NYT: Hillsdale College "City on the Hill" for Conservative Students

I dare say I am not mistaken. I know you mean the above sincerely, but it is so muddled in what you hope to be that you seem to have lost all concept of what actually is. And I mean this seriously. I respect that you mean every word, but is wishful thinking. Now, those words could be made reality, but there is process to do that. However, just stating these positions in a post means zilch.

What I write below is something I suspect every Hillsdale student knows:

To begin, the Founding Fathers would whole-heartedly agree with you that, “[My] 60 per cent number has nothing to do with the will of the people by any stretch of the imagination” because they set up a republic of sovereign states, not a republic of individual people. The government set-up document is called the Constitution of the United States, not the Consitution of the United People. This is key because the Constitution sets up a federal government and states with their own sovereign governments.

Specifically, the Constitution has purview over 51 different governments - 50 state governments and 1 Federal government. All states governments are equal and independent in that no one state can dictate to another state, regardless of population or physical size. California cannot tell New Hampshire anything about how to run NH, even though CA is some 30X more populous and much larger in landmass. The equal power of the States is preserved by each state having two Senators, with all senators bestowed with equal powers.

You misrepresent, even if inadvertently, what I wrote in my post. I did not write that the 60% majority represented the will of the people. I clearly wrote the 60% represents the will of the states. But, that is what the vote should represent because, given that it is the Constitution of the United States and each state is sovereign, our system is set-up for the states choose the president. The president takes an oath to defend the Constitution, not to defend the people who voted.

Therefore, all the popular vote talk is empty because there is absolutely nothing in the Constitution about a popular vote for president. The Founding Fathers discussed and determined for several reasons, with a main reason being to preserve state sovereignty, that the states should choose the president, since the Constitution governs the states and the federal government. And given that the president is the executive of the federal government, it is proper that the entities he governs, i.e., the states, be the ones which choose him. Hence, the electoral college. In simple english, the president does not govern the people, which is so erroneously believed by ill-taught students and people. The people actually are governed directly by their state governments.

What you seem not to understand is the will of the people is designed specifically to be expressed locally, which gives each person the most power, i.e., voting for their congressional representatives and their state government. For example, a person voting in NH has the same power over how the state governs him as a person voting in CA because the larger voting bloc in CA is constitutionally irrelevant to NH governance and thus cannot override any voters’ wishes in NH. Without this set-up, the progressive ideas of the coasts would be controlling public policy in all states. However, with sovereign states, CA and the coasts are free to be uber-progressive and other states are free ignore and be undisturbed by them.

The end result is two-fold: state sovereignty is preserved and, by proxy, the voters in each state have votes that have the most power to directly affecting their lives. Therefore, when voting for president of the United States, it is the states, and by proxy, the people in each sovereign state which decides who they want to represent their state as president at the federal level.

The beauty of the system is there could be 100 million people in CA with looney ideas of governance, but the rest of the states are not forced to follow that looney approach simply by their collective populations voting for other presidential candidates. And when the states’ votes are tallied, you can get what we just got this past year - 30 states choosing a particular candidate over the 20 more populous states.

And as for the 10 million more Senate votes, totally irrelevant because there is no national senatorial vote tabulation in the Constitution for anything because the states, by definition, are sovereign. So why make up meaningless correlations as if it applies to something? It is futile exercise in nothingness. A senator who receives 30,000 votes in his state is equal to the senator who receives 3 million votes in his state. Population size is irrelevant; thus, the number of votes garnered by senators collectively is irrelevant.

So, you can go on about the national popular and senatorial votes, but it is a disservice to students (and others) around the country because that is not part of our Constitution. And, it borders on abusive to make them think that something went wrong, when everything worked exactly as intended.

Students should be taught properly that, per the Constitution, the states choose the president and that there is no place in the presidency for tabulating a popular vote other than at the state level. If you do not like it, then draft an amendment and do the hard work of changing it instead of saying and complaining about something that has never been part of our system and acting like it means anything in our current system.

And the answer to the result does not represent the will the people, there is an easy solution given that the states are sovereign - the people unhappy with the results should move to a state that is more aligned with their beliefs and which is governed that way, instead of thinking they should be able to force their beliefs on everyone in every state.

I am not good with this.

“We could also conclude that the government has no right to regulate abortion since it was not part of the original meaning of the constitution” is meaningless because government is not defined. As lawyer, I know you know better than to write this as if it makes sense.

What is wrong with your statement is it fails to acknowledge that there are two levels of government involved here, state and federal. The answer is very simple and is provided by the constitution itself - given that there is no mention of abortion in Constitution, then the federal government does not have the right to regulate it.

