The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

E.J. Dionne Is Smarter Than You

Posted on | July 4, 2011 | 41 Comments

E.J. Dionne can read the Declaration of Independence, whereas you are too stupid to do so for yourself — but don’t worry: E.J. will tell you what it really means, in his newspaper column.

Although you are too stupid to understand the Declaration of Independence (which is why E.J. thinks you need him to tell you what it means), perhaps you are not too stupid to understand why E.J.’s newspaper column isn’t really popular or influential.

UPDATE: Here, let’s try a little experiment. See if you can understand this without E.J. Dionne’s tutelage:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

That’s exactly 1,337 words, whereas E.J. Dionne’s column is 747 words. Most readers will find the Declaration perfectly comprehensible. E.J.’s column is equally comprehensible in declaring that all men are not created equal, and that’s why morons like us need liberal geniuses like E.J. to think for us, because we’re too stupid to think for ourselves.

Happy 4th of July!

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Category: Liberals, Media Bias

Comments

  • http://leatherpenguin.com/wordpress/ TC_LeatherPenguin

    Dionne: “This misunderstanding of our founding document is paralleled by a misunderstanding of our Constitution. “The federal government was created by the states to be an agent for the states, not the other way around,” Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said recently. No, our Constitution begins with the words “We the People” not “We the States.”
    Right there, in a nutshell; he doesn’t understand that ‘the States,’ in this regard, are representatives of their citizenry, and speak in those citizens’ voice and name, not the other way around.

  • Anonymous

    I’m confused.  Why did you start off talking about E.J. Dionne and then start copying today’s transcript of C-SPAN?

  • John Marlin

    As I note in the comments to Dionne’s column, Jefferson, et al were schooled in the classical rhetoric of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintillian.  They taught one was to arrange his materials in climactic order, that is, from least to most important — so the fact that passing laws was first and taxes came later mean the opposite of what Dionne says they do.  Not surprised he got it wrong, though.

  • http://twitter.com/marriedrambler Andrew Patrick

    If you ever need to have the position of the Establishment laid out plainly for you, Dionne is your guy. He reminds one of an English Lord in the 1920′s gathering the clan for a shooting party weekend, utterly unware of the world going on beyond the manor.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=706090622 Barbara O’Brien

    “Right there, in a nutshell; he doesn’t understand that ‘the States,’ in this regard, are representatives of their citizenry, and speak in those citizens’ voice and name, not the other way around.”

    Speaking of the Declaration, you may have missed the part where it says,

    “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
    their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of
    Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to
    alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation
    on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
    most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

    In the minds of the Founders, governments ultimately take their legitimacy from the people, not from other governments.

    Further — originally in the Constitution, it was understood that the states were represented in the Senate but the people, not the states, were represented in the House. In Federalist Paper #52, James Madison described his idea for the House of Representatives to be the “branch of the federal government which ought to be dependent on the people
    alone” and not on state governments. So while we think of representatives as being from states, they are  not representing the states but the people. Go give Federalist #52 a careful read if you don’t believe me.

    So, while the Constitution was ratified by delegates from the states, it was not created to be an agent of the states alone. Some parts of it were set up to represent the interests of states, but other parts of it directly represent the interests of the people directly.  And the federal government ultimately takes its authority to govern from the people, not the states.

    Also, E.J. Dionne’s point was not that people aren’t capable of understanding the Declaration, but that much political rhetoric today is at odds with what the Declaration says. He points out several examples of this in his column, which you ought to read for yourself, since it appears Mr. McCain is not capable of understanding E.J. Dionne.

  • http://www.redstateeclectic.typepad.com AngelaTC

    Too much to respond to – but the problem with representation is not that the members of the House represent the people, but that the members of the Senate are not representing their states. THey’re also representing the people, thus undermining what was the perfect system.

    And finally, the federal government gets its *just*” powers to govern from the Constitution, not from the people or the states.

  • Charlesmartel41

    If all men are created equal, why can’t I slam dunk like Michael Jordan?

  • http://www.rightviewfromtheleftcoast.blogspot.com Mark Goluskin

    OK, I think that EJ kind of sort of makes the case for the Tea Party right here, in his own words:

    Whether they intend it or not, their name suggests they believe that the current elected government in Washington is as illegitimate as was a distant, unelected monarchy.

    OK, so they representatives ARE elected in Washington, DC, but they ARE becoming illegitimate and distant. That is why so many, lefties to be certain, but conservative elites are not getting the point. It is not just taxation that has us upset. It is rules being imposed by fiat. It is one political party passing legislation that the majority of people do NOT want. Socialized medicine. It is an elite that wants us to essentially render our borders meaningless and pass so-called comprehensive immigration “reform”.
    Yeah, I do not need some libertard blowhard to “explain” what the Declaration of Independence means.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=706090622 Barbara O’Brien

    “Too much to respond to – but the problem with representation is not that the members of the House represent the people, but that the members of the Senate are not representing their states. THey’re also representing the people, thus undermining what was the perfect system.”

