I think the comparison between the Sacred Bible of the World’s Greatest Religion and the Sacred Constitution of the World’s Greatest Country is very apt. They contain much God-given wisdom that mortals have not yet fully fathomed.
For example, the Tenth Commandment (“thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s ass”) seems to be a pretty clear injunction against homosexual sodomy, and yet is widely ignored. Similarly, left wing efforts to ignore “the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” have led to disasters. Don’t you think if it were easier for righteous Citizens to buy automatic weapons at gun shows, the Arizonan assassin might have been thwarted?
And dare I, at this liberal board, mention the 3/5 clause of Article 1, chapter 2, verse 3? Had this not been overturned by apostates, do you think we would have ever elected a foreign-born Marxist as President?
Thanks for excluding me. I’ll add that if you’re talking about same-sex marriage, conservatives are following the full faith and credit clause’s text: “And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.” With DOMA, Congress has provided that states need not recognize same sex marriages in other states, exactly as the Full Faith and Credit Clause requires.
True. Although it’s hard to see how we might definitively determine what rights the Ninth Amendment does protect. But yes, you’re right.
No, that’s not the thrust of the conservative argument. They say that the federal government doesn’t have the power to use taxation to compel economic inactivity. Levy taxes? No problem. But remember that the Constitution requires that direct taxes be levied in proportion to a state’s population (Art I: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers… No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census of Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”)
Right?
The levying taxes power is not the subject of the debate. It’s Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause that is being disputed.
At least it’s a document that tries to make concrete points. What irritates me is when in the middle of a debate someone will start ancestor worshipping and say something like “the founding fathers thought ____.” What’s in that blank is either gonna be made up, half true since they’re not a monolithic bloc who agreed on much, true but irrelevant since they lived over 200 years ago and it doesn’t really apply to what we’re talking about except by stretched metaphor, or a complete non sequitur. And this ethereal authority doesn’t apply to anyone else. No one gives a shit what Grover Cleveland would’ve thought about modern economics or internet pirating. But people will wrap themselves into a pretzel trying to figure out what Thomas Jefferson would’ve thought of X or Y.
It seems to me that an obvious consequence of the idea of self-governance is that we can pass laws, and those laws mean what the people passing them think they mean. If the meaning of a law can change over time, without the words changing, then the power to change the law belongs not to those who write the laws but to those who decide what laws mean. In the federal system, that’s judges, they of the lifetime, unelected tenure – which is decidedly NOT what we think of when we call ourselves self-governed.
So what Thomas Jefferson and his buddies thought a law meant is sometimes relevant, if it’s offered to rebut the proposition that the same text means something completely different now.
If, on the other hand, the existing law is being applied to a new set of facts, one that Jefferson and co. never confronted or imagined, then it’s not all that relevant.
I would have thought you could just direct people to read the OP if you wanted to do that.
ETA: If anything, it’s the conservatives who don’t respect the Constitution enough I have a problem with. Specifically, the ones who think we ought to determine what its authors’ intent was by introducing evidence of it that isn’t in there. That goes for liberals who try to make up intentions too.
There is a lot of founding father fetishism out there now. Conservatives detest any notion that government can play a role in improving the common welfare and so dismiss any policy that can’t trace its lineage back to the founders. Personally, I respect the founders but recognize that they were all too human. They were by and large agrarian aristocrats, and to think that we need to limit what government can and should do in a multicultural industrial society based on the life experiences of 18th century white slave owners is pretty silly. Maybe they believed in private gun ownership, but they could not have forseen assault rifles or drug gang warfare. Time to take the founders off their pedestal and treat the Constitution as something less than infallible.
And maybe they believed in a free press, but they could not have foreseen the 24 hour news cycle and the Internet.
I have no problem with what you said, if the next sentence contains, “…and so we need to repeal the Second Amendment.” That’s a perfectly legitimate way to change the Constitution. (Obviously, I object to the specific change, but I’m right there with you on the WAY to change it.)
I object to the idea of simply interpreting the Second Amendment into a nullity because we’ve decided we don’t like it anymore. If it no longer makes sense, repeal it.
I don’t want this to descend into a debate over the Second Half of God’s Second Amendment. The point is larger than that- do we want to consider the words of the founders to be infallible and unchangeable? Or should we interpret the Constitution with the common sense that comes with over two centuries of a changing culture?
Well, the two aren’t completely incompatible. It’s Ronald Dworkin’s argument that the constitution was written in language such that it would naturally adapt to the changing times - concepts such as due process, and equal protection, and cruel and unusual punishment by their nature are not static.
In certain areas, the FF were ridiculously specific. Take the Seventh Amendment for example. But in other areas they used deliberately general language. Which could lead one to the belief that, for example, they didn’t intend simply to outlaw punishments that were “cruel and unusual” at the time of writing, but instead to outlaw the punishments that were, at the time of conviction, considered to be “cruel and unusual.”
But some things plainly are dated, such as the right to sue for damages over $20 or whatever it is. Just as you can be a Christian without believing in the Great Flood, so you should be able to live under a Constitution without believing it to be infallible. The Constitution doesn’t allow for a graduated tax, but we have one anyway. Should we go to a flat tax because that’s what a strict reading tells us, or should we use our own brains?
