NODE 58e118e5Re: CLT&G Update: 29 Dec 98 (fwd)
Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>Thu, 31 Dec 1998 01:17:39 +0800
Forwarded message:
> Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 08:53:44 -0800
> From: Michael Motyka <mmotyka@lsil.com>
> Subject: Re: CLT&G Update: 29 Dec 98
> >The entire point of a consitutional democracy is to avoid >centralization.
> >
> >A better way to word this is that we should be afraid of the federal
> >government becoming the central government.
> >
> The ENTIRE point?
The ENTIRE point.
> ONE of the points was to define and limit the extents of centralization.
No, the point of a democratic government is to eliminate centralization of
authority. To distribute and limit what each level can do from the top to
the bottem. Read the 9th and 10th again.
> There is no cure for the chronic tendency of people in power to try and
> increase their scope. The repeated application of palliatives is the
> only way to deal with that social disease.
If you truly believe this then you should shoot yourself now and get it over
with.
There is a cure, that cure is to recognize the behaviour in people and build
systems that limit the opportunity to express it. The best plan we've come
up with so far is constitutional democracy.
____________________________________________________________________
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NODE 0a6ec087limitations of fed power (was CLT&G Update: 29 Dec 98 (fwd))
Jim Burnes - Denver <jim.burnes@ssds.com>Thu, 31 Dec 1998 03:03:50 +0800
On Wed, 30 Dec 1998, Jim Choate wrote:
>
> Forwarded message:
>
> > Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 08:53:44 -0800
> > From: Michael Motyka <mmotyka@lsil.com>
> > Subject: Re: CLT&G Update: 29 Dec 98
>
> > >The entire point of a consitutional democracy is to avoid >centralization.
> > >
That would be a valid point if we were living in that arrangement. I
like to be a little more specifc. We are living in a democratically elected
reprentative constitutional republic.
The point of that constitution is to shackle the tendancy of
a bureaucracy from assuming authority over matters never
assigned to it and using its enforcement powers to assure it.
Eventually the people, wallowing in ignorance, forget the
infraction and the bureacracy assumes de facto control.
More eloquently stated:
"Our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no
further, our confidence may go... In questions of power, then, let no more
be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the
chains of the Constitution." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky
Resolutions, 1798. ME 17:388
jim