JimHackerMP
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- May 7, 2018
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Which is why britain now has an unwritten constitution instead of the magna carta. But they cannot create a written constitution without first riding themselves of the magna cartsa. Which they have not done, hence the unwritten one.
Some counties might have good reasons. The fact that you fail to point out any but instead can only give a fallacious argument of the many do so it must be ok is far more telling as a fail.
And yet look at the op. Many americans would agree that the constitution is a work of god. So i would not be so hasty as to down play what american stupidity can achieve.
First of all, your bigotry aside, Americans do not believe their constitution is the work of God. I'm wondering how many Americans you actually know. Many of us are quite critical of the faults in our constitution. My question to you would be, if we were to throw it out, how could it possibly be replaced with an unwritten one? How could we have designed an unwritten constitution in 1787 rather than the written one? I don't think you are thinking it through, and if my argument is weak or fallacious, well, I don't think you have come up with much of one at all. You want a better argument? Fine. Here's one.
Let me explain it this way as to why we have a written constitution and the UK, for example, doesn't. The UK has had a parliamentary tradition, of sorts, since medieval times. It developed very gradually over hundreds of years, by custom. The Magna Carta was more of a foundation, on which the rest of the constitution, the unwritten bits, were formed. As the need arose, more customs and norms were added into the law-making and governing procedure of the realm. There was no need for a written constitution, because what was agreed upon as the normal system of governance was already being practiced daily, without the need to get agreement on it from all the communities of the realm. Not only that, it came "from above" (from the crown) rather than from the bottom up, as did the American one. The crown granted (or rather was forced to grant at sword-point) rights and privileges and an agreement on how the realm was to be governed. Not all in the Magna Carta was exactly "new". Great Councils (it mentions "great council" not "parliament" by name) of the nobles of the realm had been called into session by English kings before 1215. The MC itself drew on customs that were already prevalent in the realm; the king was forced by the barons in the revolt to agree to adhere to them, permanently.
The United States, by contrast, broke itself free of the constraints of the British Empire, and had to design a whole new REPUBLICAN system, at odds with the regal and parliamentary tradition of Great Britain, from scratch. Therefore, it had to be agreed upon by the thirteen states exactly what form the government would take, and how it was to work. Such a complicated problem requires more than an oral agreement, or a treaty, or simply custom, in order to be described adequately and agreed upon. You have to write such a thing down, or no one would agree on what its terms are. There was no way to define these terms simply by custom, because the union of American states was brand new, and, by breaking with Great Britain, was therefore throwing away all those hundreds of years of tradition. Something new had to be created, and to get the agreement of the people who weren't at the convention, it had to be written and transmitted to them for their approval. How can you agree on customs when you're starting (almost) from scratch?
Does that explain it? You may not agree with my argument, but it's far from fallacious. You said "some countries might have good reasons". Care to state those reasons? And perhaps you might consider that we had good reasons, too, for having a written one--which I did state just now. Try to look at the rest of the world a little more objectively. It always looks silly when seen through the eyes of your own corner of the cosmos.
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