What is your philosophy regarding the U.S. Constitution?

My philosophy regarding the U.S. Constitution is that it is an often ambiguously written guideline on how a representative democracy is to be organized. It is not the Absolute Truth. There are parts I would like to change. Nevertheless, as long as the American people are as polarized as they are I think we should delay changes, especially major changes.

The disadvantages of what exists can be seen and mitigated. The disadvantages of what has never existed can only be guessed at. Nevertheless, they may be worse than what exists.

The U.S. Constitution has lasted as long as it has because it has been flexible enough to respond to changes in popular opinion.

Also, the United States today is a very different country than the country that created the Constitution. We should not assume that the kind of government that existed right after the Constitution was signed is the kind of government that would work best now.

Concerning the "Founding Fathers," they were intelligent, and well educated for their time. We should study what they wrote with respect. We should also study other political thinkers before and after their time. I believe that a political thinker should be read for insight, rather than doctrine.

i think its overly glorified, people treat it like its scripture handed down from the gods

ive always hated when people reference the constitution in an argument, as if because "the founding fahers" said it, its therefore divine mandate. Or if it wasn't in the constitution they wouldn't care about it all.

The Constitution was an awesome document meant to have the powers of government constantly combating itself. It was the answer to authoritarianism, It's meant to be very hard to change unless the public is essentially unanimous. Those things are now starting to break down as some of the founders expected... The supreme court will, in the future, completely flip the balance and we'll have an authoritarian socialist state. The supreme court is not doing it's job as a regulator of congress and the president and it will just get worse in the future.

The constitution is great, if we actually followed it... Liberals do not understand that all the new powers they want the government to have will eventually be in the hands of their enemy.

SmartCat said:

My philosophy regarding the U.S. Constitution is that it is an often ambiguously written guideline on how a representative democracy is to be organized. It is not the Absolute Truth. There are parts I would like to change. Nevertheless, as long as the American people are as polarized as they are I think we should delay changes, especially major changes.

The disadvantages of what exists can be seen and mitigated. The disadvantages of what has never existed can only be guessed at. Nevertheless, they may be worse than what exists.

The U.S. Constitution has lasted as long as it has because it has been flexible enough to respond to changes in popular opinion.

Also, the United States today is a very different country than the country that created the Constitution. We should not assume that the kind of government that existed right after the Constitution was signed is the kind of government that would work best now.

Concerning the "Founding Fathers," they were intelligent, and well educated for their time. We should study what they wrote with respect. We should also study other political thinkers before and after their time. I believe that a political thinker should be read for insight, rather than doctrine.

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I agree with much of what you stated, but see no problem with amending and changing with the times.

The founders did a brilliant job, but they got stuff wrong or not suited to current times; the 13th (abolishing slavery) and 19th (women's suffrage) quickly come to mind.

They left an amendment process in place for good reason.

And they included a co-equal judicial branch of government for good reason.

celticwar17 said:

The Constitution was an awesome document meant to have the powers of government constantly combating itself. It was the answer to authoritarianism, It's meant to be very hard to change unless the public is essentially unanimous. Those things are now starting to break down as some of the founders expected... The supreme court will, in the future, completely flip the balance and we'll have an authoritarian socialist state. The supreme court is not doing it's job as a regulator of congress and the president and it will just get worse in the future.

The constitution is great, if we actually followed it... Liberals do not understand that all the new powers they want the government to have will eventually be in the hands of their enemy.

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And what is your basis to state the bolded?

SmartCat said:

My philosophy regarding the U.S. Constitution is that it is an often ambiguously written guideline on how a representative democracy is to be organized. It is not the Absolute Truth. There are parts I would like to change. Nevertheless, as long as the American people are as polarized as they are I think we should delay changes, especially major changes.

The disadvantages of what exists can be seen and mitigated. The disadvantages of what has never existed can only be guessed at. Nevertheless, they may be worse than what exists.

