Part IIThe Threat **THE PEOPLE §§ Slavery and The People Madison was a slave-holder. So was Washington. So was Jefferson. Madison is credited as the chief author of the Constitution. That document does not contain the words slave or slavery anywhere, until the 13th Amendment abolished it after the Civil War. That the author ofContinue reading “The Long Clasp (Post 9)”
Category Archives: What Makes USA Great
The Long Clasp (Post 8)
Part IIThe Threat **THE PEOPLE The arrangement addressed by the proposed Constitution and dissected by Hamilton amounted to a government of the States, by the States, and for the States. Thirteen sovereign States established it by agreement amongst themselves. Their legislatures appointed the delegates to the Congress. The business of the government included little elseContinue reading “The Long Clasp (Post 8)”
The Long Clasp (Post 7)
Part IIThe Threat *UNION §§ The Defect In considering the necessity to throw over utterly the Articles of Confederation as inadequate to sustain the Union, Hamilton, in particular, analyzed nine major defects of that document. The great and radical vice in the construction of the existing Confederation is the principle of LEGISLATION for STATESContinue reading “The Long Clasp (Post 7)”
The Long Clasp (Post 6)
Part IIThe Threat *UNION § Politics How shall we understand “power”? Without waxing prolix and philosophical, I offer the following thoughts by limiting its use to the everyday world of human beings. “Power” refers to the wherewithal to direct and control desired outcomes. The strength of that power may emanate from the character, the will,Continue reading “The Long Clasp (Post 6)”
The Long Clasp (Post 5)
Part IIThe Threat *UNION USAmerican exceptionalism lies not in the hand of God, nor in its economic/military dominance of the world, nor in the accident that this is my country. Human beings, thoughtful, serious, profoundly capable human beings, two-and-a-half hundred years before our time at a moment of economic and military ebb tide, acted onContinue reading “The Long Clasp (Post 5)”
The Long Clasp (Post 4)
*** The Challenge Human nature—that fecund field strewn as well with all the seeds of noxious weeds and nettles as with those of all perfumy petals and productive harvest—ever works at odds with social good. “Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition” “the ambition and jealousy of each other” “preconceived jealousies and fears” “glory,Continue reading “The Long Clasp (Post 4)”
The Long Clasp (Post 3)
** The Aspiration Between the first and last phrases of the Constitution’s mission statement—its Preamble—are the following six phrases, which, in fact, list the long-range goals, the desired outcomes that lay behind the system of governance set out within the document: in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provideContinue reading “The Long Clasp (Post 3)”
The Long Clasp (Post 2)
*The Idea Ask a thousand US citizens, or a thousand thousand, to catalogue some of those ideas, and sure to be included on every list will be Freedom and Liberty; on nearly every list in one form or another, the Right to be left alone to do as you please, to worship as you please,Continue reading “The Long Clasp (Post 2)”
The Long Clasp 