Leonard Liggio
Atlas Economic Research Foundation
The U.S. in the World Today
The Philadelphia
Society
National Meeting
Sheraton Society Hill Hotel
April 2, 2006
I was thinking recently of the Founding Fathers. It struck me that there would be a vast difference in quality if a Constitutional Convention were held today. Thinking back more than fifty years, say before the death of Senator Robert A. Taft in 1953, the quality of delegates today would be abysmal. One would fear putting any decisions in their hands.
In 1929 Harvard professor Charles Warren published his book, Congress as Santa Claus. Little could he imagine what was in the
future. Could he imagine that with almost six years of Republican Party control of the government, there would be the most profligate
Spending spree in history? Since the burden of paying for that spending will fall on the upcoming generation, one hopes that there is improvement in schooling so that they have the skills to be sufficiently productive to pay for these escalating financial burdens placed on them by the Congress.
These are the same congresspersons who have run around recently like chickens with their heads cut off, interfering in President Bush’s normal operations of the executive branch. The congresspersons have behaved like clowns or imbeciles.
Meanwhile, they have remained comatose in the face of dangerous exercise of powers not granted to the executive by the U. S. Constitution. The congresspersons are so enthused with their clownish behavior that they eschew undertaking their serious constitutional responsibilities.
One
begins to feel that we are entering a stage similar to the late
act
like fools. Efficient Augustus gave way to maniacs. Can it be that The
Of Poppaea, Nero’s wife?