The Glade 4.0

A run-on sentence?

No.

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Parallelism?

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In time, this too shall pass.

Negative, Ghostrider. I'll give you 1 brownie point for at least trying to think outside the box.

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Well, it seems to be a compound-complex periodic sentence, using grammatical parallelism.

Or, damn difficult to dissect unless you are a constitutional scholar.

I prefer to bow to empirical evidence to determine the meaning and otherwise ignore it.

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In time, this too shall pass.

That's probably as close as anyone will get, but still not quite right.Constitutional Scholars are notoriously ill-trained in the skills necessary to read the Constitution; after all, our President claims to be such a creature.Empirical evidence of what?

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Do you believe the men who drafted the Constitution possessed those skills? What about the men who ratified it?


I would add circumstantial/contextual evidence as well. As to what - drafters' intent, ratifiers' understanding, course of dealing (to use a commercial contract phrase), etc. Technical analysis of the text itself is just the first step in understanding and applying any legal document, particularly one as thoroughly infused with politics as a constitution.

No, my argument is not wrong for that reason, and I stated why. English sentence structure, like most of the other "I'm right because of a linguistic nitpick" arguments that get tossed around here to avoid dealing with actual problems is a means, not an end. Any appeal to linguistics must A) take into account that human beings can and do make mistakes, and that having made a mistae does not force everything else to conform to the error and B) it cannot create an absurd situation for no reason other than conformity to the rules of linguistics, which in turn is only an end when you want to win an argument on the internet and ignore the practical untenibility of the situation. In this case, the situation is both absurd and untenable; it cannot possibly be the case that the Founders wish there to be no civilian commander of the armed forces in peacetime. This would have rendered them wither worthless or dangerous.



This only demonstrates your utter ignorance of military affairs. A military organization needs a commander in order to be able to function at all. During peacetime it must train, procure equipment, and otherwise prepare for war, or else it will not be a military organization once war comes; it will be, at best, an armed mob. However, it is not possible to train for every conceiveable war or procure every piece of equipment available, so priorities must be set. This means a civilian leader who ties the military priorities to the larger national interest is an absolute necessity unless you want Generals to do it themselves.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Another fun question: What do 5-star generals have to do with having an organized command structure capable of functioning?

Answer: They don't. The rank structure is not what makes the military function; it is simply a way of representing relative authority. We just happen to have 4 ranks of falg officer in common use and 1 no longer in common use. We could easily make the highest rank in the military a 1-star general, and appoint a bunch of the to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or create an entirely new command structure. As long as unity of command is maintained, the structure will work regardless of what we choose to call individual officers.



Really, don't try to pretend like you're pooking holes in my argument with your stupid snarky questions. You have no idea what the **** you're talkign about, and are really just trying to look cool and knowledagble for the bandwagon.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

In large part, you mean John Madison when you mention the drafting of the Constitution. As a matter of course, the attendees of that Constitutional Conventions, authors of various Federalist and anti-Federalist Papers, and their contemporaries present at its ratification were better trained in classical rhetoric than most living scholars. Indeed, this is likely why most contemporary legal scholars, mock-historians, and lay-persons reading the Constitution get tripped up by punctuation they don't understand; sentences they can't read; structures they don't understand.

For instance, both you and Diamondeye are providing a rhetorically and grammatically incorrect reading of Article II, Section II. There are no grammatical errors in the Constitution, although there are structures foreign to your sensibilities and which seem erroneous based on English as you speak, read, and write the language. Diamondeye's most recent post demonstrates as much.

More to the point, his derision of grammatical nitpicking indicates he's not interested in what the document denotes or the procedural necessities of learning to read the document. He's content to assume that a current English reading, his understanding/experience with military affairs, and stare decisis make all such discussion moot. And that's well within his right, but it does not mean that an actual procedural and structural analysis of the language is immaterial or pointless.I'm simply interested in the blanket presumption that Stathol's reading is a priori wrong because of externalizations by third parties over the course of history. Likewise, I find it amusing that you and Diamondeye both assume the meaning is obvious when both of you make the same (like taught) mistake in parsing the written word before you.

To answer my question, it's a period. There are two sentences (cola) and nine phrases/clauses (commas) in the artifact we're discussing. There are no comma splices or grammatical errors by modern or contemporary (that is at the time of writing) standards.

That said, the problem here seems to rely on a relative clause: "... when called into the actual services of the United States;". So, I'll ask this question:What indicators do you have that the relative clause is a non-essential qualifier? And what part of the truncated sentence does position itself relative to?

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Yes, actually; that's exactly what I want. If the Generals and Admirals of our armed forces aren't capable of maintaining a standing army without the President telling them exactly how to do it, then they really aren't qualified to hold those positions.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

DE, there is nothing you can say to refute this.

