Battling over the Constitution

I have not posted for a while now, but for good reason. Recently, my free time has been taken up with a book by Richard Charques, "The Twilight of Imperial Russia." The book, originally published in 1958, recounts the decline of the Romanov dynasty and the monarchy in Russia. The book begins with the ascension of Nicholas II to the throne and ends with the rise of the Bolsheviks in 1917.

I don't want to get really preachy about this subject, but as I've been reading I came to the conclusion that we as Americans take the concept of a Constitution and limited power for granted. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, strikes and even revolution plagued Russia in an attempt to get Tsar Nicholas II to release any amount of power to a representative branch of government. On more than one occasion, these attempts were met with the shutting down of the duma by the tsar, arrests, and multiple attempts by the conservative members of society to rig the elections of the duma to produce a less rambunctious group of representatives. Needless to say, the tsar still exercised a pretty much unlimited amount of power within the country.

Meanwhile, the United States had been enjoying a government with limitations and separation of powers around one-hundred years. This is not to say that we didn't have any issues (Lincoln repealed habeas corpus in large areas during the Civil War). In any case, it is important to remember how lucky we are as citizens to have the rights that we do. If we don't like something the executive is doing, we have two other branches that we can complain to without worry about being exiled. I'm almost finished with this book. After that I'll pick up on some more religion cases. Thanks.

Eric