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Thom's blog
Republicans Want to Turn Back the Clock on the Constitution
Tehran Tom Cotton has done it again.
That’s right -- Tom Cotton is freaking out about the fact that the government of Iran controls Tehran, which IS THE FREAKING CAPITAL OF IRAN!
I think it’s safe to say that Senator Cotton might want to skim through a Rand McNally World Atlas before his next Sunday show appearance. In fact, while he’s at it, Senator Cotton should also retake high school civics because his letter to the government of Iran didn’t just violate diplomatic protocol, it also turned back the clock to one of the most chaotic periods in American history.
You see in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, America was governed by a collection of documents known as the Articles of Confederation. The Articles were, for lack of a better word, a mess. They didn’t provide for any real central authority and gave no clear guidelines as to who had what kind of power, which was a big problem when it came to things like foreign policy.
Things got so bad that at one point in 1786, North Carolina Congressman James White actually tried to work out a deal with Spain that would have seen the western part of his state secede from the U.S. and join the Spanish Empire.
This obviously never happened, but it’s still a great example why when they scrapped the Articles of Confederation in favor of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers gave the president and only the president the sole power to make and ratify treaties. The Founders had seen the kind of chaos that came about when citizens negotiated directly with foreign governments, and they wanted to make sure that that chaos never reared its ugly head again.
And, for the most part, they succeeded.
-Thom
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