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America was built because we rebelled from our government via violent revolution. The Constitution was clearly written by people fearing a new tyrannical govern

America was built because we rebelled from our government via violent revolution. The Constitution was clearly written by people fearing a new tyrannical government (see 2nd amendment). Whether this attitude should be so pervasive is another discussion, but that's where the seed is from.

UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
> The Constitution was clearly written by people fearing a new tyrannical government (see 2nd amendment). Alright quick pet peeve: First off I agree that the constitution was specifically written to make it hard for a dictatorship and or tyrannical government. But my pet peeve is: You cannot use the 2nd amendment as an example of that. It was written four years later and by almost a completely different set of people.
- _asummers 12y ago
  That's a fair criticism of my post. However, do you believe the mindset just four years later was any different? The second amendment very explicitly mentions militias, which implies the same fear of government.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> The Constitution was clearly written by people fearing a new tyrannical government (see 2nd amendment). The original text of the Constitution was written by people tired of the failings of a weak government and wanting to replace it with a much stronger one. The bill of rights, including the 2nd Amendment, was written to mitigate the fears of a significant but somewhat less prominent faction that feared that without the express boundaries it provided, a stronger central government would become too strong.
- _asummers 12y ago
  Yes, they were responding to the impossibly weak Articles of Confederation. The framers put several checks in place to prevent the federal government from becoming too powerful: 1) Enumerating the powers of the executive. There will be no King George in America! 2) Designing the checks & balances system such that (in theory) no one of legislative, executive, judicial could become too powerful to override the other two. 3) As you mentioned, the inclusion of the second amendment (and third, fourth, eighth) were all designed to prevent repeating problems the colonists faced before the war. 4) Tenth amendment was added to further strip the federal government of its non-enumerated powers. The framers wanted something stronger than AoC, but they were very clear in their desire to limit the power of the federal government. They wanted a weak executive, and the legislative, particularly the Senate, was designed to be the main "doer of things". The executive was initially quite powerless on purpose. When Jefferson tried to do the Louisiana Purchase, people challenged whether the executive had this power. Andrew Jackson then came along and began the journey of expanding the powers of the executive, followed by Lincoln suspending habeus corpus, and more modern figures such as FDR with the internment camps and New Deal all continuing to expand these powers. While this is obviously only a partial list of expansion, it contains several notable examples.

UnoriginalGuy 12y ago

> The Constitution was clearly written by people fearing a new tyrannical government (see 2nd amendment). Alright quick pet peeve: First off I agree that the constitution was specifically written to make it hard for a dictatorship and or tyrannical government. But my pet peeve is: You cannot use the 2nd amendment as an example of that. It was written four years later and by almost a completely different set of people.

_asummers 12y ago
That's a fair criticism of my post. However, do you believe the mindset just four years later was any different? The second amendment very explicitly mentions militias, which implies the same fear of government.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> The Constitution was clearly written by people fearing a new tyrannical government (see 2nd amendment). The original text of the Constitution was written by people tired of the failings of a weak government and wanting to replace it with a much stronger one. The bill of rights, including the 2nd Amendment, was written to mitigate the fears of a significant but somewhat less prominent faction that feared that without the express boundaries it provided, a stronger central government would become too strong.

_asummers 12y ago
Yes, they were responding to the impossibly weak Articles of Confederation. The framers put several checks in place to prevent the federal government from becoming too powerful: 1) Enumerating the powers of the executive. There will be no King George in America! 2) Designing the checks & balances system such that (in theory) no one of legislative, executive, judicial could become too powerful to override the other two. 3) As you mentioned, the inclusion of the second amendment (and third, fourth, eighth) were all designed to prevent repeating problems the colonists faced before the war. 4) Tenth amendment was added to further strip the federal government of its non-enumerated powers. The framers wanted something stronger than AoC, but they were very clear in their desire to limit the power of the federal government. They wanted a weak executive, and the legislative, particularly the Senate, was designed to be the main "doer of things". The executive was initially quite powerless on purpose. When Jefferson tried to do the Louisiana Purchase, people challenged whether the executive had this power. Andrew Jackson then came along and began the journey of expanding the powers of the executive, followed by Lincoln suspending habeus corpus, and more modern figures such as FDR with the internment camps and New Deal all continuing to expand these powers. While this is obviously only a partial list of expansion, it contains several notable examples.