Rich Turner Quotes
It took two years for the thirteen states to ratify The Constitution, and the last state to ratify it did so by a mere two votes [36-34].)
The Grammar Curmudgeon
Rich Turner, 1937-2011 Grammarian, Philosopher & Essayist, The Big Brother Dilemma, April 10, 2011
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Most of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were aristocrats, and all were elites of different types. However, they wanted and knew that they would have to submit their work product to the people for ratification. So while each had their own views, most were heavily influenced by their perception of public opinion reaction to their draft. Even with that, in order to get the ratification votes, they had to add the first 10 amendments—the Bill of Rights in order to get the votes of the men who were NOT at the convention.
The political battles over the ratification of the Constitution were vicious and brutal even by modern standards.
The 10th Amendment was created to take care of this objection which Jefferson and many others had.
Conason was refuting the argument of Presidential Press Secretary Ari Fleischer {618120} who had used the secrecy of the Constitutional Convention in 1789 to justify the Vice President’s secret meetings with energy businessman to make government energy policy.
There are many Americans who resent the fact that states and localities publish official documents in Spanish and other foreign languages as well as English. They often argue that the Founders wanted English to be the only language of the American government. It comes as a shock and surprise that the Constitution was published in English AND German to reach the many German immigrants who were a part of early America.
In the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the delegates agreed that the there would be no official transcript and that the debates were to be kept secret:
Most of the states would not ratify the proposed 1787 constitution as it was. Congress then added a version of what became known as the Bill of Rights in order to obtain the required concurrence of the people. Most scholars look at the 1787 Constitution and observe how little trust it had in the men who would rule and implement it. However, the people in general were even more skeptical than the intellectual leaders who drafted the Constitution and wanted even more assurances. Many people believed that most of the issues in the Bill of Rights were either implicit in the original 1787 draft or were unnecessary to spell out, but Congress had to sell the Constitution to the people as a whole and it took some very specific text to get people to believe that their rights would be protected.
George W. Bush. See {618119} for the rejoinder to the defense.
at the NSA collection of every American’s private e-mails, phone calls, and other digital communications. Referring to the NSA program of collecting information on all electronic communications of all American Citizens. See {636963} for more on the case.
This hypocrisy and insincerity was seen for what it was by the Radical Republicans, Abolitionists and the newly freed slaves themselves. See {617728} and {617339}. However, this approach soon was adopted as the “party line” by intellectual Southerners of the time, and has continued to this day. The rebellion that caused the deaths of more Americans than all the rest of our wars, was not as they stated it caused by any conflict over slavery, no economic causes, no differences in labor philosophies and trade, no contention over control of new territories, but was simply an attempt to vigorously support and defend the Constitution. However, one advantage to using this story as an explanation of the bloody rebellion, was that the defeated Southerners could see their acts as somewhat nobly motivated.
