The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Staying Put

4.10.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 5)

DEFENDERS OF THE CONSTITUION
Re: Lisa Fabrizio's You Say You'll Change the Constitution:

Ms. Fabrizio submits an interesting column. One is tempted to uncritically agree with her thesis and simply move on to the other columns. I find myself unable, however, to do that. Ms. Fabrizio ends her missive thusly; "It's not the U.S. Constitution that has been found wanting; it is those who have sworn to uphold it."

No, Ms. Fabrizio, that is precisely the wrong conclusion to reach. Those who are sworn to uphold the Constitution, i.e. the politicians, are merely playing by the rules of the game as they find it. Surely, one can not blame the standard issue pro or college basketball player if fouls for traveling, charging, palming the ball, hanging on the rim, etc. are not called. They are simply playing the modern, obscene version of the game as the referees are administering the game. Also the referees are only calling the game the way that the various leagues and ruling bodies dictate. The leagues are only responding to the modern basketball fans and the ghettoized version of the game that they demand. The rules will be enforced, or not, in direct accordance with the wishes of the fans, as expressed by their purchase of tickets and their tuning in on their TVs, and their various messages to the league offices, however delivered. Similarly, if baseball fans voted with their dollars to reject the obscenity of a designated hitter and actually make pitchers play the entire game, the designated hitter would be gone in one season. If the fans actually took effective steps to demand that batters NOT come to the plate wearing all kinds of body armor so that they can hang body parts into the strike zone, AND if the umpires actually refused to award first base to a batter who gets hit by a ball delivered actually in the strike zone, as the rules call for, then batter's behavior and mechanics and positioning would change in a NY minute.

So it is with our politicians. If the majority of voters actually voted to punish those that make a mockery of our Constitution, then the politicians would change their tactics in the blink of an eye. Politicians simply respond to what gets them elected and re-elected so that they can pull down significant salary and benefits without having to actually work for a living in a respectable job. The majority of our American society totally agrees with the TV ad that intones that, "I want it all, and I want it now." Politicians legislate by earmark because that is what their constituents demand. You have another column in this issue relating to the trouble that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is in. What is his sin? Why it is injecting some economic discipline and good government principle into the government of the state. That is NOT what the "I want it all, and I want it now" crowd wants or will accept.

Ms. Fabrizio, we get EXACTLY the kind of government that we demand. No the kind that we SAY that we want, but the kind that we vote for every election. Who cares what we SAY that we want? It only counts when you determine what we will actually vote for on Election Day. When it comes to our egotistical, arrogant, semi-criminal politicians and bureaucrats (and that is a whole other essay), the problem is that we have met the enemy, and he is us."
-- Ken Shreve

I am positively delighted to actually hear someone actually say out loud & in print what I have gnashed my teeth at for so long. To see in your recent article these words: "the noxious 17th Amendment," did me good. It is such a sad commentary on the demagoguery & ignorance in the public sphere in these United States that this wretched amendment ever got passed in the first place, and it is even more so that hardly anyone these days is even aware of the fact that our federal Union was effectively ruined by this one amendment.

As Lisa Fabrizio rightly stated, the men who wrote the Constitution really did know what they were doing. Benjamin Franklin, when asked what form of government the Constitutional Convention had given us, famously said that they had given is "a Republic, if you can keep it." They gave us a Republic, not a democracy. They knew that democracies are innately self-destructive, both to the body politic & to public morality. I believe that it was Aristotle who once observed that "Republics decline into democracies, and democracies degenerate into despotisms." With the 17th Amendment the key check on Federal power (namely States jealously guarding their rights through statesman Senators elected to represent the state governments) was stripped away. Thus, what was once the greatest deliberative body since the days of ancient Rome has been peopled by demagogues? And where demagogues lead, despotism cannot be far off.

It's too bad that this & other reckless & ill-conceived amendments to the United States Constitution will never be repealed. And thus goes the Republic.
-- Austin Olive
Fayette, Alabama

I think that it is a great idea to encourage people to channel their energy into changing the Constitution. It would make them feel as if they were on some great crusade. Given how divided a nation we are, there is slim to none chances of it happening.
-- Laurence

Lisa Fabrizio makes perfect sense, except for this:

"..the Constitution was set up to loosely govern a federation of smaller governments; those of the individual states."

I doubt that many of the founding fathers envisioned a federal government that was even as large
as the smallest of the state's governments.
-- Dan Martin
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

HOME ON THE PLAINS
Re: George Neumayr's Big Love on the Prairie:

Can Texas provide for the total safety for all of these children in foster homes? How about in the public schools, on the school buses, play yards and other venues where children are often attacked by bullies, predators and misinformed "do-gooders?" Fostering these children will not be easy, nor consistent with any specific "childhood ideal." The trauma will continue throughout their lives. Life is difficult and no one can say that the state "village" can provide a better grounding for dealing with those difficulties than can a family. I don't condone polygamy, but neither do I condone forced removal of children from their familiar environment no matter how bizarre we may believe it to be. I will believe that the state cares about "the children" when abortion becomes an extinct public policy, two-parent families are celebrated, and public schools stop sexualizing our grade-schoolers.
-- Rose Storey

FURTHER SOUTH
Re: George H. Wittman's Where the Rattlers and Scorpions Play:

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Foreign Policy, John McCain, Business, Islam, Abortion, Environment, Constitution, Law, Founding Fathers, Iraq, Iran, NATO, Fascism, Energy, Oil