An amendable Constitution is the opposite counterpart to a living constitution, not dead

IMHO, One of the worst unintended consequences of the mischaracterization of the US Constitution as 'living' is that it urges a response to what is the readily-available/exact opposite.

The problem is, the United States Constitution is not a dead constitution. To illustrate, I would like to make a list of dead constitutions for you in the hopes that it will help set up what may be a proper comparison.

The Constitution of Rome, is a dead constitution.

The Solonian Constitution, is a dead constitution.

The Constitution of Prussia, is a dead constitution. (All three of them)

The Constitution of Burma, is a dead constitution.(First two.)

The Constitution of The German Empire as well as the Weimar Constitution, are both dead constitutions.

The point being, they are dead because they are obviously dead. Nobody pays attention to them, nobody lives under them. They are historical show pieces at this point, nothing more.

Yesterday I put a video lecture online highlighting what I believe to be a very useful observation - that the British Constitution is a living and breathing document. This observation came as part of the things I post, but it came to a head for a summer paper that I wrote for my last history class. I wrote about that paper in my prior here so I don't need to re-hash it. But two paragraphs from that paper I would really like to lift and put on display.

If the American Constitution is not living and breathing, then what is it? Well first, just because it is not “living” does not mean that it is “dead”. If you want to see an example of a dead constitution, look to Rome. While Rome's “constitution” was uncodified similarly to what Britain has, another example of a dead constitution would be the Kingdom of Prussia. Constitutions are legal documents, they do not live and breathe in the way that Wilson tried to describe, but considering how Wilson laid out his concept of a living document, we can comfortably say that Britain's model fits the mold as if that is what he was describing all along.

While constitutions do not “live” along these lines, if the societies that they are tied to die or become eclipsed, such as Rome and Prussia, then the documents are as dead as the societies that used to be subject to them. If the American Constitution were ever to die, then that means that the American People will have repealed and replaced her and reverted back to a more monarchical form. To put this simply, the opposite of a living and breathing document is an amendable document; not living, not dead; amendable. Our Constitution with it's amendment process and high bars is in and of itself proof that it's not a living and breathing document, it's an amendable document.

With living beings, the opposite of "living" is "dead".

With legal documents, the opposite of "living" is "amendable".

http://tinyurl.com/qexygqp

Progressingamerica lecture 1: comparing living and breathing constitutions

Now that 2014 is here, I have decided that I want to take the project in a slightly different direction. I have all of this information, but what good is it if it isn't put to good use? The audiobooks are great, but I still want to do more. For that reason, I have put together my first lecture based on some of my archived posts. I plan to do three of these, all based on different topics, to see if I should do more of them.

I have already posted the transcript for the lecture here, with some small difference. I recorded in first person to take ownership of the message. The transcript is written more objectively.

This first lecture is based almost entirely upon a research paper that I wrote for my last history class over the summer. I have uploaded my research paper to the internet as well, but I want it to be said that there are things in this paper which are troublesome to me. It's a college class - so I have to write based on the professor's requirements. But given that, I tried the best I could to move into the topic of my choice. That's part of what led me to do a lecture on this. I wanted my real message to be broken free and put out to a wider audience. But given as my paper has 21 primary sources in it, it is properly cited and academically reviewed, and it is in full APA format, I want to put this out there for others to use. The one thing missing is the title page, but I'm sure people can understand my reasons for removing that before uploading. :-)

And of course, this paper got me an A. I never doubted that outcome even when I started.

The paper is here. On academia.edu.

Tinyurl for academia.edu

http://tinyurl.com/q4zca9t

Does being unwritten make the British Constitution a living and breathing document?

Most conservatives resist the notion that the Constitution is a living and breathing document. But perhaps the notion is worth a second look if you just ask the following question: Which constitution? Once you decide to start comparing constitutions you might be surprised at your findings. There are living Constitutions out there, they just don't apply to the United States of America.

This article is built around three goals. First, to highlight a small piece of the history of Progressivism and how it relates to what’s written. Second, to highlight the discovery process -- without a continued curiosity of the era between 1900 and 1920 by the author, this might not have been considered. Third, to compare the two constitutions, the British Constitution and the American Constitution.

