on James Madisons worst nightmare is just plain old interesting. He takes the supercilious Madison worshiper George Will to task for his hypocrisy (or intellectual inconsistency perhaps) and, among other things, brilliantly makes a point that Ive often discussed on this blog over the years: Modern conservatism continues to rely on certain antebellum-era arguments on behalf of states’ rights and, also, the intrastate rights of state majorities versus state minorities. In the decades before the Civil War, the increasingly dominant Southern wing of the Democratic Party agreed about the broad questions of political and economic power. During the 1850s, the issue of slavery destroyed the Whig Party and brought forth the anti-slavery Republican Party (or, at the least, the party opposed to the expansion of slavery). These developments clarified the overwhelmingly pro-slavery position of the Southern Democrats, who argued only over the smartest tactics—whether to stay within or leave the federal union—that would preserve the pervasive privileges and hierarchies of slavery. Antebellum Southern intellectuals sought to promote and defend their vision of American society by lodging the maximum power possible within the states. Calhoun, as sitting vice president during Andrew Jackson’s presidency, had worked, during the 1820s and early 1830s, on refining the doctrine of “nullification” in connection with South Carolina’s opposition to congressionally passed tariff laws. Calhoun disagreed that the federal government—whose power to trump the states is enshrined in the supremacy clause of the Constitution (strongly defended by Hamilton in Federalist No. 33)—subsumed, as the clause stated, “under the authority of the United States,” a state’s right to decide which federal laws (and treaties) are constitutional and which aren’t. Calhoun believed that the “mutual negative” of warring interests “forms the constitution.” Its essential purpose was to nullify, not ratify. Read on, thats just the tip of the iceberg. from Digby prospect.org/article/james-madison%E2%80%99s-worst-nightmare#.Uu-ikM12OCy.facebook
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 14:42:29 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015