The Constitution...Time for an Upgrade?

[bladimz]

I imagine this will get the blood boiling in the veins of our staid forum constitutionalists, but i thought that this was worth posting anyway.

Is your constitution too out-of-date?


The U.S. Needs a New Constitution—Here's How to Write It

America, we've got some bad news: Our Constitution isn't going to make it. It's had 224 years of commendable, often glorious service, but there's a time for everything, and the government shutdown and permanent-crisis governance signal that it's time to think about moving on. "No society can make a perpetual constitution," Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789, the year ours took effect. "The earth belongs always to the living generation and not to the dead .… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years." By that calculation, we're more than two centuries behind schedule for a long, hard look at our most sacred of cows. And what it reveals isn't pretty.

If men (and, finally, women) as wise as Jefferson and Madison set about the task of writing a constitution in 2013, it would look little like the one we have now. Americans today can't agree on anything about Washington except that they want to "blow up the place," in the words of former Republican Senator George Voinovich as he left Congress, and maybe that thought isn't so radical.

Clocking in at some 4,500 words—about the same length as the screenplay for an episode of Two and a Half Men—and without serious modification since 18-year-olds got the vote in 1971, the Constitution simply isn't cut out for 21st-century governance. It's full of holes, only some of which have been patched; it guarantees gridlock; and it's virtually impossible to change. "It gets close to a failing grade in terms of 21st-century notions on democratic theory," says University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson, part of the growing cadre of legal scholars who say the time has come for a new constitutional convention.
http://goo.gl/Lk2KDEI think that if our Founders were to show up now, they'd look at what's happened to the country they formed via the original constitution and agree that maybe it's time to write a new one. And then they'd sit down and do it, dammit.

[Alyosha]

If progressives rewrite it we will live in France. I will also move back to Russia where I will ironically have more freedoms.

I will take Ethereal, XL, Green Arrow, and Codename with me.

[Chris]

I imagine this will get the blood boiling in the veins of our staid forum constitutionalists, but i thought that this was worth posting anyway.

Is your constitution too out-of-date?

I think that if our Founders were to show up now, they'd look at what's happened to the country they formed via the original constitution and agree that maybe it's time to write a new one. And then they'd sit down and do it, dammit.



And why do you think that?

I think they'd be appalled at how the Constitution has been misinterpreted and shredded up. Government no longer accepts its limits.

[Peter1469]

I imagine this will get the blood boiling in the veins of our staid forum constitutionalists, but i thought that this was worth posting anyway.

Is your constitution too out-of-date?

I think that if our Founders were to show up now, they'd look at what's happened to the country they formed via the original constitution and agree that maybe it's time to write a new one. And then they'd sit down and do it, dammit.

Those crafty Founders added into the Constitution two ways to do just that: the Amendment process, started by Congress. Or the Convention process, started by the States.

[Green Arrow]

I vote for a downgrade, rather than an upgrade. Revert back to the Articles of Confederation, with an added measure granting individual communities autonomy.

[nic34]

I vote for a downgrade, rather than an upgrade. Revert back to the Articles of Confederation, with an added measure granting individual communities autonomy.

"Balkanize" the US, great idea.

Failed then, failed now....

[Codename Section]

"Balkanize" the US, great idea.

Failed then, failed now....


How did it fail? I have been looking this up and there seems to be nothing real bad that happened just fears of invasion again.

[Green Arrow]

"Balkanize" the US, great idea.

Failed then, failed now....

There's no evidence that the Articles failed.

[snali]

There no way a constitutional convention can happen it would be too polarized to do anything

[bladimz]

If progressives rewrite it we will live in France. I will also move back to Russia where I will ironically have more freedoms.

I will take Ethereal, XL, Green Arrow, and Codename with me.Do you guys all have your passports current? LOL

So, what if our Founders re-write it? What if they bring it up-to-date? Would you hang around? I mean, do you think you would?

[bladimz]

Those crafty Founders added into the Constitution two ways to do just that: the Amendment process, started by Congress. Or the Convention process, started by the States.And you know, as a constitutionalist, and i hope, a realist, that neither is realistic at this point in our country. For instance, how long would you expect the amendment process to take? Just any simple amendment. It doesn't have to be that outrageous...

[nic34]

There's no evidence that the Articles failed.

When it came time to pay debts, the system failed. The US could not defend its sovereignty as an independent nation, not to mention it couldn't pay it's troops.

