Forum Overview :: Motherfucking News :: Founding Fathers Fight!

[quote name="Zsenicorpse"]<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-brookhiser4jul04,0,3186394.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions">THE FOUNDING FATHERS ARE FULL OF AWESOME LESSONS BUT I'LL IGNORE THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES</a> versus <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kurlansky4jul04,0,4231520.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions">THEY HAVE NOTHING TO SAY AND THEY WOULD HAVE WANTED ME TO FEEL THIS WAY</a> Motherfucker! I wish I could parlay my bullshit into a sweet sweet columnist gig! Unfortunately my penetrating intellect and Faustian wit prohibit me from anything but shuffling paper and shutting up for a living. Smart people have a curse: too often, they know how weak their material is, so they just don't put anything out at all. Meanwhile dumb people can really GET IN to how awesome they are. They can't figure out what's wrong with their stuff, so they cheerfully assume that there's NOTHING WRONG. "Today, Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) has been in hot water since he was found cooling $90,000 in cash in his freezer, allegedly from shady deals. When the FBI raided Jefferson's congressional office in May looking for related information, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi condemned the search as a violation of the separation of powers. The founders would have known that it was no such thing. The Constitution protects congressmen from prosecution while Congress is in session, so they can be free to meet and discuss, but it also allows them to be arrested for treason, felony and breach of the peace. These protections — and these exceptions to protections — apply to their offices and papers. " Oh my god! I love that! It's just a shit blizzard of dumb! In a nutshell, the author argues that the Founding Fathers had no conception of Constitutional interpretation, and that, in fact, they (a body which is not delineated clearly, with no particular conception of which of the residents of New England prior to oh, say, 1850 count in its numbers) all jointly held a completely unified theory of what every word in the Constitution means. AND THAT FURTHERMORE THIS UNIFIED THEORY IS THE ONLY WAY TO THINK ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION. It's Constitutional <i>fundamentalism</i> and like all fundamentalisms, it is espoused by an idiot. In the other corner, the other kind of fundie: Everything American Sucks. "The real American question of our times is how our country in a little over 200 years sank from the great hope to the most backward democracy in the West. " We're like Nambia with fewer lion-related deaths. <i>But less heart and soul.</i> "To be honest, the U.S. was never as good as it was supposed to be. Perhaps no nation is." <i>Perhaps</i> no nation is, but <i>America definitely isn't</i>. As a ridiculously gifted child, I was always confounded and puzzled when mid-level government bureacrats crooned about my "potential" and "talent" - like, <i>what would you know about potential and talent, exactly?</i> Which is why I love this prating ass, this bullpig loudly insisting for <i>good American dollars</i> that America is just a little suboptimal. Because it means that somewhere in his head he has an idea of how America <i>ought to be</i>. "I have no doubt the response to this article will show an America still unwilling to be criticized. But it is difficult for a society that accepts no criticism to progress." The Peer Review Apology Sidestep, Passive Aggressive Edition. Who is this guy, and how did he get INC's schtick? "Yet it is only with anti-establishment thinkers that a society progresses." Or maybe SB's schtick. But he's Right, except for Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore.... oh yeah, and Iceland, Sweden, Finland, etc. Turkey! There's a place where antiestablishmentarianism worked <i>exactly once</i> and then was blotted out forever with the grateful complicity of the loyal populace. Part of America's innate charm is that there is no genuine anti-establishment posture. The establishment has successfully co-opted the anti-establishmentarians ever since that nasty wake-up call at Kent State. We are a nation progressing on the backs of multinational conglomerates and megachurches, and this dumb sucker still wants to believe, violently, that his HIGHLY HAZARDOUS THOUGHTS may still incite a nation of Target shoppers to... do something! "It is surprising that these words are not more often quoted in Washington because they are literally carved in stone — on a wall of the Jefferson Memorial to be exact. " <font color="pink">"<i>I've</i> been to the Jefferson Memorial... have <i>you</i> ever been to the Jefferson Memorial, hypernationalist swine?"</font>[/quote]