Why do so many people think the Constitution is classical liberal?

[Anarchist420]

It's actually mercantilist. The framers of it were largely mercantilist, and then it's text also indicates that the govt was intended to be mercantilist. Here's why:

It favors American-manufactured ships over foreign manufactured ships. Therefore, it was against free trade.

It gives Congress the power to regulate international trade.

It does not place limits on the tariffs.

It gives Congress the power to regulate the value of foreign coins which means that it intended for all the gold and silver to be kept here.

It gives Congress the power to ban goods and services from crossing state lines if they aren't all the same.

I don't see why Dr. Paul didn't point out that it is not classical liberal.

 

[Soundmanred]

It is.

 

[Craig234]

Anarchist, I don't find word definition debates all that useful as you get into 'classical liberal' and 'mercantilist' and such.

You should worry less about the labels and instead try to look at what policies have what effects and which are better.

And OF COURSE the founding fathers were against 'free trade'. Until the Income tax in the 20th century, the federal government was largely paid for from trade tariffs.

Aside from that, there is also the issue of protecting the growing of American industries by opposing free trade.

You can learn a lot from this quote from Ulysses Grant:

For centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks that protection can no longer offer it anything. Very well then, gentlemen, my knowledge of our country leads me to believe that within 200 years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade.

 

[piasabird]

What the constitution looks like now is not what the constitution was designed to work like. It is constantly changing. For instance at first women did not have the right to vote. When the pilgrims got here they made rules like "If you dont work you dont eat!" There was no welfare. If you wanted a job or were down on your luck, you could go to the center of town and stand around till somone offered you some work.

The purpose of the constitution was to protect the rights of the states and the individual and to limit the power of the Federal Government. We purposely made it so we did not have a king, we could own property, and we had the right to speak our mind. In other countries if the king did not like what you said you could be hung or beheaded. Along with this was freedom of religion or no state religion which is linked to freedom of speech.

Have you ever read the constitution?

So if some teacher or person says something is against the constitution, How would you even know if they were right or wrong? In a way some of the things you said exist or make sense, but that does not mean they are exactly constitutional. The federal government has become larger and it seems to be as oppressive as any king ever was. Some people think this is a good thing and some people dont like it.

I dont like a strong centralized federal government. The main reason is that Federal employees all seem to make too much money and the Feds waste about half the money you send them. So the smaller the federal government the better.

The NSA is probably reading this post right now.

 

[piasabird]

Freedom is kind of a liberal idea. Liberal did not always equal progressive. At some point we became a nanny state and some people equate that to being liberal. There has to be a balance to all things. I think churches can help people the best and the most economical way when it comes to welfare. The federal government is just too wasteful and too ready to use welfare as bribery. At some point too much help for too long can hurt the human spirit and human dignity. People need work to feel needed and successful. The Government should not be the answer to everything.

 

[Craig234]

When the pilgrims got here they made rules like "If you dont work you dont eat!" There was no welfare. If you wanted a job or were down on your luck, you could go to the center of town and stand around till somone offered you some work.

The econonics were extremeley different then. There could be 0% unemplolyment, with unlimited land for free (except to the Indians it was taken from), not our modern advanced industrialized economy with structural unemployment, in part kept higher to keep an affordable labor pool. The safety net is a small and humane price to pay for it.

 

[Craig234]

Freedom is kind of a liberal idea. Liberal did not always equal progressive. At some point we became a nanny state and some people equate that to being liberal. There has to be a balance to all things. I think churches can help people the best and the most economical way when it comes to welfare. The federal government is just too wasteful and too ready to use welfare as bribery. At some point too much help for too long can hurt the human spirit and human dignity. People need work to feel needed and successful. The Government should not be the answer to everything.

And those are comments filled with ideology and unsupported assumptions and assertions.

And for one of your points, NO ONE says government should be the answer to everything.

 

[woolfe9998]

I guess Craig already said this, but I don't honestly understand some people's obsession with ideological labels. It's mental masturbation. People like that never see shades of grey. Everything must fit into one conceptual box or another.

 

[Anarchist420]

And OF COURSE the founding fathers were against 'free trade'.

Thomas Jefferson wasn't.

For instance at first women did not have the right to vote.

Neither did men.

The purpose of the constitution was to protect the rights of the states and the individual and to limit the power of the Federal Government. We purposely made it so we did not have a king, we could own property, and we had the right to speak our mind. In other countries if the king did not like what you said you could be hung or beheaded.

Quite the contrary, it was actually created to take power away from the States... and the President is the king and has been since George Washington. The only President who wasn't really king was Andrew Johnson, but that was because his predecessor already had the country under military rule.

"King" and "President" are both independent executives so they're one and the same.

Alexander Hamilton was a fascist as was everyone else who advocated for the Constitution. The Federalist Party was fascist.

