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[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I'm an originalist. A Constitution/bill of rights that changes with the political whims of the moment is dead. They were specifically designed to not change with passions of the moment and to have their principles remain consistent through time; this is the best way to ensure that the rights of political minorities/individuals remain protected.

I agree with this completely.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I believe that principles must have a basis in the people. Regnat populus res patriam: The people rule this country. The Constitution is governed by our democracy, not the other way around. The moment we allow our people’s liberties to be restrained by the Constitution is the moment we allow our democracy to die.

Democracy and liberty are not the same thing.

Democracy has a long history of being very dangerous to civil and equal rights for instance. The constitution and the non-democractic institutions have to intervene and uphold the constitutionally protected rights of the people, from being infringed on by the dictatorship of the majority.

I don't think democracy is the over arching umbrella in this case. I think we are a constitutional republic, which has protections in its constitution for natural and civil liberties. We have a series of competing institutions, of which the democratic ones are counterpoised by equally powerful institutions representing difference interests. All democracy does is channel the will of the majority of people. People are naturally flawed and therefore capable of evil as well as good, therefore said majority could just as easily be evil. What makes us different from a country like Egypt, where you hold an election and the Muslim Brotherhood wins and the Coptics start getting killed, is that our system understands both the necessity of democratic and majority rule, but also the necessity of limiting and restraining said majorities.

Lincoln held to a similar belief, which is in the quote in the bottom of my signature. 
"A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people." - Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, emphasis mine.

It is why I support strengthening the democratic nature of the democratic institutions (ending gerrymandering, making the house larger, campaign finance changes), but at the same time strongly support preserving the Senate, the Independent Judiciary and the electoral college.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Harlan and Black were correct on that.


It was Plessy that was the deviation from original intent, and this was solely because the Court was allowed to be influenced by political factors at the time.

The same can be said of the Dred Scott decision, which also violated original intent when it said that the framers could not fathom the idea of blacks being citizens, and yet five states allowed free blacks to vote in 1787.