Today E.J. Dionne writes about the Declaration of Independence. More specifically, he compares Tea Party rhetoric with sections of the Declaration to demonstrate that the baggers are not exactly the Founding Fathers’ representatives on earth they make themselves out to be. “We are at odds over the meaning of our history and why, to quote our Declaration of Independence, ‘governments are instituted,'” Dionne says. It’s a very good column, and I recommend reading it. See also Steve Benen.
Dionne also takes a swipe at Rick Perry —
This misunderstanding of our founding document is paralleled by a misunderstanding of our Constitution. “The federal government was created by the states to be an agent for the states, not the other way around,†Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said recently.
No, our Constitution begins with the words “We the People†not “We the States.†The Constitution’s Preamble speaks of promoting “a more perfect Union,†“Justice,†“the common defense,†“the general Welfare†and “the Blessings of Liberty.†These were national goals.
Hold that thought.
The literacy challenged Robert Stacy McCain posted about the Dionne column, and he mis-characterized Dionne’s column as a claim that people are not capable of understanding the Declaration, which was not the point.
To prove that people can understand the Declaration, McCain posted the entire text of the Declaration. He may not understand what the text means, but the boy can copy and paste with the best of ’em.
But then the commenters go on to disprove McCain — the Declaration is right in front of them, and they have no idea what it means. So, apparently, they really aren’t capable of understanding it.
First comment:
Dionne: “This misunderstanding of our founding document is paralleled by a misunderstanding of our Constitution. “The federal government was created by the states to be an agent for the states, not the other way around,†Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said recently. No, our Constitution begins with the words “We the People†not “We the States.â€
Right there, in a nutshell; he doesn’t understand that ‘the States,’ in this regard, are representatives of their citizenry, and speak in those citizens’ voice and name, not the other way around.
Against my better judgment, I responded —
Speaking of the Declaration, you may have missed the part where it says,
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”In the minds of the Founders, governments ultimately take their legitimacy from the people, not from other governments.
What I didn’t say was — you’ve got the bleeping text of the bleeping Declaration right in front of you, and you still can’t see it!
Further — originally in the Constitution, it was understood that the states were represented in the Senate but the people, not the states, were represented in the House. In Federalist Paper #52, James Madison described his idea for the House of Representatives to be the “branch of the federal government which ought to be dependent on the people alone” and not on state governments. So while we think of representatives as being from states, they are not representing the states but the people. Go give Federalist #52 a careful read if you don’t believe me.
So, while the Constitution was ratified by delegates from the states, it was not created to be an agent of the states alone. Some parts of it were set up to represent the interests of states, but other parts of it directly represent the interests of the people directly. And the federal government ultimately takes its authority to govern from the people, not the states.
Another commenter disagreed with this, saying, “the federal government gets its *just*” powers to govern from the Constitution, not from the people or the states.”
To which I did not say —
“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
This is the foundational philosophy that our country was built on; this was Jefferson laying out the moral justification for declaring independence. It’s right there bleeping in front of your face, and you can’t see it.
But I didn’t say that. I said,
No, you’re confusing two different things. The Constitution lays out the charter of how the government is structured and how the state and federal governments relate to each other, and of course it is the supreme law of the land. But the Constitution takes its authority from the consent of We, the People; see the preamble and also the Declaration.
This same commenter, btw, seems also to want to appeal the 17th Amendment and give the job of choosing senators back to state governments. Yeah, state governments are so much better.
The next rightie site I looked at was American Power, where our friend DD (I am not linking to him because if I do he will spend the next three days finding ways around the twit filter to drool on my blog) wrote,
Anyone can cherry pick the founding documents to find passages and quotations to fit their agenda. Progressives like Dionne are depressed that it’s been conservatives and libertarians who’ve been much more successful in capturing and representing the spirit of individual liberty animating our political culture.
