I feel their pain.

I think the paper’s description of Ms. Greenberg as “taking the long view” was meant to be a little facetious. I don’t think the paper was actually looking at her attitude as a healthy way of dealing with things.

If there is facetiousness here, it is so understated that you have to see it yourself. The story quotes a series of people about how unhappy they are, and then says:

———————
Some are trying hard to take the long view.

Penny Greenberg, who feels as if she does not belong in her own country anymore, offered, “My only consolation is that someday this planet will be a dead cinder in the universe and all the stupidity, greed, and intolerance and their sad, sad consequences will be lost to all memory.”
———————

Long before the sun burns out and the earth is a wandering “cinder”, it’s at least possible that all the world’s peoples will be subjugated under Marxism, Islamism, or something equally ghastly. Far from being the “long view”, Ms Greenberg’s is the typically myopic perspective of the leftist: she wants her Utopia and she wants it now.

SCott in PA wrote:
“…she wants her Utopia and she wants it now.”

Yes, and her Utopia consists of ” … a dead cinder in the universe and all the stupidity, greed, and intolerance and their sad, sad consequences … lost to all memory.”

Ms. Greenberg’s statement reminds me of Camus’profile of the Marquis de Sade(in The Rebel)as an example of Absolute Negation:”Real fulfillment,for the man who allows absolutely free reign to his desires and who must dominate everything,lies in hatred. Sade’s republic is not founded on liberty but libertinism.” De Sade, the ultimate libertine, is also the person who declared that he abhorred nature and that if given the chance he would cast out the sun. Camus notes along the way that,”Sade did not create a philosophy but pursued a monstrous dream of revenge.” And later: “Sade’s success in our day is explained by the dream he had in common with contemporary thought:the demand for total freedom and dehumanization coldly planned by the intelligence.”

We can be thankful that the influence of Jefferson’s inchoate radicalism was attenuated during the deliberations on the Philadelphia Constitution, and even further attenuated by the great interpreter of that Constitution, namely Publius.

Mr. Cella wrote:
“…and even further attenuated by the great interpreter of that Constitution, namely Publius.”

Yes we can. Indeed if we could hold the Supreme Court’s constitutional feet to the cleansing fire of the Federalist Papers we would be far better off.

But we ought to also keep in mind that the pre-ratification Publius put a very different spin on things than the post-ratification Hamilton. Publius-Hamilton argues in the Federalist Papers that the congressional power to tax and spend is limited to spending specifically to implement the enumerated powers in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. The anti-federalist objection, that the power to tax and spend could and would be interpreted more broadly to mean that Congress can tax and spend on whatever was for the general welfare, was just so much unfounded reactionary alarmist hooey according to Publius-Hamilton. Oddly though the post-ratification Secretary of Commerce Alexander Hamilton, a very, very short while later, asserted in his _Report on Manufactures_ just the broad interpretation those alarmist anti-federalists had worried that the tax-and-spend liberals would pursue.

So we can’t lose sight of the historical fact that liberals - in this case Hamilton and Jefferson - have been pulling the old bait-and-switch rope-a-dope routine on friendly play-along-to-get-along conservatives for quite a long time.

Good point, Matt. Hamilton also endorsed a broader interpretation in his Opinion to Washington on the Bank of the United States (and interestingly, we was arrayed against Jefferson on that issue). I generally prefer Publius to Hamilton (or Madison).

Mr. Cella: I agree completely. A very good reason to prefer Publius to Hamilton is that Publius was the sales brochure we were shown before the Constitution was ratified. We thought we were buying Publius; not Hamilton, or Madison, or Jefferson. Probably the Constitution would not have been ratified without the understanding expressed by Publius in the New York newspapers. So even though Hamilton (and in a few instances Jay) *was* Publius, we need to hold him to his word on what he sold us rather than allowing him to play revisionist.

Does Matt have citations and/or quotes to back up his point, namely, that Hamilton in the Federalist said that money bills would not be based on the General Welfare, but that as Treasure Secretary he adopted the very principle he had earlier excluded?

Federalist 41:
“Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.”

Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, _Report on Manufactures_:
“A Question has been made concerning the Constitutional right of the Government of the United States to apply this species of encouragement, but there is certainly no good foundation for such a question. The National Legislature has express authority “To lay and Collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the Common defence and general welfare” with no other qualifications than that “all duties, imposts and excises, shall be uniform throughout the United states, that no capitation or other direct tax shall be laid unless in proportion to numbers ascertained by a census or enumeration taken on the principles prescribed in the Constitution, and that “no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state.” These three qualifications excepted, the power to raise money is plenary, and indefinite; and the objects to which it may be appropriated are no less comprehensive, than the payment of the public debts and the providing for the common defence and “general Welfare.”

Well good grief. Mr. Auster just pointed out to me in email that Federalist 41 was written by Madison, not Hamilton. I’ve made this point a number of times with these quotes in discussions over the years without ever getting called on it, thinking that it was Hamilton, to the point where it is just a cut-and-paste argument. Mea culpa.

Mr. Cella’s broader point that Publius is to be preferred to his post-ratification successors still stands, of course. Hamilton’s post-ratification interpretation of the general welfare clause is directly opposed to what was sold to the anti-federalists by Publius; but not, apparently, by Hamilton-as-Publius.

I looked the passage up, not because I doubted that it was by Hamilton, but because I wanted to see the text that followed the part that Matt quoted. Matt quoted the part where Publius denies that General Welfare is the basis of money bills. I wanted to see if Publius immediately followed that, as Matt had earlier suggested he did, by saying that the enumerated powers in Article I Section 8 were the correct basis for the money bills. And indeed he did.

But, though No. 41 is by Madison not Hamilton, the difference between Madison-Publius and Treasure Secretary Hamilton is still appropriate, is it not? Though Madison in 1787-88 was a strong federalist, even a nationalist (unlike his later Jeffersonian self), he still had a more restrictive view of the general government’s powers than did Hamilton, and that difference of course came to the fore in the 1790s.

Yeah, it just doesn’t have quite the same punch as it would if it were realio, trulio the same guy!

Some comments on the notion of “unprincipled exception” can be found at http://pbswatch.blogspot.com/

Marv:

How very Lutheran of you to advocate the abandonment of rational consistency in politics.

Also I think you misunderstand the Hegelian Mambo, or at least summarize it incorrectly. The HM is not a cluster of unprincipled exceptions biased in a particular direction. The particular unprincipled exceptions of the moment do help to determine the pace of the dance, though, cha cha cha.

Lutheran? That may be the one thing I have never been accused of. ;-) I do not advocate the abandonment of rational consistency. I do, however, advocate the recognition that rational consistency is fraught with perils, not the least of which is, paradoxically, a logical peril.

Matt, I was wondering if che-che-che (as in a certain renowned Latin America Hegeian) might be preferable for the HM over cha-cha-cha. What do you think?

Matt’s HM is so exquisitely funny to me perhaps because I had to study Hegel in Spanish in college. Although I made straight A’s in Spanish, I really disliked Hegel’s writings. The dialectic: uninteresting to a partying but serious student such as myself. Of course, I realize now that such concepts perhaps have importance (Wittgenstein’s theory being my remaining doubt), and I am not really qualified to debate them. My attitude then was, “what conclusory hogwash.” But here I have learned that an intellectual foundation is necessary to an advanced civilization regardless of eternal debates over Wittgenstein’s grand philosophical issues that he rejected as illness.

Hey Carl I like your variation, the Hegelian Mambo speeds up into the ever-frenetic Sartreian Salsa, che che che!