OWEN BENJAMIN: You have to DO the constitution. You have to WANT authority. Or else any LLC or NGO could centralize power.

Scalia crushes. Parchment guarantee is great rhetoric. He made a similar point about the meaning of the word “constitution” as I did the other day in one of my classic “unhinged rants.” I had never seen this vid. I love vibing w legends like Scalia.
His point about…

— Owen Benjamin 🐻 (@OwenBenjamin) November 21, 2024

From OWEN BENJAMIN.

Scalia crushes. Parchment guarantee is great rhetoric. He made a similar point about the meaning of the word “constitution” as I did the other day in one of my classic “unhinged rants.” I had never seen this vid. I love vibing w legends like Scalia.

His point about centralization of power is also sound. I will add something however. The federalist papers and the structure is still parchment unless people live it and want it. You have to DO the constitution. You have to WANT authority. Or else any LLC or NGO could centralize power. American exceptionalism is because we ARE and we LIVE the constitution. And we still do despite the malaise from the spoils of success. We ARE Americans and it’s explained on parchment: There is no magic dirt. There is no magic paper. It’s us. And don’t forget it.

From ANTONIN SCALIA.

I speak to law students, college students, and quite frequently high school students about the Constitution because I feel that we're not teaching it very well. I speak to law students from the best law schools, people presumably especially interested in the law, and I asked them how many of you have read The Federalist Papers? A lot of hands will go up, and I say, no not just #48 and the big ones. How many of you have read The Federalist Papers cover to cover? Never more than about 5%. That is very sad especially if you're interested in the Constitution. Here's a document that says what the framers of it thought they were doing. It's such a profound exposition of political science that it is studied in political science courses in Europe and yet we have raised a generation of Americans who are not familiar with it.

So when I speak to these groups, the first point I make, and I think it's even a little more fundamental than the one that Steven has just put forward, I ask them what do you think is the reason that such a free America is such a free country? What is it in our constitution that makes us what we are? And I guarantee you that the response I will get, and you will get this from almost any American including the woman he was talking to at the supermarket, the answer would be "freedom of speech, freedom of the press, no unreasonable searches and seizures, no quartering of troops and of those marvelous provisions in the Bill of Rights." But then I tell them, if you think that a Bill of Rights is what sets us apart, you're crazy. Every Banana Republic in the world has a Bill of Rights. Every president for life has a Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was much better than ours. I mean that literally. It was much better. We guarantee freedom of speech, of the press, big deal. They guarantee freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests, and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff. Of course, just words on paper, what our Framers would have called "a parchment guarantee." And the reason is that the real constitution of the Soviet Union . . . when you think of the word constitution, it doesn't mean a bill of rights, it means structure. We say a person has a sound constitution, he has a sound structure. The real constitution of the Soviet Union, which is what our framers debated that whole summer in Philadelphia in 1787, they didn't talk about the Bill of Rights; that was an afterthought wasn't it? That constitution of the Soviet Union did not prevent the centralization of power in one person, or in one party. And when that happens the game is over. The Bill of Rights is just what our framers would call "a parchment guarantee." So the real key to the distinctiveness of America is the structure of our government. One part of it, of course, is the independence of the Judiciary. But there's a lot more. There are very few countries in the world for example that have a bicameral legislature. Oh, England has a House of Lords for the time being, but the House of Lords has no substantial power; they can just make the Commons pass a bill a second time. France has a senate. It's honorific. Italy has a senate. It's honorific. Very few countries have two separate bodies in the legislature equally powerful. That's a lot of trouble as you gentlemen doubtless know to get the same language through two different bodies elected in a different fashion. Very few countries in the world have they a separately elected chief executive. Sometimes I go to Europe to talk about separation of powers, and when I get there I find all I'm talking about is independence of the Judiciary because the Europeans don't even try to divide the two political powers, the two political branches: the legislature and the chief executive. In all of the Parliamentary countries, the chief executive is the creature of the legislature. There's never any disagreement between them and the Prime Minister as there is sometimes between you and the president. What when there's a disagreement, they just kick them out. They have a "no confidence" vote, a new election, and they get a prime minister who agrees with the legislature. And the Europeans look at this system and they say "It passes one house, and it doesn't pass the other house. Sometimes the other house is in control of the different party. It passes both and then this president who has a veto power, vetoes it, and they look at this and they say, it is gridlock."

And I hear Americans saying this nowadays and there's a lot of it going around. They talk about a dysfunctional government because there's disagreement. And the framers would have said, yes! that's exactly the way we set it up. We wanted this to be power, contradicting power, because the main ill that beset us, as Hamilton said in the Federalist when he talked about a separate Senate, he said "Yes, it seems inconvenient, but in as much as the main ill that besets us is an excess of legislation it won't be so bad." This is 1787. He didn't know what excessive legislation was. So unless Americans can appreciate that and learn learn to love the separation of powers, which means learning to love the gridlock, which the framers believed would be the main protection of minorities, the main protection. If a bill is about to pass that really comes down hard on some minority, they think it's terribly unfair, it doesn't take much to throw a monkey wrench into this complex system. So, Americans should appreciate that, and they should learn to love the gridlock. It's there for a reason. So that the legislation that gets out will be good legislation.