I'm still plugging away at the Debate on the Constitution, Vol. 1 (from the Library of America). Today arrived Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Poems and Translations, which I am eager to get to, but my sense of duty demands that I read the earlier arrivals first -- which means I still have the Debate on the Constitution, Vol. 2, the collected writings/papers of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Abraham Lincoln (Speeches and Writings 1859-1965), a volume on the American Revolution, and (finally some fiction!) a book containing Sinclair Lewis's novels Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, and Dodsworth (none of which I have read before). Then, and only then, can I read the Emerson. Unless I break down and "cheat" before then.

I'm having fun, really. It's just that eighteenth-century prose can sometimes be a bit of a chore to get through, especially when I'm tired. But sometimes one of them will say something that makes me want to be able to talk to them now and say "wow, look, you were right about that, look what happened a hundred years after you wrote" or whatever; also "actually dude, you ended up getting that completely wrong." I'm not sure I need to have read all of these articles to understand the debate, but it does help me try to look at the USA of today from the perspective of the people who were just starting it up. intriguing.

And sometimes notably relevant. It looks like Alexander Hamilton wouldn't have approved of things like California's supermajority budget approval requirement:

This is one of those refinements which in practice has an effect, the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. ... When the concurrence of a large number is required by the constitution to the doing of any national act, we are apt to rest satisfied that all is safe, because nothing improper will be likely to be done; but we forget how much good may be prevented, and how much ill may be produced, by the power of hindering the doing what may be necessary...

Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist XXII