Who Were the Sea Peoples?

One of the most prominent critics of democracy was, of course, Plato, who along the way gave us the metaphor of "the ship of state." Democracy, he argued, was akin to a ship being steered and navigated by the passengers. Different potential captains would sell themselves to the passengers by pandering to their desires rather than based upon their seamanship. Such a voyage could not but end badly, Plato thought. The argument for a mixed constitution flows pretty naturally from this metaphor, I think, although Plato did not pursue it in that direction. While it's true we don't want the passengers picking which channel to attempt or when to tack, we also don't fancy the notion of the captain essentially kidnapping the passengers and dragging them anywhere on the seven seas he wishes to go. A mixed constitution tries to balance sound seamanship and individual autonomy.

"Jefferson believed that one generation could not be trusted to safeguard the interests of the next... the people deriving benefits from the federal Constitution had to be the living users of the text. The Constitution's meaning could not be stagnant; it's understood benefits had to be progressively redefined. 'No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law'... He meant, too, that there was no original intent : the founding generation could not make the Constitution into a property monopolized by its authors, eternally empowering themselves to control its value and application." -- Madison and Jefferson , p. 205

Something that sometimes happens is that libertarians think I must no longer understand the pitfalls of politics that I once understood. Not so! Coming to appreciate the pitfalls of trying to ignore or do away with politics does not imply having forgotten the pitfalls of politics itself. One serious problem is that the government officials, who are supposed to be attending to the common weal, come to treat their offices as merely ways to feather their own nests. (Those who would say that that is all that government officials ever do are being absurd: all I can say is get out of your parent's basement and meet a variety of people in government posts: most of them are genuinely concerned, to some extent or other , with actually doing good at their job, even if they are also concerned with doing well themselves. I'd say, in fact, it's much like at any private company for which I've worked: some people are devoted to the company, some care enough to get promotions, som...

PS Huff is upset that our constitution is no longer being employed according to its "original understanding." As noble as his motives are, there never was one single "original understanding," and the idea of "one constitution to rule them all, one constitution to bind them" was always an impossible dream: "Nor can there be a single ultimate rule of recognition, an unconditional and unquestionable norm from which all others derive their authority: a 'constitution' not subject to interpretation and immune from inquiry." -- Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct , p. 151