Salon: We need new constitution

Post Reply New Topic

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/27/we_need ... newsletter

How about we actually follow the one we have?

There are a few nice things worth defending in the Constitution and you would give the job of reforming it to a bunch of greedy slimy thieving butchering lying political scum who want to have their dirty fingers in everything?

There isn't a group of people today I'd trust with this; Buddhists and WP (perhaps) aside.

ZenDen makes the most important point: even if one agrees that the constitution is broken, the current political climate is too broken to re-write it without destroying the fabric of the country.

Since we no longer have a right to a trial all our other rights are meaningless and the constitution is now only a piece of paper.
For example, suppose you say something the government does not like. They can throw you in prison for decades. Since they do not have to charge you with anything (they do not even have to explain their actions), no one (including you ) will know that you are in prison for exercising your freedom of speech.
One can claim that the government would never do such a thing (it already has). One can claim, "who cares. It will never happen to me." That means that you are accepting that we are no longer a nation built on law,but rather brute power.

The constitution is just fine as it is. Simply adopting a new one won't do anything to fix the things that are really broken.
Besides, we could NEVER agree on what should be in the new one.

The problem is not the Constitution, the problem is interpretation. Each side wants to reinterpret every line and syllable of the Constitution to suit their own agenda, so much so that people are going back to studying opinion documents and letters of era figures and writers of the Constitution and even trying to interpret those documents and letters in such a way as to apply them to justifications for reinterpretation and misinterpretation of the Constitution.

It also does not help that every legal document ever written in American history is full of ambiguity and contradiction, just like the Bible. Maybe it is, was, and always will be, intentional.

Seems like the original is pretty good to me.

I highly doubt there'd be one as liberal and inclusive written up now.

And f**k democracy. Rule by majority is just another name for mob rule.

"And f**k democracy. Rule by majority is just another name for mob rule"

It cannot be mob rule as long as we can maintain a system of checks and balances. Problem is we have people in our society right now who are trying to eliminate that crucial element of democracy.

The people who are crying the loudest to proclaim Obama a "Socialist," are doing everything in their power, every corruption that money can buy, to actually create the Socialist society they are accusing Obama of leading. The more effective these people are at turning our society into a bunch of brain dead imbeciles the sooner they will achieve their goal. Thus the attacks on education and science. The United States is now among the least literate societies on the planet, and getting worse by the minute.

What is on the required reading list for the typical 15 year old these days? "Gumby Goes To Disneyland?" Is civics even taught these days in elementary school? How many people employed in a money handling position are capable of calculating even the most basic math without the aid of an electronic device? I don't think people these days could even operate a slide rule. Hell, I don't know of anyone under 45 who could even tell me what a slide rule is.

How about letting people that don't want to be a part of the state be free of it?

I can't remember signing any documents saying I want to be a part of society/the state, and I'm pretty sure it can't be argued that it's some form of natural unspoken law.

The only ethical solution to the imperfect governing systems is to give people the choice.

You want to live in a democracy or whatever? Cool. You don't? That's also cool.

(Checks and balances are a joke in the end, as the majority can outvote them. That's why democracy sucks.)