{"id":682,"date":"2009-03-21T19:43:26","date_gmt":"2009-03-22T02:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/?p=682"},"modified":"2014-01-09T12:18:56","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T19:18:56","slug":"was-montesquieu-right-did-the-founders-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/was-montesquieu-right-did-the-founders-fail\/","title":{"rendered":"Was Montesquieu Right? Did The Founders Fail?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/b>t’s an old manipulative first year con law question, much like when Donald Sutherland in Animal House<\/i> thinks he’s being risque asking if Milton’s “Paradise Lost” asserted being evil is more fun while Sutherland munches an apple. We dwell on it here after reading Cass Susstein’s item “The Enlarged Republic – Then and Now.”<\/a><\/p>\n

\"This<\/center><\/p>\n

F<\/b>or those of you who’ve followed Sunstein’s writings since the 1980s it’s familiar stuff. He delves into the history and context of the Federalist Papers<\/i> as a means of arguing their relevance for our nation today. He starts off summarizing the project thusly: <\/p>\n

Publius’s project was to reconceive republicanism\u2014a body of thought with ancient origins in Aristotle and Cicero whose modern forms had been elaborated in different ways by Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. Emphasizing self-rule by the people, republicans insisted on the importance of civic virtue and generally believed that self-government works best in small, homogeneous republics. According to the argument of the Federalist Papers, however, such small republics tend to destroy themselves. The reason lay in the power of factions\u2014well-organized private groups with passions or interests inconsistent with the good of the public as a whole. Publius believed that in a large republic, a heterogeneous public could counteract factional power and serve as a creative force, promoting circumspection and introducing safeguards against bias, error, confusion, and even oppression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sunstein gives us thumb nail sketches of the large republic\/constitutional Federalist argument and the small republics\/civic virtue notions of the antifederalist. And like Donald Sutherland, he cops out just by asking the question — always the safe career choice.<\/p>\n

We all talked here together about demotic societies, their characteristics and consequences. Watching recent events this last month does little to change our diagnosis. Although in broad constitutional terms, the system’s infrastructure performed as designed — the House is deliberately the outlet for the passions of ‘the people’ (including ill-advised ones). The Senate is the cooling saucer and the President has veto. <\/p>\n

If Obama intends to restore liberal democracy after the Warlord’s imperial criminality he must do more than repeal this or that or close some base, etc He must figure out a way for accountable deliberative government to function once more. Just item 206 on this GTD list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s an old manipulative first year con law question, much like when Donald Sutherland in Animal House thinks he’s being risque asking if Milton’s “Paradise Lost” asserted being evil is more fun while Sutherland munches an apple. We dwell on it here after reading Cass Susstein’s item “The Enlarged Republic – Then and Now.” For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","two_page_speed":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-constitutional-issues","7":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stiftungleostrauss.com\/bunker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}