I see no historical evidence whatsoever that the authors fo the Constitution were immune from linguistic error, or that they were any better at avoiding such than any other fairly-well-educated men.



Similarly, your insistence on grammatical technicality at the expense of the impracticality of the situation it would create indicates that you consider all such discussion just as moot. That would not be the first time there has been an impasse on this board and I suppose it won't be the last.

In any case, stare decisis is an almost-insurmountable obstacle to overcome. Not simply because it is precednet, but because much of it was created by the same men who ostensibly wrote it to mean what you claim it means. Indeed, the Department of the Navy was created in 1789 in response to the Barbary piracy problems, and eventually resulted in war in 1801, all during a period where Constitutional signers were actively involved in government, yet none complained that a declaration of war was needed to found a Navy, much less engage in combat thousands of miles from the United States.

One might argue that Jefferson stated he was not authorized to go "beyond the line of defense" without authorization from Congress, but even then, everything up to that point he was still authorized to do as CINC, and in fact, that line of defense was determined to be in the area to protect American ships. In fact, Congress eventually passed "An act for the Protection of Commerce and seamen of the United States against the Tripolitan cruisers", authorizing the President to "... employ such of the armed vessels of the United States as may be judged requisite ... for protecting effectually the commerce and seamen thereof on the Atlantic ocean, the Mediterranean and adjoining seas." which speaks to the lack of necessity for a "Declaration of War"; in fact any authorization for substantially the same purpose will suffice.

In fact, I really do not understand (and I apologize if I am lumping in any of your views with anyone else's) how you think the Constitution could even be worth a damn if it actually worked the way in which so many here like to claim. The nation would have been utterly destroyed many times over from internal paralysis and strife and foriegn attack if it actually placed limits of such absurd strictness on the government.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Sure there is. Don't be silly. Of course they can maintain an army (by the way, admirals have nothing to do with the Army) but that's all they can do: Maintain what already existed. They cannot make decisions of policy that will determine what the shape of what is being maintained is to be, or how it should support current and future policy.

They already do maintain the military, the PResident doesn't do that. His job is to tell them what sort of military to main.

Congress cannot do that; that is a command issue and does not fall under the purview of "making rules for the militia" because A) it is the President's power and B) it would be impossible for Congress to do so effectively. Such decisions cannot be made by committee, which Congress is both in its subordinate committees and in its entirity. You would end up with a morass of men and equipment with little to no direction and no ability to successfully carry out any sort of military operation.

Your position that military commanders should independantly direct the military during peacetime is just an invitation to military dictatorship. I'm quite certain you will handwave this away, but really, what's stopping them if not civilian authority? Granted, the physical ability to do so is always there, but always answering to civilian leaders ingrains in the military that they are servents of the elected representatives of the people. Independant authority with no command would not ingrain that and would create a real danger of flag officers running amok.

Furthermore, you have failed to address the need for operational command of a navy, conveniently switching to the army. The Navy must operate at all times; it did so at the founder's time and it must now as well. Your argument boils down to nothing more than a semantic claim that, absurdly, no one can command the military other than in war for no apparent reason than to allow you to claim any military action you don't happen to like is illegal, and nurse the constant "ZOMG T3H GUMMI?NT IGNORES Z3H C0NST1TU10N!!" bandwagon that runs roughshod over all intelligent discussion around here.

I eagerly await the next oversimiplified laymanized assumtion about the military, though.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I said there are no grammatical errors in the Constitution. This doesn't mean they made mistakes when drafting it, but the final version is free from grammatical problems.There's no impracticality in a procedural and structural reading of a didactic document as it was written. In point of fact, it is supremely impractical NOT to do so; which, amusingly, is the basis of your argument and RangerDave's concerning the actual meaning of the statement in question.

So, again, I ask, ... what does "when" and it's subsequent clause modify?

That said, the Constitution does not provide Congress with the power to maintain a standing army, a distinction quite evident between the statements concerning armies and the Navy in Article I, Section 8. But, you know, there's those tricky linguistics getting in the way of your sensibilities and retrospective interpretation of the document.

I'm curious what you think the document means and why from an actual procedural perspective, not what you've decided it means because it conforms to your political, ideological, and experiential expectations.

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I will grant you that, but that is also not exactly what I meant. It is perfectly possible to construct a sentence that is technically grammatically correct, but which also does not mean tchnically what you want because you made a mistake. In other words, your mistake change the grammatical meaning, but left it in a different, but still correct format.

How would one know whether such errors were present or not?



Who cares? Have I not made it clear that I do not see any reason whatsoever that this could possibly be what was actually meant?

