The Missing Amendment in the Bill of Rights: Under the Compensation Clause, Congress has the power to control its own salary. The Anti-Federalists and others at the state-ratifying conventions rightly objected to the danger of allowing this power. In response, James Madison proposed a compensation amendment stating that pay increases would apply only to the next Congress. It read: “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.” [What a great idea! The political class would go bonkers! – JS]
The temple of postmodern liberalism [Postmodernism] was rocked these last few weeks, as a number of supporting columns and buttresses simply crashed, leaving the entire edifice wobbling…
In short, liberalism does not work, contrary as it is to human nature. I wish I could just say that about every thirty years or so, forgetful Americans take an allergy shot of it, suffer the reaction, and then get another three decades of Carter/Obama immunity. But instead statist redistribution and intrusion are an insidious process, no longer specific just to Democrats, but bound up in the growing affluence and leisure of the West—both serving its various needs of alleviating guilt to the masses, subsidizing half the nation, and providing much envied power and lucre to a highly educated and technocratic elite who have little talent for acquiring either in the private sector. That it is not sustainable does not mean that it will not cause havoc as it totters and collapses. Look at Russia and Eastern Europe circa 1989, or the present-day EU, or Greece proper, or California or Illinois today. (Worth reading all of it here…)
"The plea of necessity, that eternal argument of all conspirators." -- William Henry Harrison Video: William Henry Harrison: America's briefest President
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