Word: brickering
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...would be valid in the absence of treaty. This is not a return to the Articles of Confederation by any means, for the federal government's share of power is much larger than it once was. Nevertheless, much of the most elementary stuff of foreign affairs would fall within Bricker's charmed circle. As the New York Times pointed out, even the common-garden "friendship, commerce, navigation" agreements which are made with every friendly nation in the world and which provide the foundations of all our foreign intercourse would come under the strictures of the which clause...
Section 3 would wipe out this balance by giving the legislature an exclusive, if residual, authority. Congress has been no less prone to abuse authority than the President, no less in need of the restraints inherent in a checks and balance system. Once Bricker had his way, the hundreds of agreements which diplomacy requires daily would become so many levers by which Congressmen could pry out of the executive satisfaction for their peeves and private theories...
...amendment, then, attacks two of the Constitution's most valuable principles, its distribution of authority and its balance of power. Why are Bricker & Company so anxious to junk the wisdom of those upon whose shades they so frequently call? They are afraid, apparently, that mistakes will be made, that some future President, Senate, House, and electorate will depart from the political ideas which they deem immutable. Aside from the arrogance of this stand, its rationale, that paralysis is better than risk of error, is appalling. It reflects the same mistrust of power that today makes France the picture of chaos...
...power necessary to discharge it. One suspects that behind the Senator's oratory lies the same isolationism which has marked his wing of the GOP for years, that the amendment is simply a bigger and better version of the wild attacks on the State Department. Unable to succeed straightforwardly, Bricker and his colleagues have launched an oblique attack, seeking to abolish foreign entanglements by abolishing the power to make them. They ignore the fact that the conditions which doomed their views when made in the open, namely, the state of world politics which requires an ever increasing participation...
Seven members of the University faculty last night denounced the controversial Bricker Amendment to limit the treaty-making powers of the president as variously "dangerous, "unnecessary," and "awful." Most of the men interviewed felt the amendment would definitely be harmful...