While Twitter has more than its fair share of uninformed and dense people (looking at you, AOC) luckily there are still a few folks around who actually know what the heck they’re talking about.
Like Dan McLaughlin.
Dan’s thread on legitimate political power is a great reminder of what the Founding Fathers believed and why they made the decisions they did, which is especially important to keep in mind when Democrats are actively working to take apart what they so brilliantly built.
Take a gander:
There are ultimately two sources of legitimate political power: up from the governed, or down from God. The latter is of course preferable in theory, but long experience has taught us not to trust earthly interpreters of God's will with secular power. So we settle for the former.
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) September 20, 2019
If we can't trust an unrepresentative elite that explicitly seeks to divine the will of God, even less so can we trust one that takes the same approach but leaves out God, substituting "fundamental human rights" or "fairness" or "justice" or "equality." All fine things, but…
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) September 20, 2019
Unrepresentative elite.
Damn, that’s good.
Keep reading.
…once we accept that legitimate power is flowing up from the governed, not down from God, we must also ultimately trust the governed with deciding what is a fundamental right, what is fair or equal or just. Restraints on the majority aim not to deny that power but to guide it.
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) September 20, 2019
The Founding Fathers believed in the necessity of elite leadership, elite draftsmanship. But they ultimately submitted their work to be ratified by the governed. The institutions they built have speed bumps & sobriety checkpoints, but the people still have the wheel.
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) September 20, 2019
Recommended
Institutions they built have speed bumps … like the Electoral College? Oh yeah.
It is true, as the Framers warned us, that a democracy cannot long survive a corrupted and unvirtuous people. But no other system can, either. A corrupt people produces bad kings, bad priests, bad judges, bad philosophers, and bad soldiers.
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) September 20, 2019
Bad politicians.
If classical liberalism is doomed, it is doomed because all things human are doomed. The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) September 20, 2019
This reads like something you’d see in a textbook, not on Twitter.
Which makes is extra rad.
Related:
Join the conversation as a VIP Member