Our Founding Fathers Were Wrong

[kentuck]

Up to now, I always assumed that our government had a built-in balance of power and a free press that would always prevent a tyrant or a dictator from taking charge of our country. I no longer believe that. Even during Watergate, I believed that justice would eventually win and the lies and deceit would be exposed.

However, there is no way that our Founders envisioned the present partisan division coupled with the dictatorial tendencies of an Executive Branch. They believed that the other branches would create a balance of power for a powerful or dictatorial Executive. They were shortsighted and wrong. We are now clinging by a thread to keep our Constitution and our democracy in tact.

No doubt, the Founding Fathers thought our Senators and Congress would protect and defend our Constitution at all costs. They assumed that the Congress would impeach Presidents or other officials that ran roughshod over our Constitution and Bill of Rights. They were wrong.

We are now in a situation where our Representatives are divided almost unanimously by Party. They ignore all warnings that were given by people such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin. They irrationally defend their President and their Leaders at all costs. There are no Patriots amongst them. Like lemmings, they march to the sea. And we shall all drown from their blind partisanship.

[Zodiak]

1. We are not divided by party.

That is a false paradigm. 1/4 of both or our respresentatives in both houses voted with the Republicans and have don so on just about every issue for 6 years. Our leadership refused to even put forth conditions where we *could* have won (the 2/3 majority for our bill vs. Bush). This isn't about partisanship, unfortunately.

I think the divide is corporate/grassroots....people vs. money. The Democratic party can be just as fascist as the Republicans when they are needed to be so. When Bush is unpopular, that is when the Democrats are needed to push through his agenda...and right on cue they do it every time.

By us buying this Repubican/Democrat paradigm, we force ourselves into a position of ittle choices in a system with a predetermined outcome.

Either we purge the Democrtic party, or we have another Article 5 convention. I am leaning towards the latter because I believe our government is now irretrievably damaged by monied interests.

[followthemoney]

5. I agree with you, Zodiak

The prime function of the parties is to foster division between the ruled class factions to prevent unification against the ruling minority. While the ruled are at war with each other on the field of a contrived scarcity, the war front of the rulers against the material interests of the ruled is left undefended.

[truedelphi]

10. Explain the Article Five process please. I am all ears! n/t

[Zodiak]

11. Essentially, it is another Consitutional Convention

where the states or representatives of the states at the convention can dissolve the federal government and start anew by Constitutional amndment. Bloodless revolution codified in the Constitution, bascially.

"The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."

We could also go on general strike and bring the whole economic system to a standstill.

But this voting for the same characters every few years gets us a 95% incumbency rate...that is a 95% chance that we will continue on the course we are on no matter who holds office. Our reps collectively do not respond to the people.

[Myrina]

15. You get the cookie!

:applause: Spot on! :applause:

It is now, as it has always been in this country - one needs only read the (real) history of the Industrial Revolution and the Company Politics of the late 1800's/early 1900's to see who has always been in charge and what their vested interest is - regardless of which party's banner their financial support ends up behind.

[indepat]

16. The system is too broken to be fixed: the corruption and venality just run too deep

[Demeter]

2. The Founders Never Imagined That Pioneering Americans Would Sell Out

to evil. Or work against their own best interests to spite "the feminazis", "the blacks", "the Mexicans", "the undeserving poor", all pejorative terms with the snarl and curled lip in full display.

They never envisioned a nation of idiots. In colonial and post-Revolutionary times, idiots didn't live very long. It was social darwinism at its best, unlike present day devolution via corporate meddling.

[underpants]

3. Funny that you mention lemmings

First of al :hi: nice to see a post of yours

The mention of lemmings brings up a point about how easily the media (the news medium) can influence or NOT influence perceived fact

I just stumbled onto this last week

Lemmings don't actually follow blindly over cliffs into the sea. That is the result of a 1958 Disney "documentary" called "White Wilderness". Everyone saw it when they were growing up and it became known fact. It is not the case. It was done with props and camera angles.


http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.htm

Claim: During the filming of the 1958 Disney nature documentary White Wilderness, the film crew induced lemmings into jumping off a cliff and into the sea in order to document their supposedly suicidal behavior.
Status: True.


http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1081903.htm

So lemmings do have their regular wild fluctuations in population - and when the numbers are high, the lemmings do migrate.

The myth of mass lemming suicide began when the Walt Disney movie, Wild Wilderness was released in 1958. It was filmed in Alberta, Canada, far from the sea and not a native home to lemmings. So the filmmakers imported lemmings, by buying them from Inuit children. The migration sequence was filmed by placing the lemmings on a spinning turntable that was covered with snow, and then shooting it from many different angles. The cliff-death-plunge sequence was done by herding the lemmings over a small cliff into a river. It's easy to understand why the filmmakers did this - wild animals are notoriously uncooperative, and a migration-of-doom followed by a cliff-of-death sequence is far more dramatic to show than the lemmings' self-implemented population-density management plan.

