7 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2018
    1. He desires to preserve the Government, that it may be administered for all as it was administered by the men who made it. Loyal citizens everywhere have the right to claim this of their government, and the government has no right to withhold or neglect it.

      Constitution is theirs despite not wanting it. I think we have a lot of conflict still in this realm. Some don't see the Constitution as their protection so unnecessary in the 14th, for example, but essential in the 2nd Amendment.

    1. “The necessary consequence of taking the sense of the community by the concurrent majority is, as has been explained, to give to each interest or portion of the community a negative on the others. It is this mutual negative among its various conflicting interests, which invests each with the power of protecting itself — and places the rights and safety of each, where only they can be securely placed, under its own guardianship. Without this there can be no systematic, peaceful, or effective resistance to the natural tendency of each to come into conflict with the others: and without this there can be no constitution. It is this negative power — the power of preventing or arresting the action of the government — be it called by what term it may — veto, interposition, nullification, check, or balance of power — which, in fact, forms the constitution.

      Captain Sully really spoke eloquently on this in his recent interview with Lawrence O'Donnell.<br> Description I am a daily reader of the WP and didn't see the October 29 op ed. How can "we the people" communicate on a platform to be heard in our current model of filter bubbles?

    2. It is democratic, in contradistinction to aristocracy and monarchy. It excludes classes, orders, and all artificial distinctions.

      When was it last a democracy? When did the oligarchy take hold?

  2. Aug 2018
    1. “in case of an insurrection in any State against the government thereof, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, on application of the legislature of such State or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened), to call forth such number of the militia of any other State or States, as may be applied for, as he may judge sufficient to sufficient to suppress such insurrection.”

      This is scary.

    1. 3. We may consolidate the states as to certain national objects, and leave them severally distinct independent republics, as to internal police generally. Let the general government consist of an executive, a judiciary, and balanced legislature, and its powers extend exclusively to all foreign concerns, causes arising on the seas to commerce, imports, armies, navies, Indian affairs, peace and war, and to a few internal concerns of the community; to the coin, post-offices, weights and measures, a general plan for the militia, to naturalization, and, perhaps to bankruptcies, leaving the internal police of the community, in other respects, exclusively to the state governments; as the administration of justice in all causes arising internally, the laying and collecting of internal taxes, and the forming of the militia according to a general plan prescribed. In this case there would be a compleat consolidation, quoad certain objects only.

      His chosen plan.

    1. he efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients.

      Has simply knowing changed anything?