BURN the Constitution

Great Debates
1

I feel America should burn its constitution and make a new one.

All Americans admit (to other Americans) that the government doesn’t work. Few outside of the polititians pretend it will ever work.
But people never question why. It is easier just to find someone to blame.
The Founders are revered. No one doubts the Fathers of our country. The whole political spectrum worships them. The only people I’ve heard call for a Constitutional Congress are the Militias.
Hey, if your apartment building collapses, do you blame the contracter or the super?

Don’t get me wrong. I agree with the ideals put forth in the the document… Freedom, Democracy, Justice. I am arguing about the details of how best to acheive these. I think, like us today, the framers let their prejudices affect their efforts. Also by today’s standards they would be woefully ignorant.

Disclaimer.
Please no jingoism(or make it subtle).

My points.

  1. The constitution is undemocratic.
    —1a. Did you ever vote on it?
    —1b. why do we need the electoral college? Our votes should be what matters.
    —1c. 1 citizen 1 vote. The Senate is blatently nonrepresentational(19, count em, 19 letters). Why are Californians less valuable than Utahers? (insert own joke here.)

—2 The constitution is too rigid. Give the power to amend it directly into the hands of the people.

—3 The Constitution is obscure. Precise modern wording would eliminate semantic arguments.(and happily put all constitutional lawers out of business)

—4 The constitution makes goverment complex. If we steamlined the government structure itself, we could make it more responsive to voters. Plus we would know who to point the finger at when things go wrong.

—5 Equality. This should be ensrined with the other great virtues of America. It is not.
Last disclaimer: This is not a Bill of Rights thread. Will discuss amendments if they pertain to the shape of government.

Wow! My very first thread. Got my copy ready. So proud of myself. I didn’t use the word elitist even once.oops.

Fire Away.

The Constitution is a contract with death.
Frederick Douglass

2

If we did what you propose, how could we be certain the new Constitution would guarantee the same basic rights as the old one? Many gun control advocates probably wish the Second Amendment didn’t exist, a lot of fundamentalists aren’t too happy about the separation of church and state, some people don’t like the idea of rights of the accused, and there are even those who don’t think that we should have the level of free speech that we do.

Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.

3

It’s late, so forgive me for not getting as in-depth as I’d like. More to come tomorrow.

But for now I would like to address two of your points, in random order.

I’m really sorry to say this, but look around you. The american public is too fickle, confrontational, whiny, and (dare I say it?) stupid to truly govern themselves. Granted, the people whom we elect to do it for us are not a whole lot better, but they at least are educated in the system of governance.

If the people had direct control over the government, rather than a representative system as we have now, the constitution would be a self-contradictory (17 letters, how is that? :slight_smile: ) motley patchwork of crap, with each portion catering to the selfish needs of a vocal minority. We don’t need a constitutional amendment telling burger king to stay open until 1:00am instead of 11:00pm, but that’s the kind of thing we would end up with. (maybe not to that degree, but I hope you see what I’m saying)

Which brings me to this:

One of the greatest strengths of the constitution is that its wording is NOT precise. Precision of language is a scourge upon our legal system. The more precisely worded a law becomes, the more easily you can worm your way out of prosecution under that law by arguing points of language. So you need more laws to cover the minutiae that you missed with the first one, and more to cover what you missed with those, and so on.

Additionally, with very precise language, you blur the division of governmental checks and balances.

Example: You start with a law, “Do not Kill.”
Understandably, you decide that this is MUCH too vague, as killing includes self-defense, euthanasia, what-have-you.
So you narrow the definition, and reword it to say “Do not Murder.” A much better choice of words. At this point, you have a dictionary that defines the word “murder” for you to a reasonable degree, and you have judges who are qualified to hear cases and decide whether a) a particular killing qualifies as murder, and b) whether circumstances were extenuating.
In other words, your judges have the power to see that your law is enforced fairly and taking into account the facts of each individual case.

Let’s take the other route now, the one our current legal system has taken: you pass thousands or even millions (as we have now) of laws in an attempt to have legal verbage covering every possible permutation of circumstances with corresponding penalties written right into the legal code.

