Page 5 - Wasnt Everything News Today

Science at villanova and author of "james madison: spirit of republican self-government." james best is here, author of "tempest at dawn." before i get to jeanine, let me come to you with this. set the scene of the constitutional convention. it was so important. and at the brink, everything would have been for nothing, the revolutionary war for nothing if this didnt come together. >> right. the nation was disintegrating and this was a do-or-die area, they were going to get something out of here ...

With this president, been with presidents in the past. it becomes an emergency. got to go it. got to do it. you dont even read it. so it just goes through. wasnt everything that he did basically a roadblock or a speed bump? >> he wanted to slow things down. and allow for communication between the representatives and their constituents. in the newspapers, circulating he said throughout the entire nation, so we take time to think about these things, to have second thoughts. so that the judgments w...

So you get everything. but you can read it in novel form. what were they really, what were they dead set for and against? >> they were dead set against any centralized power. they had just come from underneath the british. and they feared concentration of power. we talk about checks and balances today. but we use it as one word. they wanted balance to also go into checks. so if you didnt have enough power, that check wasnt any good. so that is one of the reasons senators were pinted by the state...

Factions. we call them special interest. everything he did in design of the government was an attempt to diminish the ability of factions or alliances of factions to take over the leaders of government. >> the problem with factions, particularly majority faction, if you have a country based on the idea of majority rule is that any passion can almost immediately become law. so madison what he wanted to do was not take away the idea of liberty to make the choices and mistakes even. and think throu...

Public opinion, lincoln said, is everything. without it nothing can succeed. with it, nothing can fail. he who holds public opinion goes deeper than he who enacts stay chutes and legislation. he makes the statutes and legislation possible. it really is a government by the people. the movement we are seeing now in the united states for example, which has different component parts and different people, this is a movement from the ground up. this is something we saw in prerevolutionary america. who...

Thats why you hired me to do. wouldnt he? he would be crazy on a politician saying that. >> a true mrooefr -- believer in self-running government. >> glenn: he said you can amend the constitution and i think the amendment system is brilliant because for instance, prohibition. that amendment is there. plus the repeal. so when you look at the constitution, youre like oh, really? we banned alcohol. that didnt work out well. the scars are left there and it goes to what jefferson said and im hearing ...

On. public opinion, lincoln said, is everything. without it nothing can succeed. with it, nothing can fail. he who holds public opinion goes deeper than he who enacts stay chutes and legislation. he makes the statutes and legislation possible. it really is a government by the people. the movement we are seeing now in the united states for example, which has different component parts and different people, this is a movement from the ground up. this is something we saw in prerevolutionary america....

Liberties. >> glenn: it is amazing. i was thinking, because i think there is a lot of people in america on both sides of the aisle that are not going to sit down. god help hus if it gets violent and spirals out of control. but it requires someone like lincoln who could spin things and get them back. that is a one in a million find. to have someone to squash like that, you dont do that. that is dangerous. how does the system work when you have people gaming the system, playing the system, in the ...

Was with the last president, with this president, been with presidents in the past. it becomes an emergency. got to go it. got to do it. you dont even read it. so it just goes through. wasnt everything that he did basically a roadblock or a speed bump? >> he wanted to slow things down. and allow for communication between the representatives and their constituents. in the newspapers, circulating he said throughout the entire nation, so we take time to think about these things, to have second thou...

Jefferson was just an explorer i think. explorer on everything. who is he? >> the first thing he wanted to do is a lot of people came to the convention wanting to fix a broken system. he wanted to do something epic, historic. he wanted to build a republic that would last for generations and decades. he had studied every republic that ever existed in the history of the world and he believed he had figured out a formula. part of the formula was enumerated powers, not general powers and decentraliz...