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Quote: Original post by THELEADER
You think because software needs updates that the constitution MUST be updated as well? I am sorry but that is the one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard in my life, truly laughable.

Why is the idea laughable? The same founding fathers that you exalt for their genius saw fit to put in a method of amending the Constitution, with the realization that such a document would not remain relevant in perpetuity, but must be updated to adapt with the times.

Regardless, I don't think that you can extrapolate that, since Ben Franklin was very intelligent, all of the founding fathers were very intelligent. Furthermore, I don't think that you can assume that, because Franklin was intelligent that we are unqualified to analyze and change the Constitution to better fit modern times.

I think that you grossly overestimate the founding fathers, in general, and severely underestimate ourselves. People were not magically smarter and more insightful back then than we are today. That's the product of looking through rose-colored glasses.

My only real problem with the constitution is its brevity and ambiguity. As others have said, Supreme Court Judges are basically able to litigate from the bench. While state constitutions are not models for clarity either, they are typically much more dense, and try to spell things out and leave a bit less up for interpretation.

But when it comes down to it, one of the excepted answers for what government is supposed to do for the people is: Protect your life, liberty and property. Of those three, only one can be considered partly up to the federal government: Liberty. The other two are wholly up to the state government, and even the states have a large amount of responsibility in protecting your liberty.

Quote: Original post by mhamlin

Quote: Original post by LessBread
I'd like to see a few new amendments, for example, an amendment stripping corporations of personage, but a new constitution? No. I'd to see the Constitution enforced, for example, the provision giving the war power to Congress not the President. I'm not a Tenther. For the most part Tenther's are yahoos.

So you'd like to see the Constitution enforced, except for those parts you don't care for? Just curious.

Curious? I don't think so. I said nothing about enforcing or not enforcing the Tenth Amendment. Instead, I disparaged people who think the Tenth Amendment is some kind of magical elixir that will dissolve those portions of the Federal Government they detest. Here's an account of that psychosis: Rally 'Round the "True Constitution"

Quote:
...
Tentherism, in a nutshell, proclaims that New Deal-era reformers led an unlawful coup against the "True Constitution," exploiting Depression-born desperation to expand the federal government's powers beyond recognition. Under the tenther constitution, Barack Obama's health-care reform is forbidden, as is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The federal minimum wage is a crime against state sovereignty; the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters is an unlawful encroachment on local businesses.

Tenthers divine all this from the brief language of the 10th Amendment, which provides that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In layman's terms, this simply means that the Constitution contains an itemized list of federal powers -- such as the power to regulate interstate commerce or establish post offices or make war on foreign nations -- and anything not contained in that list is beyond Congress' authority.

The tenther constitution, however, reads each of these powers very narrowly -- too narrowly, it turns out, to permit much of the progress of the last century. As the nation emerges from the worst economic downturn in three generations, the tenthers would strip away the very reforms and economic regulations that beat back the Great Depression, and they would hamstring any attempt to enact new progressive legislation.

Such retreat to fringe constitutional theories is one of the right's favorite tactics during times of historic upheaval. The right-wing South justified both secession and the Civil War on the theory that the Constitution is nothing more than a pact between sovereigns that each state is free to leave at will. In the immediate wake of Brown v. Board of Education, 19 senators and 77 representatives endorsed a "Southern Manifesto," proclaiming -- in words echoed by modern-day tenthers -- that Brown "encroach[es] on the rights reserved to the States" because the "Constitution does not mention education." President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent much of his first term combating a tenther majority on the Supreme Court, which routinely struck down substantial portions of the New Deal.
...
Additionally, while the Depression-era justices provided much of the movement's intellectual framework, today's tenthers are extreme even by 1930s standards. The Constitution gives Congress the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," thus empowering the federal government to levy taxes and leverage these revenues to benefit the American people. Tenthers, however, insist that these words don't actually mean what they say, claiming that spending on things like health care, education, and Social Security is simply not allowed.
...
More important, there is something fundamentally authoritarian about the tenther constitution. Social Security, Medicare, and health-care reform are all wildly popular, yet the tenther constitution would shackle our democracy and forbid Congress from enacting the same policies that the American people elected them to advance. After years of raging against mythical judges who "legislate from the bench," tenther conservatives now demand a constitution that will not let anyone legislate at all.

These tenther folks seem possessed with the ghost of John C. Calhoun fighting for states rights and nullification.

Quote: Original post by mhamlin
But anyway, I'll let Lysander Spooner speak for me, from the appendix to his essay, "No Treason":

Quote:
Inasmuch as the Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such an one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning, as a contract, is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

So you're trying to say that your mindset is stuck in the 1870's?



Here's a article about another necessary structural reform that doesn't require a Constitutional Amendment: Is the House of Representatives Too Small?

Quote:
For the first 13 decades of its history, the U.S. House of Representatives was an ever-expanding institution. From 65 members in its vintage 1789 configuration, the lower chamber grew steadily with each new census count, accommodating the growing population of the country.

But a bigger House also meant a more unwieldy House. And so in 1911, Congress somewhat arbitrarily decided that 435 was enough already and set the number down in a statute. The House had gotten as big as it was going to be.

And so it has been ever since, even as the country has more than tripled in size. The average U.S. congressional district now contains roughly 640,000 citizens, as opposed to about 200,000 in 1911.
...
Brian Frederick, a professor of political science at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts, thinks that things are heading that way. His research shows that as districts get bigger in population, constituents are less likely to report that they had contact with their member of Congress, less likely to think their member would be helpful, and less likely to favorably evaluate their member of Congress (and more likely to see their member as out of touch with the district).

These findings confirm what most theory on representation already suggests: Members from larger districts should have a harder time connecting with and thus representing their constituents. But until Frederick combined National Election Survey data with district and member characteristics, there was no solid empirical evidence to back it up.
...
But if the U.S. House were to add seats, how many should it have? Arend Lijphart, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and a comparative scholar of democratic institutions, has argued for 650 seats.

That figure is based on the so-called "cube root law" of Rein Taagepera, who figured out that taking the cube root of a nation's population provided a remarkably good predictor of the size of that nation's lower house. By that logic, the U.S. was an outlier on the low side, with a House of 435 instead of the 669 that would now be expected given the U.S. population of 300 million. (Lijphart made his 650-seat recommendation in 1998, when the U.S. population was at 275 million.)
...

Expanding the number of seats in Congress at a glance might seem to benefit the Democrats, but it would more likely benefit the Republicans. Considering that the GOP continues to collapse - losing 20% of those who identify with it since August* - this might be the only way they can remain a national party. ["Since August there have been 18 public opinion polls conducted which have measured party identification. Of those, just one showed more than 30 percent of the public affiliating itself with the GOP. Twice, Republican self-affiliation was below 20 percent." GOP Brand Has Declined Since Obama Took Office, According To New Polling Data (10-19-09)]

* if party identification is at 25% and it falls to 20%, then it has lost 20% [(25-20)/25 * 100]

"Only 20 percent of adults identify themselves as Republicans, little changed in recent months, but still the lowest single number in Post-ABC polls since 1983." Public option gains support Poll Data (See question 901).


[Edited by - LessBread on October 23, 2009 5:55:24 PM]

With regards to Tenthers, I guess you could call me a quasi-tenther. As a matter of fact, I tend to take a fairly strict interpretation of the Constitution, and as a result I don't feel that federal Social Security or Universal Health Care are permitted by the Constitution as-is.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I am against either Social Security or Universal Health Care. On the contrary, I believe that both are useful and necessary for a stable society. I simply feel that, rather than taking the lawfully correct method of amending the Constitution or implementing those programs at a state level, that policy makers decided to play word games to work around it, because it was easier. I'd greatly prefer to see a Constitutional amendment that allowed for some limited right-to-life style programs, such as welfare, UHC, and SS.

Of course, my political beliefs are weird and don't really follow any of the large parties or groups out there. I believe in pissing off all political parties equally. :)

Quote:

Quote: Original post by mhamlin

Quote: Original post by LessBread
I'd like to see a few new amendments, for example, an amendment stripping corporations of personage, but a new constitution? No. I'd to see the Constitution enforced, for example, the provision giving the war power to Congress not the President. I'm not a Tenther. For the most part Tenther's are yahoos.

So you'd like to see the Constitution enforced, except for those parts you don't care for? Just curious.

Curious? I don't think so. I said nothing about enforcing or not enforcing the Tenth Amendment. Instead, I disparaged people who think the Tenth Amendment is some kind of magical elixir that will dissolve those portions of the Federal Government they detest. Here's an account of that psychosis: Rally 'Round the "True Constitution"

Why is the 'tenther' interpretation of the Constitution so crazy? I bet we will both agree, though, that many of these newfound "tenthers" are likely reactionaries against the Obama administration.

Quote:

Quote:
...
Tentherism, in a nutshell, proclaims that New Deal-era reformers led an unlawful coup against the "True Constitution," exploiting Depression-born desperation to expand the federal government's powers beyond recognition. Under the tenther constitution, Barack Obama's health-care reform is forbidden, as is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The federal minimum wage is a crime against state sovereignty; the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters is an unlawful encroachment on local businesses.

Tenthers divine all this from the brief language of the 10th Amendment, which provides that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In layman's terms, this simply means that the Constitution contains an itemized list of federal powers -- such as the power to regulate interstate commerce or establish post offices or make war on foreign nations -- and anything not contained in that list is beyond Congress' authority.

The tenther constitution, however, reads each of these powers very narrowly -- too narrowly, it turns out, to permit much of the progress of the last century. As the nation emerges from the worst economic downturn in three generations, the tenthers would strip away the very reforms and economic regulations that beat back the Great Depression, and they would hamstring any attempt to enact new progressive legislation.

Such retreat to fringe constitutional theories is one of the right's favorite tactics during times of historic upheaval. The right-wing South justified both secession and the Civil War on the theory that the Constitution is nothing more than a pact between sovereigns that each state is free to leave at will. In the immediate wake of Brown v. Board of Education, 19 senators and 77 representatives endorsed a "Southern Manifesto," proclaiming -- in words echoed by modern-day tenthers -- that Brown "encroach[es] on the rights reserved to the States" because the "Constitution does not mention education." President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent much of his first term combating a tenther majority on the Supreme Court, which routinely struck down substantial portions of the New Deal.
...
Additionally, while the Depression-era justices provided much of the movement's intellectual framework, today's tenthers are extreme even by 1930s standards. The Constitution gives Congress the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," thus empowering the federal government to levy taxes and leverage these revenues to benefit the American people. Tenthers, however, insist that these words don't actually mean what they say, claiming that spending on things like health care, education, and Social Security is simply not allowed.
...
More important, there is something fundamentally authoritarian about the tenther constitution. Social Security, Medicare, and health-care reform are all wildly popular, yet the tenther constitution would shackle our democracy and forbid Congress from enacting the same policies that the American people elected them to advance. After years of raging against mythical judges who "legislate from the bench," tenther conservatives now demand a constitution that will not let anyone legislate at all.

These tenther folks seem possessed with the ghost of John C. Calhoun fighting for states rights and nullification.

Of course, you will hardly be surprised that I do not view the developments of the last century as "progress." The doublespeak present in that citation is despicable. Apparently constraints the "tenthers" claim should be present on the Federal government are "authoritarian." I wonder how such constraints are authoritarian?

Quote:

Quote:
But anyway, I'll let Lysander Spooner speak for me, from the appendix to his essay, "No Treason":

Quote:
Inasmuch as the Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such an one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning, as a contract, is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

So you're trying to say that your mindset is stuck in the 1870's?

I am saying that I agree with Spooner's analysis and argument. Why do you bring up that Spooner wrote the essay near 1870? Are ideas and arguments invalid because they are old?

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Expanding the number of seats in Congress at a glance might seem to benefit the Democrats, but it would more likely benefit the Republicans. Considering that the GOP continues to collapse - losing 20% of those who identify with it since August - this might be the only way they can remain a national party. ["Since August there have been 18 public opinion polls conducted which have measured party identification. Of those, just one showed more than 30 percent of the public affiliating itself with the GOP. Twice, Republican self-affiliation was below 20 percent." GOP Brand Has Declined Since Obama Took Office, According To New Polling Data (10-19-09)]

I don't really think that the GOP is gone forever, or needs to worry about imploding out of existence. There have been periods in U.S. history where one party went on such a sharp decline that they were almost powerless for a decade or more. Eventually, something happens again in the public eye which leads people to look to other options, and the downtrodden party comes back. Both Republicans and Democrats have been in that position before.

What is exciting to me about those periods is that it leaves a power void where another party could have precious time to establish a base.

Quote: Original post by mhamlin
Is having a different opinion than yours a psychosis? Why is the 'tenther' interpretation of the Constitution so crazy?

Disagreeing with me isn't a psychosis. Trying to roll back the 20th century is. The Tenther's interpretation is discredited and antiquarian.

Quote: Original post by mhamlin
Of course, you will hardly be surprised that I do not view the developments of the last century as "progress." The doublespeak present in that citation is despicable. Apparently constraints the "tenthers" claim should be present on the Federal government are "authoritarian." I wonder how such constraints are authoritarian?