[bladimz]

I vote for a downgrade, rather than an upgrade. Revert back to the Articles of Confederation, with an added measure granting individual communities autonomy.So you want to replace one 18th century document with another 18th century document... ok.

[Codename Section]

And you know, as a constitutionalist, and i hope, a realist, that neither is realistic at this point in our country. For instance, how long would you expect the amendment process to take? Just any simple amendment. It doesn't have to be that outrageous...


I'm so frickin' frightened of what this country would look like if progressives got hold of it that I would just give up and move. It has nothing to do with taxing businesses or shit like that, but every single thing in the world would be illegal.

It would be like in Demolition Man where there are tickets for cursing.

[Chris]

And you know, as a constitutionalist, and i hope, a realist, that neither is realistic at this point in our country. For instance, how long would you expect the amendment process to take? Just any simple amendment. It doesn't have to be that outrageous...



The Declaration gives you a third way. Faster, and beats government trampling the Constitution.

[bladimz]

I'm so frickin' frightened of what this country would look like if progressives got hold of it that I would just give up and move. It has nothing to do with taxing businesses or shit like that, but every single thing in the world would be illegal.

It would be like in Demolition Man where there are tickets for cursing.Yeah, i know. The conservatives would freak if progressives re-wrote it, and the libs would freak if the cons re-did it. Yeah, sure...

But what if the Founders stopped in for a week or so, and decided that this country and its people now is not the country that we started out with, and so realised that this country needed a new, more comprehensive Constitution. Would you trust them to do the job, and would you accept their finished work?

[Green Arrow]

So you want to replace one 18th century document with another 18th century document... ok.

Not so. I want a similar concept, but the document itself would have to be rewritten to add my clause about autonomous communities.

[The Xl]

I only wish our unalienable rights were more strongly worded, with clarity, so these idiot neocons and progressives couldn't twist the document to fit their agendas, thereby taking our rights away.

[Peter1469]

And you know, as a constitutionalist, and i hope, a realist, that neither is realistic at this point in our country. For instance, how long would you expect the amendment process to take? Just any simple amendment. It doesn't have to be that outrageous...

It seems to me that you are advocating for option 2- a Constitutional Convention.

I know that the Amendment process is burdensome; it was made to be that way. And I don't want a Convention; I want us to actually follow the Constitution as it currently stands- minus a lot of incorrect case law.

[junie]

And you know, as a constitutionalist, and i hope, a realist, that neither is realistic at this point in our country.

For instance, how long would you expect the amendment process to take? Just any simple amendment. It doesn't have to be that outrageous...


but maybe the foresight was that such consideration should take so long so as to insure the best end result, all things considered...

[junie]

I'm so frickin' frightened




of what this country would look like

if progressives

got hold

of it


that I would just give up

and move.


It has nothing to do

with taxing businesses

or shit like that,

but every single thing

in the world

would

be illegal.


It would be like

in Demolition Man


where there are tickets for cursing.


sounds so fucking frightening!

4474

[patrickt]

Do you guys all have your passports current? LOL

So, what if our Founders re-write it? What if they bring it up-to-date? Would you hang around? I mean, do you think you would?

It's been brought up to date, Nitwit. The last amendment was in 1992. The problem for the socialists/communist is they don't have public support so they want to change the Constitution illegally.

You and you're comrades could propose all the amendments you want and give it a shot. You will not destroy the country without a vote and without a fight.

[Green Arrow]

It's been brought up to date, Nitwit. The last amendment was in 1992. The problem for the socialists/communist is they don't have public support so they want to change the Constitution illegally.

You and you're comrades could propose all the amendments you want and give it a shot. You will not destroy the country without a vote and without a fight.

There is only one socialist in government and he does not have the support to get anything socialist/communist enacted.

[Mr Happy]

If progressives rewrite it we will live in France. I will also move back to Russia where I will ironically have more freedoms.

I will take Ethereal, XL, Green Arrow, and Codename with me.

And if conservatives do?
BTW, France ain't all that bad yknow

Oh, as for more freedoms in Russia, than France - I call BS. Sorry dear...;o)

[patrickt]

And if conservatives do?
BTW, France ain't all that bad yknow

Oh, as for more freedoms in Russia, than France - I call BS. Sorry dear...;o)

France is great for leftists but leftists have an odd definition of freedom. We're free to buy government mandated insurance or suffer the penalty. That's liberal freedom. It's rather like their odd definition of voluntary as in income tax. It's totally voluntary.

[Captain Obvious]

The constitution is a meaningless piece of paper for a number of different reasons.