Faction and enthusiasm are the instruments by which popular governments are destroyed. We need not talk of the power of an aristocracy. The people, when they lose their liberties, are cheated out of them. They nourish factions in their bosoms, which will subsist so long as abusing their honest credulity shall be the means of acquiring power. A democracy is a volcano, which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption, and carry desolation in their way. The people always mean right; and, if time is allowed for reflection and information, they will do right. I would not have the first wish, the momentary impulse of the public mind, become law; for it is not always the sense of the people, with whom I admit that all power resides. On great questions, we first hear the loud clamors of passion, artifice, and faction. - Fisher Ames, Massachusetts Convention, 15 January 1788.

Liberty Letters Comment: Fisher Ames, who would become one of the most important interpreters of the Constitution, was no friend of the ridiculousness of direct democracy schemes - which we still here more of today. He favored the "security" of the "sober second thought," or third or fourth which our Constitution (and its mixed republic) guarantees. That is part of the magnificence of the document, no volcanic measures may shoot through in a day, and swiftly bring tomorrow's tyranny. And the same principle applies to the subtle and sneaky.

Of the latter, today, in the name of responding to a fast-changing, technologically driven world, we have the fast track rule (introduced by the supposedly conservative "Contract With America" gang, and made law by the Compassionate Conservative gang) that has all but destroyed the check of the Senate on treaty law (over-riding the 2/3rds vote provision in the Constitution, with a majority vote rule, and a near zero debate provision). Thank you to the Republicans, taken in by a Third Way, arm-twisting "conservative."

Before that came administrative law (beginning mostly with FDR and his regulating of such things as beef - but moving forward in broad, penetrating, ubiquitous ways under Republican Richard Nixon who gave us the EPA, OSHO, the DOE, and other ABC tyrannies, etc.)

Talk about stifling debate! These unconstitutional executive agencies, legislate, execute, and judge their own laws (the very definition of tyranny, so taught our forefathers). And this too: they are not elected, not subject to recall or impeachment, not subject to the jurisdiction of the normal court system, violators of their laws are guilty until proven innocent, are tried in courts that are on the agencies payroll (thus no jury, no impartial judges), and finally, these wonderful speedy laws are never seen by the people till they show up on the Federal Register, a Federal Register that the average Joe never reads, nor has the time or resources to read.

This is progress? If America is to recover her freedoms, she must rediscover checks and balances, separation of powers (horizontal and vertical), and avoid "progressive" calls to speed up government. We need less laws, not more; more informed debates, not less. And we need to stop blaming ONLY the Democrats. All three of the serious constitutional problems listed above are the work of Third Way/Compassionate Conservative Republicans, that is socialists, frauds, and self-interested men who put party above principle while wrapping the Constitution around themselves as if they were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They aren't. However, we can insist that they DO act more like them.

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