Furthermore, it is not the least bit impractical to not extensively analyze the grammer. Practical reality is what happens when the Constitution is actually applied, and if it were applied int he way you say it should, the Constituion would be more of a danger to the liberty it purports to protect than the government it supposedly limits. The ultimate goal of the Constitution is to keep the nation together as a coherent entity for the benefit of its people; not to adhere to its own specific linguistic characteristics for their own sake.



As a matter of fact it does provide such a power. It merely states that funding for an army cannot exceed two years at a time. In our modern era, we fund everything a year at a time, which leads to huge inefficiency in naval purchasing, but I digress. The bottom line is that it simply does not say anything that even implies "no standing army, period".

The linguistics, are not, in fact, getting in the way of anything, because almost no one actually goes into technical linguistics in much of anything. Indeed, they seem primarily useful for allowing linguistic experts to appoint themselves a shadow Supreme Court both of law and human thought in general by telling people what they must think based on linguistic details that the average person really has no time for, and by average person, I mean almost anyone who does anything other than deal with language as a profession. What's really getting in the way here is that practically no one reads it to mean what you say it does, and inconveniently, few people are going to allow their reading of it to be dictated to them for no better reason than grammatical technicalities.



I don't have any ideological expectations, except insofar as realpolitic could be considered an ideology. I believe I've made that clear repeatedly. As to "what the document means" that would take excessive effort, especially since it addresses a wide range of peripherally related topics.

However, I would say that ultimately, its intent must be read with a view to preserving the nation and its interests. If tis is not done, the meaning of the document is moot. No reading of the Constitution can ever be allowed to predjudice national survival. National interest is a bit trickier since a reading should not predjudice this, but by the same token, adhereing to the Constitution's principles is a national interest. A balance must be achieved, and it must be done subjectively. I do not see any possibility of creating exceedingly specific definitions for everything without expanding it into an unreadable monstrosity similar to the tax code.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What's the minimum length of an Enlistment Contract, Diamondeye?

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You know, I was going to make a polite, reasoned response to you. But you don't even pretend to be anything other than a giant talking *** anymore, do you? So **** it.







...


You know what I eagerly await? You learning how to **** read your own native language.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Setting aside the debate over Constitutional interpretation for a minute and just considering the textual analysis in a vacuum, how would you (Khross, Stathol, whoever) write this sentence in order to have the final modifying clause apply only to the Militia?

ETA: Whoops, looks like Khross posted a response while I was editing my own post into a question rather than a statement of my own analysis.

The "when" affects the

the Militia of the several States,

Stating that when these organizations are called into the service of the United States, the President is their Commander in Chief.

As the Army and the Navy are always in the service of the United States and POTUS is always their CIC, it would be redundant to include them, and grammatically, going back an additional phrase is unnecessary and inappropriate.

That is my take on it anyway. Did I come close Professor?

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

RangerDave:

Your analysis is problematic for several reasons:

1. Even in the late 18th Century, you wouldn't need commas to separate "...and the militias of the several States..." from "...the Army and Navy of the United States..." In fact, to get the reading you want, only one comma is necessary even in temporally appropriate grammatical structures.

2. As I said above, the Constitution is written in periods. Semicolons, colons, and periods (the punctuation mark) all serve to separate various sentences. Even commas can serve that purpose depending on the section. To get a good idea of what a period (in rhetorical terms) happens to be, examine Article I, Section 8.

3. The commas enforce parallelism in the multiple objections of the preposition "of" ...

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and the Navy of the United States.

The President shall be Command in Chief of the militias of the several States.

Ignoring the final phrase for a moment, both of those sentences are contained within that single period.

4. "...when called into the actual Service of the United States" contains a null pronoun -- "they". In this case, "they" serves to make the final phrase an actual subordinate clause, but because of rhetorical and grammatical convention it's not necessary in the sentence: e.g. Johnny build the house Jack lived in. The relative "that" between 'house' and 'Jack' is not necessary. Antecedent rules are also important here, because 'when' denotes a relative, adverbial clause. "When" is the President of the United States Commander in Chief of the Army and the Navy and the militias of the several States? "... when [they are] called into the actual Service of the United States."

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I have a hard time believing that the men who signed the Constituion all failed to proofread their new and historically signifigant document to run their new republic.

Of course almost 100% of the lawmakers today failed to read the healthcare bill...

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It doesn't matter if they read it. They just vote along party lines anyways.

That said, how many bills do you think Obama has ever read back to back? I bet it's less than a handful.

What's this got to do with anything whatsoever?

Don't ask a bunch of cryptic questions and expect me to answer them. If you have something to say, say it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

If I had to guess; I would think that since an enlistment contract is typically 4 years, that there is a contract in place that goes well beyond the two years that they are supposed to be allowed.

Again, this is my assumption. I do not have a dog in this fight, so I really do not give a rats ***.

I didn't think the question was being too cryptic, could it be that someone is just being overly defensive about the subject?

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut