Antonin Scalia - On American Exceptionalism

A constitutionally limited government can explicitly hurt minority rights, for instance the Confederate States Constitution, or betray intentions of principles through direct democratic procedures by interpretation and enforcement. With direct democracy you do have tyranny of the majority while this is certainly mitigated in a representative democracy; for instance the 2016 election where the popular vote would have selected a different president. The US founding fathers were very familiar with Aristotle who stated: "Unlimited democracy is, just like oligarchy, a tyranny spread over a large number of people.” Indeed the US founding fathers' decisions reflect this, If we're to believe their commentary, they picked a republic with the motivation of liberty for all with emphasis on the elective structure, Constitutional Convention of Hamilton 1787 : "We are now forming a republican government...Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.” Scalia has a good talk about this, how a merely constitutionally limited government is completely ineffective of guaranteeing its provisions, its interpretation, and its enforcements: [this video] "Every banana republic has a bill of rights"

I'd love to discuss with others here something related. I have lately (to my surprise) been drawn by some talks of Antonin Scalia on Youtube. Far from being repelled (or amused at his standing alone) as I was years ago by his coming down on the opposite side of judgements I thought were socially just and good, I now come to understand better what he was doing. At least if you believe his talks. After listening to his talks (and then thinking back to his opinions), I understand he was trying to make sure that the Constitution was followed to the letter of the law, and that if the people were unhappy with it, let them change it so that it reflected the popular desires. But let it follow that process. Not have social or political will creep its way in via individual judges' or courts' determination something was now "acceptable enough" that it could be ruled to have evolved and be constitutional at the present time. And that the writers of the Constitution were trying to prevent disaster as much as trying to enable progress -- and that we should be careful when we stray from the words encoding that goal, because when you do that it opens up all sorts of unintended consequences. (Hence the connection to this OP's story + comments about law as source code.) This really opened my eyes about what that aspect of judicial conservatism is about. Not that I agree with all of its philosophy or tendency (in politics) to court a certain sector of the vote, for example. But it did arouse in

Exactly! Which is why this conversation is so interesting – and why it seemed they were unfairly downvoted. The question of "does friendship compromise integrity of systems over time?" is quite fascinating, and there are many examples across many countries that show "yes, yes it does." So it seemed entirely legitimate to say that perhaps a system should penalize friendships, somehow. But, after watching Scalia, how can you not like him? [this video] [link] He was witty, charming, and a master orator. So when people hear "can't have a friendship with Scalia, even though you work with him," it's kind of like "can't breathe, even though you're human." It's a logical contradiction. And it's not even a well-defined problem: what is a "friendship," anyway?

Remember, founding fathers had a very dim view on Democracy, this is why they chose to have a Republic and then restrict the republic through a constitution. If Democrats were losing out to big numbers, they would pro-republic and Republicans would be pro-democracy. But, one of the best explanations for why founding fathers built the system the way they did is this[1], by late Justice Scalia. The fundamental idea is that the American system is created to represent the will of the republic across time and space: - Every bill needs to be passed by all three House, Senate and the President - House recycles very fast (every 2 years) - President recycles at a moderate speed (every 4 years) - Senate recycles at a slow pace (every 6 years, and partially every 2 years) - House represents the population - Senate represents all states equally (or represents land) - Presidency is elected through a hybrid system (electoral college, which is distributed in proportion to the population). - The fundamental idea is that any bill must be agreed upon by: a. The will of the people not just in short term (house), but in mid-term (presidency) and long term (senate) also. When UK wanted out of EU, the remainers believed that they should have a revote because they didn't believe that people voted with full information. Of course, years later a second proxy vote through general elections made the intent clear, but in the US we will not go for a bill to be passed unless its not just what we voted for

Justice Scalia basically agreed with you: gridlock is essential for protecting minority interests. > And I hear Americans saying this nowadays, and there's a lot of it going around. They talk about a "dysfunctional government" because there's disagreement. And the Framers would have said, "Yes, that's exactly the way we set it up. We wanted this to be power contradicting power -- because the main ill that beset us" -- as Hamilton said in The Federalist when he talked about a separate Senate -- He said, "Yes, it seems inconvenient, but inasmuch as the main ill that besets us is an excess of legislation, it won't be so bad." This is 1787 -- he didn't know what an excess of legislation was. > So, unless Americans can appreciate that and learn to love the separation of powers, which means learning to love the gridlock, which the Framers believed would be the main protection of minorities -- the main protection. If a bill is about to pass that really comes down hard on some minority [and] they think it's terribly unfair, it doesn't take much to throw a monkey wrench into this complex system. > So, Americans should appreciate that and they should learn to love the gridlock. It's there for a reason -- so that the legislation that gets out will be good legislation. [link] [this video]

As Antonin Scalia (Supreme Court Justice) said to the US Senate ..."learning to love the gridlock" "And I hear Americans saying this nowadays, and there's a lot of it going around. They talk about a "dysfunctional government" because there's disagreement. And the Framers would have said, "Yes, that's exactly the way we set it up. We wanted this to be power contradicting power -- because the main ill that beset us" -- as Hamilton said in The Federalist when he talked about a separate Senate -- He said, "Yes, it seems inconvenient, but inasmuch as the main ill that besets us is an excess of legislation, it won't be so bad." This is 1787 -- he didn't know what an excess of legislation was." [this video]