if men were angels...

As you can see, the title of this blog lasted about two days. Since I plan to use this as a forum to tied current governmental issues with those of the past, I thought it useful to use a quote from one of the Federalist Papers.

The previous title, "the weaker party," came from Federalist #10 and its point that direct democracies had no mechanism to protect the weaker party or the obnoxious indiviual from a majority that wished to persecute it. That worked well enough, but I think this phrase pulled form Federalist #51 is more helpful since its a reminder of why governments exist in the first place (or at least Locke's). "If men were angles no government would be necessary."

It's a constant reminder that it is pointless to complain about human imperfection, cruelty, and avarice, since they are reliably constant aspects of human affairs. The only real issue is how a governing system can contain them. I don't claim to have learned much in my years teaching government, but the one thing that continues to intrigue me is this procedural feature of the Constitution.

It ain't what you do, it's how you do it.

One More Time...

Not that you necessarily care, but I've tried using blogs as a teaching technique and it was moderately successful. I'm lazier than I like to admit though so I never got around to learning the technology that would make it truly useful.

Fortunately there are those industrious--and smart enough--to do so.

Thank you blogspotters.

So here goes. I am assuming that you have logged in because I have made you and have promised that this will be a tool we can use to discuss the constitutional issue underlying contemporary issues.

We'll have to see how it goes wont we?