The U.S. Constitution has lasted as long as it has because it has been flexible enough to respond to changes in popular opinion.

Also, the United States today is a very different country than the country that created the Constitution. We should not assume that the kind of government that existed right after the Constitution was signed is the kind of government that would work best now.

Concerning the "Founding Fathers," they were intelligent, and well educated for their time. We should study what they wrote with respect. We should also study other political thinkers before and after their time. I believe that a political thinker should be read for insight, rather than doctrine.

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I honestly wrestle with my opinion on this.

On the one hand there are clearly elements of the Constitution which are outmoded and the process of altering it to suit our present needs is arguably too difficult given the problems that we face. Whether it comes to how we apportion representatives in an age where the independence and power of states is dramatically different from what it was in the 18th Century, to hurdles over basic policy prescriptions concerning things like gun control. Hell, the whole idea of states and the way we've structured our legal jurisdictions is silly in a lot of ways if you think about it

But on the other hand the fact that people revere the Constitution so much, indeed that so many people see it as a sort of secular divine mandate, is an incredible thing. It gives our institutions enormous strength and provides the country with a massively powerful bedrock of stability. It's enough in this country to point to a Supreme Court decision and say 'The Constitution says we must obey' and people (or the vast vast vast vast majority do) obey despite colossal ideological opposition. This is something I place a great deal of value in and I'm not comfortable with how easy it is to alter the Constitutions and founding documents of many other developed states enough to want to replicate that here.

So I don't know.

Chomsky said:

And what is your basis to state the bolded?

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It is my speculation, the country will fall based on the balance of the supreme court, once the members of the supreme court doesn't respect the constitution, our system fails.
With the new incoming supreme court leaders the "interpretations" are going to change.... the supreme court members are not supposed to be political... their ONE job is to see if something violates the constitution, to them the constitution is god. I fear the future supreme court members will be far more political than the ones we have now.

celticwar17 said:

It is my speculation, the country will fall based on the balance of the supreme court, once the members of the supreme court doesn't respect the constitution, our system fails.
With the new incoming supreme court leaders the "interpretations" are going to change.... the supreme court members are not supposed to be political... their ONE job is to see if something violates the constitution, to them the constitution is god. I fear the future supreme court members will be far more political than the ones we have now.

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Well, judges have had various degrees of activism, and we haven't fallen apart yet.

But what makes you believe there will be left appointed judges? That's President dependent.

Chomsky said:

I agree with much of what you stated, but see no problem with amending and changing with the times.

The founders did a brilliant job, but they got stuff wrong or not suited to current times; the 13th (abolishing slavery) and 19th (women's suffrage) quickly come to mind.

They left an amendment process in place for good reason.

And they included a co-equal judicial branch of government for good reason.

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According to the thinking (interpretation?) of our current SCOTUS, the 19A is simply redundant since the "equal protection" clause of the 14A should certainly cover adult women voting (because adult men can vote) since it was used to "mandate" that SSM become state law.

We seem to have evolved to a point where what the constitution actually says can be interpreted to mean pretty much anything. For example, education is clearly not mentioned as a constitutional federal power yet we now have a cabinet level, federal education department with an annual budget of about $70 billion. PPACA was "justified" based on the 16A, which simply states that income from all sources may be taxed, yet that 16A never implied that such taxation could be based upon how that income was not later spent on a private good/service.

It would appear that anything is a federal power if it can be said to be remotely related to commerce (even if not interstate commerce), general welfare or taxation. Basically, if something is deemed important, like income redistribution, even if never mentioned as a constitutional federal power, it is OK now simply because "it is the right thing to do" according to congress critters and the POTUS.

ttwtt78640 said:

According to the thinking (interpretation?) of our current SCOTUS, the 19A is simply redundant since the "equal protection" clause of the 14A should certainly cover adult women voting (because adult men can vote) since it was used to "mandate" that SSM become state law.

We seem to have evolved to a point where what the constitution actually says can be interpreted to mean pretty much anything. For example, education is clearly not mentioned as a constitutional federal power yet we now have a cabinet level, federal education department with an annual budget of about $70 billion. PPACA was "justified" based on the 16A, which simply states that income from all sources may be taxed, yet that 16A never implied that such taxation could be based upon how that income was not later spent on a private good/service.

It would appear that anything is a federal power if it can be said to be remotely related to commerce (even if not interstate commerce), general welfare or taxation. Basically, if something is deemed important, like income redistribution, even if never mentioned as a constitutional federal power, it is OK now simply because "it is the right thing to do" according to congress critters and the POTUS.

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To the bolded: That's an interesting premise (and seems rational).

SmartCat said:

My philosophy regarding the U.S. Constitution is that it is an often ambiguously written guideline on how a representative democracy is to be organized. It is not the Absolute Truth. There are parts I would like to change. Nevertheless, as long as the American people are as polarized as they are I think we should delay changes, especially major changes.

The disadvantages of what exists can be seen and mitigated. The disadvantages of what has never existed can only be guessed at. Nevertheless, they may be worse than what exists.

The U.S. Constitution has lasted as long as it has because it has been flexible enough to respond to changes in popular opinion.

Also, the United States today is a very different country than the country that created the Constitution. We should not assume that the kind of government that existed right after the Constitution was signed is the kind of government that would work best now.

Concerning the "Founding Fathers," they were intelligent, and well educated for their time. We should study what they wrote with respect. We should also study other political thinkers before and after their time. I believe that a political thinker should be read for insight, rather than doctrine.

Click to expand...

The problem with a written constitution is that, as Edmund Burke pointed out, the actual constitutions of societies are unwritten. One can show this quite clearly, from the fact that the founding fathers used the existing legal mechanisms in place (part of our unwritten constitution) to pass it. The amendment process also shows the problem, real societies are organic, and so amendments to our real, unwritten constitution, are made slowly, not by distinct ratification decrees.

Regarding content, it was written to establish a liberal democracy, so the content of it is bad.

The core of the document is sound. There are certain Amendments (such as the Second Amendment) that should never be changed. Others may not be relevant. Currently, the biggest problem is that the Judicial branch of the government has become too powerful. Therefore, checks and balances are no longer as effective. Corruption has eaten away at the legislative branch as it is highly influenced by corporate interests.

If I could add a single Amendment to the constitution, it would be the complete and irrevocable abolition of Corporate Personhood.

Cally said:

The core of the document is sound. There are certain Amendments (such as the Second Amendment) that should never be changed. Others may not be relevant. Currently, the biggest problem is that the Judicial branch of the government has become too powerful. Therefore, checks and balances are no longer as effective. Corruption has eaten away at the legislative branch as it is highly influenced by corporate interests.

If I could add a single Amendment to the constitution, it would be the complete and irrevocable abolition of Corporate Personhood.

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Amen!

Chomsky said:

To the bolded: That's an interesting premise (and seems rational).

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Until you ponder how a male only military draft (selective service act) was ever deemed constitutional.

Other interesting concepts are racial or gender preferences used to achieve (proper?) diversity. How can racial or gender discrimination be both constitutional and unconstitutional depending on how cleverly the law is worded?

Chomsky said:

Well, judges have had various degrees of activism, and we haven't fallen apart yet.

But what makes you believe there will be left appointed judges? That's President dependent.

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it doesn't have to be a left or right ones... just ones that don't care for the constitution

SmartCat said:

My philosophy regarding the U.S. Constitution is that it is an often ambiguously written guideline on how a representative democracy is to be organized. It is not the Absolute Truth. There are parts I would like to change. Nevertheless, as long as the American people are as polarized as they are I think we should delay changes, especially major changes.

The disadvantages of what exists can be seen and mitigated. The disadvantages of what has never existed can only be guessed at. Nevertheless, they may be worse than what exists.

The U.S. Constitution has lasted as long as it has because it has been flexible enough to respond to changes in popular opinion.

Also, the United States today is a very different country than the country that created the Constitution. We should not assume that the kind of government that existed right after the Constitution was signed is the kind of government that would work best now.

Concerning the "Founding Fathers," they were intelligent, and well educated for their time. We should study what they wrote with respect. We should also study other political thinkers before and after their time. I believe that a political thinker should be read for insight, rather than doctrine.

Click to expand...

It's worked well enough. It is what it is though a document of compromises. They did however leave us the means to change it.

It's worked ok. I don't consider it a third book of the bible as some do.

The country has 330 million people. 50 states. A huge geography of regions, different religions, ethnic groups, etc. Most of our issues stem from the nature of a huge diverse country and not any political set of rules.

We'll all be watching the Super Bowl ( at least a cross section of America). We all know Mickey Mouse, Walmart, Apple, and celebrate Thanksgiving.

The country works fine. Texas isn't at war with New York and Catholics don't have to register in Alabama. Mormons aren't harassed, Blacks go to college, women vote, etc. All in all we spend time debating surface issues. If Alaska was attacked tomorrow we'd all stand united to be the end.

Overall the ammendments and interpretation of the Constitution have evolved to keep pace with modern reality. Most days we would say f..k New York City but on 9/11 we were all New Yorkers.

In the early twentieth century Charles Beard wrote An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. This was published in 1913. In this book Beard argued that the Constitutional Convention was in effect a conspiracy against democracy by a small, wealthy elite whose economic and political interests were divergent from those of the vast majority of Americans at the time.

He argued that this wealthy elite had inspired ordinary Americans to fight for independence, and that it was inspired by a desire to keep ordinary Americans from getting enough power to redistribute the country's wealth in their direction, and away from the wealthy elite.

I think there is some truth to this analysis. I also think that for its time the U.S. Constitution was progressive and democratic.

Up to the time of the signing of the U.S. Constitution the usual pattern in history was for sucessful revolutionary leaders to become the new aristocracy, and for their leader to become the new monarch. This did happen after the French Revolution when Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself to be the French Emperor. It did not happen after the American Revolution, although with his popularity George Washington probably could have had himself declared to be king with far greater power than Queen Elizabeth currently enjoys in the UK.

Instead, George Washington served two terms as president, and retired to Mount Vernon. During the presidency of Andrew Jackson European visitors to the United States noted with an element of surprise that few if any of the descendants of those who sighed the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were politically prominent.

Nevertheless, the argument by reactionaries that we should somehow "get back to Constitutional government," is an argument that we should allow the one percent to have more wealth and power, while retaining less of both for America's middle class. We should appreciate the achievement of those who wrote and signed the U.S. Constitution without assuming that those men were infallible.

Chomsky said:

Well, judges have had various degrees of activism, and we haven't fallen apart yet.

But what makes you believe there will be left appointed judges? That's President dependent.

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Problem is even though the country has not fallen apart, people have been oppressed while the court ruled in favor of things in blatent violation of the constitution. Even before the rulings with the commerce clause, they almost constantly allowed jim crowe laws and voting restrictions, despite both being unconstitutional since the 14th amendment about 150 years ago. Gay marriage laws were in direct violation as well and it took 150 years for scotus to finally rule them unconstitutional.


The constitution has an amendment process and was designed to protect people from govt, and to ensure their freedoms while outlining what powers govt has. But the scotus has been shown time and time again to be against the constitution and for either their political affiliation or for popular opinion rather than the law of the land. This should be obvious since scotus was never given the power to rule over constitutional amendments or interperet them, just the laws under the constitution, not over it. They granted themselves that power shortly after the country formed, and the other two branches of govt have not challenged it since it favors them.

SmartCat said:

My philosophy regarding the U.S. Constitution is that it is an often ambiguously written guideline on how a representative democracy is to be organized. It is not the Absolute Truth. There are parts I would like to change. Nevertheless, as long as the American people are as polarized as they are I think we should delay changes, especially major changes.

The disadvantages of what exists can be seen and mitigated. The disadvantages of what has never existed can only be guessed at. Nevertheless, they may be worse than what exists.

The U.S. Constitution has lasted as long as it has because it has been flexible enough to respond to changes in popular opinion.

Also, the United States today is a very different country than the country that created the Constitution. We should not assume that the kind of government that existed right after the Constitution was signed is the kind of government that would work best now.

Concerning the "Founding Fathers," they were intelligent, and well educated for their time. We should study what they wrote with respect. We should also study other political thinkers before and after their time. I believe that a political thinker should be read for insight, rather than doctrine.

Click to expand...

Great subject...

My philosophy regarding the US Constitution is that even with all of our faults over our history it was a very clever method to outline function and limitation of a government while at the same time providing an outline of rights afforded to the individual. As a Constitutional Republic, the document was well written and designed with a reasonable method to allow for change as the times changed. We can argue all day about how some of those changes caused new problems, but the main point is we have the power to change the document without abandoning core principles of our government type.

I would argue that the American People are polarized because of the very "faction" oriented thinking many of our founders warned us of. We would have been better off if we had at least 3, perhaps 4, major parties established in modern times forcing a few things to happen. Namely, just to get to majority it would require cooperation and post just about all elections there would have to be consensus on whatever issues were tackled by sessions of Congress.

We can agree that the US is a very different nation today vs. the moment the ink dried on the Constitution, we can also agree that government trends shift overtime often reflective of the social and economic climate of our nation. It still comes down to making the right choices in our governance within the confines of the Constitution as it has evolved over time. The Constitution may be painful to change in some political climates, but perhaps it should be to illustrate how important core functions are kept in check and how core rights are protected.

OrphanSlug said:

Great subject...

My philosophy regarding the US Constitution is that even with all of our faults over our history it was a very clever method to outline function and limitation of a government while at the same time providing an outline of rights afforded to the individual. As a Constitutional Republic, the document was well written and designed with a reasonable method to allow for change as the times changed. We can argue all day about how some of those changes caused new problems, but the main point is we have the power to change the document without abandoning core principles of our government type.

I would argue that the American People are polarized because of the very "faction" oriented thinking many of our founders warned us of. We would have been better off if we had at least 3, perhaps 4, major parties established in modern times forcing a few things to happen. Namely, just to get to majority it would require cooperation and post just about all elections there would have to be consensus on whatever issues were tackled by sessions of Congress.

We can agree that the US is a very different nation today vs. the moment the ink dried on the Constitution, we can also agree that government trends shift overtime often reflective of the social and economic climate of our nation. It still comes down to making the right choices in our governance within the confines of the Constitution as it has evolved over time. The Constitution may be painful to change in some political climates, but perhaps it should be to illustrate how important core functions are kept in check and how core rights are protected.

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That (bolded above) is the problem - the unchanged constitution allows time, rather than actual amendment, to change its meaning. Those "core rights" included a federal government strictly limited in its power over the states and the people. That ended when the SCOTUS, the only federal branch not limited by any checks or balances, decided to make law.

Not only may the SCOTUS simply refuse to rule on a given matter, they may establish precedent to supersede anything that they wish. Show me any constiutional federal power that allows establishing a cabinet level, federal education department. What we have now is a SCOTUS that has decided to use commerce, taxation and/or general welfare to let the federal government do "important" or "popular" things.

It is not really an ambiguously written guideline, it is the Supreme Law of the Land. It is a law, not a guideline, but one must be "into" the rule of law for that to mean anything.

And it's not nearly as ambiguous as you make it out to be. The founders were quite good with the English language. Modern generations, not so much.

