Political Quotes

“In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. A few years later, in another letter, this time to Thomas Jefferson as part of their famous correspondence, Madison expounded on that very simple superlative, naming the war powers clause in the Constitution as the most important. He said: The constitution supposes what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature. Our Founding Fathers didn't get everything right. They didn't see ahead of time that this Chamber would be divided in two: Republicans on one side, Democrats on the other side. But they knew, having watched the course of human history, that Executives--in their day, mostly all Monarchs and Kings--had all sorts of reasons to drag their Nation into war. Power often came from war, the funding that could be raised for war, the loyalty commanded by war, the glory that occasionally came to the leader, the ruler, through war and through conquest. There was great risk in war, but there was also great reward in war. And there was far too much of it in the era in which our Constitution was being formed.…”