Ashley Husemoller > Recent Status Updates

When John Quincy Adams called Madison “the father of the Constitution,“ he was not only paying tribute to what Madison accomplished in Philadelphia but also recognizing his achievements in the months afterward. Crucial as Madison was to the creation of the Constitution, he was at least equally important to seeing that it went into effect.

Euphemisms were a way of avoiding the terrible truth that slavery existed, but they also allowed the delegates to create a document suitable for a time when it would not. As political scientist Robert Goldwin observed, they created a constitution for a society that would offer more justice than their own.

Legislators themselves too often acted out of self-interest instead of for the public good…They were given to uniting in majorities that violated the rights and interests of minorities.

Same shit, different day…

No society, not even the smallest, was truly homogeneous. Factions, or interest groups, were endemic to the human race, and the challenge was making sure that majority rule, which was at the heart of republican government, did not become an instrument for one faction to suppress others.

“If [eloquence] includes persuasion by convincing,” his fellow Virginian John Marshall wrote, “Mr. Madison was the most eloquent man I ever heard.”

FIRST LINE: {Philadelphia, May 5, 1787} He hurried along Market Street, his high-crowned hat offering scant protection against the rain.

FIRST LINE: Day had begun to smile and the sun was shining upon the hilltops when a band armed pirates scaled the mountain which extends to the mouth of the Nile called the Heracleot, where it empties into the sea.

Grief is a chronic illness. […] There is no known cure. Which is not to say humankind hasn’t tried any number of fixes. […] It’s just that grief is stronger because it will always have the last word, because it has no words for us at all. Its power is in its silent finality.

FIRST LINE: “Don’t embarrass me in front of David Bowie, Dad.”

END OF SERIAL NO. 1 (Chapters 1-4, March of 1852)

FIRST LINE: I am Chariton of the city of Aphrodisias, a secretary to the lawyer Athenagoras, and I shall relate a love story which took place in Syracuse.

Darcy, about Lizzy: “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt *me*; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”

MAN, you lie like a rug.

FIRST LINE(S): London. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall.

FIRST LINE: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

True, the gods have other laws than ours; how can I balance my human Fate with theirs?

Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ‘em.