Wei wrote:

> I would really like to believe that Pound did believe in the US
> Constitution.  When I first began to study Pound, I believed that he did
> believe not only in democracy, but in "economic democracy."

        In my view, the trouble with much of this thread--as exemplified
by this excerpt--is the level of abstraction at which key terms operate.
Did Pound "believe" in the Constitution?  Of course he did, and he said so
again and again, to anyone who would listen and to those who wouldn't.  I
am told by Omar Pound that Ezra's first question to many new visitors to
St. Elizabeths was, "Have you read the Constitution?"
        Pound would vehemently asseverate that he "believed" in the
Constitution.  But Wei seems to assume that there is a certain
"democratic" (another lofty word), and therefore self-evidently valid, way
to believe in the Constitution.  Justice Blackmun believed that the
Constitution contained an inherent right of women to privacy from state
interference in matters of abortion; Justices Thomas and Scalia do not
believe in that Constitution.  Chief Justice Warren believed that a
Constitution that permitted a state to operate segregated schools was not
a "democratic" Constitution, yet the majority in Plessy v. Ferguson at the
end of the last century believed that such a Constitution was deeply
democratic.  And so forth.

        Now to empirics:

> If he did, where did he enunciate his understanding of the Constitution?
> Where in the Cantos did he actually quote any part of the Constitution, in
> support of the basic principles which are antithetical to fascsim, namely
> the rule of law over men, the system of checks and balances, and the vesting
> of the supreme power of law-making, and the power of the purse in an elected
> legislature?  When he spoke favorably of the Constitution, and I admit he
> did (in the vaguest terms) what was the context, and what he saying about
> the Constitution?  If he liked the Constituion , what did he like about it?

        I confess--without meaning to be spiteful--that I find this
statement very disturbing from a person who holds forth so eloquently and
voluminously about Pound.  I fear that Wei will spread further and more
ineradicable ignorance among the many (not on this list, of course) who
really don't know much about Pound and are happy to accept whatever they
come across as truth certain about that difficult individual.
        No scholar of Pound can begin to come to grips with Pound's views
on the Constitution without knowing that he obsessively referred (in
letters, radio talks, and the Cantos (see, e.g., the Pisans)) to the U.S.
Constitution art. I, sec. 8: "The Congress shall have power ... [t]o coin
money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the
standard of weights and measures."
        If you miss this aspect of Pound's thought--and I don't see how
anyone actively reading him could--you've missed it all: Our government,
Pound believed, can remedy the problem of private banking ("usury"), and
the creation of wars to perpetuate privately controlled money, by
returning the control of money (read "stamp scrip" or whatever you like)
to the elected representatives--like the Congressmen Pound lobbied when he
visited America in 1939.  And--pace Wei--this is Pound's way of affirming
a belief, deeply though quirkily held, in representative democracy.
        Of course, that may seem to us inconsistent with his hankering for
charismatic fascism, but Pound cannot be held to political and ideological
"consistency" of the ordinary sort and still remain Pound.
        Wei seeks virtuous and homogeneous consistency in ideological
thought. Bravo for him.  But if he wants to find this among the poets, he
should pursue other quarry than Ezra Pound.

        One last snippet:

>   And if he did highly value the US Consitution, as you suggest, why was he
> so interested in China, Confucianism (which is an authoritarian doctrine),
> and in Confucian texts?  And how could he reconcile these interests?

        If, as an interpreter of Pound, you do not see it as your
task--and Pound would have told you it was your task--to find out how the
American democratic society of Pound's dreams (an odd-looking America,
perhaps--one run on a sound and fair money policy, amply patronizing
worthy artists, and led, perhaps, by Martin Van Buren with an Italian
accent) converged with the thought of Confucius, the deeds of Malatesta,
and all his other heroes of history, then Pound is not your man.
        Pound thought he was politically consistent, of course.  But Wei
is asking for something that Pound cannot supply.
        Let's all go munch some tulips and call it a day.

                        Respectfuly, Robert Spoo