[gutzmank]

You’re welcome, John, and thanks for your kind appraisal. Tell your friends!

[gutzmank]

In context, it seems that the Due Process Clause means that one cannot be executed, jailed, or fined without first having had access to the traditional Anglo-American adversarial process. The best discussion by far is to be found in Raoul Berger’s GOVERNMENT BY JUDICIARY: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, and he elaborated on that in THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS.

[gutzmank]

THE FEDERALIST is one source of the Federalists’ ratification-era argument, though not the best–for the reasons explained in the lectures. The complete version of ratification materials is THE DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE RATIFICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION, which –at 26 volumes–costs well over the sum you mentioned.

I’m afraid I don’t have time to do research projects from subscribers about particular issues of constitutional interpretation. This particular question certainly did come up in the Richmond Ratification Convention, and so is dealt with in my JAMES MADISON AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA.

Perhaps Dr. McClanahan will offer further detail.

[gutzmank]

No, a legislature cannot commit treason against its country.

[gutzmank]

Thomas Jefferson famously wrote of slavery during the Missouri Crisis, “we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” This statement reflected the idea, in wide circulation at the time, that the only moral claim stronger than justice was self-preservation. If libertarians deny this, I haven’t seen it.

[gutzmank]

No, the semantics of your assumption aren’t wrong. Yes, this was the way that people were told the Constitution would be read — for example, in the Virginia Ratification Convention, as I detail both in JAMES MADISON AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA and in VIRGINIA’S AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Yes, there were differing interpretations sold by Federalists in different states, viz., Massachusetts ratifiers were sold an antislavery take on the Constitution while South Carolina ratifiers were sold the opposite. In ordinary contract law, the absence of a “meeting of the minds” would render the contract invalid. No, no one has written on this subject, although I could certainly see myself doing so.

[gutzmank]

Yes. At the time of the Revolution, the states began to exempt such people from requirements of military service. They had in mind chiefly the Quakers, who are pacifists and whom it was widely thought unjust to punish for refusing military service. The alternative mentioned here was not paying for militia service, but paying someone to go into the Continental Army.

[gutzmank]

Defenses of what? I need a specific topic.

I could refer you to defenses of icons, of veneration of the God-bearer, of the word “God-bearer” as her title, of episcopal governance, of Orthodox ecclesiology, of the doctrine of the Trinity, of the homoousion, etc., but I don’t know what you want.

Typically, short introductions are going to be from one confessional perspective (Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Fundamentalist, etc.) or another. Again, please be more specific.

It’s a big question, and to ask it as you have is a bit like saying, “Can someone please give me a recommendation of an introductory book on knowledge?”

[gutzmank]

Samgheb, I think Dr. Woods’ point is that “books about theology” is a gigantic category. Care to be more specific?

[gutzmank]

I’m an Orthodox convert (since 1990). I’d be happy to communicate about it further, if you’d like, via e-mail: gutzmank@wcsu.edu.

[gutzmank]

Dinesh D? Really?

These questions are nothing new. The eminent Christian theologian Origen wrote about them as early as the third century, and the pagans raised them almost from the start. For the latter, see Robert Wilken’s THE CHRISTIANS AS THE ROMANS SAW THEM. Wilken, who was then an ordained Lutheran minister, but who later became a Catholic (despite publicly stating that he agreed with the Orthodox about the filioque, Vatican I, etc.), is one of the most prominent historians of Christianity in the last half-century, and that book is outstanding.

The questions posed in this thread all assume that one becomes a Christian as a result of receiving acceptable answers to a series of questions. The first Christians, on the other hand, became Christian because they saw Christ risen, and then they re-read the Old Testament in light of that fact. See, for example, Eusebius’s THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH, or Kallistos Ware’s THE ORTHODOX CHURCH.

[gutzmank]

You’re welcome.

[gutzmank]

The reason “they tried to learn from the ancients” is that the educated ones were all educated by reading the ancients. One wouldn’t be surprised that they differed about the lessons the ancients taught.

[gutzmank]

John, the Miranda warning certainly is entirely the invention of the SCUS. It has no connection to the Constitution.

[gutzmank]

Bland and Jefferson were among several Virginia pamphleteers, including my ancestor Landon Carter and George Mason’s brother Thomson Mason, who wrote along similar lines in the 1760s and ’70s. You can find the story in chapter 1 of my VIRGINIA’S AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

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