Who Killed the Constitution?

[Peguy]

Who Killed the Constitution?
by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.


Today is the official release date for Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush (Random House/Crown Forum), the book I wrote with Kevin Gutzman, the New York Times bestselling author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution.

In a sense, our book states the obvious: the United States government today is restrained not by the Constitution but simply by a sense of what it can get away with.

But ours is not the standard right-wing lament about the emasculation of the Constitution at the hands of liberal judges, though such judges receive in our pages none of the superstitious reverence Americans are taught to have for the judiciary. (Mencken once described a judge as merely a law student who graded his own examination papers.) To the contrary, we suggest that all three branches of the federal government, either separately or in collusion, have been responsible for turning the Constitution into just a museum piece, and that conservatives and liberals alike have much to answer for as well.

To hear the Left tell it, the Bush administration is a strange aberration in our history. But bad as the Bush administration is, it is not an aberration, and most of its deformations of the Constitution enjoy bipartisan support. The Democrats have made and will doubtless continue to make equally bold claims for presidential war powers, and Bill Clinton sought measures similar to the Patriot Act in the 1990s.

As I wrote in last year’s 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask, "The philosophy of an activist, vigorous executive possessing inherent powers that override congressional prerogative is not a recent development at all, but has been an integral part of the thinking of most of the presidents our historians teach us to admire. Demonizing only one president, as the left is by and large still doing in 2008, is far too timid. So many others merit the same treatment."

We show that Harry Truman’s seizure of the steel mills in 1952, for which the Supreme Court rebuked him (though not as sweepingly as the standard account suggests), was based on the same philosophy of the presidency that nearly all twentieth-century presidents held, and was likewise no aberration at all.

Woodrow Wilson is another good example, for more reasons than we can chronicle in this book. As Bill Kauffman puts it, Wilson makes George W. Bush look like a pro bono lawyer for the ACLU. In tandem with draconian penalties for the most harmless statements about the Great War, voluntary enforcement agencies with names like the Sedition Slammers, the Terrible Threateners, and the Boy Spies of America sprang up across the country. Eugene V. Debs made the best of his situation, collecting a million votes for president in the 1920 election while in prison for giving a speech. (A popular campaign button read, "For President: Convict No. 9653.") All three branches of government heartily approved.

Read the rest here:
Who Killed the Constitution? by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

[Magic Poriferan]

Professor Plum, in the library, with the revolver!

[Lateralus]

How about this?

http://mises.org/multimedia/mp3/MU2008/MC_Woods.mp3

[ajblaise]

I think exposure and mild fabric disintegration is what is damaging it most.

[Oberon]

Imagine the common man in the interrogation room.

The Democrats are the good cop.
The Republicans are the bad cop.
They share a common goal.
Looking out for you ain't it.

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Imagine the common man in the interrogation room.

The Democrats are the good cop.
The Republicans are the bad cop.
They share a common goal.
Looking out for you ain't it.

I've heard this analogy plenty of times, but it doesn't make sense. The idea of good cop/bad cop is that the bad cop is there to make you trust the good cop. If this is true then why do we keep electing Republican presidents. Politics is somehow a reverse good cop/bad cop where people are scared of the good cop and want to trust the bad cop.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by The_Liquid_Laser

I've heard this analogy plenty of times, but it doesn't make sense. The idea of good cop/bad cop is that the bad cop is there to make you trust the good cop. If this is true then why do we keep electing Republican presidents. Politics is somehow a reverse good cop/bad cop where people are scared of the good cop and want to trust the bad cop.

The roles reverse depending on whether one is liberal or conservative.

[pure_mercury]

Originally Posted by The_Liquid_Laser

I've heard this analogy plenty of times, but it doesn't make sense. The idea of good cop/bad cop is that the bad cop is there to make you trust the good cop. If this is true then why do we keep electing Republican presidents. Politics is somehow a reverse good cop/bad cop where people are scared of the good cop and want to trust the bad cop.

The analogy is inherently flawed. Neither party is trustworthy, and they are set up to undermine each other in popularity and in influence, but they need the Us vs. Them duality to keep their system in place.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by pure_mercury

The analogy is inherently flawed. Neither party is trustworthy, and they are set up to undermine each other in popularity and in influence, but they need the Us vs. Them duality to keep their system in place.

Yes, the analogy is probably flawed, but I don't see anything in your post that contradicts it...

From the point of view of the common man in the chair, the good cop isn't truly trustworthy, though he's working very hard to appear so. This corresponds to our current political environment quite nicely IMHO.

It is a limited analogy. Let's not ask too much of it.

[Prototype]

Is it possible that the constitution killed itself?

I mean, you can't really pin it on a single moronic, stupid, foolish, senseless, brainless, mindless, idiotic, imbecile, insane, lunatic, asinine, ridiculous, ludicrous, absurd, preposterous, silly, inane, witless, half-baked, empty-headed, unintelligent, slow-witted, weak-minded; informal crazy, dumb, brain-dead, cretinous, imbecilic, doltish, thick, thickheaded, birdbrained, pea-brained, dopey, dim, dimwitted, halfwitted, fat-headed, blockheaded, boneheaded, daft, dumb-ass person, you need millions of them to mess things up... Right?