# Godel and the constitution **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [February 8, 2024, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316 "2024-02-08T18:37:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/21 "2024-02-09T16:53:55Z")
I guess the President could theoretically violate the constitution and then pardon himself. For example an hipotetical president T\*\*\*\* could interfere in the elections and make himself president for life and then pardon himself. But if you’ve reached that level of depravity you could do the same thing even without the pardon power and use the same support in congress that saved you from the inevitable impeachment that your actions provoked to just rule unconstitutionally. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/22 "2024-02-09T16:55:04Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > It’s also easy to write a constitution without a loophole I don’t know, didn’t Gödel’s constitutional incompleteness theorem prove that any constitution that’s complex enough to create a country something something? ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/23 "2024-02-09T16:55:42Z")
I think that’s Seldon’s bailiwick not Gödel’s ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/24 "2024-02-09T16:57:01Z")
This is why the board needs a like button. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/25 "2024-02-09T17:06:14Z")
> [@Frodo](#): > > But if you’ve reached that level of depravity you could do the same thing even without the pardon power and use the same support in congress that saved you from the inevitable impeachment that your actions provoked to just rule unconstitutionally. But, see, my point is: it’s only interesting if we ask about people for whom the depravity (a) is as big as you want, as long as it (b) stops short of _“just rule unconstitutionally.”_ As long as it’s just short of _“technically illegal.”_ And I think you can depravedly get there with the pardon power. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/26 "2024-02-09T17:06:22Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > I don’t know, didn’t Gödel’s constitutional incompleteness theorem prove that any constitution that’s complex enough to create a country something something? According to Douglas Adams, it explodes in a puff of logic? Or from the Seldon reference: “violence is the last resort of the incompetent.” But let’s not get too frivolous… there are some serious issues at stake here. I will admit I’m a UK rather than US citizen so I’m not directly involved… but the two countries are joined very closely and if democratic society is to survive, we will sink or swim together, I think. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/27 "2024-02-09T17:07:14Z")
That’s what would happen, as some of our founding dads realized. The first article could state “This constitution is final and may not be amended, altered, or rewritten in any way for any purpose”. No loopholes, short lived constitution. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/28 "2024-02-09T17:11:26Z")
Fair enough. Technically yes, then you _could_ exploit the pardon power in that way, but 99% of the time that would result in you being impeached and removed from your post, or in a civil war if yo get really really obstinate with it (say closing congress, killing all the opposition reps or something like that) ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/29 "2024-02-09T17:48:18Z")
Pardon power is another loophole in the system. It can be left out. It’s become an impractical part of our system already. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/30 "2024-02-09T18:45:17Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Sinclair Lewis, “It Can’t Happen Here,” published in 1935, about how the US became a fascist state through exploitation of populism and fear (sound familiar?). Not farfetched conjecture at all, even then, when Gödel was not yet 30. It was based on real-life people, including Huey Long and Charles Coughlin. Agreed. I recently read [Inside U.S.A. (1947)](https://thenewpress.com/books/inside-usa), which was blurbed by Sinclair Lewis. Author John Gunther interviewed almost every U.S. governor, and a large portion of senators, and he came away with a lot of reactionary Trumpy quotes. As for Godel, the U.S. Constitution is, as such documents go, unusually short. It requires considerable interpretation, because it was not written in a way to rule out implausible misreadings. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/31 "2024-02-09T19:23:34Z")
> [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > One is reminded of the (possibly apocryphal) Washington quote: “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force.” Ultima Ratio Regum. The last argument of Kings. > **[Canon de 24 de Vallière | Front part](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_de_24_de_Valli%C3%A8re#Front_part)** > > Starting with the front part, the gun had a sight design at its extremity. They followed the name of the gun (here Uranie). Then, a Latin phrase "Ultima Ratio Regum", initially introduced by Louis XIV, and rather descriptive of the role of the gun: "The Last Argument of Kings". Under that appears the name "Louis Charles de Bourbon, Comte d'Eu, Duc d'Aumale", the Grand Maître de l'artillerie de France (Grand Master of the Artillery of France), followed by a royal emblem. In the middle of the canno... ---
**Author:** ![squidfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@squidfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squidfood)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/32 "2024-02-09T20:50:11Z")
When I first read this anecdote years ago, I took it as a parable of the error of applying strict mathematical logic to a legal document. The exact loophole scarcely matters, there could be many if one tried to treat the Constitution as a formal set of logic proofs (and in general, the upthread-mentioned Peter Suber essay covers this very well). I read this anecdote in a book of anecdotes of famous mathematicians that included well-known stories of the eccentricities of Von Neumann, Feynman, etc. so the presentation tone was definitely “look what happens when eccentric geniuses apply their logic to the real world…” ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/33 "2024-02-09T21:06:49Z")