First problem: You can NEVER foresee every possible set of circumstances. even a chess game has mind-bogglingly many possible outcomes over just a few moves. Every day life has far more variables than that. So there will always be loopholes and ways around. (on the other hand, you have built-in job security, because you will always be passing more and more and more laws…)

Second problem: It’s not possible for a person to know and follow every law that can possibly apply to him/her. There are too many to know, and even lawyers, who have nothing to do EXCEPT study the law know only small portions in which they specialize. Not to mention contradictory sets of laws that are bound to show up.

Third problem: Your legislators are doing the job of the judiciary branch. They are usurping the power of your judges by defining law in such narrow channels that the judges have no room to act. They merely look up offenses in tables and books and read the pre-defined sentence. And voila, your legislative branch is dangerously powerful and your judiciary is weak and useless.

That’s enough for tonight. I apologize for how disjointed I sound. More to follow on saturday.

Mere Life is not Victory.
Mere Death is not Defeat.

Joe Cool

4

I agree with you. but one minor point…
There is no separation of church and state in the constitution. That’s a principle that was adopted later on and separately.

Mere Life is not Victory.
Mere Death is not Defeat.

Joe Cool

5

I do not claim to be a political expert, but…

Elaborate please, cause I don’t.

Hah, ignorant argument on your part. Lets say the contracter made it perfectly, but it was a 300 year old building and the super was an idiot and neglected it. Who do you blame now?

Uh, no, but it WAS ratified by the colonies.

Balance of power.The states rights preserve power. Why do you think it was so hard to make the union in the first place? The articles of confederation failed cause it had too much states rights. The constitution was a rather decent comprimise.

Actually it is extremly flexible, but it’s true that it is firm.

That was the point. It was meant to be ambiguous so that it would allow for maximum flexibility.

Blame the status quo. Thats the way the ball bounced way back then. So deal. It’s different now.

6

Th OP sez;
All Americans admit (to other Americans) that the government doesn’t work.

Bored2001 replies;
Elaborate please, cause I don’t.

Nor do I, so please, do elaborate.
Peace,
mangeorge

I only know two things;
I know what I need to know
And
I know what I want to know
Mangeorge, 2000

7

RoboDude,

Valid points. But not in the vein of this argument. I am trying to establish that we SHOULD write a new constitution. Not how we CAN. That is a whole 'nother can of worms. I don’t want to discourage people with how difficult THAT will be.

I will say that if we can’t establish a government, how can we be smart enough to run a government.

I would like to discuss it later, if this shows promise. Joe-Cool sounds like he’d like some of that action. :slight_smile:

_______________________Peace

8

Oh sorry.
Thank you for posting RoboDude.
You were the first to answer me.
You are my friend!
__________________________Peace.

9

I couldn’t disagree more.

The constitution is very well drafted and general enough to meet our needs today. It’s a statment of principals, not a code of laws.

In essence, our government has only seen fit to change the constitution 15 times in 213 years. What other government can claim that its basic organizational document has sustained that long?

You didn’t vote on it? Which laws did you vote on? Are you a Congressman or a Senator?

Plunging like stones from a slingshot on Mars.

10

All Americans admit that the government doesn’t work.

I also disagree. The government may not be the most efficient organization, but we have a pretty good society overall.

1a. Did you ever vote on it?

Should we re-count the votes every time a new voter reaches majority or an old one dies? Seems impractical.

1b. why do we need the electoral college? Our votes should be what matters

The electoral college is pointless and it’ll probably get amended the next time the candidate who wins the popular vote loses in the EC. But not yet a reason for burning the whole Constitution.

The Senate is blatently nonrepresentational

The Senate represents the States, and the HoR represents the people. The whole states thing is kind of weird, but it’s working, so why change it?

The Constitution is obscure.

Actually, the Constitution is one of the shortest and clearest of any legal document, much less of a document governing an entire country.

The constitution makes goverment complex.

There are a lot of reasons the government is complex. I don’t think the Constitution makes it so. If you have more evidence, put it forth.

Equality.

What sort of equality do you have in mind?

11

Bored2001,

To your first concern:
Check out the 2 posts before yours. Do they sound confidant in our government? I do not think these opinions are rare.

To your response to my building analogy:
But the contracter promised you an eternal home. And left no way to change the tenant agreement to provide for routine safty precautions. Of course, new-fangled items like fire escapes weren’t provided for. And you have your family in this building.
What then?

