I disagree. Gentle John doesn't have an imperious whim but an imperious Will. He Will not consider another Will, but Bill Will. Bill, an attorney, and therefore conversant with facts and evidence, says: "The author Mary likes so much on Mary Sidney brings impressive, exhaustive erudition to bear on the authorship question..." That author is Robin WILLiams, of course. Do you hear that, John? Bill read the book and says: "impressive, exhaustive erudition." Robin Williams writes, “there is no documented evidence that [Will] Shakespeare was a writer.” Why don't you read the book, John?

Mary, if I read every book that everybody with a cause told me to read because it will change my life - or at least my thinking on their particular point - I'd have no time to breath. Frequently, you have to go with what you've got, use common sense and general knowledge, and trust that all those other very learned people have it right. I do that with global warming to some extent (I've read more there on my on my own than of Mary Sidney), and by God, I do it with Shakespeare and Mary Sidney and all the other theories and pretenders. I'm not being blithely superficial - just trusting my own sense. (John, of course, is blithely superficial. He is, after all, a Tory. But even John is sometimes right. And this is one of those times.)

I can't have that, Michael. I may be blithely superficial but that is in spite of, not because of, being a Tory. Are you suggesting Edmund Burke and Michael Oakeshott are superficial? Of course you are not. It is Tom Paine who is superficial. And Thomas Jefferson, or whoever it was responsible for that monument to superficiality, the American Constitution. As if you could write all that stuff down. Brits are deep. We bite our lips and stay silent. All except me, that is.

And I am right about Shakespeare because I feel it to be so.

As the great Peter de Vries had it - Deep down, I'm shallow.

If you’re thinking of Thomas Jefferson’s authorship, John, you’re not thinking of the Constitution, but rather of the Declaration of Independence. Every year on the Fourth of July, some British commentator can be counted on to point out that the Declaration, properly considered, was an expression of British Enlightenment thinking. Well, of course it was. Jefferson was British. All white Virginian slave owners in the 1700s were British.

James Madison is frequently credited as “the Father of the Constitution,” but that document was more a product of committee collaboration than of individual authorship. (Although other hands dabbled in Jefferson’s Declaration, it’s reasonable to see him as the primary author. You can’t really finger one primary author of the Constitution, although Madison definitely gets credit for the Bill of Rights, without which the Constitution would have been far more imperfect.) The Constitution was certainly a pact with the devil, in the sense that it blueprinted a democratic republic by compromising with the monumental evil of the slave system. But it was not shallow or superficial. To design a democracy with built-in safeguards against the tyranny of the mob is a deep undertaking.

Shakespeare-didn't-really-write-Shakespeare arguments -- now, those are shallow.

I bow to your superior knowledge, Chris. As you might suppose, Chris, I'm no great fan of enlightenment thinking. Too much Shaw, that child of the enlightenment, at an early age. The only enlightenment philosopher I really like is Hume for his book-burning tendencies.

I still think that a written constitution is a great step backwards. You have to live it, not read it.

Well, I’ll take a written constitution over its historic alternative, which is usually tyranny or monarchy. So, John, am I to assume that you’d rather be ruled by the whims of some king or queen or prince? What’s next in your reasoned argument? The divine right of kings? You probably would have opposed the Magna Carta.

Without written constitutional law, people have no rights. Your statement, "You have to live it, not read it," is a ridiculous non sequitur. How can people live a life entailing certain freedoms and rights if those freedoms and rights are not stipulated in the governmental structure? You sometimes say the dopiest things.

Richard

Our way is better. The British way is better. We have managed for a thousand years without a written constitution. And in general we are freer than you have historically been.

How many Americans have read and understood their constitution and amendments (twenty-seven? thirty-three?) right through? I get from the internet that there are 4,500 words in the Constitution. How many more words are in the amendments? Are all these words immediately intelligible to an ordinary person? I assume it is taught in schools but lots of things are taught in schools. What exactly has a slave owning man of the eighteenth century got to say to an American black woman today?

John,
I'll tell you what the eighteenth century man would tell a black woman today-- we were wrong, we were wrong to try to get 13 colonies to agree to the bigger picture without foregoing slavery, however, we corrected that problem in the Civil War which cost the country half a million men and bad blood for many years after the war was over.

Furthermore, the Crown had no specific problem with the Colonies and slavery during the Seven-Years-War with the French. The Crown relished using rubes like us to do their dirty work until that little disaster was done. We were allies loyal to the King, however crazy he might have been.

I would rather have the freedom wrought by blood and the Constitution than be referred to as a subject.

Respectfully,
Charlie.

Perhaps the British way is better for the British and the American way for the Americans, neither of which is without flaws nor without greatness.

As the subject of the thread has written:

Let's all cry peace, freedom, and liberty!

I am a foe to tyrants, and my country's friend.

Who is here so vile that will not love his country?

Well, actually, Charlie, we are not referred to as subjects, though I wouldn't mind that at all.

My original point is that few people are convinced of anything by reading a book about it unless they are already half convinced. Nor does reasoned argument do the trick. Have you not ever thought, 'His argument is better but he's still wrong. I can't put it as well as he can but I know I'm right.'