But, weirdly, it’s the righties who are moving away from the spirit of the Declaration, and its argument that the just powers of government come from the consent of the governed, from We, the People. If you present this idea to them — plainly stated in the Declaration, which they apparently really can’t read — they blink at you as if you were speaking Martian. It’s an utterly alien idea to them.
re the 17th amendment repeal – I have an othewise intelligent friend who somehow tuned into Zell Miller’s argument (remember Zell, one of the Bush era’s most traitorious Democrats?) that senators should be selected by state legislatures because it gets around the onerous and corrupting problem of having to raise mountains of cash to campaign for office. Somehow I couldn’t convince her of the problems of this approach, nor make much headway with the argument that publicly funded campaigns (which the Roberts court recently struck down in Arizona) are the way to go, to avoid the corrupting influence of money. Following my friend’s/Zell’s argument, we should simply have Kings and do away entirely with elected representatives, to avoid the corrupting influence of money.
In any sufficienly complex text (the Bible, the Koran, the Constitution), people of all stripes do bring their biases and see what they want to see.
Hey, if elections are going to be bought anyway, the money might as well be funding an election campaign industry that employs a lot of people instead of just going into the pockets of state politicians.
This is the foundational philosophy that our country was built on; this was Jefferson laying out the moral justification for declaring independence. It’s right there bleeping in front of your face, and you can’t see it.
Somebody needs to read Common Sense by Thomas Paine.. and if they really want to swim against the current, than they should read this….http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Paine-Author-Declaration-independence/dp/B0007DMH7O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309811820&sr=1-1-spell
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but if you want to test your knowledge on how well you understand the Declaration of Independence… Read the book. I’m absolutely convinced that Jefferson penned the Declaration of independence…but the real author is known by the spirit of the document.
Over 3 million words are attributed to Jefferson’s writings…and only one time is the word “Hath” used…why is that?
I read and enjoyed Dionne’s column. I did not enjoy reading the idiot comments section. Guess somehow I’m going to have to ignore the comments in future. You are braver than I, Barbara.
I have to say I’m amused by the suggestion that E.J. Dionne would be “depressed” by someone else being “more successful” at finding justification in the Declaration. I am sure Mr. Dionne’s entire life revolves around some adolescent striving for earning points in finding rationalizations, and he must be devastated to be losing at that game to a right-wing blogger. That obviously must be his only motivation in writing this column.
Riiight.
Some of those comments put me in mind of the really awful Star Trek (original series) episode with the two tribes, the Yangs and the Comms, when Kirk miraculously recognizes the opening words of the Declaration in the garbled lingo of the planet’s natives. The readings from those righties is garbled just as badly. Worse, really. “E plebnista …”
Jefferson was quite consciously alluding to other texts that educated men of his time were likely to be familiar with, including Tom Paine and of course John Locke, and if you’ve done any reading of the thinkers that preceded the Declaration, its interpretation is pretty fricking straightforward. It’s remarkable how creative the righties get at shoehorning their own ideas into the text, while carefully ignoring all the context that came before.
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They also seem to be unaware that our original governing document, the Articles of Confederation, gave states all the sovereignty they could ask for including the right to coin their own money. Yet the founders scrapped it after just seven years. Why? They wanted the federal government to have the authority to levy taxes, regulate trade and pass legislation that would be the uniform law of the land. All of these Constitution fetishists would have been on the side of the anti-federalists if they had been around in 1787.
Not to take anything from Thomas Jefferson..He was a brilliant man…But Like John Adams sensed and resented( lifelong). Jefferson had an ability and a need for self promotion and didn’t hesitate to credit himself for the work of others. Sorta like a smart Newt Gingrich.
demz taters — one of Dionne’s points was that what Rick Perry said was true of the Articles of Confederation but not the Constitution.
I remember back in the 1990s some among the militia/anti-government crowd got hold of the Articles of Confederation and accused the government of a conspiracy to suppress it, somehow. They didn’t understand it had been replaced by the Constitution.
As moonbat said, people see what they want to see.
And the same people who see states rights in every document are also the same ones who claim to have read the Bible and think Jesus would be fine with them carrying fully automatic pisols into church, and wants their ignorant, red-neck, gun-toting, xenophobic, misgynistic, racist, cracker selves advising him at his right hand after he pulls their worthy souls nekked into Heaven.
Having said all of that, this ‘Oui, the People” stuff sounds awfully French to me…