When I decide to try out a new restaurant, I like to know how the food is there, not how bad the food is at other restaurants. Why do Libertarians start out with a condemnation of whoever is in power, instead of talking about what positive things their candidate has to offer? As far as I am concerned, embracing a pig in a poke will get you exactly what you deserve nine times out of ten.
You can amend the constitution.
2006: “Impeach Bush for the tyrannical things that he’s done!”
2010: “The government is tyrannical for the things that it *might *do!”
You realize taht a lot of those people were people like me who have read the white papers on the subject of health care reform and knew that the best way to cut costs and improve the overall level of health care in society was a single payer system. We went from overpriced ehalth care for the rich to slightly less overprice health care for everyone.
I dunno. I think it makes more sense to read it the other way. Death threats against the president have quadrupled since Obama took office.
Everyone wants to be the first to predict the onset of Dramatic Events.
If only there had been someone like Glenn Beck in 1930’s Germany. Well, we’re not going to make that same mistake twice.
If the government is going to become tyrannical, you heard it from me first. So my predictions have to be more dire and dramatic than the next guy. So we try to outdo each other to see who extrapolate actual events into the most attention-getting scenario.
Which makes me wonder why no constitutional amendments have been passed recently addressing any supreme court rulings. Other than calls for an amendment criminalizing abortion, I haven’t heard of much activism on other controversial court decisions. In any case, my point was whether there ought to be some way of modifying the effect of court rulings that’s easier than a full constitutional amendment.
Can’t congress make new law, that supercedes and replaces the old law in question? Presuming that problem isn’t that the desired result is unconstitutional of course.
The real problem is that these dingbats have a weak grasp of the meaning of the word “tyranny”.
The system of “checks and balances” refers to the responsibilities of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. They check and balance each other. There is nothing in the Gospel of the Forefathers that said that the process has to be inefficient.
I don’t know that the argument has shifted in that direction. But if it does, I will state that I think that Bush was driven by a group of neo-con tyrants who manipulated Bush’s own psychological hangups toward certain maniacal goals such as broadening the powers of the Executive Office, filling judicial positions with political appointments, and exploiting the vast oil supply in the Middle East.
I do not think that Bush and his comb-kicking neo-cons are typical of Republicans. Nor are the tea-baggers.
Do you think that Obama is a tyrant, Bricker?
As for why some people think that the government is a tyrant, there are lots of different reasons. Why don’t we have an Equal Rights Amendment that guarantees that there will not be discrimination based on gender?
What business is it of the government who anyone chooses to marry and live with?
Why aren’t women who qualify allowed to serve in combat?
What about the laws of Eminent Domain? Why should they allow a religious college to have the privilege of buying up private property that a homeowner does not wish to sell?
How are our civil rights so easily taken from us by Congress?
Cite? I’ve not heard of that example…and I’m curious.
Well amendments only take 2/3 of each house and 3/4 of the states.
The Twenty-first amendment, enacted in 1933, repealed Prohibition; since then one amendment of consequence has passed, the Twenty-fourth banning poll taxes. All the others since 1933 have been technicalities like the voting age and presidential term limits. IMHO, it’s because the Supreme Court started getting extremely inventive in interpreting the Constitution, beginning in the Roosevelt administration and also in the civil rights era. So one the one hand, broad interpretations of federal power have removed much of the need for formal amendments. And on the other hand, people are now afraid that any amendment that speaks in generalities could eventually get used as a constitutional mandate for a limitless progressive agenda.