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Jeffrey Polet
September 24, 2025
s we lurch uncertainly and with diminished confidence into America’s semiquincentennial, we would do well to reflect on the reasons our constitutional system seems rickety, our democratic norms attenuated, public trust in institutions shattered, and faith in the American dream and exceptionalism at ebb-tide. Two hundred and fifty years is no small achievement for a republic, but most of us would like to see it last at least a little longer. Current criticisms of the state of the nation result from disparate answers to this question: are the problems we are facing features of the system or an imported virus that has corrupted it? If the latter, from whence and when did that occur?
In some ways, however, that question obscures the nature of our constitutional framework, one that emerged out of intense debate and overcame serious resistance. Rereading the constitutional debates reminds us that no perfect instrument was ever crafted by imperfect hands and that critics of the Constitution had legitimate concerns, many of which now seem prescient. History, not simply tinged but driven by irony, has a way of undoing the best of designs. We have become the empire Alexander Hamilton longed for, and like all empires, we are brought nearer to the dust but no closer to wisdom.
It is difficult to determine which part of the Constitution generated the most debate, but certainly those disagreements over a standing army hold a special place. Sarah Burns’s essay gives us an overview of the history of congressional and executive wrangling over control of that army, yet such wrangling can only occur once that entity already exists. The overall structure of her narrative is pretty straightforward: as the military gets bigger, the ambitions for it grow larger and the restraining actions of Congress shrink, resulting in an increasingly imperial president in charge of an increasingly imperial military. Just as the anti-federalists feared, for they knew America could be a republic or an empire, but it could not be both.
If a gaffe is mistakenly speaking the truth aloud, then Madeleine Albright committed a classic and revealing one when she wondered what the point was of having a powerful military if you weren’t going to use it. The anti-federalists understood and worried about this temptation and worried that, all too often, giving control of that military to the president would be like giving a chainsaw to a child: he might be able to fell a tree, but more likely would cut off a limb.
Continue reading:
lawliberty.org
September 24, 2025
s we lurch uncertainly and with diminished confidence into America’s semiquincentennial, we would do well to reflect on the reasons our constitutional system seems rickety, our democratic norms attenuated, public trust in institutions shattered, and faith in the American dream and exceptionalism at ebb-tide. Two hundred and fifty years is no small achievement for a republic, but most of us would like to see it last at least a little longer. Current criticisms of the state of the nation result from disparate answers to this question: are the problems we are facing features of the system or an imported virus that has corrupted it? If the latter, from whence and when did that occur?
In some ways, however, that question obscures the nature of our constitutional framework, one that emerged out of intense debate and overcame serious resistance. Rereading the constitutional debates reminds us that no perfect instrument was ever crafted by imperfect hands and that critics of the Constitution had legitimate concerns, many of which now seem prescient. History, not simply tinged but driven by irony, has a way of undoing the best of designs. We have become the empire Alexander Hamilton longed for, and like all empires, we are brought nearer to the dust but no closer to wisdom.
It is difficult to determine which part of the Constitution generated the most debate, but certainly those disagreements over a standing army hold a special place. Sarah Burns’s essay gives us an overview of the history of congressional and executive wrangling over control of that army, yet such wrangling can only occur once that entity already exists. The overall structure of her narrative is pretty straightforward: as the military gets bigger, the ambitions for it grow larger and the restraining actions of Congress shrink, resulting in an increasingly imperial president in charge of an increasingly imperial military. Just as the anti-federalists feared, for they knew America could be a republic or an empire, but it could not be both.
If a gaffe is mistakenly speaking the truth aloud, then Madeleine Albright committed a classic and revealing one when she wondered what the point was of having a powerful military if you weren’t going to use it. The anti-federalists understood and worried about this temptation and worried that, all too often, giving control of that military to the president would be like giving a chainsaw to a child: he might be able to fell a tree, but more likely would cut off a limb.
Continue reading:
Imperial Ambitions and a Militaristic Constitution – Jeffrey Polet
The Constitution’s original critics warned that presidential ambitions for imperial greatness could lead directly to militarism and tyranny.
lawliberty.org