It all starts with Woodrow Wilson. Quite literally, the notion that the United States Constitution is a living and breathing document is a Wilsonian construct. The first time Wilson makes this point is in his 1908 book "Constitutional Government in the United States", in which he says on page 57:

Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice.

He expands on this idea during the 1912 election in one of his speeches titled "What Is Progress?":

Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop.

All that progressives ask or desire is permission - in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word - to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.

Just these words right here, and knowing who wrote them, give us tremendous power. Modern progressives will hem and haw if you ask them straight up what they mean by the notion "living and breathing document", but with this you can nail them on it. This is how the notion was built, this is its foundation. By saying that progressives want to interpret the Constitution along the Darwinian principle, what Wilson is saying is that he wishes to substitute one version of meaning with another version of meaning, even while assuming the exact same words exist on paper. Even for the most casual observer of the Supreme Court, you know that's what progressives want, they just never admit it. Wilson's background on this is not just highly interesting, it gives us an even greater ability to further erode the false reality that progressives live in.

Wilson held other ideological beliefs that shine light upon the notion, such as his belief in what he called "the spirit of the age". That is, the current generation is the only generation that matters. Now it is true that the Earth belongs to the living, but Wilson was no Jeffersonian. Jefferson believed that history was an important guide while Wilson is just like every other progressive, or rather, most progressives are much more Wilsonian than they realize. Progressives have no use at all for substantive history and tradition, it gets in the way of their schemes. Understanding what Wilson means when he talks about the spirit of the age is best summed up with what he told the Jefferson Club in 1911:

If you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface.

What's in the "preface"? For most of us, that is the important things. For Wilson, that's where you find all of the inconvenient things. Without the "preface" all you have left is a list of grievances that are unmoored from the highly important anchor of Natural Law, all that's left is a list of grievances -- the spirit of that specific age.

Wilson's campaign for Governor of New Jersey also gives us insight into his belief system. While a candidate, Wilson publicly stated that if he were to win his election he would be an "Unconstitutional Governor". Wilson explained that while his opponent would gladly fill the role of governor as described in the state constitution, he would not. Once elected, Wilson would go on to meddle in the affairs of the NJ congressional delegations and act outside of New Jersey constitutional proscription. As Governor, Wilson acted much more like a Prime Minister than he did a Governor of a state.

Woodrow Wilson was also a huge fan of British Parliamentarianism, that's how he knew how to act like a Prime Minister so well and it is what led the discovery process. Wilson specifically cites Walter Bagehot numerous times in different speeches as well as cites one of Bagehot's best known books "The English Constitution" repeatedly in his 1887 PhD dissertation, "Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics".

So what of this British Constitution? Well for starters, it is unwritten. Which means that every single time you go to reference it you can interpret it however and in whatever way you wish. Does that sound living and breathing to you? According to the website of Pearson Education under the appropriate title of "The Changing Constitution", (And Parliament's own website) we find that their constitution only requires a simple 50+1 percent majority to modify. Not two thirds of both houses, not three-fourths of the states. Is the American Constitution starting to sound a lot more rock-solid to you yet? Another web page of Parliament makes it clear that the British Constitution relies upon 21 primary documents spanning back to the Magna Carta.

How many spirits of how many ages does that make their Constitution subject to? And therein lies why it's so important to understand Wilson in all of this. Everything you learned about his beliefs applies not to the American Constitution, but the British Constitution.

It is worth considering that some of you may be saying to yourselves that the amendments to the American Constitution inject a spirit of the age into it. This is true to a degree, but that is certainly not what Wilson was saying, and progressives today never say that. Their argument is always that the whole thing as it sits is subject to re-interpretation and that's exactly the way their judicial activists rule. But that could not be further from the truth. Our Constitution is written. You can see the words that comprise it, you can study what those words meant when it was ratified, and you can print a copy of it for yourself. You cannot print a copy of the British Constitution, it doesn't exist. That means every time there is a constitutional question, they end up with a different and unique interpretation.

Based on the history and the facts, you should reconsider the notion’s legitimacy. It seems readily clear that the British Constitution is without a doubt living and breathing, considering its structure as well as how Wilson laid his concept, and Wilson’s background ideology. But then if the British Constitution is living and breathing, then the American Constitution cannot also be living and breathing. These two documents by comparison are just too different.

http://tinyurl.com/pd4su26

The importance of subtlety and reader perception to manipulative journalism

"The subtlest and most pervasive of all influences ere those which create and maintain the repertory of stereotypes. We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception." - Walter Lippmann, "Public Opinion", page 89.

