When reading these papers and other writing by the founders, they are always overtly concerned about ensuring that the national government does not overstep its power and undermine the states or oppress the people. This is certainly understandable, given the warfare and other struggles they and the nation had just undergone. But why was there no concern among the founders that the new system they designed might not be able to respond to urgent challenges?Did they never worry that their system of checks and balances would be unable to act quickly when necessary? Was there any discussion of these issues?
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast
A major theme of this course is the role of religion in American public life. An example comes in today's appearance by President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast. Here is a short excerpt from his remarks:
Click here for the full text.
The National Prayer Breakfast has been an annual event since 1953. Atheist groups have criticized the participation of presidents and lawmakers. This year, the sponsoring organization has come in for additional criticism.
The key point here is that American public figures routinely invoke God and take part in religious events. Such practices are less common in other industrial democracies.
Surely we can agree to find common ground when possible, parting ways when necessary. But in doing so, let us be guided by our faith, and by prayer. For while prayer can buck us up when we are down, keep us calm in a storm; while prayer can stiffen our spines to surmount an obstacle -- and I assure you I'm praying a lot these days -- (laughter) -- prayer can also do something else. It can touch our hearts with humility. It can fill us with a spirit of brotherhood. It can remind us that each of us are children of a awesome and loving God.
Click here for the full text.
The National Prayer Breakfast has been an annual event since 1953. Atheist groups have criticized the participation of presidents and lawmakers. This year, the sponsoring organization has come in for additional criticism.
The key point here is that American public figures routinely invoke God and take part in religious events. Such practices are less common in other industrial democracies.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The Constitution -- A First Cut
The Great Compromise:
Read these provisions from an actual constitution. How would you appraise them?
ARTICLE 118. Citizens have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance with its quantity and quality. ...
ARTICLE 119. Citizens have the right to rest and leisure. The right to rest and leisure is ensured by the reduction of the working day to seven hours for the overwhelming majority of the workers, the institution of annual vacations with full pay for workers and employees and the provision of a wide network of sanatoria, rest homes and clubs for the accommodation of the working people.
ARTICLE 120. Citizens have the right to maintenance in old age and also in case of sickness or loss of capacity to work. This right is ensured by the extensive development of social insurance of workers and employees at state expense, free medical service for the working people and the provision of a wide network of health resorts for the use of the working people.
ARTICLE 121. Citizens have the right to education. This right is ensured by universal, compulsory elementary education; by education, including higher education, being free of charge; by the system of state stipends for the overwhelming majority of students in the universities and colleges; by instruction in schools being conducted in the native language...
ARTICLE 122. Women are accorded equal rights with men in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life. The possibility of exercising these rights is ensured to women by granting them an equal right with men to work, payment for work, rest and leisure, social insurance and education, and by state protection of the interests of mother and child, prematernity and maternity leave with full pay, and the provision of a wide network of maternity homes, nurseries and kindergartens.
ARTICLE 123. Equality of rights of citizens irrespective of their nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life, is an indefeasible law. Any direct or indirect restriction of the rights of, or, conversely, any establishment of direct or indirect privileges for, citizens on account of their race or
nationality, as well as any advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, is punishable by law.
ARTICLE 124. In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church is separated from the state, and the school from the church. ...
ARTICLE 128. The inviolability of the homes of citizens and privacy of correspondence are protected by law.
Contrast the US Constitution with the Confederate Constitution.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
First Assignment
Below is your first assignment. Before writing it, make sure that you read Strunk and White. Also see my writing advice at http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/govt/jpitney/writing.htm, which in turn contains links to model papers.
Pick one of the following:
- Find a recent (since October 2009) article pointing to a problem that Publius anticipated. (You may search newspapers at news.google.com.) Explain how The Federalist sheds light on the story. In this instance, is the political system working as the Founders hoped?
- Pick an environmental issue (e.g. toxic waste facility siting). Explain how federalism either fosters or hinders progress on this issue.
- See the box on p. 64 of the textbook. Would you favor or oppose a new constitutional convention? Explain.
- See the box on pp. 94-95 of the textbook. What, if anything, has your state government done about the issue of illegal immigration? What should it do?
- See the box on pp. 128-129 of the textbook. Do you believe that the government should encourage or discourage dual citizenship? Explain.
- Choose one of the following bills and evaluate it. Should Congress pass it or not? Why?
HR 1868 – deny birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants;
HR 3596 – repeal health insurance industry’s antitrust exemption.
Whichever essay you choose, do research to document your claims. Do not write from the top of your head.
Essays should be typed, stapled, double-spaced, and no more than three pages long. I will not read past the third page.
Put your name on a cover sheet. Do not identify yourself on the text pages.
Cite your sources with endnotes, which should be in a standard style (e.g., Turabian or Chicago Manual of Style). Endnote pages do not count against the page limit.
Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you.
Return essays by the start of class, Wednesday, February 17. Late essays will drop a letter grade. I will grant no extensions except for illness or emergency.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
A Crumbling Cornerstone
Alexander Stephens refers to "the equality of races," a principle that the founders of our nation considered to be a natural law governing all humankind, as an "error" and a "sandy foundation." I find this idea, the fulcrum of Stephens' argument in his famed Cornerstone Speech on the eve of the Civil War, ludicrous. Stephens nods to Thomas Jefferson's premonition that slavery would be "the rock upon which the old Union split." Sure enough, less than a century after the Declaration was boldly endorsed by 56 revolutionary men, the Confederacy sought to wrench itself away from the newborn nation. Stephens spits the signers' words back at them, claiming irrationally that the enslavement and subsequent gross mistreatment of African people should be the proverbial cornerstone of a nation. The vice president of the Confederacy asserts that what Jefferson and the other signers thought to be an "evanescent" trend in labor and trade is instead a solid foundation. Stephens even goes so far as to call those opposed to slavery "fanatics," blaming a "defect in reasoning" for anti-slavery sentiments felt by many Americans. It is a travesty that Stephens and others in favor of slavery were so narrow-minded. Had these men considered how much their own freedom rested upon the Declaration's guarantees of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" to all men, perhaps they would have noticed the cracks in their "cornerstone."
Democracy, Freedom, Deliberation, Citizenship
The Cornerstone Speech: contemporaneous news coverage. BTW, this source is a good case study in internet research. Google Cornerstone Speech 1861 and one early hit is
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=227002 , which cites
http://www.pointsouth.com/csanet/greatmen/stephens/stephens-corner.html -- but the link is broken. What to do? Paste the link into:
-------------------------------------------------------
- Who are the people?
- Limited government v. unlimited scope of power: "everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
Freedom
- Negative Freedom
- Positive Freedom
Deliberation
- What does it mean to reason on the merits?
- How does deliberation differ from bargaining?
Citizenship
Monday, January 25, 2010
The Declaration
Lincoln-Douglas Galesburg debate (forward to 1:01:30)
From the Cornerstone Speech by Alexander Stephens:
The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."Deleted Paragraph:
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidels powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. He has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
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