Quote:
Originally Posted by Jibartik
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But I saw that amazing rant by Anton Scalia, where he was like, "every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights, what sets America apart is our judicial, executive, and legislative branches being separate and that is protected in the constitution."
...It is the constitution that would "protect the bill of rights" and that's what sets us apart. (And it's why the "living document" aspect works too.)...
...Because they didnt have the 3 branches of goverment the way we do and a constitution that protects them.
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Sorry, I was going to get back to this earlier but it's tough to beat up an icon like Scalia so I had to compose myself.
Scalia was dead wrong.
His main thesis comes midway through his speech -- "So, the real key to the distinctiveness of America is the structure of our government." Then he goes on to describe the branches and so forth.
Here is the real key:
The only reason America exists is because the people believe. A structure means nothing without a culture that cherishes it. Written promises, however numerous and complicated, are made worthless without a core belief that it is the nature of government to serve it's citizens.
I don't know what happened to Scalia there, perhaps he was microing and the speech was out of context, or maybe he was addressing third-graders with the basics, because he surely knows that. No amount of rights and branches and structure and will protect the Republic if the people become weak and start to worship idols. It doesn't matter if your legislature is bi-cameral or tri-camelot; it can delay the decay but the end result is the same.
Everything flows from the belief that we have created the most just and progressive society on earth in order to serve the people to achieve happiness (which by the way we specifically included as a written action item just to make sure everyone knew). Protecting that belief is so much more important than any mechanical issues.
I'm not being ideological. This just flows from the foundation. If we all got together in the beginning and said 'ok all these governments are bad let's make a new one and this one will be better, so let's have a roundtable and throw around some suggestions' and then we came up with some models and decided which one was logically better for the people and we settled on that, then the structure would be very important and would serve as the primary basis for the existence of the nation.
But that's not what happened. I mean yes, that conversation did take place, but that was after all the impassioned feelings. It wasn't the basis. The basis was "we don't need no King" and "aargh!". It was feelings. It was idealism. Irrational exuberant idealism. They hammered out the structure later. That's why protecting the belief in American Exceptionalism is so important, more than anything toward preserving this nation. Because it really is all we got. The structure is smoke and mirrors, designed to make us think there's something more so we don't panic.