So who creates and controls these preconceptions? Journalists do, and he knows it. He says so on page 355:

It is a problem of provoking feeling in the reader, of inducing him to feel a sense of personal identification with the stories he is reading. News which does not offer this opportunity to introduce oneself into the struggle which it depicts cannot appeal to a wide audience. The audience must participate in the news, much as it participates in the drama, by personal identification. Just as everyone holds his breath when the heroine is in danger, as he helps Babe Ruth swing his bat, so in subtler form the reader enters into the news. In order that he shall enter he must find a familiar foothold in the story, and this is supplied to him by the use of stereotypes. They tell him that if an association of plumbers is called a "combine" it is appropriate to develop his hostility; if it is called a "group of leading business men" the cue is for a favorable reaction.

It is in a combination of these elements that the power to create opinion resides. Editorials reinforce.

This is how the game works. The journalist knows that most people are too busy in their daily lives to take their time to learn about the association of plumbers. This lack of education is key to their power to manipulate, so the journalist can insert faulty education in its place and then use it against the reader. That's exactly what he says. The journalist educates the reader that the plumbers are a "combine", if the journalist wants the reader to hate the plumbers. That is a "subtle and highly pervasive influence which has created and will now maintain this stereotype".

The reader's preconception of the bad plumbers governs deeply the whole process of perception.

Editorials reinforce.

http://tinyurl.com/ox5oed4

Is Walter Lippmann really the "Father of Modern Journalism"? Part 2

As a continuation of my prior post, I want to point out some more things I have found. This will further highlight the importance of Lippmann's ideas among the journalistic world - not because I say they're important, but because journalists themselves say or write it.

One of the things I mentioned in the prior post was that the Harvard School of Journalism has a monument to Walter Lippmann, right on their campus. That's a fairly profound statement on their behalf of what their view of Lippmann was. They also proudly proclaim it:

That’s our home, Lippmann House, above in less frozen days.

Here is what the monument to Walter Lippmann looks like:

And again, you can see that the Lippmann House is where they conduct internships:

You’ll be based here in Cambridge, in our office at Lippmann House

You could also find out what they think just by searching their websites for him. Such as this article: "A spotlight, not a truth machine", which says right along the top as a sub heading:

"The answer will be what it has been since Walter Lippmann got it right 90 years ago."

Or this article: "Questioning Walter Lippmann and our methods of journalism training". These are the things that journalism schools are teaching, and journalism students are reading. There are many other references to Lippmann which are not nearly as specific. Often times, you will just see an off-hand comment which mentions Lippmann and nothing more.

If you notice in that last link, one of the big laments is the lack of journalism schools. On the surface, this appears to be a circular argument and somewhat counter to what is written, because its no secret that these institutions of higher learning teach everybody regardless of their field to be activist. So while on the website it looks like they are only training based on Lippmann's more "honorable" quotes, we can verify the roots of activist thought just by using the first link as well as Lippmann's own writing. In the first link, it says this:

The answer will be what it has been since Walter Lippmann got it right 90 years ago: Journalism is not a truth machine but a searchlight that picks up aspects of reality that obtrude upon the world at a moment when the searchlight hits upon that location.

and

People like me will remind data enthusiasts that journalism is about stories, not data. Data are vital resources, but someone has to apply intelligence, art, and ardor to them to make them a matter of public interest.

As I explained here and here (using pages 355 and 358), Lippmann says the same thing almost word for word. Once you know the history of journalism, you will know that this set of talking points is actually their green card to propaganda:

1: News and truth are not the same thing.

2: There is a very small body of exact knowledge, which it requires no outstanding ability or training to deal with.

3: The rest is in the journalist's own discretion.

Its not just that they think that journalism is about stories("the rest") over data("truth"), its the stories - "the rest" - where they have their source of power because "The rest is in the journalist's own discretion". Right from his own mouth. Page 358.

