> Those who love to spend tax dollars on pet projects hate it 
> when  the 
> Constitution is thrown in their faces.  Fortunately, the 
> Roberts Court  will 
> undoubtedly return things to a some semblance of the intent of 
> the Founding  Fathers.
>  
> J South
>  

Yes, and those who profess to admire the Founders hate it when someone reminds them that the founding generation was not led by a bunch of free marketeers or extreme individualists. Look at Virginia's name: the Commonwealth of Virginia. What's a commonwealth? To them, it meant a state based on popular consent (a republic) whose citizens were expected to be ready and willing to sacrifice self-interest for the "common weal" (common good). One of the Founders who wrote a lot about such matters, Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania, declared in a 1786 essay on public education for the new republic (Pennsylvania), "Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property." 

The highest priority was given to the welfare of the community, the state, the nation as a whole in those remarkable times. I should add that most of the people driven by such ideas were deeply disappointed to discover, again and again, that almost everywhere they looked the behavior of citizens of all ages and backgrounds seemed to be falling far short of the what republican ideals prescribed. Hence, the attractiveness of a plan of government that would limit self-serving behavior by political factions (Madison, Fed.10). Protestants of Calvinist bent knew all along what the problem was: original sin. 

So what will Roberts and company do to reinvigorate "original intent"? I hesitate to ask what they might imagine to be today's constitutionally appropriate "new order of the ages" (novus ordo seclorum).

Doug Deal
History/SUNY Oswego

 

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