When the Constitution was framed there were no railways, there was no telegraph, there was no telephone. The Supreme Court has read the power of Congress to establish post-offices and post-roads and to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states to mean that it has jurisdiction over practically ever matter connected with intercourse between the states. Railways are highways; telegraph and telephone lines are new forms of the post. The Constitution was not meant to hold the government back to the time of horses and wagons, the time when postboys carried every communication that passed from merchant to merchant, when trade had few long routes within the nation and did not venture in bulk beyond neighborhood transactions. The United States have clearly from generation to generation been taking on more and more of the characteristics of a community; more and more have their economic interests come to seem common interests; and the courts have rightly endeavored to make the Constitution a suitable instrument of the national life, extending to the things that are now common the rules that it established for similar things that were common at the beginning.
The fact that new technologies have arisen is of course, wholly irrelevant to whether or not the legislative has a check and balance upon the executive. It appears to me as if Wilson is perplexed a bit by the constitution. But being as Wilson himself was a central planner, he can't help it but look at the constitution in that way, as a highly regressive document for planning itself - which it isn't.
In the discourse regarding new technologies, Wilson utterly fails to make the case as to why there needs to be wholly new structures in government. It doesn't surprise me that this argument is of Wilsonian construct. Whole lectures have taken place in regard to this subject, It's been on TV and radio before. These are the voices of modern totalitarianism. So here's what all of us need to get straight: because three former paypal employees invented something called "Youtube", that means we need to give up the house and senate and we need panel after panel after panel of administrators to run our lives for us. See how disconnected the argument is? But that's what any progressive - Wilson included - would ultimately have you believe. Without being so honest and forthcoming, of course. This discourse on technology and the constitution is pure demagoguery. Even worse. Demagogues rely upon weaknesses in order to do what they do. Technology in conjunction with the constitution is not a weakness, but it's been made into one under an entirely false premise.
And this use of the word 'common' in conjunction with 'property' is disingenuous. For millenia, dictators of all stripes have used this ruse of 'common property' in order to rally the serfs. Common property is not government property. Private, government, and common property are three different things. The books I routinely quote from are common property; in the public domain, as are my recordings. The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution is common property. The audiobook recording of the STORM Manifesto is common property. It's one of the tyrant's best sales tactics: "We'll just redistribute a little wealth over here, hold this or that property in common over there", it's all a lie. What's really happening is the concentration of amassed power and wealth in one spot: the dictator's fist.
In some of the most famous words ever written, Lord Acton wrote the following to Mandell Creighton:
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
All of this and more, is exactly what Acton was talking about.
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