It all fits. The truth is hidden right there in front of you, right in plain sight. Simply because nobody is actually reading these things and seeing what's actually contained there, these people can get away almost literally with bloody murder. That's the Manufacture of Consent. (which is another Lippmann masterpiece. See page 75)

There's also this, from the American Journalism Review titled "Lippmann On the New Objective Journalism", which reads very similar to the second link from the Nieman Foundation(Harvard).

As you can see, Walter Lippmann is the hero of the story. So if Walter Lippmann is not the "Father of Modern Journalism" but rather he is the "Hero of Modern Journalism", then it is to a degree a distinction without a difference. Either way it does highlight how important he is to the whole establishment.

And no, I am not using a broad brush to paint. Again from page 355: (Lippmann is writing about he the reader, and the user of stereotype words, the writer)

In order that he shall enter he must find a familiar foothold in the story, and this is supplied to him by the use of stereotypes. They tell him that if an association of plumbers is called a "combine" it is appropriate to develop his hostility; if it is called a "group of leading business men" the cue is for a favorable reaction.

It is in a combination of these elements that the power to create opinion resides. Editorials reinforce.

So what did I just do here? I just used a quote from 1920 to describe to you the New York Times in 2014. That's exactly what they do - key words in the news strategically placed, and the editorials repeat it ad-nauseam.

All of them, they have all been trained to be just like Walter Lippmann. They're all Lippmann activists and/or acolytes. This is what journalism schools are teaching, and its what we are watching in real-time.

You can also find some very interesting things if you poke around the website for Columbia's Journalism department. For example, this paper titled The "Lippmann-Dewey Debate" and the Invention of Walter Lippmann as an Anti-Democrat 1986-1996. In this paper, you will find the following:

In this article, Carey asserts that Lippmann's Public Opinion is "the founding book of modern journalism" (Carey, 1987, p. 6), although with greater reason he had called it in 1982 "the founding book in American media studies" (Carey, 19

He's talking about James Carey's 1982 article in The Center Magazine titled "The Press and the Public Discourse," as well as Carey's earlier article "Mass Media: The Critical View." Unfortunately, neither are available online for us to examine, but these are pretty specific phrases being used here - that and its not like others have not used similar wording, see my prior entry.

So what of this founding document of modern journalism, written by what would have to be its father, Walter Lippmann? If "Public Opinion" is the "founding document", does that make it journalism's "Constitution"? In a sense, I think all of us can answer that question with a "yes".

You can download the transcript here.

Or, you can listen to the audiobook of it here.

Lets stop letting these journalists get away with it. Let's use their own history against them. What possible defense could they have?

http://tinyurl.com/mhqjz2c

New audiobook release: Public Opinion, by Walter Lippmann

"You want to know why journalism doesn't get it? You know why journalism isn't on top of it? Because they have read Walter Lippmann." - Glenn Beck, May 27th, 2010.

The implication here is that if you want to understand the foundational corruption of the institution of journalism, you should be reading Walter Lippmann. They are.

Now you have a new option on the table. Listen to it.

This book consists of 28 chapters, all 28 are now freely downloadable. More than anything else, this is what the progressingamerica project is all about. There is so much work to do with understanding progressivism. This isn't like communism. If you want to understand communism then all you have to do is go read Marx's manifesto. There you go, with one book you have solved the problem. Sure, you could read more, read much more. But you don't have to. Same thing for fascism. Go read the Fascist Manifesto or Mein Kampf. There you go, you have it covered.

But there is no progressive manifesto in the same sense. In order to understand progressivism, you need to read John Dewey to learn about it from the educational point of view, you need to read Woodrow Wilson to understand it from the administration point of view, and to understand progressivism and journalism, Walter Lippmann is your go-to guy. John Dewey is widely considered the Father of Modern Education; Lippmann is the Father of Modern Journalism. With progressivism being such a large topic to tackle, audiobooks should make it easier to consume.

What makes it worse, is that the book Public Opinion is not an easy read. Large portions of it are couched in the view from World War 1, which is the era in which the book was written. However, some of the undeniable aspects of the book appear when he starts explaining how to use key words in order to manipulate public opinion and even how to create it. From there, the whole book gets placed in context for what it really is. I know I may be asking a lot, but I do recommend a second reading(or listening) of this once you have reached the end. I make it a point to constantly read the progressives' own writings, and as you can see in that last link I did not spot nearly as much out of this book as is there.