But the colonies voted on it:
If YOU don’t have a vote, how is that democratic?

States rights concerns:
I don’t believe states should have rights. People should.
If people decide to move to California, why should they be represented less in government?

The constitution as a compromise. I’ll buy this argument. Then. But if the constitution was more easily changed, a better compromise might have been possible later. After the American Civil War, for example.

Accually it is extremely flexible:
I am refering to Artical 5, the ammendment process. Not to glib and convienent interpetations by lawyers.

Blame the status quo:
Exactly. I do.

_________________________________Salaam

12

2sense, the whole POINT to the constitution is that it is undemocratic. A Constitution’s purpose is to set limits on democracy. Without it, the ‘tyranny of the majority’ rules, and under-represented people may have their rights squashed.

You know, there’s nothing magical about democracy. Majority rule is just a way to attempt to have government reflect the wishes of the governed, but it’s a pretty blunt instrument for that purpose. Do you really want white people to be able to vote to enslave blacks? The Nazi party in Germany was democratically elected. Shall we vote on which minority we want to exterminate in ovens?

The founding fathers of the U.S. were of the opinion that majority rule is a good thing as long as it is not allowed to step past certain boundaries, and those boundaries are described by the constitution. Having people be able to vote on it renders the whole concept meaningless, and makes a society much more unstable and dangerous.

13

Oh, and constitutions are also worthless if they only reflect the wishes of the electorate in the first place. A constitution is only valuable when it protects people from the desires of others. As it is right now when it protects the right of free speech from a reactionary electorate that would vote to make flag burning illegal (a measure, btw, which has a majority of people behind it), or when it protects the rights of gun owners from the majority of people who wish to take those rights away.

If you’re going to scrap and re-write the Constitution whenever the wishes of the populace stray from it, you might as well not have one at all.

14

The whole point of the federal government established by the Constitution is that it isn’t efficient. It’s supposed to be hidebound and slow to act. The framers (rightly, IMHO) perceived that the pursuit of happiness is not a right that the government provides for, it’s a right that the government must be prevented from infringing upon. The more efficient a government is, the more powerful and quicker to act it is, the scarier and potentially more oppressive it is. You want efficient government? Hitler’s Germany was pretty damned efficient. And a lot of the people who weren’t being rounded up and killed loved it, because the government was finally getting some results after all that Weimar government ineptitude.

I realize that whenever someone wants to provide an illustration of a bad idea coming to its logical conclusion, they trot out Hitler’s Germany. But I stand by my assertion (and the Framers’) that an efficient government is to be feared and avoided.
And I have to say something here:

SingleDad already mentioned it, but I will repeat: The Senate may be unrepresentational based on population, but that’s the reason we have a bicameral legislature. The House allocates seats based on population, so those Californians can hold off on their San Francisco Tea Party, because it turns out that they are proportionally represented in the legislature.

“Are you frightened of snakes?”
“Only when they dress like werewolves.”
-Preacher

15

SingleDad
The government may not be the most efficient organization, but we have a pretty good society overall.

The government section of our society is the portion I am focusing on.(meoww)
Should we re-count the votes every time a new voter reaches majority or an old one dies? Seems impractical.

The document that guarantees your freedom doesn’t even give you a choice? Doesn’t that seem odd? The Michigan state constitution mandates a contitutional vote every 12 years.
The electoral college is pointless and it’ll probably get amended the next time the candidate who wins the popular vote loses in the EC. But not yet a reason for burning the whole Constitution.

The electoral college is not pointless. Remember the debates that the framers went through over the specific wording. They had a point. It never occurs to people to wonder what it was though.
The Senate represents the States, and the HoR represents the people. The whole states thing is kind of weird, but it’s working, so why change it?

Obviously I don’t think it IS working.
There are a lot of reasons the government is complex. I don’t think the Constitution makes it so. If you have more evidence, put it forth.

The government was created by the constitution as a weak central government. Not as weak as the previous one, but a compromise. Much of the complexity in our government comes from trying to twist the letter of the constitution to fit contemperary needs.

An example,
The first national proscription of marahuana was called the Marahuana Tax Law of 1937. The federal government didn’t have the authority to ban Marahuana. But it decided to get rid of it anyway. By taxing it out of existance. This is the sort of roundabout government we get. The constitution is outdated.
What sort of equality do you have in mind?

