (And so is this, YES).

There needs to be an argument about whether Madison and the founders are right or this bureaucratic czar and his allies are right with regard to civil liberties, just as there needs to be an argument about whether our nation should keep piling up unsustainable debt.    There is going to be an argument about these and other big questions in this city in coming years, and the Kirby Center will have a hand in that argument.


This is it for today and will be back soon again with Part ll. Thanks for stopping by, and may I suggest in closing, READ THE LAST 3 PARAGRAPHS AGAIN.      Cheers    CJ