In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do.
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Author: Redactor
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December 02, Monroe Doctrine
On December 2, 1823, U.S. President James Monroe delivered a speech establishing American neutrality in future European conflicts. The policy became known as the Monroe Doctrine.
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Dead Document?
Could it be? We do not live under the Constitution of the United States. The document has been a dead letter for a century, maybe longer.
Ours is a Post-Constitutional America.
Surely, there have been great moments of executive usurpation.
Andrew Jackson, in defiance of the Supreme Court, and against all normal principles of law and justice, removed the Cherokee from their agrarian holdings in Georgia and contiguous southeastern United States, sending them marching to Oklahoma. The Supreme Court said his order was unconstitutional. Jackson’s response? Not really much different from “nyah nyah, nyah nyah, nyah nyah.”
Much of the Civil War and Reconstruction was undertaken on the shakiest of constitutional grounds. And then came the “great progressive” presidents.
Republican Teddy Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson defied the explicit intent of the Constitution’s authors — as written in The Federalist as well as in the state houses that adopted the new compact. Both presidents construed the Constitution as authorizing the federal government to do pretty much darn near anything not explicitly forbidden in the document.
That was not the original understanding.
And then there is war. The U.S. Congress hasn’t declared an explicit war since World War II. But we’ve been in a never-ending string of wars.
With Obama, the post-constitutional prevarication has reached new . . . effrontery. The current president says that, though he had previously declared the “Iraq War” a done deal, over, finito, he now says his new attacks upon ISIS are constitutionally justified by 2002’s Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq.
“Post-constitutional”? It means our leaders are liars, beyond the law.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Most people agree about the wrongness of police brutality, if not about whether a particular police action is an example of it.
But what about protester brutality? Again, most oppose it. Still, skeptics on this point have been particularly loud and insistent lately. Some even suggest (or scream) that violence against the innocent is fully justified if that’s what it takes to protest injustice.
But the existence of police brutality does not justify protester brutality, protester vandalism, protester indifference-to-evidence, or any other violence or irrationality.
The grand jurors in Ferguson were not dealing with injustice in the abstract, but with a particular incident and the relevant evidence. They were not asked to determine whether police ever wrongly shoot or kill, but whether there was evidence that a particular officer had done so, enough to justify a trial. Even assuming legitimate grounds to disagree with their conclusion, too many commenters declaim as if the evidence is irrelevant and the jurors’ motives not possibly honest. The man had to be indicted regardless.
Of course, had Officer Wilson been tried, on this assumed-guilty approach only one outcome would have then been deemed acceptable, regardless of evidence: conviction. Absent that conviction, violence against the innocent would still have been rationalized.
No injustice is properly fought by either sweeping aside facts or by attacking the innocent in the name of protecting the innocent. If we ignore the requirements of justice in order to advance a Cause, how can that Cause be justice?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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December 01, 2012, stolen election of 1824
On December 1, 1824, with neither John Quincy Adams nor Andrew Jackson (pictured) receiving a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives was given the task of deciding the winner in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The House selected Adams.
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Baruch Spinoza
He whose honor depends on the opinion of the mob must day by day strive with the greatest anxiety, act and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the mob is varied and inconstant, and therefore if a reputation is not carefully preserved it dies quickly.
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November 30, 2012, Sam Chase impeachment
On November 30, 1804, the United States House of Representatives began impeachment hearings against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. The House thought he was too partisan, too “Federalist.” The Senate later acquitted Chase.
On 1835 on this date, Samuel Clemens was born, later to achieve world fame as author and humorist Mark Twain.
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Baruch Spinoza
So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long is he determined not to do it: and consequently, so long it is impossible to him that he should do it.
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Townhall: Against Protester Brutality
This weekend on Townhall, something more about the big story of the day. One injustice doesn’t justify another. On some level, we all know that. So on every level, we must make sure that this basic rule of morality holds all accountable the same.
Click on over, then back here for a little more reading.
- The Daily Beast: “Michael Brown’s Step-Father Tells Crowd, ‘Burn This Bitch Down’” by Jack Holmes
- New York Times: “Protests Flare After Ferguson Police Officer Is Not Indicted,” by Monica Davey and Julie Bosman
- Townhall.com/Common Sense: “Justice Vision,” by Paul Jacob
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Lewis, Nov 29
Irish-English medievalist, theologian, and fantasy writer Clive Staples Lewis was born on November 29, 1898.