    Yes, but an earlier generation of Americans decided to amend the Constitution to allow for direct election of Senators, possibly because state governments tend to be even screwier than the feds. So perhaps it wasn’t all that perfect. Often what looks good in theory doesn’t work that well in the real world.

    “And finally, the federal government gets its *just*” powers to govern from the Constitution, not from the people or the states.”

    No, you’re confusing two different things. The Constitution lays out the charter of how the government is structured and how the state and federal governments relate to each other, and of course it is the supreme law of the land. But the Constitution takes its authority from the consent of We, the People; see the preamble and also the Declaration.

  • timburns116

    Wow, a man who doesn’t like the Declaration  on Independence Day itself! 

    Bastille Day is in 10 days, given your name perhaps you prefer July 14th to July 4th?

  • timburns116

    No, he understands the Founding just perfectly.  The states do not have sovereignty; the people.  Thus, Stacy’s fascination with his state and region over the national government is the fetish thinking of the sore loser.  From Calhoun to Davis to Russell to Perry, sore losers claim the 10th Amendment is more important than the Supremacy Clause, because they didn’t like to lose.

    Dionne is right about the source of the government

  • Anamika

    Stories come and go and change with almost every retelling. 

    Awareness stays the same. Always. 

    We can choose to take a ride on the roller coaster and “enjoy” the thrills and chills, or we can stay grounded in mental and emotional ease, poise, and nonattachment.

    Even though it’s the 4th of July holiday in the States, I think I’ll pass on all the meaning making fireworks of story telling and story living. I’m taking a vacation from all that, and plan to view the pyrotechnics from the easy chair of being.

  • http://www.thepiratescove.us/ William_Teach

    It’s a shame they no longer teach constitutional history in school anymore. The constitution, in replacing the articles of confederation, was intended to create a federal government that would bind the States together into one nation, instead of being mostly sovereign nations, as they had been acting post War for Independence. It was never intended for the federal Govt to be so damned powerful, and for the states to be supporting characters.

  • Charlesmartel41

    Your comment, sir, does not address my question.

  • Anamika

    Is that you Chuckles Johnson sockpuppet? You are the slow-witted Mortimer Snerd muppet aren’t you?

  • Charlesmartel41

    I assume that, unlike me, you are not slow-witted.  Therefore, I invite you to answer my question.

  • http://leatherpenguin.com/wordpress/ TC_LeatherPenguin

    “No, he understands the Founding just perfectly.  The states do not have sovereignty; the people.”
    Define the residents.
    Dipshit.

  • BLBeamer

    Your question can be answered simply.  All men are created equal insofar as they have the same unalienable rights endowed by their Creator:  the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Those aren’t the only unalienable rights, but those are the ones the singers felt were most important since they were explicitly mentioned.

    It’s right there in the document.

  • BLBeamer

    Good grief:  “signers” NOT “singers”.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=706090622 Barbara O’Brien

    Hey, Teach, we meet again.

    I’m not going to disagree with what you said here, but it doesn’t exactly address what Perry said. Perry said, “The federal government was created by the states to be an agent for the states, not the other way around.” And Dionne says the federal government, as laid out in the Preamble of the Constitution, was created by We, the People, not the states.

    And as I wrote in another comment here, in fact the House of Representatives, at least, was created specifically to represent the people separately from the states (see Madison, Federalist Paper #52). So while the Senate in theory functions as an agent of the states, the House does not, and I don’t see that the President or the federal court system do, either. The state and federal governments have their own spheres of authority and sovereignty,  and it’s not correct to say that the federal government is merely supposed to act as an agent of the states any more than it is to say the federal government has authority over the states, except where the Constitution specifically says it does.

    Getting back to who created the federal government, this ties directly to the Declaration, where it says governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Ultimately, the authority of government at all levels is derived from the consent of the governed, or We, the People.  This is the argument Jefferson lays out in the Declaration as the moral justification for revolution, and I’m sure he would argue that the same holds true for the government of the United States.

    Garry Wills’s book _Lincoln at Gettysburg_ does a good job of tying the Declaration of Independence to Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, showing that Lincoln had the Declaration in mind when he spoke of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

  • Anonymous

    Dungbat.

  • Anamika

    “All men are created equal ”

    Those sentiments were voiced in the Declaration of Independence, which was essentially a campaign platform. The actual founding document was not nearly as egalitarian, e.g. enslaved black folks counted as 3/5 of equal and brutally oppressed red folks not even

    considered, same goes for the rights of women.

  • BLBeamer

    “Black folks” were not counted as “3/5 of equal” (which, by the way, makes no sense).  Slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person for purposes of Congressional representation.

    English isn’t your native language, is it?

  • Anonymous

    Some people don’t get that there were black Americans who weren’t slaves before the 13th Amendment was ratified. In fact, some of the “free persons of color”  were slave owners themselves.

