[ExI] Be nice to leftists

[Dan Ust]

Dennis May wrote:

"The Constitution is a document of negative liberties - meaning the federal government can do this finite list of enumerated things and nothing more.  The majority of US federal government spending is now outside of the Constitution hence we are in a post-Constitutional period.  This issue is already covered in the Constitution but ignored and worked around with every branch of the federal government involved in bypassing the Constitution."

Not the actual US Constitution. It gives broad and sweeping powers to the central government, and the enumerated powers were to be interpreted (by the text of the document and by the federalists' stated intentions; their big concerns were foreign domination and internal faction and not limiting government) far more broadly than many libertarian sympathizers today believe. This is one reason why the anti-federalists at that time argued so strongly against it.

Also, separation of powers is cute, but it only works, or so thought Montesquieu and the anti-federalists who relies on him, when the separation matches something deeper and more permanent than a constitutional mandate. In England, a key example of working separation of powers for Montesquieu, separation worked, they argued because the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the commons were truly separate and rival classes. No such deep antagonisms existed in the US, so separation of powers would have to be based on something other than class rivalry. The anti-federalists argued in favor of a less centralized government (much less centralized than the actual US Constitution) as a check and balance on central power -- against a separation of powers within the central power. They mostly feared what has come to pass: a very powerful central government that is extremely active in economic and private life of its subjects.

Regards,

Dan
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