Dear visionaries,
I too hope for a smooth ride in Iraq. But there is a difference between Congress declaring war and Congress abdicating its assigned responsibilities. Congress could issue a statement that the federal budget could originate this year in the Supreme Court. Doesn’t make it right. The Constitution doesn’t say that Congress declares war unless the Congress decides to let someone else do it.
I don’t understand why so-called progressives can’t live with their own principles. The right to be kept out of shadow courtrooms is guaranteed by a living document. All that fair trial stuff actually means something else now. New era! Change with the times! Go with the flow!
If we agree the Constitution is a living document, this means it is actually dead and malleable. Anyways, what this means is that the folks I saw marching on the federal building the other day must be guilty of treason and sedition. I suggest that they all turn themselves in ipso pronto at the federal building for processing off to Guantanamo.
As Pogo put it, we have met the enemy and he is us. If the Constitution says that Congress is to declare war, not the president, and this is blown off as a bit of constitutional arcana, then why is not the 1st Amendment equally arcane? The 2nd Amendment? Or, more to the point, the 9th and 10th?
The bad news is that when you make something malleable, as progressives have diligently sought to do to the Constitution for generations, you one day wake up to find that a malleable Constitution can stretch in any direction, left or right, up or down. It is not enough to shrill in a discontent way about the consequences, it is necessary to see how those consequences have arisen.
Caesar has declared war. I don’t know why those who made him Caesar don’t want to follow him.
The Constitution says (Article 1/Section 8) “The Congress shall have power To . . . declare War.”
Cordially,
Douglas Wilson
“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.