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We don't just need a Constitutional amendment, we need a new Constitution. People act like the Constitution we have came down from the heavens in a beam of lig
by baron816 9y ago
We don't just need a Constitutional amendment, we need a new Constitution.
People act like the Constitution we have came down from the heavens in a beam of light. But it was written by a bunch of guys who had never lived in a real democracy before. In fact it was written at a time when there pretty much hadn't been ANY democracies in the whole world for two thousand years. We've had two hundred years of experience and hundreds of iterations of the concept since then, so we have a much better idea of what will work and what won't.
It bothers me so much the passion for the Constitution people have. Yet, there is almost universal distain for Congress and the entire political establishment. Washington is entirely a function of the rules that are set by the Constitution. Electing different people isn't going to change anything. Ending Gerrymandering (if possible while using districts) would help, but it doesn't go far enough. You would still have a two party system. You would still be forced to choose between the lesser of two evils every time you go to the polls. And a large chunk of the country would always feel that they don't have someone in government representing them.
If we want people engaged in government, and to have a government engaged in them, then we need proportional representation in one form or another. Anything else is just a bandaid.
- zeckalpha 9y agoThe entire constitution could be rewritten through amendment.
- CalChris 9y agoOr we could just have another Constitution. It wouldn't be our second. It would be our third.
- thatswrong0 9y ago> We don't just need a Constitutional amendment, we need a new Constitution. Uh you can achieve that via amendments. And just who is going to write this new Constitution? > Washington is entirely a function of the rules that are set by the Constitution. And all of the Supreme Court precedents that have bent the hell out of the document such that it's hardly the same document that it was 200 years ago. States could, if they wanted to, implement proportional representation themselves without having to amend the Constitution. It obviously wouldn't mean that the entirety of Congress is proportional, but it'd be a start.
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoSeriously. The last Constitutional Convention was convened to amend the Articles of Confederation. It wrote a new system of government. If you don't like our elected leaders, understand that a constitutional convention means giving them, as a convention, absolute power to do anything.
- elihu 9y agoNot really; if the convention proposes an amendment that isn't ratified by 3/4ths of states, things stay as they are. Even a constitutional convention has checks and balances. (Historically, states have used the threat of a convention to force congress to act on issues where they were dragging their feet.)
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> Even a constitutional convention has checks and balances Any checks passed before the convention are null and void when it starts. The checks find force in the constitution being nullified by the convention. Constitutional conventions are temporary autocracies. Established when needed, but never to be lightly considered.
- mozumder 9y agoWorks for me, we absolutely need a new constitution. The current one obviously is completely failed (an entire industrial-scale Civil War? REALLY?!) Too bad we need 3/4 states to nullify the current constitution before we can establish a new one via another constitutional convention.
- mburns 9y agoTalk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. How is starting from scratch preferable to passing 3 or 4 amendments in the current system to address the largest issues we've struggled to fix over the decades?
- mozumder 9y agoBecause you need a lot more than three or four amendments, each of which might not be ratified. It would be a lot easier to start from scratch. If you look at the list of lies told by trump, you'll find that they each need amendments to fix, not just laws passed, since it laws are only as good as a president that enforces them. the entire structure of government can change. There isn't an oversight branch that enforces checks and balances, for example. A parliamentary system is more useful. Nationalism needs to be curtailed. Services need to be redefined for the modern era.
- nindalf 9y ago> oversight branch And who watches these watchmen?
- mozumder 9y agois that something people haven't figured out?
- nindalf 9y agoThe problem of watching the watchmen is an old one. Ideally you want to have watchmen who watch each other, like how the judiciary acts as a check on the executive and the legislature. However, the person I replied to was unhappy with the current state of affairs and proposed adding another watchman. So I wondered what their solution was.
- Aloha 9y agoWhy do you think we need a new Constitution?
- nostrademons 9y agoGreat Britain had become a constitutional monarchy and rough parliamentary democracy (and Great Britain, for that matter...Scotland and England merged soon after) with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. British politics in the mid-1700s was a contact sport, and many of the upper-class colonists who would become the Founding Fathers spent their formative years watching Britain wrestle with what it means to be a democracy. Many of the principles in the Constitution come from bitter experience, and are direct reactions to misbehavior on the part of colonial governors, magistrates, or members of parliament. There are certainly parts of the Constitution that are woefully out-of-date, but it's not really true that it was written in a vacuum, nor that the United States was the first democracy for two thousand years.
- rayiner 9y agoWe went five years without Congress being able to pass a budget during the Obama administration. If we tried to come up with a new Constitution we'd not have one country anymore. (Which may well be what we need.)