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ourmandave 3 days ago

The founders argued over the presidential pardon having to much power, and decided that congress's impeachment power would prevent abuse.

RealityVoid 2 days ago | parent [-]

Hah! Guess they didn't see these voting patterns coming! They gave you “A republic, if you can keep it.” - I will admit, you gave it a pretty good run.

pear01 2 days ago | parent [-]

voting patterns? The founders didn't want most people to vote.

RealityVoid 2 days ago | parent [-]

Then they must have seen it even less.

pear01 2 days ago | parent [-]

Incorrect. Why do you think they held that view in the first place? Ironic you can't seem to grasp the meaning of the quote you so smugly parroted.

RealityVoid 2 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

pear01 2 days ago | parent [-]

Guess they didn't see that coming says guy quoting them seeing it coming - u.

^ here you can downvote this one too

just don't be so smug. So many smug takes, not enough critical thinking. All of the founding was littered with irony anyway. He is to have said that to someone who couldn't vote, right? What does that imply?

They were men after all, not gods - as they warned later generations to remember. One wonders what your theory, what your solution is. What is your form of government? After all, in a different time perhaps something like a pardon is a useful instrument against the sort of mob rule they feared. Maybe it isn't. The Congress of the founding is far different from that of today.

But if you follow the broad strokes of what they predicted and what has happened, it's hard to argue they didn't see this coming. In fact they did. If they failed in preventing it that is one thing, but they clearly foretold of that possibility. And they ultimately decided it's up to the future, not to them.

Many of them signed off on compromises they already predicted would lead to conflict within generations, as it did (the civil war). As for the rest of it, I'm annoyed by your analysis and its lack of self awareness. Getting mad at you over "my country" makes no sense unless you are an alt for someone in power.

Regardless, I suggest you should read more about the debates during the founding if you care for a more nuanced perspective. Wherever you call your home, it cannot be totally immune to the same sorts of questions they grappled with, which afaik humanity has been wrestling with across cultures and across generations for all time. Have a good day

Animats 2 days ago | parent [-]

> They were men after all, not gods - as they warned later generations to remember.

Indeed.

A digression:

If you read the Federalist Papers, or the debates of the Constitutional Convention, you can get a sense of what they were trying to do, which was to come up with some form of government that would work reliably. They had a few specific things they wanted to avoid.

First was a king. They'd fought a war to get rid of a king, and didn't want that again. (Well, Hamilton wanted to be king, but few others agreed.)

They wanted a stronger central government than the Articles of Confederation the country was then running under. That was like the United Nations - a group of sovereign states that could only act as a group if everyone cooperated. It wasn't working too well, which was the reason for a constitutional convention.

They wanted to avoid anarchy. The French Revolution was about to happen, and the run-up to it wasn't looking good.[1]

Those were the design constraints. Most of the arguments were over how strong the executive branch should be vs. the legislative branch, and how strong the federal government should be vs. the state governments.

As working models, they had the state governments, where a governor and two houses was the usual pattern.

They ended up with a reasonably practical design. It's come unglued because Congress, which is supposed to be in charge, can't get its act together.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_French_Revolut...