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Obama blames Founding Fathers

Dochter said:
Granted it has been awhile since I read through all the Federalist Papers but you have a very strong view that seems more ideologically than historically driven. Perhaps you can provide some support for our assertion?
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That is the history. Not an ideological position. It's the reason the federal government's powers are strictly enumerated and everything else is the domain of the states. I suppose saying enumerated powers seems more neutral than limited powers but that's a semantics argument for sure.

Sure, the fed's power has grown as more matters become interstate matters but the original goal was that the states would operate as little fiefdoms with a federal government that only really applied when the need for central authority was essential (such as interstate conflicts, commerce, national treaties, wars, etc).

Of course, you have to juxtapose the strictly enumerated powers of the federal government against the unlimited powers of the states. Even many of the supposedly national programs that the federal government runs are only allowable when the states chose to participate (usually by accepting federal funds) or that the states choose to limit themselves with by voting in amendments to the Constitution.

http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/2/109.abstract
http://www.pbs.org/tpt/constitution-usa-peter-sagal/federalism/enumerated-powers/

I don't know what links people are willing to accept as unbiased these days so these are just simple presentations of the general understanding that enumerated powers were enacted to limit Congress's power.
 
strangejosh said:
Or it just proves that it's getting worse and not better?

Eventually this thing is going to break down. It's just a matter of when.
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Okay...uhm...what?

Everything breaks down so we'll draw unfounded conclusions from minimal data points. I'm pretty sure I don't agree.

You could just as easily say that the 112th and 113th were temporary responses to combination of Obama's election (and boost in unspoken racial tensions it provoked) and the amped up patriotism following 9/11.

Put another way, it's way to early to tell.
 
panamaican said:
That is the history. Not an ideological position. It's the reason the federal government's powers are strictly enumerated and everything else is the domain of the states. I suppose saying enumerated powers seems more neutral than limited powers but that's a semantics argument for sure.

Sure, the fed's power has grown as more matters become interstate matters but the original goal was that the states would operate as little fiefdoms with a federal government that only really applied when the need for central authority was essential (such as interstate conflicts, commerce, national treaties, wars, etc).
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Okay, what you wrote read to me as stronger than just pointing to the enumerated powers.
Nonetheless I think that's a bit myopic though and doesn't really fit in with other arguments made by, for example, Madison as well.

Unfortunately I don't have access to the Sorenson paper even though I'm in my office but thanks. It is worth noting that Sorenson's conclusion, based solely on the abstract, isn't necessarily the consensus of constitutional scholars.
 
Cold Front said:
Yeah, but the point is whether it's going to break down because it's a presidential system. I highly doubt parliamentarianism will save it.
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i'm not sure what the best system is, but in my experience and opinion, it's definitely not ours here in the good 'ol US of A.
 
Dochter said:
Okay, what you wrote read to me as stronger than just pointing to the enumerated powers.
Nonetheless I think that's a bit myopic though and doesn't really fit in with other arguments made by, for example, Madison as well.

Unfortunately I don't have access to the Sorenson paper even though I'm in my office but thanks. It is worth noting that Sorenson's conclusion, based solely on the abstract, isn't necessarily the consensus of constitutional scholars.
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If you're saying that some people wanted a strong, central government...sure, that's true.

But the end result was a document that specified the the federal government's authority and limited it's future authority except by state decree.
 
Santi Claus said:
Because the EU isn't a country. Neither is Texas. Hope this clears things up for you.
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Is that the best you got? In terms of total population and land mass, the US is closer to the EU as a whole than any of it's individual countries. If you're going to justify it as being a shitty analogy, you ought to do better than complaining about semantics.
 
not enough, my mistake

basically just this paragraph, the rest just confused the issue

In 1787, the Founders attempted to solve the problem by writing a Constitution that called the federal government into existence. The result was historically significant: The Constitution made it clear that this government, unlike others in history, would not be one of unlimited powers. Instead, by the express terms of the Constitution itself, the federal government would be one of limited, enumerated powers.
_________________________________________________________________________

In the Tenth Amendment, the Constitution also recognizes the powers of the state governments. Traditionally, these included the
 
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panamaican said:
But the end result was a document that specified the the federal government's authority and limited it's future authority except by state decree.
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Sure. Except that you were posting that our system of government was intended to impede the passage of legislation.
 
Dochter said:
Sure. Except that you were posting that our system of government was intended to impede the passage of legislation.
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No, that's not what I wrote.

I said it was designed to limit governance (since it specifically limits the government's powers) and that some people might call that "impeding" governance (since limited powers hinder/impede the ability of the government to do things). But impeding/limiting governance is far broader than simply impeding law-making.

I also said it was not designed to facilitate law-making. However, there's a huge difference between impeding law-making and simply not facilitating it.

Parliamentary systems facilitate law-making by making it easier for the majority party to have enough votes to accomplish their goals. Our system makes no attempt to provide the majority party with the means to accomplish anything. It does not facilitate law-making, whether you see that as impeding it or not, is a matter of perspective.
 
Dochter said:
Wow, your rebuttal is a flat out Godwin's Law post? You should have stuck with your former erudite rebuttal of "Nuh-uh". That was equally effective and less embarrassing for you.


Does anyone really have a hard and fast position about the superiority of a presidential versus parliamentarian systems? That would seem rather silly since I doubt very many people have thought much about it. I would hope most adults can at least occasionally look at arguments and modify their own stances, certainly that should be expected of adults when we're not talking about hardlline ideological issues. This part of your post seemingly translates to "I just posted to post and now don't have anything to say and don't want to admit I was just talking out of my ass".
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You lack the education to understand Godwin's Law. First of all it's not a law. It's an internet meme. Secondly, when you are discussing actual historical events then using actual history is not even a fake fallacy. So instead of an appeal to fake internet meme laws use something called "reason" and "historical evidence" to try to construct a coherent argument. Because all you seem to have is a laundry list of fake fallacies while actually using actual fallacies.

Funny how the left resorts to such juvenile and intellectually dishonest tactics. Surprised you didn't throw in a random "racist" or "sexist" in your diatribe.
 
Dochter said:
Granted it has been awhile since I read through all the Federalist Papers but you have a very strong view that seems more ideologically than historically driven. Perhaps you can provide some support for our assertion?
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How about you read the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Here's some stuff on the 10th amendment that ought to be illuminating. All from the wiki.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
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Judicial interpretation[edit]
The Tenth Amendment, which makes explicit the idea that the federal government is limited to only the powers granted in the Constitution, has been declared to be a truism by the Supreme Court. In United States v. Sprague (1931) the Supreme Court asserted that the amendment "added nothing to the [Constitution] as originally ratified."

States and local governments have occasionally attempted to assert exemption from various federal regulations, especially in the areas of labor and environmental controls, using the Tenth Amendment as a basis for their claim. An often-repeated quote, from United States v. Darby Lumber, 312 U.S. 100, 124 (1941), reads as follows:

The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers.
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Now just because Congress has found it convenient to usurp state and individual power by abusing the Commerce Clause does not overrule the original intent of the Constitution to limit national power. The whole Constitution is a limit of national power because if it is not in the Constitution it has to be interpreted into it.

Now, of course this contradicts your gubmint is god worldview, but it's not an ideological argument. It's a fact.
 
Santi Claus said:
Because the EU isn't a country. Neither is Texas. Hope this clears things up for you.
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Analogy. Look it up. When the US was formed as a nation the states were what at that point? Independent entities. Which when they joined to form the US they gave up some rights they had to a central government for many reasons. EU is a supranational form of government and some member nations have given up rights for a multiple of reasons.

The analogy is fine as an analogy.
 
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