New House Speaker constitutionally clueless
Desperately needs education in the Madison Extension of the Library of Congress
We’ve seen this rodeo before. Another constitutionally clueless House Speaker who portends further dismantling of the Republic and rule of law.
The Constitution was anchored to the understanding that men are not angels but the opposite. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The need for government was predicated on the depravity of the species.
Remember James Madison in Federalist 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition…[W]hat is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
All of this is dismissed by House Speaker Mike Johnson. He subscribes to the view that evil like gun violence should be prevented or alleviated not by laws but by a utopian quest to change the human heart from malevolent to benign as he shared with empty-headed Sean Hannity. The Speaker is clueless, however about how this is to be accomplished since Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount proved a colossal failure. On the other hand, experience corroborates Samuel Johnson’s gospel that when a man knows he is to be hung in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Speaker Johnson’s principles, however, are like a restricted railroad ticket good for this day and train only. He believes the law, not the human heart, should triumph on questions of abortion or gay rights or religious freedom. The human heart is made subordinate.
In sum, Speaker Johnson principles expand or contract like an accordion to achieve the outcome he craves—the mindset of an erratic tyrant.