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Here’s a fun article:

http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2012/12/01/economist_laurence_kotlikoff_us_222_trillion_in_debt_363.html

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1) The Federal Government has done far more harm than the state governments.
2) More local government is more apt to be like what we want than more distant government.
3) The Federal Government is controlled by completely unrepresentative people — 9 Harvard Law and Yale Law graduates on the Supreme Court, permanent DC residents in the administrative agencies, etc.
4) Federal policymaking tends to be by people who never were elected and never have to answer to anyone elected. That’s why we got 30 years of forced busing, a new mandate about lightbulbs, a 21-year drinking age, a 1.5-gallon toilet mandate, Obamacare regulations stripping millions of people of their health policies, a ban on prayer in public schools, etc. None of these things would have been imposed by elected officials.
5) Federal officials take an oath to uphold the Constitution, which reserves control over most of what they do to the states. If they’ll lie taking that oath, they’ll lie about anything.

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it doesn’t matter what we think: in the end, federal courts will decide. They’ll do it because the question is interesting, and because no one can stop them. If past be prologue, they’ll rule that the Constitution requires that homosexual “marriage” be recognized, because federal courts have an almost perfect record these 76 years of ruling against traditional Christian views and of ruling against states’ 10th Amendment rights.

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I agree with Tom. In fact, I long ago decided that the chief benefit of a Facebook discussion isn’t its effect on participants, but its effect on lurkers. Many people comment to me about things the saw me post days/weeks/months earlier in some dispute with an under-bright interlocutor.

[gutzmank]

Your friend’s use of the Weights and Measures Clause reminds me that I’ve often told people that if there were no 14th Amendment Due Process Clause, the Supreme Court would have said we have a right to buy and sell abortion services on the basis that the Constitution requires that presidents be at least 35 years old.

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John D, you da man.

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Both in the US to 1877 course and in the Constitutional History course, we deal with what Federalist leaders of the day saw as the problems of excessively democratic government in the 1770s and ’80s.

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My new course “The American Revolution” will appear in January 2014. Along with chronological lectures on the Revolution, from its precursors in the 1760s through the creation of the US Constitution, it will include individual lectures on Sam Adams, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.

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What is said in this interview is about 85% accurate. I would only correct it insofar as it leaves the impression that Madison succeeded in having a principle of non-cognizance enforceable against state governments included in the US Constitution. He tried, but his effort failed, which is why the Danbury Baptists still lived in a state with a Congregational establishment 12 years after the Establishment Clause was ratified.

For the full story, see the Introduction to the paperback and electronic editions of my JAMES MADISON AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA.

[gutzmank]

I am perhaps oddly well qualified to respond to this, as I’m a Jeffersonian who graduated from the LBJ School of Public Affairs (where the student body was about 4% Republican, with me as sole libertarian type) and once worked as a “Tax Examiner Clerk” for the IRS for about 6 months. I went to LBJ as part of a joint JD/MPAff program with the UTx Law School, thinking that I’d practice law for a few years and become a politician. What I saw there was that everyone there, students and faculty members, accepted the notion that we as prospective grads were preparing to go out and run people’s lives. I should have foreseen that, of course, but I didn’t, and I found it entirely off-putting.

I worked at the IRS Service Center in Austin during the 15-month break I took between graduating in May 1985 and entering the Law-LBJ program in 1986. Of the cohort of people who started with me, one was a very devout Hal Lindsey-type Protestant/Army veteran, another was a veteran friend of his, and several others (including myself) were just there because it was a job. It’s entirely possible that the IRS higher-ups (other LBJ grad-types) skew to the left, but the entry-level people I worked with skewed toward unemployment. No great conspiracy in that huge office.

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My favorite is Tyler. I also have high opinions of Van Buren (solely as president), Jefferson, Madison (particularly as war president), Coolidge, and Cleveland. Dr. McClanahan has told me that he agrees about Tyler. I have a good opinion of Reagan too–alone among presidents in my lifetime.

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It can’t be done. Any governor that tried to use force to impede enforcement of federal law in this way would end up in jail.

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I fear that I don’t know this area, and I don’t think that any of the other faculty members here are political scientists, by training or by inclination, either. What particular subjects do you intend for the course to cover? Do you have to use a textbook?

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Danes and Germans all use Euros, the currency of the European Union.

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You’re welcome.

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