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My apologies. I thought the "stale" comment was directed at the third amendment in particular. Most of what I was offering my rebuttal on was this: >all sugges

My apologies. I thought the "stale" comment was directed at the third amendment in particular. Most of what I was offering my rebuttal on was this: >all suggest that there are things wrong with the American constitution. Depending on your interpretation of "Wrong", I'd either agree or disagree. But the general point I was trying to make was that I don't find too many flaws with the examples you provided, and with regards to the third amendment, I was trying to provide an example in which even older parts of the document still have a lot of relevance, despite seeming stale at face value. I didn't mean to insult your intelligence by providing the history lesson though; when I write a reply I do so imagining everyone in the discussion is reading, so while it is probably not new information to you, it might be to someone else. That's the real value in our talk here. Sorry about that, Cheers. =)

vacri 11y ago
The thing is, you can appreciate a thing and admire it, and still see room for improvement. To claim there is nothing wrong with the US constitution (as the OP did) is to take a religiose view of it. One other flaw I just put to wtbob below is that the way the document structures elections, the result is a two-party system that simply cannot adequately represent hundreds of millions of people of diverse backgrounds. Given that the document was raised explicitly in response to inadequate representation, that's a problem. Is it the worst problem ever in a constitution? No, but it is still an issue. Edit: For comparison, here in Australia we have a couple of major parties, a couple of big minor parties, and a scattering of small parties all in government at the moment. Or in Germany, it's entirely normal for major parties to have to band together to form a majority in order to govern - from memory, Merkel's party gets about 25% of the vote, and has to create a coalition with other parties to get the majority required. There is space in these systems for new parties to rise, and the concept of "you're either for us or against us" is nowhere near as prevalent as in the US. These systems have their issues too, but they are more representative of their people due to their flexibility.
- ckozlowski 11y ago
  I agree with that. If there's one persistently leveled "flaw" in the structure of things, it was the failure to take into account the impact of political parties. There was far more concern about varying regional interests than political orientation. Re: Germany, (I live abroad in Germany right now, it's fascinating to watch) The fascinating thing was in this latest election, her party very nearly won an outright majority, meaning it would have required no partners at all. I think the CSU/CDU felt just short of the 51% required. There's never been such a sweeping victory of that scale since the party's inception in the 50's.

vacri 11y ago

The thing is, you can appreciate a thing and admire it, and still see room for improvement. To claim there is nothing wrong with the US constitution (as the OP did) is to take a religiose view of it. One other flaw I just put to wtbob below is that the way the document structures elections, the result is a two-party system that simply cannot adequately represent hundreds of millions of people of diverse backgrounds. Given that the document was raised explicitly in response to inadequate representation, that's a problem. Is it the worst problem ever in a constitution? No, but it is still an issue. Edit: For comparison, here in Australia we have a couple of major parties, a couple of big minor parties, and a scattering of small parties all in government at the moment. Or in Germany, it's entirely normal for major parties to have to band together to form a majority in order to govern - from memory, Merkel's party gets about 25% of the vote, and has to create a coalition with other parties to get the majority required. There is space in these systems for new parties to rise, and the concept of "you're either for us or against us" is nowhere near as prevalent as in the US. These systems have their issues too, but they are more representative of their people due to their flexibility.

ckozlowski 11y ago
I agree with that. If there's one persistently leveled "flaw" in the structure of things, it was the failure to take into account the impact of political parties. There was far more concern about varying regional interests than political orientation. Re: Germany, (I live abroad in Germany right now, it's fascinating to watch) The fascinating thing was in this latest election, her party very nearly won an outright majority, meaning it would have required no partners at all. I think the CSU/CDU felt just short of the 51% required. There's never been such a sweeping victory of that scale since the party's inception in the 50's.