Constitutional Reform Quotes
There had been a revolution against the Qing Dynasty and an attempt to establish a republic. Wang, the spokesperson, quickly wrote an article in the Atlantic Monthly one of the most prestigious American publications. He minimized the degree of bloodshed, but by Chinese standards of civil unrest where over 20 million people had been killed in previous discords, this was relatively benign. It was a de facto military coup which also involved political assassinations which he carefully avoided mentioning, and just a few months after the publication of this article a second revolution broke out and this version of the Chinese Republic was very short lived.
Harding, not the most historically knowledgeable of American Presidents, had forgotten the revolutionary origin of the United States or its drastically experimental nature. It was the fear of Communism and the Russian Revolution that gave revolution a bad name at the time.
Mao worked for a democratic reform in China and ending the single party rule of the Kuomintang. It was part of his communist theoretical concept that a democratic revolution is the first stage to be followed by the socialist revolution. Young Mao valued basic freedoms. However when the Communists finally attained power, freedom of speech, assembly and association no longer were important and were denied the Chinese people by the Communist Party which was the single party ruler just as the Kuomintang had been.
The Articles of Confederation had no Federal teeth and the Continental Congress and the State Government’s were a mess after the Revolution. At the time of this writing to Jefferson in Europe, the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention had begun and many were pinning all their hopes on the outcome. While the proceedings of the convention were secret, the fact that it was ongoing was not only public knowledge, but there was intense public interest and hope for its outcome. The delegates were under a great deal of public pressure to unify the nation and come up with a viable form of government.
At the time Turkey and the Ottoman Empire included Egypt and most of the Middle East, Chechnya, Georgia, Armenia, Usbekistan, Ajerbaijon, Greece, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and other countries.
The comment was prompted by FDR’s attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court.