[closeupready]

4. They don't care because they are powerful people in the most powerful country in the world.

If power corrupts, then that's what's happened to our government. That's why it's become so toxic, more about exercising power than representing constituents and protecting their interests.

[L1A1Rocker]

6. I tend to agree but. . .

While I do agree that the parties seem to have never been as partisian as they are tody there have actually been worse times. While I cannot quote a source I do recall in my high school poly sci class learning about a couple of fist fights on the house floor (in the days before TV). I also recall that the issue of slavery was very polerizing back in "the day".

What I do whole hartedly agree on is that our current crop of representatives are putting their own self interest ahead of the countries best interests. Look at the discrase of a vote that took place a couple of nights ago in the House.

[Hydra]

7. Our founding fathers assumed too much

They were rich and well educated. They knew how to fight for what they wanted/needed. My hero Jefferson, felt that bloody riots were generally better than conformity.

Fast forward to today. The wealthy have formed a coalition against everyone else, and because their offspring are idiots, they need monopolies and government welfare to continue to be successful. They are the most pathetic creatures on earth, which is why they don't see that happy lower classes are good lower classes.

What we have here is the pathetic highway robber pretending to be the wealthy merchant prince.

One way or another, this can't continue.

[pretzel4gore]

8. not as if it take much to upset the bush applecart!

geez, it was obvious that bush wasn't fit to be president! it was obvious money had corrupted the selection process. it was obvious that criminal actions had been committed in our political history, and the worst enemy was the 'mom's apple pie' bunch who ...well they once outlawed booze, BEER ferchrissakes!
They killed:
Abe Lincoln
JFK
Robert Kennedy
Martin Luther King
Malcolm X
Alan Berg (regan era Liberal radio wunderkind)
etc...
yet no one, not even one voice of reason could point out to the goofy herd that their worst enemy was taking control of the country!
amazing!

[truedelphi]

9. The Founding Fathers never envisioned a situation

Wherein a Senator from California could vote for a war and her husband could almost immediately receive a contract for 27 Million dollars.

Constitution?? Who cares about a Constitution when you as a Senatior are basically self-appointed nobility.

[4_TN_TITANS]

12. And I don't think the founders were 'wrong'

I believe that they never anticipated the dumbing down of and lack of interest by Americans in their government. Fresh off the revolution, everybody back then took a keen interest in what happened with the government.

[BornagainDUer]

13. A much bigger problem is that the human species cannot

grasp the concepts neccessary to correct the situation. After seven fucking years of stating the obvious--Neoliberalism is the illness--people en masse still cannot understand what it is and how it is killing us.

What we need is a socialist revolution in the US. We already have fascism, why not extend the subsidy to the people?

BTW: Poppy Bush and Bill Clinton are/were both members of the Trilateral Commission ("Elite Planning for World Management")

[Uncle Joe]

14. Corporations weren't a major deal in their time,

although Abraham Lincoln would recognize and fear the threat for allowing them to accumulate too much power, to the point of endangering the Republic. I believe this is the root cause of our current instability and dysfunction in our government.

[InternalDialogue]

17. kentuck, it's good to see your name around again.

And to add to what some others have touched on, I offer another belief of the Founders that has fallen by the wayside: The jealous defense of each branch of government over intrusion by another. Beyond partisan politics and the influence of money, our system would be enjoying marginally better health had both Congress and the Judiciary guarded their obligations as established in the Constitution.

I still believe that Democrats can be Democrats, Republicans can be Republicans, but both should realize that even if one of their party members sits in the Oval Office, defending the rights of their governmental branch supercedes party loyalty. Upholding the Constitution over partisan concerns causes a short-term scuffle (and personal difficulty, perhaps) but leaves the republic in better health; subverting the tenets of oversight and checks and balances in favor of party politics leads to short-term accolades from the current resident of the White House, but sparks a malignant cancer in the body republic.

[treestar]

18. They thought each branch would jealously safeguard its own power

The weird, hard-to-understand part is how Congress seems willing to cede to the Executive (obviously the most dangerous of the three branches for the desire to aggregate power).

Even during Clinton's presidency, Congress was passing laws declaring that there should be "no judicial review" of this or that decision by the executive.

That gives the Executive carte blanche to interpret black as white and white as black at its prerogative.

One can only hope the judiciary does not agree when the inevitable cases are brought questioning this.

In the name of expediency everyone is willing to hand the executive unreviewable power. Maybe we do have to defend ourselves without taking the time for Congress' deliberations, but that could be limited to a military strategy. It doesn't have to give the executive the power to attack other countries.

[Karenina]

19. Kentuck ist in da Haus!!!

:woohoo::woohoo::woohoo::woohoo::woohoo::woohoo: