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Our Founding Fathers' Ideas

What should be done with the Founders' ideas?


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I was never dishonest in the first place.

I guess not, since you were able to accept the shortcomings of your position, as opposed to maintaining them in the face of contradictory evidence and logic.
 
I guess not, since you were able to accept the shortcomings of your position, as opposed to maintaining them in the face of contradictory evidence and logic.

My mistake was putting philosophy and modern communications into different categories when there were elements of both in both types of communication. While each category may represent the primary use, it doesn't necessarily speak for the tools used for that usage.
 
You appear to have a basic misunderstanding of the constitution.

Here are a few examples of what the government can not do.

It can make no ex post facto laws.

It can not grant any specific privileges and immunities.

It prevents each branch of government from usurping another branch.

There are plenty of other examples of what the government can not do.

Would you like to hear more?:roll:
With citations to the Constitution, yes.
 
I am certainly glad the "Founding Fathers" did not have the faith in European aristocratic forms of government like some around here have faith in the "Founding Fathers" around here.
 
That is not what he said, period.

You over rate the tenth amendment. The tenth amendment has not been tested enough in the supreme court. In fact, I doubt that the court will ever rule on it's perceived meaning.

If the tenth has the meaning of which you speak then why did not Gore's lawyers use it when the supreme court over ruled the Florida supreme court in bush vs gore?
The 9th and 10th Amendments are plain language. There's no reason for SCOTUS to "test" them, as in most of the Bill or Rights, they merely affirm the obvious, that the People grant certain limited powers to the government, not that the government establishes certain Rights to the People.
 
It took 76 years for people to get around to amending the Constitution to eliminate slavery, and it took 131 years for them to give women the right to vote. Furthermore, when slavery was abolished, it was done so at the barrel of a gun...not because three-fourths of the states ACTUALLY wanted it abolished. That's a pretty major flaw, both in the original absence of those things and the amendment process itself. The amendment process is grossly insufficient for allowing necessary changes to the Constitution.

That is a major flaw in the people of the country, not in the Constitution, which never made any position on women's rights or slavery to begin with. The fact that such things actually went so far as to be put into the Constitution rather than continually decided at a state level as was intended just shows that the amendment process, though difficult, isn't as difficult as you made it out to be.


I'm not going to worship the Founding Fathers just because you think it might be bad for the country if I don't. That's just a fallacious variation on Pascal's Wager. The Founding Fathers were human beings who made mistakes, and the document they wrote was far from perfect.

Several straw men here. I never asked to you worship the Founding Fathers, nor did I say they weren't mistake-prone human beings or that the Constitution is perfect.


Actually they did. The world has changed in unimaginable ways. Suppose you were writing a Constitution from scratch that you intended to last until 2200. What would you include?

About 90% of what was written in 1787.


Yes, it was in the Constitution 76 years later, after a bloody civil war and southern states grudgingly ratified it under the barrel of a gun. It certainly was not one of the Founding Fathers' ideas. The existence of SOME Founding Fathers who were abolitionists is irrelevant, as I'm sure you could find SOME Founding Fathers who supported any number of ideas you'd reject which didn't make it into the Constitution.

Again, the Constitution pre-Civil War took no position on slavery at all. It could very well have been banned without an amendment specifically doing so.


That's fine as long as we use a living document approach so that we don't have to amend the Constitution. But if you demand an originalist interpretation AND an incredibly difficult amendment process, our government would never evolve much beyond what it was in 1789. This is impractical. There was nothing special about that particular moment in history that made it the ideal time on which to model a government.



If you accept a living document approach then we are in agreement.

This all depends on what is meant by a "living document". If by "living document" one means "the document means whatever I want it to mean", there's no point in having a written Constitution in the first place. Whereas if it means "vague passages will have to be interpreted to fit unforseen issues", then basically everyone favors a living document approach, including the Framers.


It is. The Founding Fathers didn't give a damn where the president was born, the anti-federalists just hated Hamilton.

...Are you serious? You seemed to be too knowledgeable to say something as non-sensical as the notion that anti-federalists had any say in what went into the Constitution, when they were the ones who opposed ratifying the Constitution in the first place. Anyways, here's from Wikipedia:
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_born_citizen]Natural born citizen of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
The Oxford English Dictionary defines "natural born" as "[h]aving a specified position or character by birth." 7 OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 38 (1961) so in English the phrase refers to anyone who is a citizen from birth. There is no record of a debate on the requirements to meet the "natural born Citizen" qualification during the Constitutional Convention. This clause was introduced by the drafting Committee of Eleven, and then adopted without discussion by the Convention as a whole. One possible source of the clause can be traced to Alexander Hamilton, a delegate to the Convention. On June 18, 1787, Hamilton submitted to the Convention a sketch of a plan of government. Article IX, section 1 of Hamilton's plan provided:

No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States."[2]

Another possible source of the clause is a July 25, 1787 letter from John Jay to George Washington, presiding officer of the Convention. Jay wrote:

Permit me to hint whether it would not be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government, and to declare expressly that the Command in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.[3]

The term "natural born citizen" was defined by Emmerich de Vattel as "those born in the country, of parents who are citizens."[4]

So not only did Hamilton first propose a similar requirement, but Jay, who I'm fairly sure held no hostility towards Hamilton (he helped write the Federalist Papers), wanted it for reasons that had nothing to do with Hamilton.

Not to mention, Hamilton may have been as eligible to run for President as anyone else of the time, since they were all born as residents of British colonies, and not as citizens of a country that did not yet exist. Hamilton may have been able to pull off a run for the presidency had he not been shot so soon.



I don't think people should worship Lincoln any more than I think they should worship the Founding Fathers.

That's cool, I'm not asking you to. But my point had nothing to do with Lincoln. My point was that by your logic, blacks should never have been given the right to vote, because the people who did that didn't want women to vote too.


If they were wrong about some things, then what makes you think that everything (or almost everything) that made it into the Constitution was infallible? Just because they AGREED on certain things doesn't make them right, as they could've all been in agreement on the same wrong ideas. And it CERTAINLY doesn't make them right for what policies work best for the United States in 2010, which looks nothing like the country they founded.

So besides issues which the Constitution originally took no stance at all on, and issues which have made it in since, what made it in there that was wrong?
I'll give you the natural born clause, and the electoral college. But is there anything a bit less trivial?

OK, here. I'll write a constitution, and I'd like your assessment of it:



There, I included an amendment process. If there are any problems in this document, they can be addressed at a later time. My constitution is pretty much the perfect document, right?

Oh brother. Fallacies galore. Ignoring that a 99% majority is not even close to the same as a 2/3 and 3/4 majority, in your example the problem is caused by the Constitution, whereas in the examples you were addressing- slavery and women's rights- the problem had nothing to do with the Constitution, and were eventually put in there as a matter of formality.
 
Actually they did. The world has changed in unimaginable ways. Suppose you were writing a Constitution from scratch that you intended to last until 2200. What would you include?
With the inclusion of Article V and Amemdment X, the Constitution is equipped to handle any eventuality.
 
That is a major flaw in the people of the country, not in the Constitution,

Since constitutions are written to be used by people, any flaw in the people of the country is necessarily a flaw in the Constitution. The Communist Manifesto looks great on paper too...it's just a flaw in human nature that makes it not work. :roll:

Dav said:
which never made any position on women's rights or slavery to begin with. The fact that such things actually went so far as to be put into the Constitution rather than continually decided at a state level as was intended just shows that the amendment process, though difficult, isn't as difficult as you made it out to be.

It took a vicious civil war, and the North literally FORCING Southern states to ratify the 13th amendment at gunpoint. I'd say that's a pretty damn difficult amendment process...probably not what the Founders had in mind.

Dav said:
About 90% of what was written in 1787.

Really. So 90% of that document will be good for another 200 years? Tell me, what do you think John Adams' view would be on the sovereignty of Matrix-like nations within our nation? Do you think that James Madison would have approved or disapproved of human-chimp hybrids having equal rights? Would Roger Sherman think it was cruel and unusual punishment to sentence someone to 500 years in hibernation? How would Alexander Hamilton feel about Congress regulating e-currencies issued by privately-owned artificial intelligences? :roll:

Our constitution (if we go with a fundamentalist interpretation instead of a living document interpretation) is ALREADY grossly inadequate for handling today's issues. It will only become moreso as we get farther and farther away from 1789.

Dav said:
Again, the Constitution pre-Civil War took no position on slavery at all. It could very well have been banned without an amendment specifically doing so.

I suggest you reread Article 4, Section 3. Seems like a pretty straightforward endorsement of slavery.

Dav said:
This all depends on what is meant by a "living document". If by "living document" one means "the document means whatever I want it to mean", there's no point in having a written Constitution in the first place. Whereas if it means "vague passages will have to be interpreted to fit unforseen issues", then basically everyone favors a living document approach, including the Framers.

Ya but what YOU consider to be unforeseen and what *I* consider to be unforeseen may be two entirely different things. The Founders never imagined universal education; does that justify a Department of Education? The Founders never imagined nuclear war; does that justify Congress abdicating its responsibility to declare war? The Founders never imagined major environmental degradation; can the EPA survive the Interstate Commerce Clause?

Etc, etc.

Dav said:
...Are you serious? You seemed to be too knowledgeable to say something as non-sensical as the notion that anti-federalists had any say in what went into the Constitution, when they were the ones who opposed ratifying the Constitution in the first place.

They didn't all oppose it. Jefferson essentially wrote the Bill of Rights, and was instrumental in getting the Constitution passed after it was included.

Dav said:
So not only did Hamilton first propose a similar requirement, but Jay, who I'm fairly sure held no hostility towards Hamilton (he helped write the Federalist Papers), wanted it for reasons that had nothing to do with Hamilton.

Not to mention, Hamilton may have been as eligible to run for President as anyone else of the time, since they were all born as residents of British colonies, and not as citizens of a country that did not yet exist. Hamilton may have been able to pull off a run for the presidency had he not been shot so soon.

Hamilton included it as a peace offering, not because he thought he'd be incapable of being president on account of being born in the Caribbean.

Dav said:
That's cool, I'm not asking you to. But my point had nothing to do with Lincoln. My point was that by your logic, blacks should never have been given the right to vote, because the people who did that didn't want women to vote too.

What? I'm not saying they had no good ideas. I'm saying that many of their ideas were bad, and even many of their good ideas are outdated.

Dav said:
So besides issues which the Constitution originally took no stance at all on, and issues which have made it in since, what made it in there that was wrong?
I'll give you the natural born clause, and the electoral college. But is there anything a bit less trivial?

If I was writing a constitution from scratch for today's world, I wouldn't include anything like the US Senate. States no longer are as independent as they once were, and are fairly similar culturally. Equal representation simply gives too much power to small states for no particular reason.

The amendment process itself, as I already mentioned, was wrong. The Founding Fathers miscalculated how difficult it would be to amend their constitution, and it's only gotten worse as we've added more states.

I'd add a fourth branch of government: The Federal Reserve. This isn't something they got WRONG persay...just something they couldn't possibly have anticipated in 1789. The three-branch government idea was based on John Locke's book which was popular at the time. It worked well enough, but I'd say we need an independent Fed as well.

And of course, the scope of congressional/presidential power needs a HUGE revision (if we go with a fundamentalist interpretation of the Constitution instead of passing whatever we want through the Interstate Commerce Clause.) The powers that they assigned to the federal government in their agrarian nation of 13 coastal states are simply not sufficient for the modern world.

Dav said:
Oh brother. Fallacies galore. Ignoring that a 99% majority is not even close to the same as a 2/3 and 3/4 majority, in your example the problem is caused by the Constitution, whereas in the examples you were addressing- slavery and women's rights- the problem had nothing to do with the Constitution,

From the perspective of the slave, I'd imagine that our actual constitution wasn't too different from that one.

Dav said:
and were eventually put in there as a matter of formality.

I'd say abolishing slavery was a bit more than a "matter of formality."
 
I suggest you reread Article 4, Section 3. Seems like a pretty straightforward endorsement of slavery.

...The process for admitting a new state to the union?

The Constitution mentions slavery at many points, but it never endorses it; it simply specifies what would be done as long as it still exists. It would have been perfectly Constitutional if slavery had disappeared altogether without a Constitutional amendment doing so... in fact, this is what several founding fathers envisioned. Then came the cotton gin.

Ya but what YOU consider to be unforeseen and what *I* consider to be unforeseen may be two entirely different things. The Founders never imagined universal education; does that justify a Department of Education? The Founders never imagined nuclear war; does that justify Congress abdicating its responsibility to declare war? The Founders never imagined major environmental degradation; can the EPA survive the Interstate Commerce Clause?

Etc, etc.

Much of that would fall under the "general welfare" clause. I'm actually of the opinion that the clause pretty much grants Congress authority to spend money almost anywhere it wants.

Frankly, if the EPA or anything else can't survive the Interstate Commerce Clause, it shouldn't exist. There's no reason the federal government would do such things better, and a good case for governments closer to the people being able to do such things better. But most commerce nowadays is from companies that do business in more than one state, which I think justifies federal intervention. If I set up a shop on a street corner, it shouldn't be subject to any federal regulations unless I expand to shops in other states.


I have a feeling we are mostly in agreement here, but just look at it in different ways.

They didn't all oppose it. Jefferson essentially wrote the Bill of Rights, and was instrumental in getting the Constitution passed after it was included.

Jefferson had no role in writing the Constitution, and thus no role in the natural born clause.



If I was writing a constitution from scratch for today's world, I wouldn't include anything like the US Senate. States no longer are as independent as they once were, and are fairly similar culturally. Equal representation simply gives too much power to small states for no particular reason.

The amendment process itself, as I already mentioned, was wrong. The Founding Fathers miscalculated how difficult it would be to amend their constitution, and it's only gotten worse as we've added more states.

I'd add a fourth branch of government: The Federal Reserve. This isn't something they got WRONG persay...just something they couldn't possibly have anticipated in 1789. The three-branch government idea was based on John Locke's book which was popular at the time. It worked well enough, but I'd say we need an independent Fed as well.

And of course, the scope of congressional/presidential power needs a HUGE revision (if we go with a fundamentalist interpretation of the Constitution instead of passing whatever we want through the Interstate Commerce Clause.) The powers that they assigned to the federal government in their agrarian nation of 13 coastal states are simply not sufficient for the modern world.

I again think we are mostly in agreement, though I would disagree with most of what you'd want to change. I'd also like to amend the Constitution to revise Congressional and Presidential power, if only to stop them from going too far once they feel like they're ignoring it anyways, and might as well go the whole way. But so far, the vagueness of the original document has worked as it was intended.


From the perspective of the slave, I'd imagine that our actual constitution wasn't too different from that one.

Except it was, because the Constitution never explicitly endorsed slavery.


I'd say abolishing slavery was a bit more than a "matter of formality."

Making it Constitutional was a formality. Well, moreso with women's right to vote, since a war wasn't fought over that one.
 
Since constitutions are written to be used by people, any flaw in the people of the country is necessarily a flaw in the Constitution. The Communist Manifesto looks great on paper too...it's just a flaw in human nature that makes it not work. :roll:

Humans are fundamentally flawed. No system of governance can mitigate that entirely.

It took a vicious civil war, and the North literally FORCING Southern states to ratify the 13th amendment at gunpoint. I'd say that's a pretty damn difficult amendment process...probably not what the Founders had in mind.

Okay, the Amendment process failed in certain circumstances, but that doesn't mean its entirely worthless.
 
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