Maybe he just noticed what we’ve seen happen with Trump. The president nominates cabinet members who are personally loyal to the president, so they’ll never use their Article 25 powers to remove him. If the president’s party wins either of the House or Senate, impeachment and conviction is impossible, and at that time, I don’t think the presidential term limits had been created. With this set up, a sufficiently motivated fascist group would have four years to figure out the re-election issues, knowing that no one else has the power to stop them. Add in a bit of extra-judicial killing under the protection of the president, and things could go very badly. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/34 "2024-02-09T21:12:13Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > The story is nonsense. There’s no secret here. I concur. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/35 "2024-02-09T21:50:53Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > The story is nonsense. Rebecca Goldstein includes the story in her book about Godel: _Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel_. She says “This is perhaps the most famous story told about Gödel. (It comes to us by way of Morgenstern.)” (This would be Oskar Morgenstern, who, with Einstein, accompanied Godel to the citizenship test, so he would have been a witness to the event.) From what I know about Godel, I don’t see any particular reason to dismiss the story as nonsense. She adds in a footnote that > [@](#): > > Unfortunately, Morgenstern’s account, and so all the others that derive from it, omits mention of the precise constitutional flaw. I asked John Dawson whether he knew what it was supposed to be, and he e-mailed back: “No, I don’t, though many have asked that question. There is a set of shorthand notes in Gödel’s Nachlass concerned with American government (presumably made while he was studying for the citizenship examination) that might contain the answer, but transcribing that particular item has never had as much priority as the mathematical material” ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/36 "2024-02-09T23:00:56Z")
The idea presented in Harry Turtledove’s Southern Victory series (where the South wins the Civil War, fights America and Germany alongside France and the UK in a WWI analogue, loses, and goes fascist in time to start WWII) - a Confederate president is able to seize power by making an enemy of the Supreme Court, passing a very popular but very clearly unconstitutional law (involving hurricane relief IIRC), and then in the public uproar over the court’s decision neutering it. Obviously this happend in the CSA, not the USA, but the legal system seems pretty much copy-pasted so I always thought that method of delegitimizing the courts could work in real life, too. Of course, if you can coopt the court systen instead through strategic apportionments (and by blocking your opponents from making their own appointments), that seems to be an even better strategy. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2024, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/37 "2024-02-12T19:16:08Z")
> [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > But then, the constitution is just a document. It has no intrinsic powers of enforcement. > One is reminded of the (possibly apocryphal) Washington quote: “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force.” There is another quote, dubiously attributed to Winston Churchill or George Orwell, along the lines of: “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf to those who would do them harm”. The problem is, how do we keep those rough men inside the tent rather than outside? In many areas of the world and many ages they have realized that they can get whatever they want by using the ‘terrorists credit card’ (like an AK47) to do as they will. Democratic societies as we know them seem fragile. We should not assume that the ‘problem of government’ has been ‘solved’. Span of time… even quite recently, look at Nazi germany. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2024, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/38 "2024-02-12T19:30:19Z")
I don’t think that there’s no story here at all, but the idea that only someone with Godel’s intellect was able to see the loophole doesn’t ring true. Morgenstern and Einstein may have been unaware of it and perhaps Godel alone among that crowd of great scholars examined the document in enough detail to note it’s significance. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2024, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/39 "2024-02-13T01:09:24Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > the idea that only someone with Godel’s intellect was able to see the loophole doesn’t ring true I always understood the point of the story to be, not “only someone with Godel’s intellect was able to see the loophole,” but only someone like Godel (or a Vulcan?) would think to analyze the Constitution for logical loopholes, or would jeopardize his citizenship by pointing it out. Somehow it reminds me of the old [joke about the engineer and the guillotine](https://renaissancehombre.com/2018/01/07/a-priest-a-lawyer-and-an-engineer/), except of course Godel was a logician instead of an emgineer. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2024, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316/40 "2024-02-13T01:34:58Z")
> [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > The problem is, how do we keep those rough men inside the tent rather than outside? > In many areas of the world and many ages they have realized that they can get whatever they want by using the ‘terrorists credit card’ (like an AK47) to do as they will. > > Democratic societies as we know them seem fragile. We should not assume that the ‘problem of government’ has been ‘solved’. Span of time… even quite recently, look at Nazi germany. Which is why the Founders championed the ideal of every citizen\* being armed and on the rolls as a militiaman. As they envisioned it, democracy would be a majority vote of the armed; preferably by ballots, if necessary by bullets. The 2/3 to 3/4 majorities mentioned in the Constitution perhaps not coincidentally is also about the supermajority necessary to win a civil war. The present system of an overwhelmingly powerful professional army, a vast domestic security apparatus and an apathetic pacifistic populace is so far from the original ideal that it’s a wonder “Seven Days In May” hasn’t happened yet. \*white male citizens anyway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godel-and-the-constitution/997316.md?page=3)