The people wrote the Declaration of Independence, The government wrote the Constitution
Submitted by MikeLawson on Tue, 07/07/2009 - 09:13
They're both good, but I really like the Declaration better. It was a grassroots effort---bottom-up. The Constitution was a government thing--- top-down. The original committees of safety were writing the declaration, not the constitution. I'm wondering honestly if the very first "movement" in America was usurped early to lay the foundation for this tyranny we now live under.
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Crazy, but this is pretty much the way i see it.
The declaration was meant to be liked more than the constitution. It was written to with a sort of a rhythm to it. I really don't see how you can claim it was written by the people...it just wasn't.
government = the people
especially during that time.
Murray Rothbard, the late
Murray Rothbard, the late anarcho-capitalist economist and polymath, devotes a substantial proportion of his 2000+ page history of early America, Conceived in Liberty, to the tension between the people who supported secession from England, and revolution, and the forces of the Old Order (aristocracy, mercantilism and unearned privilege). He concludes that the Old Order began to reassert itself even before the military part of the revolution was over. He goes so far as to suggest that it was a mistake for the revolutionary forces to form up as a conventional military, preferring instead that the fighting would have continued as a form of insurgency. He indicates that subjecting the revolution to the centralized control of a conventional military structure was the first step in co-opting the revolution.
Recent memory points to the triumph of the Mujahedeen of Afghanistan, in the early 1980's, against the world's #2 superpower (the USSR) using insurgency tactics. The U.S. is clearly facing the same problems in Iraq and Afghanistan today. Clearly insurgency has the power to defeat the massive State forces.
You Need to Do Better Research
Most of the ideas in the Declaration had been around for longer than the people had been alive at the time. Most of the concepts that are in the Declaration came from John Locke, and he got many of his ideas from others. This was not something that "the people" just got together and wrote. It was the result of principled education. It was built on the shoulders of giants.
The same thing could be said about the Constitution. This was not the work of just a few people who got together on a whim. Furthermore, the Constitution was ratified by a clear majority of delegates to state conventions. In fact, the vote was unanimous in three states and the average approval in the rest of the states was well over 60%. A majority of these delegates were men who would later go on to vote overwhelmingly for Democratic-Republicans. More importantly, these were men who had fought a war to win their freedom. They knew about liberty, and they were willing to risk everything they had for it. Many of the men who signed the Declaration also helped with and/or supported the Constitution.
The Constitution drew on ideas from many different people in many different eras. It also drew heavily from some of the state constitutions which were already written at the time, including Massachusetts and Virginia. In fact, what came out of the convention in Philadelphia was significantly different than what Madison had envisioned, and Hamilton didn't have much of a hand in actually writing the Constitution. He only went to bat for it after the fact and then did everything he could to subvert it once it was ratified.
Try researching your facts rather than just repeating unfounded anarchist dribble.
This is too much a quibble
This is too much a quibble over semantics. I knew what the author was trying to say. I also believe that he's right to characterize the revolution and what followed as very different in character.
Patrick Henry
P.H. nailed it I think in his "I smell a rat"
Seems some really great people have 2 first names.
Think it was Hamilton? Madison? that were the bankers pets?
The more I learn about him, the more I love Patrick Henry. He's got to be my favorite founding father.
I've wondered that
I've wondered that myself...
Considering one of the first main political parties was the anti-masonic party... just another thing that makes me wonder.
Thursday - War All The Time