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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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You seem to forget, Ishmael, that for any society to work you have to have some force that is greater than "the people". Can you imagine what life would be like if we had to wait for "the people"? "Let's all climb down from the trees." "Yeah, right."
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | To an AE-ist, the sight of liberal judges using the Constitution as an interventionist tool and conservative judges as a barrier against interventionism is just straightforward checks-and-balances in the time-honoured and hallowed manner of a properly operating Constituional Republic. |
That is what you believe. It is time you were excised as arbiter of the AE position.
The Mick Harper position on all matters political is invariably, "what is is what was meant to be." This is an anti-proscriptive attitude that ultimately robs AE analysis of any capacity to suggest solutions.
Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the Mick Harper view, it certainly does not accord with what the founders of the United States envisioned when they devised the court and the constitution. I think on that we must agree.
As intended, the court was to impose limits upon the remaining branches of government and the constitution was to impose limits upon the state as a whole. In so far as either institution continues to function as directed, it is only via the rump of so-called "conservatives" who sit on the bench. Without them, the constitution and court would utterly fail to do the job for which they were designed.
Were the liberals to triumph, the United States government would no longer be constrained by law. Should faith in the law break down, it might well undermine even the checks and balances that exist between the competing power-centers of executive, legislative and legal branches, such that each would compete extra-legally for authority.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Can you imagine what life would be like if we had to wait for "the people"? "Let's all climb down from the trees." "Yeah, right." |
Exactly.
So why wait for the people?
Just go ahead and climb down from the tree.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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You state the conservative position very well. Personally, I don't give a monkeys about the Founding Fathers, only what works. It is true that appealing to the Founding Fathers (like appealing to God) is an excellent political cry, used by all sides but it can never be 'believed' by an AE-ist. The Constitution, like the I-Ching, always 'works' but that is because the USA as a society works. The same constitution operated by lesser political breeds would collapse in five minutes.
| Were the liberals to triumph, the United States government would no longer be constrained by law |
No doubt but since they haven't 'triumphed' yet after two hundred and odd years of trying but have temporarily gained the advantage over the conservatives on dozens of occasions (and lost it every time) I think my position more fairly reflects what is, what was and what will be. Though I agree that you are entitled to argue that the US is in such a chronic mess that some other confection should now be tried. Were the conservatives 'to triumph' you will be welcome to take refuge over here.
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Grant
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| No doubt but since they haven't 'triumphed' yet after two hundred and odd years of trying but have temporarily gained the advantage over the conservatives on dozens of occasions (and lost it every time) |
When did they lose it?
I prefer Evelyn Waugh's quote: 'the trouble with the Conservative Party is it has not turned back the clock one second.' The drift towards liberalism is ratcheted.
Now why is this? The reason is that the liberal way is easier. It's easier to live off benefits than work; to give in to temptation than resist it; to yield rather than stand up for one's beliefs.
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Grant
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Ishmael wrote:
| Progressives hold that the law and the people can impose no moral constraint upon the right. If a decision is right, the demands of the law and the people must be ignored. To do otherwise is to sin. |
And Neo-Conservatives believe this as well!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The right firmly believes that the left is always in power and the left is just as certain that it is the right that always dominates. This is all part of the same syndrome. When you look under the various stones you find that each side is correct because they define the other side differently. Hence the BBC will be regarded as a nest of liberal vipers by the right but as a Bastion of the Establishment by the left.
All this is pure daily soap opera to the AE-ist though it must be hell for leftists and rightists. Unless of course both sides actually like being embattled minorities holding on to the True Flame. No...surely not...
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Grant wrote: | | And Neo-Conservatives believe this as well! |
That's the propaganda anyway.
On the other hand, the Progressives were quite explicit concerning their attitudes toward both democracy and the constitution. These are not hyperbolic charges made by their opponents.
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Grant
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| Hence the BBC will be regarded as a nest of liberal vipers by the right but as a Bastion of the Establishment by the left. |
And both would be right. Surely you must have noticed that the establishment is now liberal? The establishment believes in high taxes, the welfare state, high levels of immigration, abortion on demand, the NHS, the EU.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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You completely miss the point, Grant, and make my own. The Establishment is left wing to rightists and right-wing to leftists. By definition.
| The establishment believes in high taxes, the welfare state, high levels of immigration, abortion on demand, the NHS, the EU. |
And all these things are, or have been, both left-wing or right-wing depending on the mote in the viewer's eye. For instance the EU was originally a right-wing plot denounced universally by the left. Abortion-on-demand (in Britain) simply doesn't register on the left-right axis. David Cameron is a huge NHS-booster. High taxes have historically been a right-wing policy (mainly for military reasons) and it is only since capitalism became right-wing ( a very modern development) that the switchover has occurred.
Immigration is particularly interesting since its apparent beneficiaries (capitalist employers) are right wing but immigrants' immediate competition (wage-earners) are left-wing. However since the whole thing is now dominated by the bleeding heart tendency (ah, the poor things!) it is associated with the left.
Where the Establishment stands in all this cannot be demonstrated. That is because The Establishment, as every AE-ist knows simply doesn't exist.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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There's definitely an ideology that dominates my socio-economic strata. It doesn't win most elections but I gotta live with the self-righteous fucks.
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Grant
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| Where the Establishment stands in all this cannot be demonstrated. That is because The Establishment, as every AE-ist knows simply doesn't exist. |
You would have a valid point if the massive changes wrought by the "Establishment" in the last fifty years were actually supported by the majority, but they weren't. The majority didn't want immigration - that's why they rioted in Notting Hill in the 1950s. The majority didn't want the abolition of hanging or for Britain to join the EU. All these things happened because the interests of a country's elite do not necessarily coincide with the interests of the mass of the people.
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Pulp History
In: Wales
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| Grant wrote: | | Where the Establishment stands in all this cannot be demonstrated. That is because The Establishment, as every AE-ist knows simply doesn't exist. |
You would have a valid point if the massive changes wrought by the "Establishment" in the last fifty years were actually supported by the majority, but they weren't. The majority didn't want immigration - that's why they rioted in Notting Hill in the 1950s. The majority didn't want the abolition of hanging or for Britain to join the EU. All these things happened because the interests of a country's elite do not necessarily coincide with the interests of the mass of the people. |
and continuing - the signing of the Lisbon Treaty.....
_________________
Question everything!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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If rioting is evidence of native hostility to immigration, why was Notting Hill (seventy years ago!) the last (white) riot? All the others since have been black riots (save possibly the Poll Tax 'riots'). As I have pointed out passim, opposition to immigrants is part of the human condition, we all feel it. Hardly any of us do anything about it. Some vote National Front.
The Lisbon Treaty....why is it that people who are left-wing (or right-wing or centrist) insist on dredging up some unbelievably trivial something-or-other and hanging their hats on it for evermore? Hands up anyone who remembers what the Lisbon Treaty was and whether it was actually ratified. (Apart from me of course but then I am a polymathic genius....I wonder why....oh yes, a brain uncluttered by idees fixes.)
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The idea that the majority of British people rioted in Notting Hill in the 1950s is idiotic, of course.
But it is merely symptomatic of Grant's attitude that he knows what the majority want.
Popular opinion on single issues in Britain depend enormously on what the tabloids have printed that day.
However, as far as Europe is concerned there are three (+ the SNP + CP) fundamentally pro-European parties which will receive over 95% of the votes cast tomorrow.
For those concerned about getting out of Europe there is the UKIP, who will receive a derisory vote, and for those who wish to bring back hanging there's the BNP, who won't reach 5%.
But Grant knows the true feelings of the British people camouflaged behind their voting practices of 60 years.
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