Donald L Horowitz Quotes
How a constitution is written can sometimes matter almost as much as what it contains.
When people see the process as unfair and insensitive to minority rights and issues— rammed through by one group which wants to dictate how the rest should live, they never even reach the point of considering carefully the actual language and making compromises with that. They just oppose the constitution in toto usually by finding the 2 or 3 most egregious clauses and harping on those with no attempt to improve them and rejecting the entire constitution.
Donald L Horowitz, Political Scientist, Fellow, The Wilson Institute, “Writing the New Rules of the Game”, The Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2011
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The president was asked if he supported the Supreme court's school desegregation decision:
Powell was the Secretary of State and Addington kept advising the administration that as long as the President was acting in defense of the country in his capacity as Commander in Chief, he did not have to obey any existing laws that had been Constitutionally passed which in the opinion of the President restricted or limited the President or the executive branch. Addington was an attorney and Assistant to the Vice President, but he was given much responsibility for administration policy. Powell the Secretary of State of the Administration could not have disagreed more and although most politicians including Republicans disagreed with the Addington thesis, Powell was one of the few Republicans to criticize the Addington position.
In modern times almost all countries have written constitutions. And almost all of those constitutions appear to be democratic. Many have been taken from the United States Constitution. However, most of the countries are not real democracies as they do not enforce their own constitutions. For example, in Egypt, the constitution guarantees women equal rights to men. There are many female attorneys. However, the notion of a female judge is too much for the sexist culture. So regardless of what the constitution says, it is not enforced with respect to female judges. When Smyth gave his lecture, constitutions were just getting popular. He was prescient enough to realize that a constitution to be effective must conform to the belief structure of most of the population and the constitution most be administered as well as written.
This is the earliest surviving attempt of the Romans to formulate a legal code.
Despite Ziglar’s and other officials pointing out the illegality, illegal sweeps and arrests were made without warrants or constitutional requirements.
In 2012 the Republicans controlled the House but not the Senate or the White House. As the nation grows, the Congressionally voted budgets have implications and the budget ceiling has to be raised to balance the two. That had always been a bipartisan process over the life of the nation. However, the Republicans in the House decided that they would hold the debt ceiling legislation hostage to pressure the Senate and the White House to pass legislation that the majority of the Senate and the President thought was bad for the country. Krugman advised the President and the Senate to resist giving in to this blackmail even if the debt ceiling was hostage to their demands.
See {632309} for an similar French Political expression made at approximately the same time over an important principle. However, commerce in its many forms such as business and job creation has been the major reason for compromising important moral and political principles during much of recorded history.
