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Showing posts with label Transparency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Transparency. Show all posts

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Transparency?

The Right seems to take a great amount of glee by sarcastically pointing out that President Obama has the "most transparent administration ever." I realize that it takes a great deal of effort to put down their copy of Atlas Shrugged, unbuckled their bathrobe and spend a few minutes away from right wing blogs to conjure up an attack like this.

As is invariably the case, however, I have to wonder if these denizens of classical liberalism are as familiar and knowledgeable with US History as they bloviate to be. Would it surprise them to learn this?

In early 1787, Congress called for a special convention of all the states to revise the Articles of Confederation. On September 17, 1787, after four months of secret meetings, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention emerged from their Philadelphia meetingroom with an entirely new plan of government–the U.S. Constitution–that they hoped would ensure the survival of the experiment they had launched in 1776.

WTF??!!?? It can't possibly be that our founding fathers, whom they claim to have a direct connection to in the afterlife, were not at all transparent about the formation of the document they claim to make love to on a nightly basis (missionary position, of course). Why on earth would they be so secretive? Could it be that they wanted to speak their minds without public pressure?

The delegates also agreed that the deliberations would be kept secret. The case in favor of secrecy was that the issues at hand were so important that honest discourse needed to be encouraged and delegates ought to feel free to speak their mind, and change their mind, as they saw fit. Thus, despite the hot summer weather in Philadelphia, and delegates who, on the whole, were rather overweight and hardly “dressed down” for the occasion, the windows were closed and heavy drapes drawn. The merits and demerits of the secrecy rule have been a subject of considerable debate throughout American history.

Feel free to speak their mind and CHANGE their mind as they saw fit? Oh. My. GOSH!!!

Cue the boiling pit of sewage...:)