Is American "idealism" healthy?

Fenton said:

Lol....so much for objectivity

When did simply believing in our founding documents and their core principles equate to " fetishizing " ?

A fetish implies corruption of the fundamental core purpose, over indulgence, a obsessive need or desire for a thing or activity.

Unless the Constitution and the ammendments within have been corrupted ( it would no longer be a Constitution then ) then a belief alone wouldn't rise to the act of " fetishizing ".

The Americans definiton of Freedom no more qualifies as a fetish than Britains definition of royalty.

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Fenton said:

No, the Constitution was never meant to be a " living document ".

If it were " living " ( changing with the times and/ or the moods based on Political manipulation ) then it would no longer be a Constitution.

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Peter Grimm said:

As an empirical person, I'm not concerned with whether the constitution was intended to be a living document. I'm only concerned with whether the laws we currently have on the books are just and beneficial to the people living in America today.

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Peter Grimm said:

This is far from being true. There are really quite a few differences between American and British mentality. What stands out to me is American optimism, or the refusal to see oneself in a bad light.

If you go to an American bookshop, by far the biggest section is self-help and improvement. The idea that life is refinable and improvable, that there is a technique that can be learned for anything.... being a businessman, lovemaking, marriage, cooking, losing weight.... whatever it is there's an NLP way of doing it, there's an Anthony Robbins way of doing it, there's a "things they didn't teach you at Harvard" way of doing it.

Whatever it is, there's an unbelievable sense that life is improvable, that you can be lectured at or, indeed, given a sermon at. It's the protestant base of America, that things are done by text and by works, as opposed to by submission and doctrine the way the higher European churches still believe.


One insight in to how a culture sees itself is to look at that culture's humor.

The American comic hero is a wisecracker who is above his material, and who is above the idiots around him. For example look at John Belucci. You know that scene in animal house where John Belucci picks up the guitar and destroys it, and waggles his eyebrows at the camera?



Well the British comedian would want to play the folk singer. They want to play the failure. All the great British comic heroes are people who want life to be better and are people on whom life craps from a terrible height and a sense of dignity is constantly compromised by the world letting them down. They are Aurthor Lowe in Dad's Army, they are Basil Fawlty.

Whereas the American hero is the smart talker, the Ben Stiller, the Eddie Murphy, whoever, they can wisecrack their way out of any situation, they win the girl, they're smarter, etc.

In a sense, comedy is one microcosm that allows us to examine the differences between our two cultures. The Brits make a glory of failure, they celebrate it, in a way that Americans don't.

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Fenton said:

Lol....so much for objectivity

When did simply believing in our founding documents and their core principles equate to " fetishizing " ?

A fetish implies corruption of the fundamental core purpose, over indulgence, a obsessive need or desire for a thing or activity.

Unless the Constitution and the ammendments within have been corrupted ( it would no longer be a Constitution then ) then a belief alone wouldn't rise to the act of " fetishizing ".

The Americans definiton of Freedom no more qualifies as a fetish than Britains definition of royalty.

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Fenton said:

Yours or anyone elses concern is irrelevant.

The letter of the law does not change nor should it change based on the subjective inference of one individual.

Again, it would no longer be a Constitution if it could be molded and manipulated based on the whims of one individual.

Its no longer a Constitution if it cant withstand the attacks of men who not only misunderstand it but either knowingly or unkowningly seek to change it based on their perceptions of right or wrong.

Words do not change. Their meaning does not change.

. What changes are how people percieve those words, their inferences change based on personal experiences and or motivations good or bad.

What you fail to comprehend is thats exactly why our Constitution or ANY Constitution is drafted.

Its why the ammendment process spelled out in the Constitution is so tedious and difficult.

And its why its anything but a living breathing document.

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Nilly said:

I don't think there is a corruption, but there is a massive over indulgence in the constitution. It has come to the point where there are arguments over placements of commas to try to figure out the authors original intent. That's ridiculous. Surely we are more equipped to make decisions about our current laws and judicial procedures than people from the 18th century.



Exactly the problem. The constitution was drafted in a completely different era to what we live in now. As visionary as some of the founding fathers were, society is changing exponentially. In 1990 it would be impossible to predict what the 21st century looks like, never mind 1790. I am not saying that the constitution is irrelevant, many parts of it will be just as applicable in another 300 years time, but deference to an outdated document in matters of importance is lazy in comparison with actually reasoning out what is for the best in the now.

The constitution shouldn't be a reason in and of itself to do something. The principles on which the constitution stand on, and the ideals for which it stand for, should be examined and reexamined to ensure that it is just for society as it is now, not as it was 300 years ago.

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Fenton said:

Time and date are irrelevant.

The Constitution is a document filled with words with meanings that have never changed. Words dont change.

The only thing thats changed is how those words are defined or better yet corrupted.

Those words have been twisted by the whims of the selfish, misguided or politically motivated but they've never changed their meaning.