However, as per the 10th amendment, any powers not granted the federal government in the Constitution is reserved for the states or the people. Therefore, the sovereign state governments can regulate abortion based on regulations the voting majority in those separate states desire, which is determined by whom they vote for in the state legislature or as determined by referendums on the ballot. (Referendums supersede state legislative actions)

Therefore, as a blanket statement, it is false to say abortion cannot be regulated by government; it just should not be regulated by the federal government.

Leaving the gun topic alone - too complicated to be discussed here.

And your point is? I thought you were for promoting free thinking. If Hillsdale thinks freely and differently than the majority of the American people, is that not a good thing?

I just do not get the issue why you even care that Hillsdale, or any other school for that matter, says things that are inconsistent with the majority of the American people. Those people are free to ignore Hillsdale. Are they that disturbed by different ideas that they get upset just hearing them?

Come to think of it, a steward of the Constitution would write what you stated a bit differently, while representing the exact same thing, but better representing what the Constitution put into place: “Hillsdale will do or say anything to represent a political point of view which is totally and completely inconsistent with a [minority] of [American states’] viewpoint.”

Love, love post #140. The like button just isn’t enough. Got to put it out there on record. Sort of ironic to me, also, that free speech is only “free” if you agree with whatever the line of thinking de jour or du jour happens to be. Probably why Hillsdale defends the Constitution eh?

@awcntdb you keep forgetting the equal protection clause of the constitution. Also the constitution starts out “we the people” This should not be about the looney tunes as you so describe them from the state of Oklahoma trying to suppress California citizens.

I think you have also forgotten that many states to correct these inequities require their electoral college voters to go along with the national vote. This is about a minority trying to suppress the will the majority for their own selfish purposes.

So let me see if I have this correct. You are okay with each state regulating abortion, air pollution, auto safety standards and immigration as they see fit(you may want to check immigration is not part of the constitution) ? That sounds good to me.

Also since you think California is a bunch of looney tunes how about letting California, Oregon and Washington form their own country?

Hillsdale makes a mockery of the constitution for their own political purpose

I already got a moderator’s warning for posting excessively political comments in CC, so I will just say that what Hillsdale calls “defending the Constitution” I would call “defending Hillsdale’s very narrow, politically influenced, and historically inaccurate interpretation” of the Constitution.

But this discussion has strayed far afield. There is nothing wrong with Hillsdale, it serves a purpose, and as long as students know what they are getting into when they go there, more power to them.

One theme of US history from its founding onwards is a contestation between how much governing power(including taxation and other powers of state) should be allocated…should it prioritize state sovereigty/rights above all else or the Federal government?

Before the constitutional convention, the initial consensus was that states should have priority in the sovereignty/governing power areas and the articles of confederation was written accordingly.

However, there were some serious issues such as central government effective means to tax to raise funds for its own administrative costs or to fulfill its stipulated duties, the states ended up squabbling with each other over a variety of disputes…sometimes to the point of near/actual conflict between rival militia forces, tariff wars between states made interstate commerce expensive and impracticable, etc.

All this ended up prompting what became the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the creation of the very US Constitution which supplanted the original ineffective Articles of Confederation.

Later on, when the Confederacy seceded from the Union by among other things, citing “States rights”, the central Confederate government ended up being hoisted by that very petard when governors such as Georgia governor Joseph E. Brown refused to allow Georgia militia soldiers to be used to fight outside of state borders and generously issued “critical civil service” exemptions for as many fit military men as possible. This was further underscored by the widespread outcry among many Confederate citizens and politicians over the Confederate institution of a nationwide draft in 1862 which was not only decried as a violation of each state’s sovereignty/rights and a violation of individual rights against effective enslavement by the state, but also the very manifestation of centralized government tyranny which caused them to secede from the Union in the first place.

End result of all the above was aptly put by one early 20th century historian of Southern US history when he stated that the Confederacy effectively lost the war “due to states rights”. (Owsley, Frank L “State Rights in the Confederacy” (Chicago, 1925))

Also keep in mind that in areas of advancing Civil Rights and ending de jure racial/ethnic/religious discrimination, the Federal government has a far better record in that area than states rights advocates.

Especially considering the constitution originally legalized slavery and amendments to prohibit slavery was only put into place after a violent 4 year civil war in which the pro-slavery Confederacy were defeated and effectively prevented from participating politically because pro-Confederate citizens and politicians were stripped of their citizenship rights* as a result of their demonstrated betrayal of the constitution/laws by taking up arms against the constitutionally elected Federal government by firing on Fort Sumter and taking up arms against the Union.

  • Restoration eventually occurred though for some it only happened posthumously as was the case with CSA General Robert E. Lee and former CSA President Jefferson Davis.

And??? Is there a hidden message here that I am missing? Curious why you do not cite the entire preamble and decide to pull out three words out, as if those three words have/tell some hidden story or meaning. There is no hidden story or meaning in the preamble.