The major reason we have the dysfunctional government we have is that subsequent generations have not followed the law--neither its spirit or its letter.

dimensionallava said:

i think its overly glorified, people treat it like its scripture handed down from the gods

ive always hated when people reference the constitution in an argument, as if because "the founding fahers" said it, its therefore divine mandate. Or if it wasn't in the constitution they wouldn't care about it all.

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You are certainly right that a constitution is a societal instrument to determine how to govern.

ttwtt78640 said:

That (bolded above) is the problem - the unchanged constitution allows time, rather than actual amendment, to change its meaning. Those "core rights" included a federal government strictly limited in its power over the states and the people. That ended when the SCOTUS, the only federal branch not limited by any checks or balances, decided to make law.

Not only may the SCOTUS simply refuse to rule on a given matter, they may establish precedent to supersede anything that they wish. Show me any constiutional federal power that allows establishing a cabinet level, federal education department. What we have now is a SCOTUS that has decided to use commerce, taxation and/or general welfare to let the federal government do "important" or "popular" things.

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I would agree we have made plenty of mistakes over our history in terms of government function and Constitutionality.

It is easy to point out that once we two party politicized our government, it did not take long before the judicial branch became subject to the same thinking. That is another way of saying our political party system is far more responsible for these results than some flaw in the Constitution. Over the longer period we have done great damage to the central thinking behind our government structure. But usually when someone says "SCOTUS... decided to make law" I tend to point out that Congress and the White House put them on a course to do so via some legislative, or organizational, or overreach effort on their part putting the Constitution in question. Perhaps to the point where our founders could not have even fathomed the complication put forth in today's context. Puts the onus on changing the Constitution instead of chipping away at it, even though historically we still tend to do the latter far more than the former.

Moreover I would argue that our two party system ended up reduced to efforts where both end up adversarial to Constitutional intention. Republicans are not about Constitutionalism anymore than Democrats are, as flip sides of the same coin they both look to stretch the power of the government to ensure some set of ends as political goals. No matter if we are talking about using the government to influence social order and controls, or using the government to ensure economic and social outcome it is all well outside of the scope of our government in Constitutional terms. Same story with the realized effect of a populace that can vote for themselves treasury promise, we have a similar concern with a populace that can vote for themselves impact on opposition. Again, over the long term than puts more strain on the Constitution than it does the method.

If we are to repair this it would mean evaluating why we continually fail to break away from two party establishment politics that did more harm to the Constitution than just about any other factor we can name. SCOTUS then is just a symptom of the problem, one we tend to ignore by voting all to often for ourselves instead of for our Constitutional intentions.

SmartCat said:

My philosophy regarding the U.S. Constitution is that it is an often ambiguously written guideline on how a representative democracy is to be organized. It is not the Absolute Truth. There are parts I would like to change. Nevertheless, as long as the American people are as polarized as they are I think we should delay changes, especially major changes.

The disadvantages of what exists can be seen and mitigated. The disadvantages of what has never existed can only be guessed at. Nevertheless, they may be worse than what exists.

The U.S. Constitution has lasted as long as it has because it has been flexible enough to respond to changes in popular opinion.

Also, the United States today is a very different country than the country that created the Constitution. We should not assume that the kind of government that existed right after the Constitution was signed is the kind of government that would work best now.

Concerning the "Founding Fathers," they were intelligent, and well educated for their time. We should study what they wrote with respect. We should also study other political thinkers before and after their time. I believe that a political thinker should be read for insight, rather than doctrine.

Click to expand...

Typical "living breathing" nonsense. The only way one can find ambiguity in the Constitution, is to insert their own personal bias. The Constitution is not ambiguous in any way. It is perfectly clear.

Don't like it? There is contained within the Constitution, a mechanism to change it. But leftist usurpers prefer instead to eschew that mechanism, in favor of ruling by fiat and judicial activism. Libs won't be happy until they precipitate Civil War II.