you bashed me pretty hard for speaking in support of MY Constitution the other day.
I don't bash anyone for supporting the Constitution. I merely point out repeatedly the fact that the Constitution is an endlessly insufficient document. In fact, I have begun an analysis of the Constitution just yesterday, which I may finish as time permits. The trouble starts from the very first sentence of the Preamble. The problems are real and they are severe. There is a real and eminently sound reason I refer to the Constitution as a specification for a nation of saints. We are were anything but that in 1789 and we are much farther from it today.
The very structure of the document is problematic, the error having been addressed and solved by my redesign when I undertook to write my own version. But that version is vapor and the one in effect is a mess. That is not to say it cannot be made to work, but that it cannot do so in good fashion with a population of doltish people. Freedom and stupidity cannot coexist. It is literally impossible for it to be so on an abiding basis. Yes, some statistically insignificant number of stupid/stoopid people will always manage to luck-out, at least for a time, and not be consumed by the flames of their mental inadequacies. But a truly free land would never be able to support the current levels of stupidity as now dominates the reality of America.
As I have mentioned prior, it may be the case that the Constitution was the best those men could produce at that time, and for that time and those people it was an admirable product. But a man can wander only so far from the plantation on which he was raised and every one of those men were raised as
subjects to a crown. I am confident that there were certain assumptions from which they were able to walk away. Even they, however, should have seen the writing on the wall because it was there even at that time. A good example of this was the simple fact that many were ready to name G. Washington "king". Even then, even after that miserable war by which the new Americans barely scraped past the largest and best trained army on earth, there remained the mental constructs that remained in the minds of many, however temporarily. Certain brands of error, such as this, cannot be afforded even on the most momentary basis because the tyrants will take fullest advantage of it and the general nature of men to obey even the most ridiculous mandates placed upon them. Just look at people today - tolerating PATRIOT, NDAA, TARP, and all that rot.
Entropy of of mind is perhaps the greatest danger of them all.
that anyone who identifies with or as an "anti-federalist" is NOT in DIRECT OPPOSITION to the CONSTITUTION?
Who in their right mind would want to make such an argument in the face of the analytic reality that so glaringly exposes the Constitution as being so deeply flawed?
do the Pauls support the Constitution? can YOU spot the paradox?
There is no paradox. You are looking at the Constitution narrowly. There are at least two aspects by which the document must be assessed. One is the ideas contained therein. The other is the way in which the ideas are couched in terms of construction. A third way lies in judging the completeness of the document. This is no different than that which must be done for any argument or treatise. Ask these simple questions and drill down from there:
[*=1]Is it clear?
[*=1]Is it complete?
[*=1]Is it correct?
At even the most cursory analytic levels we see that the Constitution fails miserably. It is neither clear in all cases, nor in any way can it be deemed complete, taken at the whole. As for correctness, that becomes a matter of deeper scrutiny, the highest-level answer being "partly". It can be said to be correct in the deeper sentiments and notions therein expressed. The notions of individual sovereignty and its attendant freedoms, liberties, and the single true obligation (non-aggression, in essence) are the jewels of that document. Those are the eternal truths that give it its value. But the valence, the central significance of them is occluded and obscured by all the endless bullshit about senates and houses and powers to tax. I would, in fact, have left ALL of that out of the document, leaving it to be worked out by the "states" in other bodies of work. Had the Founders concentrated upon treating the core principles of liberty properly, exhaustively, and with perfect clarity, the rest would have worked itself out in time. The structure of govern
ment is virtually irrelevant when the proper principles of governance are in place, understood, and loved by the people, from the haughtiest intellectual down to even the village idiot.
The Founders fucked up in a very big way, having written the Constitution the way they did. Much noise is made about how pretty and compact a work it is. I don't give the least damn about pretty, diminutiveness, or elegance. I care about clarity, completeness, and correctness, which is the product of my 30 years as a systems engineer and computer scientist. Those of us in my field who have been properly trained and are well experienced and capable are well familiar with the challenges of the proper communication of ideas, which computer science and various engineering disciplines have discovered, contrived, and practice more frequently and with better capability than any other people on the planet, and by a vast margin. We do so because we understand the consequences of failure - we understand this better than even doctors and lawyers. The next best-endowed in such matters are trained combat soldiers who keenly understand the potentially disastrous results of not being C^3 in the transmission of ideas.
If it cannot have been said of any other epoch in human history, it must certainly be said of our current circumstance: humanity can no longer afford a cavalier attitude toward communication or ineptitude in its exercise. We live in an age where the single press of a button can kill people by the millions. The age of technological innocence is past us and we must rise to the new and ever-so-immediate challenges that our current technologies, taken in the context of the less flattering aspects of human behavioral habit, press upon us. We can no longer afford the naïvité of the past... "rah rah rah, 'Murka... we be free, rah rah rah..." like a nation of Charlie McCarthy's. Time is here to choose: wise up and survive as a free people, or remain the rankly doltish people we have allowed ourselves to become in terms of our understandings of what it means to be a free people and be crushed by tyrants whose lust for that end is boundless.
Just because the Constitution is in many respects an utterly miserable document, it does not follow that we should abandon it. It does, however, mean that we as a so-called "nation" can in no possible measure afford to be lazy and ignorant in our understanding of the principles of human liberty and of proper human relations. With such basic knowledge as the filter of perception and judgment, people will then be able to understand the poorly designed and constructed Constitution. They will be able to see how what is written there is to be interpreted against the standard set by the principles to which I refer, and that is all we really need, along with the attitude and will to see them made and kept real in their daily effect in the lives of all men.
who is the most popular member BY FAR at RPF's?
Could not say as I am not here to participate in a popularity contest. I am here to learn, to hone, and to help others see what I see. Oh, and to occasionally vent.
I parse my words and try to speak concisely. if my direct observation is correct..
how is this website NOT an embarrassment to the Pauls?
Nobody's perfect, but on the whole I see the site as anything but an embarrassment. While I find the flame wars and the frequency of lame-ass threads onto which so many seem to pile on unnecessary and at times irritating - perhaps for the same reasons you call the site and "embarrassment", that does not in any way detract from the fine intellectual exchanges and activism that resides here.
The Constitution is nothing more than a weakly constructed window dressing for the jewels it frames. I give it and the authors all due credit for recognizing the supremacy of individual sovereignty and the freedoms and liberties it so forcefully and directly implies. I equally call them out for the terrible job they did and the terrible errors they made in constructing the picture frame. The things that the Constitution needed to be the most were largely ignored in favor of the things we needed the least, which coincidentally just happened to be the things that best enabled the rise of the American tyrant. Funny, that.
Finally, if the site is such an embarrassment to your eyes, why do you remain here? There are plenty of others, perhaps far less embarrassing, to frequent. Why would you stay at a place that embarrasses you? I don't get it.
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