  • BLBeamer

    What’s even more delicious is the fact that the 3/5 figure was a compromise.  The Southern, slave holders wanted slaves counted as a full “5/5 of equal” (sorry! I couldn’t resist), but the Northern states wanted slaves to count as zero. 

    If the 3/5 figure was a moral statement on slaves’ humanity, then why would the racist Southerners want them counted as the equal to a white man?

  • Nospam

    The same people refuse to get that the 3/5ths Compromise was in fact horribly unfair- to all of the inhabitants of nonslave states. Essentially, slaves composed a (pardon the pun) captive population for purposes of electoral votes and House representation: one that neither paid taxes nor had a vote of its own and that could be increased in size pretty much at will. 

  • http://gripernews.blogspot.com Wisco

    Hahaha! Crazy libtards!

    Everyone knows this country was founded to give the wealthy a free ride

  • Anonymous

    Yeah, which is why the Founders were willing to give up their fortunes to create it…..

    The country certainly wasn’t founded to give the looters and moochers a free ride, no matter how much the Copperheads wish that were so.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    They amended it, or so they said, because there were wealthy industrialists and others who were bribing state legislatures and governors to appoint Senators who would do their bidding.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    “Oppressed red folks” were only oppressed because they sided with the French in the French and Indian Wars, and with the British in the Revolution, and again in the War of 1812, and committed atrocities against white settlers that in many cases were unspeakable. In other words, the assholes brought it on themselves.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    As long as there’s a decent chance I can hitch a ride with them why the fuck should I care?

  • SVT

    Very correct, Mark. 

    Note that the Declaration explicitly a contemplates the situation in which a government that had been instituted to secure unalienable rights and which had once derived its powers from the consent of the governed could later become destructive of those ends, giving the people the right to alter or abolish it. 

    Dionne seems to believe that, the government of the United States having been established consistent with the principles of the Declaration, altering or abolishing the governnment would never be justified no matter what the government might do.  Or at least that’s what he believes now because The One and his minions are running things.

  • Anonymous

    The left sure loves the Strawman Argument don’t they. “The Founders weren’t revolting against taxation but taxation without consent” DUH like everyone with any knowledge of the Constitution knows dumbass.

    “The Founders weren’t against government”, nobody said they were and on and on.

    It’s like when Obama starts a sentence, “There are those that say……”

  • Nospam

    Whereas the nations created to ‘further social justice’ have always ended in mass graves.  revolutionary France, the Soviet Empire, the Third Reich, Red China, North Korea, Cuba…

    Go and learn for yourself- it’s pure hypocricy for you to spend any more time here.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=706090622 Barbara O’Brien

    “They amended it, or so they said, because there were wealthy
    industrialists and others who were bribing state legislatures and
    governors to appoint Senators who would do their bidding.”

    Yes, that’s right. The 17th Amendment was passed to give people more say in who represented their states in the Senate, because the original system had turned into pure cronyism for the most part. In the late 19th century there were several spectacular cases of senators bribing their way into the Senate, and sometimes the corruption allegations left some states without senators for years at a time. Anyone who thinks it would be a grand idea to repeal the 17th Amendment ought to spend some time studying why people of a century ago decided the process for choosing senators had to be changed.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    We don’t hear that Truth often enough.  And I say this as a 1/16th Cherokee [though I wear a shirt and tie, I'm still a red man deep inside].

  • Fred Beloit

    E.J. is simply using the Obama technique of the straw dog. Conservatives are not anti-government, they are against a government that is being turned into a charity, a government that is trying to control what you eat and what you drive, a government that sides with a corrupt UN on many important issues.
    Conservatives aren’t against taxes. They are against taxes being used as carrots to buy votes, taxes being used to sue states for passing perfectly legal legislation.
    The Tea Party isn’t a movement of revolt against a tyrannical government. It is a loose organization formed to express citizen discontent with the government’s ignoring of the constitution and wasteful spending of tax revenues.

  • Fred Beloit

    Sorry, Bob. I didn’t see your message before posting,

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    I used to be in favor of repealing the 17th Amendment myself until I read that before the 2008 election we would have had 66 Democrat Senators if we had been under the old system at that time. That was enough right there to make me reconsider. Plainly speaking, the reason the old system didn’t work was no other reason than you just can’t keep people interested in local politics. Just look at voter turnout for your average state or local election. Its a shame. What it is is a license for state politics to become a haven for corruption and cronyism.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    What people never seem to understand is that during the time frame of the late nineteenth century when the mass of Indian Wars transpired, there were still living people with memories of the War of 1812, some firsthand experience, but also oral histories from fathers and grandfathers who in some cases also related first-hand and second-hand information about the Revolution and French and Indian Wars. That was the basis for the sustained conflicts in the face of Indian provocations, not some racist desire to “oppress the red man”.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Very true, pale face.

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