Its a document of laws. Laws are not subject to change based on personal and subjective definitions.

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Peter Grimm said:

So the words of the constitution are more important than the needs and desires of the people it rules? That, my friend, is fetishization at its finest.

The constitution exists to serve the public interest, not the other way around.


Now.... here's an etymology lesson for you: Words DO indeed change meanings all the time.

Now.... here's an American History lesson for you: The constitution was drafted about 5 years after the revolutionary war because the new nation had no legal identity of its own upon which to base a legal system. They needed an identity separate from British Common Law since they had just won a war of independence against the crown.

Now... here's a civics/mathematics lesson for you: The amendment process is much more difficult today than it was in 1788 because back then, there were only 13 states and today there are 50.

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Fenton said:

Lol !!

The " needs and desires of people " as defined by YOU should now be the standard we use for ammending our founding documents ?

What a relentlessly innane and foolish concept. Let me tell you, you have some serious fettish issues too buddy.

After your so called changes whats stopping the next guy from making more changes that would cancel out your own ? Whats stopping the guy after that from making more changes ?

Or is it to remain untouched after your alterations ?

Because its not a Constitution anymore, its not a document of laws and principles and standards that we used to build a Nation upon.

Its a worthless bit of paper thats been marked up with the good intentions of extremely short sighted individuals. It would turn into graffiti because easilly manipulated individuals failed to fully understand what the Constitution represents.

It was written by men with wisdom that out strips your own on a exponential scale. And they wrote it with the intentions of people like you in mind.

They knew that there would be unstable ideologues motivated by personal inadequecies or guilt or the idea that their ideas some how superceded the rights of the Citizens as a whole so they included a process to change it that was purposefully difficult.

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Peter Grimm said:

The needs and desires of the people as defined fluidly by the people, as in what occurs in an actual democracy.

If I can't appeal to you with reason and intellect, maybe I can speak to you in your own language of ideology.... isn't DEMOCRACY a good and American thing?

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Peter Grimm said:

I am heading to Europe in two weeks, and was just thinking about how America and Britain differ.

America, it strikes me, is much more old fashioned than Britain. Britain is a very Republican place.

They believe in the sovereignty of one’s own self and one’s own opinion, and believe that one man is as good as the next… that all men are equal. It’s a very British way of looking at things.

America, conversely, has a class system. We believe in the primacy of money and of hierarchies and…. most interestingly….. we actually believe in BELIEVING IN THINGS.



And here is the main point of my post, and probably the biggest difference between cultures…



Unlike Americans, Brits are a very skeptical people. If you wanted to define the English character in a more intellectual way, I would say that they are “empirical.”

Britain’s greatest gift to Europe and to the intellectual thrust of the last 500 years has been empiricism. It’s how Newton beat Pascal... how he was right. The French are rationalists, Brits are not, and in fact they distrust rationalism and superstition as being two wings of the same heresy.

That’s also why Britain has an established church in which no-one believes… because their empirical nature leads them to test things.

In America, we have almost a religious idea about liberty. One could say that we fetishize the ideal of liberty.

In fact, we have this tendency with other things as well. We fetishize the right to bear arms without really testing it.

The Brits have a more “let’s test it. Does that work?” Attitude. In America, on the other hand, everything rises and falls by the constitution and the ideals it imparts.

It follows then that in America, freedom of speech becomes more important than justice because freedom of speech is fetishized in the constitution. To a Brit, that idea is preposterous. To a Brit, being just to people is the first end of a state, in other words, the most important function of a state is to be a just state. Not for it to be a free state, but freedom is a good means of achieving a just state.

In other words, freedom of speech is a concept, and justice is concrete.

So my question to you…. do you think the idealistic nature of Americans is as the empiricism of our counterparts across the pond, or is our sense of idealism simply the sign of a young, perhaps naive state that hasn’t quite figured it all out yet?

Personally, I believe the Brits have it right. Would like to hear your thoughts.

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Bob Blaylock said:

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

America is not a Democracy, and has never been intended to be one. That you imagine it is or should be is unsurprising, given your demonstrated ignorance and contempt for this nation's Constitution, for the great men who founded this nation, and for the principles upon which this nation was founded.

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Bob Blaylock said:

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

America is not a Democracy, and has never been intended to be one. That you imagine it is or should be is unsurprising, given your demonstrated ignorance and contempt for this nation's Constitution, for the great men who founded this nation, and for the principles upon which this nation was founded.

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Peter Grimm said:

The needs and desires of the people as defined fluidly by the people, as in what occurs in an actual democracy.

If I can't appeal to you with reason and intellect, maybe I can speak to you in your own language of ideology.... isn't DEMOCRACY a good and American thing?

Click to expand...

Peter Grimm said:

The needs and desires of the people as defined fluidly by the people, as in what occurs in an actual democracy.

If I can't appeal to you with reason and intellect, maybe I can speak to you in your own language of ideology.... isn't DEMOCRACY a good and American thing?

Click to expand...