Media's Presidential Bias and Decline

[Plane]

The Paradigm is that the common man needs the protection of the government , a poor fit in a nation founded on the paradigm of the common man needing to repress the government.
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The Constitution simply declares what the government is banned from doing. It says nothing about the "common man repressing the government".

That sounds more  like Ronald Reagan, who claimed that the government was the problem, not the solution, and then, curiously, decided that he should take over that government, which he made bigger and even more powerful, and less protective of the common man and the environment. Silly old bastard even tore the solar cells off the White House to show that he was all for Big Oil 100%.

The common man needs some protection against dishonest banks, investment houses, scam artists, corporations who produce dangerous products, foods and drugs. The only institution that can do this is a government.

  No less does a fellow need protection from government , which without a restrictive constitution stamps out crime mostly to reduce the competition.

[Xavier_Onassis]

No less does a fellow need protection from government , which without a restrictive constitution stamps out crime mostly to reduce the competition.

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Once the constitution is enforced, the citizen does not normally have to repress the government beyond the limit of the Constitution, but occasionally, the government decides that it is a "special case" and it needs to suspend habeas corpus, hold people without trial or accusation for extended periods and torture them.

This has recently been done in the limbo of Guantanamo and other places outside the national borders.

[Michael Tee]

plane's contortions and perversions of history never cease to amaze.  Reading his posts in this thread, it sounded to me like his take on the American Revolution was to get Big Government off the backs of the people.  Craziest take I ever heard on this.  The American Revolution was to get "foreign" government off the backs of the American people, not "Big" government.  ("Foreign" in quotes because the "foreign" government they were rebelling against happened to be the one government that had founded, built and defended the nation and provided it with its language, religion, infrastructure and public institutions.)  The slogan was "No taxation without representation!" which plane seems to hear only as "No taxation!"

History proves that the American people, like any other people, far from being the mythical nation of self-reliant frontiersmen that politicians like to pretend they are, are in as much need of protection as any other people from greedy businessmen selling unsafe or fraudulent products and fleecing them any way they can get away with, all under the unblinking eyes of the great gods of Capitalism.  History proves the NEED for Blue Sky laws, federal regulation of the food and drug industry, federal regulation of the pollution of the environment, etc.  To leave all of this to the operation of the marketplace is sheer insanity, and in fact there is no industrialized nation that does so.

There was a genuine fear among the Founding Fathers of an absolutist government and appropriate provisions were made to guard against it, including a brilliant system of checks and balances, but absolutely nothing that would inhibit in any way a vigorous and necessary partisan debate, and certainly nothing that would enable one of the participants to lie with impunity about his situation in life and rely on a non-existent right of privacy in the circumstances to protect his claims from close scrutiny.

[Plane]

There was a genuine fear among the Founding Fathers of an absolutist government and appropriate provisions were made to guard against it, including a brilliant system of checks and balances, but absolutely nothing that would inhibit in any way a vigorous and necessary partisan debate, and certainly nothing that would enable one of the participants to lie with impunity about his situation in life and rely on a non-existent right of privacy in the circumstances to protect his claims from close scrutiny.

You almost get it, as overbearing paternalistic governments go , the British have one of the best , we wanted loose a cupple of centurys before the Canadians did so it was worth the fight.

There was a genuine fear among the Founding Fathers of an absolutist government and appropriate provisions were made to guard against it, including a brilliant system of checks and balances

Excellent , I wish I had said that.

but absolutely nothing that would inhibit in any way a vigorous and necessary partisan debate,

Of course not , one can even propose heavy taxation and the institution of paternalistic government.

  and certainly nothing that would enable one of the participants to lie with impunity about his situation in life and rely on a non-existent right of privacy in the circumstances to protect his claims from close scrutiny.

The Constitution does not actually include as an enumerated right , a right to privacy , it is more like implied.
But laws were broken to bring you some of the "facts" about Joe and in no way did Joe make any impossible claim.

Taxing Joe to pay out tax refunds to people who do not make enough money to pay taxes will feed the recipeients for a day and prevent joe from becomeing an employer for a cupple of extra years.