What we support and defend

[Ken White]

While the discussion of weapon bore's is fascinating, I noticed that no one answered these questions from a few pages back (though several took shots at each in the posts pror to my request):

What I find myself very frustrated with, however, are the following questions for my fellow Americans:

1. When did the Constitution become irrelevant?

To Congress, I think about 1802 -- been downhill ever since...

Congress, due to power of the purse, influences, generally adversely, everything else in the US Government -- including DoD, the US Army and USSOCOM.

The rest of the country doesn't think it's irrelevant but they sure do have about 200M interpretations of what it means; that's not irrelevance, that's disagreement on semantics and other things. The very expensive legal system exists to sort out those variations but its decisions are frequently watered down by the aforementioned Legislative body. We all hate it when others do not share our wisdom and see things our way -- but I'm afraid we're stuck with that.

2. When did the Declaration of Independence become inconvenient?

To many but not all people when it suggests their desired behavior is inconsistent with its principles.

3. When did the thinking of our historic leaders, such as Washington and Lincoln become "illegitimate"?

That's the easy one -- in 1960 when we began electing excessively venal persons to the Presidency and allowed them to hire sycophants and charlatans for 'advisors.' That also has been downhill ever since.

All the above are only slightly tongue in cheek, those answers are too close to absolute truth for comfort...

To discount these things has become a ready arguement by those who seek to rationalize why America must engage the world in the manner it has adopted in recent years. I personally believe we are better served by tuning our current approaches to our former national doctrine than we are by tuning our former national doctrine to our current approaches, but I can't believe I am alone in that position.

You're not alone in the position. However, others may not totally share your view of precisely what "our former national doctrine" was and / or what "our current approaches" really are. Thus many, to include even some in positions of power may share your broad conclusions but differ over details and processes of implementation. To be repetitious thus boring without bores: "We all hate it when others do not share our wisdom and see things our way -- but I'm afraid we're stuck with that".

[carl]

To many but not all people when it suggests their desired behavior is inconsistent with its principles.

I like this combined with what Slap said about Wilson. A political philosophy has developed that sees "good government" as trumping the strictures of the founding documents. The problem of course is "good government" changes with the wind. There is no longer any recognition of the sin of pride anymore either. One of the founders, Adams I think, talked about how he had to fight that, not always successfully but at least he knew it was bad. There is no recognition that it exists let alone that it is bad anymore I think. If you don't recognize the sin of pride there is no internal brake on willfulness. Combine all this with the de-facto separation of the political classes from the rest of the citizenry and we have a rather large problem.

I hope I have explained this clearly. Probably not though.