Jefferson, Migrant Hijack, Abortion Rights, Lindsey Goes Loud, SCOTUS

  • Let us begin with a common rightist shibboleth:
     
    The anti-democratic tilt of today’s conservatism occasionally finds a home in the simple observation that our government is a republic, not a “pure democracy.”
     
    Conservative reverence for the founders has often centered on distortions of the views of poor James Madison.
     
    The term “pure democracy” did exist in the 1700s, referring to the then zombie vision that government would be better without bothersome structures like legislatures, executives, courts, and representation. Proponents argued instead for a periodic mass meeting of everyone to make mass decisions in a series of, you know, mass votes. Madison and others argued against that form of “pure democracy”.
     
    So conservatives sometimes trot out the tired, discredited argument that the founders hated democratic elections, wanting instead to shield rulers from unruly voters through buffers like the electoral college.
     
    Madison hated the concept. In fact, he didn’t even like a non-proportional Senate. He and others went along with both in order to keep southern slaveholders on board in establishing an independent country.
     
    Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara argues that the founders were against democracy and that we should honor their wishes. He wants to abolish direct election of Senators and go back to having state legislatures choose them for us.
     
    Mercifully, he does not pick on James Madison this time, choosing instead to twist Thomas Jefferson into a pretzel.
     
    As Jefferson said, “the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.” The Founders were not primarily concerned with giving the people the right to vote. They intended to liberate the people from predatory government, whether monarchistic, theocratic, socialist, or democratic.
     
    Actually, Jefferson and his contemporaries were concerned with both. That is why we have a Bill of Rights.
     
    Mr. LaFerrara was quoting from a letter Jefferson wrote to Pierre du Pont. It is an interesting choice. Du Pont had been a supporter of the French Revolution, and became a survivor of what became known as the Reign of Terror. He barely escaped the guillotine and came to America.
     
    You may suspect he might have been receptive to warnings against mob rule.
     
    Michael neglects to mention that, in that same letter, Jefferson begins with a strong endorsement of democratic elections. That would be direct democratic elections
     
    We of the United States, you know, are constitutionally and conscientiously democrats.
     
    Jefferson goes on to describe the benefits of direct elections. Citizens are able to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent, and to delegate those to which they are not competent to deputies named, and removable for unfaithful conduct, by themselves immediately.
     
    You don’t do what we want? We’ll vote you out.
     
    Jefferson even argued separately for the abolition of the electoral college: to have no electors, but let the people vote directly.
     
    Jefferson was a contradictory mess. Loved democracy, hated slavery, owned slaves, and wrote about why Black people were inferior in most every way.
     
    How about we don’t saddle him with the additional moral crime of conflating democracy with mob rule.
     
    Leave that to the current state of contemporary conservatism.
     
  • Most of us have heard how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pulled some shady stuff in Texas to get charter planes filled with migrants. The operation was intended to show how liberals in Massachusetts can’t handle things when confronted by those damn illegals.
     
    Problem with the whole operation is, although the recipient communities were indeed surprised and unprepared, they quickly rallied at what could have been the humanitarian disaster intended by DeSantis and managed to find enough beds, food, and medical care.
     
    In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson delves into the story behind the story. Turns out the history of immigration from the south is richer and more complex than is generally reported.
     
    Part of the current story is statistical, but one reason Heather Cox Richardson is popular is clear narrative. She manages to explain numbers briefly and well without pulling readers into the high weeds.
     
    In fact, the border is not “open.” Fences, surveillance technology, and about 20,000 Border Patrol agents make the border more secure than it has ever been.
     
  • Tommy Christopher learns from CNN that the DeSantis/Abbott repopulating of “undesirables” was borrowed from 1960s segregationists.
     
    Meanwhile, Tommy bring us us this comment from Joe Scarborough:
     
    You don’t own the libs with human lives
     
  • Imani Gandy observes the political point made with refuge pawns.

  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged contrasts the coarse cynicism of DeSantis, using human desperation to own the libs, with the humanity of those in and around Martha’s Vineyard pitching in to help those in need.
     
  • Hackwhackers has several cartoon-type reactions to the DeSantis hijack of migrants.


A few tweets I thought worthy:
























And I’m allowed a few of my own:
















































































– Podcasts –
 

4 thoughts on “Jefferson, Migrant Hijack, Abortion Rights, Lindsey Goes Loud, SCOTUS”

  1. I am so glad that you have/are recovered so well to put these out-this was huge, and great! Thank you.

    1. Speaking of Thomas Jefferson and our friend Darrell, né T. Paine, his latest Constitution Day allocution is on “saving the Constitution” and its sacred permanence. The Right seems annoyed that it is amendable, and has been amended.

      He quotes an “unbiased” Republican college’s pitch for donations:
      “America’s Constitution endured for more than two centuries—longer than any other constitution in human history—because it was brilliantly conceived and based on the principles of liberty in the Declaration of Independence. Today, however, certain parts of the Constitution have been completely subverted.”

      I suppose if we mention slavery and 3/5th persons it indicates we “hate America” and are pushing “Marxist CRT”.

      I hope he isn’t too annoyed by the Anonymous comment on Jefferson.

      Constitution Day is the perfect time to remind everyone that Thomas Jefferson said we should rewrite the Constitution every 20 years.

      In a letter written to James Madison from Paris just after the French Revolution had broken out, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) argues that any Constitution expires after 19 years and must be renewed if it is not to become “an act of force and not of right”:

      “The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another… On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.”

      I’m looking forward to his conclusion that Jefferson “hated America”.

  2. great post — intelligent discussion that doesn’t imply that the only thing that matters right now is the queen’s death. thanks, too, for including a link to my site here

Comments are closed.