Hey relax, don’t want too much equallity. :wink:
Seriously, nothing to radical. Just to have it stated up front with the others.
Even just eliminating the outdated wording would make me happy. I’m talking about the 3/5ths clause(You know…the one that said Blacks were worth 3/5ths of a White.)

_______________________________PEACE

16

Mangeorge,

My apologies. I shouldn’t have spoken for you. I will admit it to anyone who will listen, apparently.

Quick elaboration:
Abortion.
The gun debate.
Campaign finance Reform.
Health Care Reform.
When do you think our government will solve these arguments and move on to other questions?

Also, what were those months of impeachment about? You wouldn’t see that happen in other western countries. When they have leadership questions, they don’t have long trials.
They have elections. Ergo-Democracy.

______________________________Salaam

17

Frankd6,

I’m going to cut your message up into separate quotes. It is easier for me to think that way. Plus I’m going for speed. I’m going to try to catch up. I hope that won’t bother anyone. Sorry,I don’t type very fast.

Exactly. Think about how much the world and America have changed in those 213 years.

And having the oldest constitution around is not something to be proud of. If it means our government is obsolete.

Why did other governments get new constitutions? Because things changed there.

Why don’t things change in America?
________________________PEACE

18

The reason that we do not scrap the constitution is that the government works! Not perfectly, not all that efficiently, but pretty damn well. Almost all Americans have a strong feeling that the basic outline of our government serves them well. We as a nation have a strong economy, basic social and human rights, and with few exceptions, all of our citizens are having their basic needs of food, clothing and shelter met, and indeed have a huge number of what would be considered luxuries in much of the world.

Yes there are problems, and societal issues that must be resolved, but they are not problems with the Constitution. Let’s take your list:

When you think of it these are pretty trivial issues, particularly compared to countries that are trying to work out their basic pattern of government like Russia and China, to use two fairly significant examples.

Perhaps the most important thing about the issues you raise is that we do not have anything approaching a national consensus on those issues. Until the populace gets behind one side or another of a controversial public issue, the elected government will be quite properly reluctant to impose a definative solution.

19

In a democracy people have a voice in government. The elected officials should feel an obligation to go to the people for a vote on important questions.

Again the Impeachment example(that one burns me up). If an election were held during the Senate trial, it appeared as though Clinton would have won handily. But the Senators continued the farce in the face of hostile public opinion.

Some Senators used the constitution defense :“I am only doing as the Constitution mandates”.
I want them to do what the people want. Or convince the people to change their views. That is leadership. IMHO.

NOT to get to vote on the documentary basis of your democracy? No one finds that unreasonable?

________________________________Peace

20

Hi dhanson. Thanks for replying.

Yes I know. This is my problem.

Your thoughts seem to me to mirror those of the founders. I do not agree.

The purpose of a constitution should be to shape the government into a less blunt instrument to serve the people.

Look I not saying some of the founders weren’t admirable. I particularly like Franklin and Washington. But they were who they were. In “The Vinyard of Liberty”, James McGregor Burns calls them," the well-bred, the well-fed, the well-read, and the well-wed."

As for enslaving Blacks, the constitution explicitly forbade outlawing slavery for 20 years.
The compromises antislavery supporters made with the southerners cost the Blacks almost another century of slavery.

Far from protecting minorities from slavery, it hurt them. Because the constitution is so hard to change, it was necessary to fight a war to free them. Despite the fact that most Americans(and not just in the north) found slavery immoral, as long as the south held onto its Senatoral seats, there was no way to end slavery. I still don’t know why the south panicked and chose war.

As for Germany, how have they done since WW2?
Just fine. Why? Maybe because we gave them(and the Japanese) a brand spanking new constitution.Which they ammended more than 30 times in over many years.

Finally, Having people vote on their own constitution makes a society dangerous and unstable? Democracy may not be magic, but surely people have more faith in it than that.

{my alter-egos become restless}

1sense: " Do it. C’mon ya know yer right. Call 'em elitist."

6sense: “Dude, I am definatly picking up those vibes on some ectoplasmic wavelengths.”

2sense: “Shut up! I alluded. Let people draw their own conclusions”