Brakeman, Brake

Shortly after I first reported to the USS LOS ANGELES (SSN688), and prior to becoming familiar with all the crewmembers, I was standing on the lanai one evening when two crewmembers drove up in an MG Midget. They asked if I wanted to go the the movies with them.  I replied in the affirmative, but asked where I would sit.  They told me to just jump in the car and squeeze between the seats and the where the covertible top use to be.  A tight fit.

Anyway, as we rolled down the hill, towards a stop sign, the driver all of a sudden said, “Brakeman, brake.” I had no idea what was meant by this, but I did note that we were not slowing down for the stop sign.  Once again, with more urgency, the driver said, “Brakeman, brake.” And again, quite forcefully, the driver said, “Brakeman, Brake!” Upon this third request, the individual sitting in the passenger seat, all of a sudden declares, “Oh, right, the brakes,” reaches for the parking brake and brings the little car to a stop.  The MG did not have functioning brakes.

I thought of this today when I read Roderick Long’s post “Finding the Brake." Long casts his eye on Benjamin Constant, his defense of monarchy, and applying the brakes to representative assemblies.  From Long’s post.

"In his 1815 Principles of Politics, French liberal author Benjamin Constant defended the monarch’s “right to dissolve representative assemblies.”

Constant’s position might seem surprising. Wasn’t securing the independence of parliaments from the royal will one of liberalism’s hard-won victories?

His reasoning ran as follows. The “tendency of assemblies to multiply indefinitely the number of laws” is the inevitable result of “two natural inclinations in the legislators, the need to act, and the pleasure of believing themselves necessary.” Hence it is only to be expected that legislators should “share out amongst themselves human existence, by right of conquest, in the same way as Alexander’s generals shared out the world.” The function of the monarch is to serve as a check against this tendency. This is why the political executive is customarily entrusted with the power of vetoing legislation; but, Constant maintains, the veto is not enough:

The veto is precisely a direct means of repressing the indiscreet activity of representative assemblies but, when employed too often, it irritates without disarming them. Thus dissolution is the only remedy whose effectiveness is assured.

But what ensures that the monarch will use this power beneficently rather than mischievously? Here Constant’s argument becomes less compelling: as a “neutral power” rather than an “active power,” the monarch has, or should have, only the power to restrain the actions of other parts of the government, but no power to initiate action himself; as a “being apart at the summit of the pyramid,” the monarch floats serenely above the fray rather than becoming involved in partisanship, and serves only to mediate among the different branches of government."

Posted by on 05/03 at 05:46 AM

  1. “being apart at the summit of the pyramid,” the monarch floats serenely above the fray rather than becoming involved in partisanship, and serves only to mediate among the different branches of government.

    This seems like an odd thing for you to post Mr. Venlet.

    Posted by  on  05/03  at  10:30 AM

  2. It can’t be that “odd,” Serpent.  My interests are varied, and reading something, of which I am ignorant (Constant), and may link to, seems only to be worthwhile, as it may increase my knoweldge, and understanding, of the world around me.

    Posted by  on  05/03  at  10:55 AM

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