Yet you seem to have a fondness for the literature of the last century, or at least for using words crafted during it, like doublespeak. There's nothing despicable in that essay, if there was you would have pointed to it. The authoritarian nature of the Tenthers is clear from their call to abolish popular social programs on the basis of the puerile ideology they adhere too. They fetishize a Constitution that never existed to promote their twisted view of how things ought to be.

Quote: Original post by mhamlin
I am saying that I agree with Spooner's analysis and argument. Why do you bring up that Spooner wrote the essay near 1870? Are ideas and arguments invalid because they are old? Is everything new necessarily better than everything old?

Spooner's essay is a product of the times it was written in and should be understood as such. That doesn't necessarily make the ideas in it invalid, but it does make them old and likely no longer applicable. If you read his essay without a clue about the times it was written in, you'll likely come away with a distorted view of it's arguments and perhaps with the mistaken idea that they still hold.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Disagreeing with me isn't a psychosis. Trying to roll back the 20th century is. The Tenther's interpretation is discredited and antiquarian.

Why can't you present a critique without resorting to claiming that your opponent's position is old or stuck in the past, as if that is somehow a meaningful point?

Quote:
Yet you seem to have a fondness for the literature of the last century, or at least for using words crafted during it, like doublespeak. There's nothing despicable in that essay, if there was you would have pointed to it. The authoritarian nature of the Tenthers is clear from their call to abolish popular social programs on the basis of the puerile ideology they adhere too. They fetishize a Constitution that never existed to promote their twisted view of how things ought to be.

I would like to point out that the doublespeak is what I referred to as despicable. I'll agree with you that many likely fetishize the Constitution (I refer to it as the Cult of the Constitution, or Cult of the Founders). Isn't attempting to minimize government power by definition anti-authoritarian?

Quote:
Spooner's essay is a product of the times it was written in and should be understood as such. That doesn't necessarily make the ideas in it invalid, but it does make them old and likely no longer applicable. If you read his essay without a clue about the times it was written in, you'll likely come away with a distorted view of it's arguments and perhaps with the mistaken idea that they still hold.

I am aware of the time in which it was written. I don't think the state of affairs that Spooner was criticizing have changed in any way that is relevant to his critique.

Quote: Original post by mhamlin

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Disagreeing with me isn't a psychosis. Trying to roll back the 20th century is. The Tenther's interpretation is discredited and antiquarian.

Why can't you present a critique without resorting to claiming that your opponent's position is old or stuck in the past, as if that is somehow a meaningful point?

Why can't you debate without dropping loaded questions about your opponent? That's the third one so far by my count. The fact is that the Tenther's are pushing old arguments and that indicates they are stuck in the past.

Quote: Original post by mhamlin

Quote:
Yet you seem to have a fondness for the literature of the last century, or at least for using words crafted during it, like doublespeak. There's nothing despicable in that essay, if there was you would have pointed to it. The authoritarian nature of the Tenthers is clear from their call to abolish popular social programs on the basis of the puerile ideology they adhere too. They fetishize a Constitution that never existed to promote their twisted view of how things ought to be.

I would like to point out that the doublespeak is what I referred to as despicable. I'll agree with you that many likely fetishize the Constitution (I refer to it as the Cult of the Constitution, or Cult of the Founders). Isn't attempting to minimize government power by definition anti-authoritarian?

Great, but you didn't point to anything specific, much less demonstrate how it constituted doublespeak. It's as if you're trying out a word that you picked up on your brief trip through the 20th century. The Tenthers don't have any problem with concentrations of power, they have a problem with government that they don't control and thus can't use to enforce their beliefs on others. Look at Rick Perry of Texas. He flirts with secession to gain favor with the Tenthers and they love him back for it in spite of his having taken stimulus money and in spite of his taking steps to cover up the execution of an innocent man. And you think those folks are anti-authoritarian? Not!

Quote: Original post by mhamlin

Quote:
Spooner's essay is a product of the times it was written in and should be understood as such. That doesn't necessarily make the ideas in it invalid, but it does make them old and likely no longer applicable. If you read his essay without a clue about the times it was written in, you'll likely come away with a distorted view of it's arguments and perhaps with the mistaken idea that they still hold.

I am aware of the time in which it was written. I don't think the state of affairs that Spooner was criticizing have changed in any way that is relevant to his critique.

Why would you if you're stuck in 1870! [grin]