. "The conservative justices supporting the decision argued that future presidents needed to be given broad discretionary power to make decisions on behalf of the country as a whole, assuming they would be wise and public spirited. This abstracted from the fact that the ex-president in front of them had gone rogue, seeking to overturn a legitimate election and denigrating the entire electoral process on which American democracy depended.”
This indeed is the core of the problem. The Founders were justifiably wary of creating an executive with too much power. Indeed, one of the reasons they were willing to create the Executive Branch in the first place was that they knew who the first occupant would be, a man who had already twice proven (at Newburgh and again when he ‘turned in his sword’ to Congress) that he well understood the nature of the struggle in which he had played such a significant part. They hoped (not without some trepidation) that in a ‘republic of virtue’ the citizenry would continue to choose the President wisely.
Two events would get in the way of that hope. The first and most destructive would be the solidification in the 1830’s of our ossified binary political party system in which parry loyalty might, and indeed has come to trump loyalty to the concepts and ideals expressed in the Constitution.
The second is the increasing lack of understanding of those concepts and ideals among far too many American voters. One cannot adequately defend (most crucially in the voting booth) that which one does not understand. The idea that Americans would simply absorb those concepts and ideals by some mysterious form of osmosis, simply by being born and brought up in this country instead of being thoroughly and accurately steeped in them both at home and at school is proving to be folly.
If one needs proof of this, one only has to compare our present presidential campaign events with the Lincoln/Douglas debates in the Illinois US Senate campaign of 1858. People came by their hundreds to listen to an extraordinary series of seven debates which largely but not compeletely focused on the issue of slavery in a supposedly free society. The debates went on for hours and were serious and reasoned and which told a great deal about each man’s character and political beliefs. By comparison, our present presidential debates are fleeting collections of insults and sound bites which tell us almost nothing except both sides’ unwillingness to put forth well-reasoned and substantial sets of beleifs and plans in favor of currying favor with certain elements of one side or the other.
This is a good opportunity to remind that both Presidentialism and First Past the Post electoral systems are very dangerous, and their superior efficiency is debatable:
I expected that the recent debacles in Korea and the US would finally kill the debate on Presidentialism, but surprisingly all public debate is about “disinformation”.
It goes without saying (I think): Trump doesn’t intend on giving up this power.
All the old (good) rules of the republic no longer hold: namely “don’t set a precedent you wouldn’t want reciprocally enacted on you”. That was the Golden Rule of civics.
Our Julius has marched into Rome with his Legions. His Marc Antony is JD Vance. His Praetorian Guard is Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel. A crisis must be created to justify the end of elections - especially if it means putting those no good, rotten, evil, Charlie-Kirk killing, church burning, child shooting, militant trans-loving, ICE attacking, ANTIFA supporting Democrats in office. That is precisely how they will frame it.
With just enough of all that stink in the eyes and ears of normie Americans - already weary of a decade of this run up - his justifications for “cleaning up the filth by any means necessary” likely rings true. And he baits the militant Left to these confrontations - and normie Democrats and their media allies to defend it. They simply can’t NOT take the bait.
Once we admit that this is what’s happening, in front of our very eyes, the true nature of what we’re confronting will brace us harshly.
It’s not that President Trump or JD Vance think this is dangerous to potentially empower a 2028 President Ocasio-Cortez or President Mamdani with such unitary executive powers - which could whipsaw us leftward with similar ferocity - it’s that they know they have three more years to engineer a descent into popular support for the revocation of elections. They have no intention to surrender these gains.
Next up: paramilitary confrontations in Portland and Chicago. It begins.
. "The conservative justices supporting the decision argued that future presidents needed to be given broad discretionary power to make decisions on behalf of the country as a whole, assuming they would be wise and public spirited. This abstracted from the fact that the ex-president in front of them had gone rogue, seeking to overturn a legitimate election and denigrating the entire electoral process on which American democracy depended.”
This indeed is the core of the problem. The Founders were justifiably wary of creating an executive with too much power. Indeed, one of the reasons they were willing to create the Executive Branch in the first place was that they knew who the first occupant would be, a man who had already twice proven (at Newburgh and again when he ‘turned in his sword’ to Congress) that he well understood the nature of the struggle in which he had played such a significant part. They hoped (not without some trepidation) that in a ‘republic of virtue’ the citizenry would continue to choose the President wisely.
Two events would get in the way of that hope. The first and most destructive would be the solidification in the 1830’s of our ossified binary political party system in which parry loyalty might, and indeed has come to trump loyalty to the concepts and ideals expressed in the Constitution.
The second is the increasing lack of understanding of those concepts and ideals among far too many American voters. One cannot adequately defend (most crucially in the voting booth) that which one does not understand. The idea that Americans would simply absorb those concepts and ideals by some mysterious form of osmosis, simply by being born and brought up in this country instead of being thoroughly and accurately steeped in them both at home and at school is proving to be folly.
If one needs proof of this, one only has to compare our present presidential campaign events with the Lincoln/Douglas debates in the Illinois US Senate campaign of 1858. People came by their hundreds to listen to an extraordinary series of seven debates which largely but not compeletely focused on the issue of slavery in a supposedly free society. The debates went on for hours and were serious and reasoned and which told a great deal about each man’s character and political beliefs. By comparison, our present presidential debates are fleeting collections of insults and sound bites which tell us almost nothing except both sides’ unwillingness to put forth well-reasoned and substantial sets of beleifs and plans in favor of currying favor with certain elements of one side or the other.
This is a good opportunity to remind that both Presidentialism and First Past the Post electoral systems are very dangerous, and their superior efficiency is debatable:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uW77FSphM6yiMZTGg/why-not-parliamentarianism-book-by-tiago-ribeiro-dos-santos
I expected that the recent debacles in Korea and the US would finally kill the debate on Presidentialism, but surprisingly all public debate is about “disinformation”.
It goes without saying (I think): Trump doesn’t intend on giving up this power.
All the old (good) rules of the republic no longer hold: namely “don’t set a precedent you wouldn’t want reciprocally enacted on you”. That was the Golden Rule of civics.
Our Julius has marched into Rome with his Legions. His Marc Antony is JD Vance. His Praetorian Guard is Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel. A crisis must be created to justify the end of elections - especially if it means putting those no good, rotten, evil, Charlie-Kirk killing, church burning, child shooting, militant trans-loving, ICE attacking, ANTIFA supporting Democrats in office. That is precisely how they will frame it.
With just enough of all that stink in the eyes and ears of normie Americans - already weary of a decade of this run up - his justifications for “cleaning up the filth by any means necessary” likely rings true. And he baits the militant Left to these confrontations - and normie Democrats and their media allies to defend it. They simply can’t NOT take the bait.
Once we admit that this is what’s happening, in front of our very eyes, the true nature of what we’re confronting will brace us harshly.
It’s not that President Trump or JD Vance think this is dangerous to potentially empower a 2028 President Ocasio-Cortez or President Mamdani with such unitary executive powers - which could whipsaw us leftward with similar ferocity - it’s that they know they have three more years to engineer a descent into popular support for the revocation of elections. They have no intention to surrender these gains.
Next up: paramilitary confrontations in Portland and Chicago. It begins.