And the first amendment could be taken to allow direct calls to violence or dissemination of child pornography.
Nearly everyone accepts that the protections to rights the Constitution provides are limited, except when they don’t want their rights to have any limits.
And the Fifth Amendment could be read to prevent the federal government from excluding all persons of a specific racial/ethic group from certain areas of the country.
Edit: My point being that the “suicide pact” complaint is always trotted out when the government wants to infringe on some (often clearly established) civil liberty. The logic of the “suicide pact” argument isn’t that the constitution doesn’t permit/prohibit something, but that even if it does, the right should be curtailed in the interest of some pressing public emergency. The danger of that approach is obvious.
This is a vast overgeneralization.
It’s true that there are people who use the Constitution as an excuse to block recognition of human rights they refuse to acknowledge, as well as displaying ignorance of the document. But most realize that the Constitution has generally worked well since its adoption and is a vital basis of our society.
The Constitution was a compromise between what would later be called slave states and free states. Free states tried to engineer it as a ratchet-effect arrangement that would see the institution of slavery diminish over time. Slave states wanted it to be more of a marriage of convenience that could self-terminate if free states ever tried to abolish slavery. Both sides hoped they got what they wanted, but the fact that these disputes were only settled by trial of arms is an indication of failure.
The Constitution absolutely is a suicide pact. It was designed to fall apart if white supremacy ever faced any real threat in the south, and it’s only held together as long as the white supremacist faction was unsure it had the numbers to prevail. If they do ever feel they have the numbers, it will absolutely fall apart.
I’m not sure about buying into the original states considered there being an out, so to speak. After all, they had agreed in the Articles of Confederation to a, and I quote, “perpetual union”. It seems to me that if they wanted a legal way to remove themselves from the union, that would have been addressed in the new constitution. Of course that argument could be used on the flip side: if the Founding Fathers wanted to ensure said perpetual union, they would have mentioned that in the new constitution.
By the way, the bit posted above about dealing with an asteroid in danger of hitting Earth already has a plan of action by our government, doesn’t it? I thought that is one of the new Space Force’s responsibilities.
If the end of slavery was not a threat to white supremacy, I don’t think anything could be.
It certainly was. That was why they fought a war that killed hundreds of thousands to try to prevent it. It’s why they fought against any and all civil rights. It’s why they still fight to go back to the “good old days”.
And you’re surely aware that southern whites marked the occasion by wiping their ass with the Constitution and killing Americans to effect that choice? And many of them claim they were never defeated and would love to have that same fight again? And that the only thing holding them in check is a certain threat of violence?
As the slavery-loving faction saw it, the Constitution was designed to self-destruct if they couldn’t have white supremacy anymore. Even though we don’t have chattel slavery anymore, that faction is very much alive and well and would love to put on a repeat performance.
No, there are two ways to amend the Constitution.
I concur.
Those other ways are wildly ineffective compared to the old poll taxes.
Poll taxes were aimed at Blacks not just because of the cost, but also because of the grandfather clauses exempting those whose ancestors voted in slavery times. It is inconceivable that there could be Black senators — of either party — in the South today without that amendment*. And it is also inconceivable there could be halfway progressive southern senators, of any race, with poll taxes of the sort the 24th amendment forbid. By contrast, the political effect of an ID check, however unnecessary, is trivial,
And poll taxes also stopped white women from voting. I’m not aware of current policies that differentially affect women.
You’re 100% right, technically.
But as a practical matter neither party is going to succeed with the small-bites method over the objections of the other. So we’re practically left with the open free-for-all method I was referring to.
Is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe the constitution NEEDS a major refresher.
If someone told you, “I have the oldest car on the block, and I haven’t gotten an oil change in 30 years” you’d stay far, far away from their vehicle. Yet Americans brag that they have the oldest constitution in the world, and that it is rarely amended!
I think it does need a major refresher.
Unfortunately, so do the people who want to “fix” it by destroying all the good that’s in it. If I can’t open it for me without also opening it for them, the status quo is probably best, if for no other reason than we know it’s not a total loss. At least not yet.
Suicide pact indeed.
There comes a point–and this one has come at least a century ago–when any document becomes outdated. My main credential, I think, as a radical lefty is my willingness to revisit the Constitution and to live with the results. If those results are to reconfigure the country entirely and make me choose which new country (or old one) I want to live in, then that’s just fine with me. The founders and drafters have been dead for a long time, and I am alive now. I want some say in how I live and which laws I am ruled by.
Keep the preamble, that wasn’t bad.
The rest could use a rewrite to follow through on it.
The problem here is not in the constitution or the constitutional process; it’s that our country is formed of people with such wildly divergent opinions that what some of us consider “all that’s good” in the constitution is what some of them think “must be destroyed”.
A scrap of paper from a couple hundred years ago that we both pretend to respect doesn’t really solve the root problem, of completely divergent values.
Agree completely. A “better” administrative mechanism for amendment is not the solution to our current problems.
That doesn’t prevent us from lamenting the fact that that better mechanism doesn’t exist. Even though we couldn’t use it right now.
That’s nice for you, but there’s a lot of us on the left who are worried that we literally would not be allowed to live with a Constitution written by the current American right.
It’s a gamble. But where the “radical” part comes in for me, as it may not for you, is that I’m willing to take that gamble. There is enough that seemed permanently, structurally flawed with the U.S. that I’m willing to go further than some others for the chance to create a new country with those that share most of my views, and break off from those who would much sooner kill me than consider me their equal (and whose views are protected by the U.S. Constitution.)
I’m saying it’s not the same gamble for everyone.