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Originally Posted by roachboy
this would have the form of a parlor game question were it not for "movements" like the federalist society, which wraps conservatism around the "original intent" doctrine for reading the constitution. the idea they seem to have is little more than a tactic for "limiting judicial activism" which i assume is code for limiting the mobility of judges with whom they do not agree politically to render decisions.
the notion of "original intent" is wholly absurd, of course. it seems to presuppose some kind of communion on the part of these conservatives and the spirits of "the founders"---the idea seems to be that you could derive intent from the various documents that surrounded the making of the constitution. this procedure has all kinds of problems, ranging from questions of which ancillary documents you would privelege to problems of making these documents into de facto law to the ridiculous assumption that you can reconstruct "intent" from texts. so i assume that, behind the scenes, ouija boards play a role in this. or channelling. or something like that.
the fetishism of the "founders" is wholly at odds with the system they put into place. you might think that it was a smart compromise, this system, if you like----but that it might be seen that way in no way has to translate into a fixation on the persons of those who put the outline of it together. the idea of the whole system was that it would be reactive to history, while having certain checks in place. the direction taken by those who fetishize the founders as people runs directly counter to this--in practice in the bizarre little world of conservative law students, in principle in the bigger world of politics.
i think the psychological motive behind this kind of thing has less to do with people preferring to live via metaphor (which is an interesting claim if you route it through nietzsche, but which seems kinda out of place here to me) than with conservatives in general being afraid of history in any strong sense because they know they cannot control it.
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I find it highly amusing that you criticise people for their fetishism of using the founders to support an arguement while at the same time trying to support your own viewpoint in terms of what their system was supposed to be. Honestly, your view on what their system is supposed to be is not inherently better than other peoples simply because you didn't mention a founder by name. What makes citing them at odds with the system? Did you use your ouija board to ask them? And why do you only claim conservatives use the founders for debating? The original poster mentioned both sides, but you instatnly assumed that this "fetishism" is only a product of some vast conservative conclave.