Here is the entire preamble:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

I think that is pretty clear writing explaining why they crafted the Constitution.

To the larger point, I do think it is perfectly safe to assume, given the haphazard governance of the colonies by England, that these “we the people” spent the time drafting the specifics of the Constitution because they expected the states signing on to follow the document, not for each state make up their own meaning of the document’s provisions - all in order to avoid the fate they experienced in the colonies.

I also suspect they would not have wasted their time if they thought what they developed could be interpreted at will by anyone reading it because then there would be no point in writing it, i.e., the Constitution would only survive intact for the lifetimes of the “we the people” who wrote it, then it would be useless as to what it meant. Hat tip @hebegebe who earlier pointed out this sentiment.

Note that these same “we the people” also knew they were not the same in character, personal beliefs, and governing expectations. Therefore, even the “we the people” who wrote the Constitution decided they did not want to live together under all the same rules; hence, they crafted a federal government structure that allowed themselves to be partitioned into separate but equal states, each with its own government.

If the “we the people” who wrote the Constitution all wanted to live under the same rules all the time, there would be no independent states, only one government, and a popular vote to choose the president of that government. Alas, they did not do that.

And they went even further, they made it possible that no state could step on and impose its will on another state for any reason. In short, they made it possible for any state to give another state a constitutionally sanctioned middle finger saying “Leave us alone.”

But seriously, you really need to come to grips that there is no collective will of the majority of people designed into the Constitution. That is a figment of your and too many other people’s imagination. There is only a collective will of the majority of States, as expressed through congressional representatives.

And how do we know this is the case, i.e, there is no collective will of the majority of people? Because the Constitution set up three co-equal branches of government. There is no co-equal branch of the majority of people. Furthermore, the co-equal branches of government have the expressed powers to act in ways the people are against. For example, the Executive is free to wage foreign wars without the majority of people agreeing with those wars. Congress is free to pass laws that a majority of people disagree with. And the Judiciary is free to rule in ways opposite to what the majority of people agree with.

Given the three branches have powers which allow them to function against the will of the majority of people, then it implicitly follows that there is no collective majority will of the the people when voting for president, head of the executive branch. Such a collective majority would be structurally inconsistent with giving the executive branch powers that allow it to act opposite to and totally independent of the will of the majority of people.

What does exist is a will of the majority of states. Note that amendments are approved by a majority of the states, not by a majority of the people. Additionally, each state has the right to enact laws and privileges specific to the people in that state even if other states disagree with those laws and privileges. Therefore, by definition, there is no majority will of the people that can be directly expressed beyond state borders. It is rather disingenuous to state such a majority will of the people structurally exists in the Constitution, and it is, in my view, harmful to teach students that such a collective majority will exists when clearly it does not in the Constitution.

There is the interesting question of why the Framers decided not to put “the will of the majority of people” as part of the governing mechanism in the Constitution. The answer is rather logical - the Framers had just lived through the War of Independence where the majority of the colonists were NOT in favor of breaking away from England, and it was the minority that knew it was necessary and thus went forward. Up until victory, there were more Loyalists who were supported of or colonists who were passive to British rule than total Patriots who supported colonial independence. Thus, the Framers did not want put the fate of the new government in the hands of the people directly and thus the three branches are allowed to take decisions with which the majority of people disagree - and that is by design.

Huh?

If you are talking about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact signed by I think 10 states and DC, that means nothing. It has been going for some 10 years now and cannot take effect until it reaches the threshold of 270 electoral votes. Currently, I believe it some 105 electoral votes short.

More importantly, it is all bona fide blue states which have signed on to this Compact. However, red states have no incentive to sign on and to cede their electoral power and state sovereignty to more populous blue states - that would be just plain dumb and they know it. And the swing states have no incentive either because they would cede the heavy attention and catering by presidential candidates they receive during elections, and they are not going to give that up to blue states. And not to mention that the Compact would probably require congressional approval to take effect.

Bottom line, there is currently no requirement in any state for its electors to follow the national popular vote tally; all states still follow the state vote tally in determining how electors vote. Therefore, I have not a clue what your post is talking about.

The least federal intrusion in the states the better. Limited federal government is best.

Immigration is a completely different animal and is the odd man out on your list. Because immigration involves foreign nationals and foreign powers, it defacto falls under foreign policy and national security, which is the venue of the Executive branch.

States cannot entire agreements with foreign powers without approval of Congress, and, by default, without approval of the Executive which would need to sign off on any legislation approving such agreements. Thus, immigration policy is an executive and legislative function, not one for the states to craft independently.

MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Moderator consensus is that we’ve exhausted the topic and gone off the rails. Closing thread.