This book Public Opinion is a blueprint for veiled public manipulation - veiled under the disguise of "objectivity". Like all blueprints, it takes time to fully understand how to read them.

http://tinyurl.com/onlur2l

Woodrow Wilson and the "Spirit of the Age"

In his 1908 book "Constitutional Government in the United States", Woodrow Wilson uses a line that could be easy to overlook, but it is a crucial point. On page 69, Wilson writes the following:

The Presidents who have not made themselves leaders have lived no more truly on that account in the spirit of the Constitution than those whose force has told in the determination of law and policy. No doubt Andrew Jackson overstepped the bounds meant to be set to the authority of his office. It was certainly in direct contravention of the spirit of the Constitution that he should have refused to respect and execute decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and no serious student of our history can righteously condone what he did in such matters on the ground that his intentions were upright and his principle pure. But the Constitution of the United States is not a mere lawyers’ document: it is a vehicle of life, and its spirit is always the spirit of the age. Its prescriptions are clear and we know what they are; a written document makes lawyers of us all, and our duty as citizens should make us conscientious lawyers, reading the text of the Constitution without subtlety or sophistication; but life is always your last and most authoritative critic.

Some of our Presidents have deliberately held themselves off from using the full power they might legitimately have used, because of conscientious scruples, because they were more theorists than statesmen.

This concept of the "Spirit of the Age" was very important to Wilson. On numerous occasions he made that clear, many times he does not use that phrase, but it's impossible to miss. In a speech to the Jefferson Club, Wilson said the following:

If you want to understand the real Declaration, do not repeat the preface

And again as I noted in that posting, he made a similar point in one of his essays, "The Author and Signers of the Declaration"

We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines held by the signers of the Declaration of Independence; we are as free as they were to make and unmake governments.

Notice how abstractly political Wilson is in all of these. He would go around acting like he was this big Jeffersonian, and many historians try to couch him as such, but the reality is that he had no use for true history and how it discounts tyrannical government of all stripes. Wilson generally says nothing about the individual's Natural rights to self-govern. As to the Declaration's "preface", if you throw that out all you have left is a list of grievances. The Spirit of the Age.

In another one of Wilson's books, "The State; Elements of Historical and Practical Politics", he writes the following on page 651:

As regards the State's Ministrant Functions. - Of the Ministrant, no less than of these Constituent functions which I have taken merely as examples of their kind, the same statement may be made, that practically the state has been relieved of very little duty by alterations of political theory. In this field of the Ministrant functions one would expect the state to be less active now than formerly: it is natural enough that in the field of the Constituent functions the state should serve society now as always. But there is in fact no such difference: government does now whatever experience permits or the times demand; and though it does not do exactly the same things it still does substantially the same kind of things that the ancient state did.

Note that in his writing, he italicized this himself. Once again, "Government does now whatever experience permits or the times demand" - Spirit of the Age.

In Charles Reade Bacon's book "A people awakened: the story of Woodrow Wilson's first campaign which carried New Jersey to the lead of the states in the great movement for the emancipation of the government", you will find this on page 203:

When you speak of a progressive Democrat, I understand that you mean not a man who will always be standing upon a literal interpretation of quotations out of Thomas Jefferson, but who will try to carry forward in the service of a new age, the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, the spirit of this man who tried to comprehend the things of the people, and to serve them by political combinations and concerted action.

How about that for "The Jeffersonian"? That's an outright rejection of it. But again, what do we see? The Spirit of the Age. This was a fundamental and core belief of Wilson's progressive ideology.

Woodrow Wilson is not the first person to have become enamored with the idea of "the spirit of the age". Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel also held this ideal in high regard. I learned that from Wilson himself, as you can see here in one of Wilson's most important essays, "The Study of Administration":

The philosophy of any time is, as Hegel says, “nothing but the spirit of that time expressed in abstract thought”; and political philosophy, like philosophy of every other kind, has only held up the mirror to contemporary affairs.

According to Hillsdale Professor Ronald J. Pestritto, there are many similarities between Wilson and Hegel, but also many differences. Though a full comparison is not the goal here. My current goal is to highlight many of the times in which Wilson indicated or plainly stated his belief in the "spirit of the age".

http://tinyurl.com/ll3fhta