Political Quotes

“Mr. Chief Justice, Senators, I speak to the matter of prudence. Charles L. Black, Jr. begins his masterful account Impeachment: A Handbook with a warning: ``Everyone must shrink from this most drastic of measures. . . . [t]his awful step.'' For it is just that. The drafters of the American Constitution had, from England and from Colonial government, fully formed models of what a legislature should be, what a judiciary should do. But nowhere on earth was there a nation with an elected head of an executive branch of government. Here they turned to an understanding of governance which marks the American Constitution as a signal event in human history--what the Framers called ``the new science of politics.'' What we might term the intellectual revolution of 1787. The victors in the Revolution could agree that no one, or not many, wanted another monarchy in line with the long melancholy succession since Rome. Yet given what Madison termed ``the fugitive and turbulent existence of . . . ancient republics,'' who could dare to suggest that a modern republic could hope for anything better? Madison could. And why? Because study had produced new knowledge, which could now be put to use. This great new claim rested upon a new and aggressively more ``realistic'' idea of human nature. Ancient and medieval thought and practice were said to have failed disastrously by clinging to illusions regarding how men ought to be.…”