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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
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To: TigerPaw who wrote (364189)2/27/2003 12:27:48 PM
From: Johannes Pilch  Read Replies (3) of 769670
 
I wonder if you are really trying to reason with me here. Perhaps someone else might try to help explain the matter because I don't think I have the ability to break through to you.

"if you treat Washington's advice as influenced by the period in which he gave it., why not the advice of his admired contemporaries the same way."

This is a distinction without a difference. My paraphrase of your argument essentially has the meaning of your question above. The problem with it is this: You are trying to treat the Constitution as if it is advice when clearly it is not.

We can easily treat Washington's advice not to enter into treaties as mere advice influenced by the period in which he gave it. We can do this because we have no legal evidence that his opinion was the will of the leadership of the American people. We therefore certainly do not know if the American leadership willed that this opinion should prevail for perpetuity. For this reason we have flexibility enough to treat Washington's opinion only as an opinion.

The Constitution, unlike Washington's advice, is a contract that pointedly expresses the essential will and life of the American people, a will and life that existed in 1787, when the Constitution was developed. Through the Constitution we clearly see that American leadership wished to restrict radical change, preserving its essential will for perpetuity.

We might treat Washington's advice as influenced by the period in which he gave it, and then dismiss it on this basis. But as Americans, we must treat the Constitution as influenced by the period in which the Founders gave it, and then obey it to preserve the American tradition codified within it. Washington's advice, as good as it is or was, binds us to nothing. The Constitution legally binds us to the past.
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