The late Justice Scalia delivered an opening statement on American exceptionalism to a Senate Judiciary Committee on October 5, 2011. Here is an excerpt from his answer to this question.
“What do you think is the reason that America is such a free country?” “What is it in our Constitution that makes us what we are?”
“If you think that a bill of rights is what sets us apart, you’re crazy. Every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights.” Every President for life has a bill of rights. The bill of rights of the former “Evil Empire,” the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours. I mean it, literally. It was much better. We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press — big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests; and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!”
“The Bill of Rights is just what our Framers would call a parchment guarantee. The real key to the distinctiveness of America is the structure of our government.”
“The Europeans look at our system and they say, well, it passes one House and it doesn’t pass the other House; sometimes the other House is in the control of a different party; it passes both, and then this President, who has a veto power, vetoes it. And they look at this and they say, “Ah, it is gridlock”.
“I hear Americans saying this nowadays, and there’s a lot of it going around. They talk about a “dysfunctional government” because there’s disagreement. And the Framers would have said, “Yes, that’s exactly the way we set it up. We wanted this to be power contradicting power — because the main ill that beset us”.
“So, unless Americans can appreciate that and learn to love the separation of powers, which means learning to love the gridlock, which the Framers believed would be the main protection of minorities — the main protection.”
Larry L. Crain, Crain Law Group, PLLC – www.crainlaw.legal
