Glenn Beck is gonna love you. sorta. Beck Loves Madison but hates FDR....thinks he was some kind of communist,Nazi,dictator worst president we have ever had. While Madison could walk on water.
Glenn Beck is gonna love you. sorta. Beck Loves Madison but hates FDR....thinks he was some kind of communist,Nazi,dictator worst president we have ever had. While Madison could walk on water.
Beck is an entertaining whack-job.
I will say this for FDR, I think the Grand Strategy that he had shaped for Amercia coming out of WWII provides a great framework for a Grand Strategy for America today:
1. The "4 Freedoms"
Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom from Fear, Freedom from Want
2. The end of Colonialism
3. The promotion of Self Determination
4. The "Four Policemen" to work together to secure peace globally (US, UK, Russia, and China)
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
A single paragraph from Wikipedia.
Much of the stability that has enabled America to endure is rooted in this body of work. Not by some fortunate accident, but through experience, study, debate, and war certain key concepts emerged to address the flaws of governance that are the causation of Insurgency; and when those fail, to ensure that the populace itself was empowered to prevent those failures of governance from growing too large.
"James Madison[2] (March 16, 1751 – June 28, 1836) was an American politician and political philosopher who served as the fourth President of the United States (1809–1817) and is considered one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
The "Father of the Constitution," he was the principal author of the document. In 1788, he wrote over a third of the Federalist Papers, still the most influential commentary on the Constitution. The first president to have served in the United States Congress, he was a leader in the 1st United States Congress, drafting many basic laws, and was responsible for the first ten amendments to the Constitution (said to be based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights) and thus is also known as the "Father of the Bill of Rights".[3] As a political theorist, Madison's most distinctive belief was that the new republic needed checks and balances to protect individual rights from the tyranny of the majority.[4][5][6][7]"
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
From my understanding of the debates during the Constitutional Congress, the most contested word was happiness. Initially, in the first draft, it was life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. During that time, property equaled wealth. After much deliberation, they changed it to happiness.
This debate seems to be the perpetual morale struggle that our nation works through in every generation. Hard work and success over greed. Happiness versus glutony. It ebbs and flow over time.
but the pursuit of happiness only appears in the Declaration of Independence.
Cheers
JohnT
John and Mike,
Actually, you both are right. Most of the rights and grievances identified in the Declaration of Independence can be directly cross-walked over to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
In this one can see how those perceptions that drove insurgency in 1776 were addressed by the new documents of those same men now acting in the role of "Counterinsurgents" as they formed a new government.
As to those specific rights not enumerated in the Bill of Rights, that is why the "sweep-up" clauses of 9 and 10 were added.
I believe the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from the Declaration is covered by the 9th Amendment:
Ninth Amendment – Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
JM was hardly an insurgent looking to mix up the old order. He wrote the Bill of Rights because of the radicals' (in places like PA and NC, two very large "states to be" with powerful Anti-Federalist lobbies) reaction to the conservative bent the Constitution took. The only way that PA and NC agreed to ratify was if changes (the BoR) we made to the extend the revolutionary gains of the Rev to more people. The BoR was a compromise to bring more "radical" elements into the US polity. If you really want to read some good history on this, I suggest Bernard Bailyn, Gordan Wood, Jackson Turner Main, and Cecilia Kenyon. Drew McCoy's work on how Madison's political philosophy changed over the years is excellent. Madison was a man of the established and elite political order.
Certainly the American structure and system have done wonderful things for America, and would provide an ideal framework for managing any hypothetical insurgency in the US. The extent to which it can assist in managing anyone else's insurgency is debatable.
There's a lot that emerging democracies can learn from the US structure, particularly from the manner in which it anticipates and manages the need to protect minority rights from a potential tyranny of the majority, always a danger in a democratic structure. That does not, of course, mean that the US system is necessarily adaptable to any other culture.
Political systems evolve, and when we see a political system that works for a country we're generally not looking at something that was created, we're looking at something that emerged over time. Because the evolution is often messy and often involves conflict (as it did in the US and most other working democracies), there's always a temptation to step in and try to short-cut the messy bits by showing them how it should be done. That's a temptation well worth resisting. Americans in particular often see structures and institutions as the defining factors of a working government, but the developing world is littered with governments that look ideal on paper but are poorly adapted to the society they're trying to govern, and in many cases simply don't work. What we think is right doesn't always translate. Compare Oman, a reasonably prosperous, well-managed, emerging nation ruled by a medieval monarchy, to Yemen, a basket case with (on paper) an admirable western-style republic structure.
Obviously there's no hard-and-fast rule on what works, but it should be obvious by now that what doesn't work is a bunch of well-meaning outsiders trying to come in and install a government.
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