 

[Craig234]

Anarchist, this is a reason I suspect many tend to avoid some of your topics, because you mangle words and treat that as an argument.

A king and a president are not the same. Saying otherwise shows not understanding the history, and paying attention to only small things while ignoring important issues.

Similarly, the federalsits were not 'fascists'. That's more throwing world around carelessly. Fascism means a lot of things different than federalism.

It reminds me a bit of the tiresome way the tea party tends to throw these words around, so the IRS becomes the same as the Nazi SS and so on.

It really takes the word hyperbole and says "you can't do justice to this".

You often do find little known nuggets that are worth telling people about, but you stretch them into unrecognizable and radical claims negating the value.

While I'm listing these issue, I'll add one more, it's not that helpful when you ignore a lot of a response - like the Grant quote - to just try to make some small point instead.

For example, let's take Piasabird's point, that we had the right for the people to speak their mind, while other countries executed people for that.

You could question just how much free speech there really was in other countries; how many people really were executed for saying the wrong thing.

And in the first few years of our country, our second president had already gotten a law passed under which many people were imprisoned, where criticiizing him was a crime.

Your old hated president, Wilson, got another law passed under which thousands of Americans were imprisoned when saying WWI was a mistake was made a crime.

That law is still on the books - it's the same law long dormant that Obama has brought back for more whiselteblower prosecutions, the Espionage Act of around 1917.

There are plenty of valid points of discussion about these things, but saying the federalists were fascists is not one.

That's why Ifind I have to spend so much time reigning in your excesses if I replay rather than agreeing with the nuggets of useful info.

99% of Americans don't pay any attention to whether 'the constitution is classic liberal', because they don't give a crap about those sorts of labels.

There are issues around that - the way identity politics makes people irrational, the way buzzwords are created so liberal anything gets a reaction of hate.

But you're off on some tangent about the constitution here that seems to me just isn't an issue that seems to have much relevance historically or politically.

 

[bryanl]

Astounding ignorance of the Enlghtenment shown here.

 

[sao123]

The econonics were extremeley different then. There could be 0% unemplolyment, with unlimited land for free (except to the Indians it was taken from), not our modern advanced industrialized economy with structural unemployment, in part kept higher to keep an affordable labor pool. The safety net is a small and humane price to pay for it.

Hate to tell you this... but intentional padded unemployment designed to keep labor costs low is why our economy is in the tank

Its funny how free martket principals are championed as what we need, until they apply to the labor market, which we have to create an artificial bubble to keep labor costs low.

I find it stupid that we have policies in place to prevent the one thing which could being us out of this economic drought.

We are a consumer economy... if you give all your consumers higher wages... they instantly begin to buy more, which in turn raises profits for companies, allowing them to raise wages again, or hire more people... and we reverse this trend.

Blind politics is blind!.

 

[Crono]

You can learn a lot from this quote from Ulysses Grant:

Is that a verifiable quote? I'm trying to backtrack the exact words.

 

[Sonikku]

Quite the contrary, it was actually created to take power away from the States... and the President is the king and has been since George Washington.

It's true.

Proof:

On a more serious note, it's fashionable to pass the constitution off as an infallible note that has the solutions to all of our problems if only it were obeyed. But at the time, being black or female was grounds enough to not even be eligible to vote. There are few liberals today that would draw comparisons between themselves and that.

 

[bononos]

What the constitution looks like now is not what the constitution was designed to work like. It is constantly changing. For instance at first women did not have the right to vote. When the pilgrims got here they made rules like "If you dont work you dont eat!" There was no welfare. If you wanted a job or were down on your luck, you could go to the center of town and stand around till somone offered you some work.

The purpose of the constitution was to protect the rights of the states and the individual and to limit the power of the Federal Government. We purposely made it so we did not have a king, we could own property, and we had the right to speak our mind. In other countries if the king did not like what you said you could be hung or beheaded. Along with this was freedom of religion or no state religion which is linked to freedom of speech.
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Actually out of work pilgrims didn't have to sit around in the center of town because they could just stake out some land and do their own thing.

Its short sighted to only see the federal govt as the only enemy of freedom. Corporations are about as big a problem as the nanny state.

 

[Juddog]

Actually out of work pilgrims didn't have to sit around in the center of town because they could just stake out some land and do their own thing.

Its short sighted to only see the federal govt as the only enemy of freedom. Corporations are about as big a problem as the nanny state.

Corporations wouldn't be that bad if they weren't allowed to use lobbyists to buy politician interests.

 

[sm625]

Its short sighted to only see the federal govt as the only enemy of freedom. Corporations are about as big a problem as the nanny state.

Corporations are the federal government. It's 90% corporate and 9% eugenics. < 1% of washington DC is actually people who even attempt to represent the people.

 

[alkemyst]

Idiots today only think bipartisan, liberal vs conservative, capitalist vs socialist, etc.

In the end most don't know WTF they are arguing about.