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The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

135 points by psteitz 4y ago

gjsman-1000 4y ago
At this point, is the difficulty in amending the Constitution actually a bug? Seeing the polarization, I could see our Founding Fathers deciding that's actually a feature right now because it prevents one side from getting the upper hand and telling the rest to stuff it.
- giantg2 4y ago
  I mostly agree. At this point though, each side tries to circumvent it anyways by at least stretching "interpretations", and the courts tend to allow it.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    I'd rather have that than have the constitution easier to amend. Otherwise the whipping back-and-forth on constitutional issues as each party takes power would be extremely destabilizing and legally chaotic. It already is; don't make it worse.
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      Endlessly bending the structures of law just makes them snap that much harder when they break under the pressure. It's not a good thing.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      I don't see how the abuses in the current system make it less chaotic. Regardless of whether I like or hate the specifics of a topic where a legally dubious mechanism was used to accomplish it, I hate the concept that both parties abuse and mis-use the governmental mechanisms to accomplish what they want.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  No rational person gives a damn what some guys who died 200 years ago would have thought about our present.
  - cvwright 4y ago
    No intelligent person thinks that we got 250 years of relative peace and prosperity by random luck.
    - xxpor 4y ago
      I don't consider 1860-1964 to be relatively peaceful.
      - _-david-_ 4y ago
        A war every now and again is relatively peaceful.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > No intelligent person thinks that we got 250 years of relative peace and prosperity by randon luck Yes, to the extent that the US had more peace and prosperity than, say, European states, most intelligent people with even modest knowledge attribute that not to random chance but to three major factors: (1) The Pacific Ocean, (2) The Atlantic Ocean, (3) The extremely small number of remotely near-peer powers that have ever existed not separated from the US by (1) or (2).
      - cvwright 4y ago
        Which of course explains why the rest of the Americas have also been so peaceful and prosperous.
        dragonwriter 4y ago
        > Which of course explains why the rest of the Americas have also been so peaceful and prosperous. The rest of the Americas benefit from (1) and (2), but most other countries have done less well with (3), in large part due to the US, which has had its “peaceful” hands in much of the conflict in the hemisphere.
- nikanj 4y ago
  I think the Founding Fathers pictured the government as being democrats and republicans versus problems, not democrats versus republicans.
  - advisedwang 4y ago
    They didn't even intend for a party system to take hold
    - zerocrates 4y ago
      Famously the original presidential election rules don't really work in the face of partisanship and President-VP tickets and they quickly were replaced.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > Famously the original presidential election rules don't really work in the face of partisanship and President-VP tickets and they quickly were replaced. Arguably, the main problem with the original rules was bullet voting in the electoral college; if they voted with preference ballots with winner elimination, instead of bullet ballots, having the second place be the VP would work well, and produce less incumbent protection even with an equally strong party system than the actual replacement system of separate election, which produced President-VP tickets.
        zerocrates 4y ago
        The 12th Amendment enshrined tickets, certainly, but they were already present by the election of 1800.
  - BitwiseFool 4y ago
    I remember reading about "factions" in the Federalist papers and I have a feeling that the Founding Fathers knew such partisanship was bound to arise. And indeed, it arose very early during George Washington's presidency. I don't think the development of political parties would have caught them by surprise, especially because many of them wound up joining them as time went on.
- runnerup 4y ago
  Or constant flip-flopping. That said, I do feel like we have hugely eroded its protections. It's not worth quite as much when it's just blatantly ignored (Andrew Jackson) or absurdly interpreted (civil asset forfeiture[0]). 0: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6918&context=jclc https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewconten... (1997)
- ISL 4y ago
  It is a feature. The Constitution defines a series of feedback loops with different time-constants: House: 2 yr President: 4 yr Senate: 6 yr President-term-limit: 8 yr Supreme-Court justice: ~16 years (per Google for average term) Constitutional Amendment: Hard. ~13.5 years between updates, potentially infinite duration. (231 years since Bill of Rights was added, 17 amendments since then) Each of these allows for differing response-times to a changing world. If you're a control-theory engineer, you might view Congress and the President as a PID loop, where the President is P, the House is D, and the Senate is I. The goal of the Constitution is to ascertain what the people want, in aggregate. This series of cascaded loops helps to serve that purpose.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Some difficulty is not a bug, but the current amount of difficulty was probably not intended. Most of the drafters understood that it was important for a government's founding document to strike a balance between two unsustainable positions: immutability (leading to a sort of tyranny of the old and dead) and excessive mutability (leading to short-term thinking and political instability). Our current approach to amending the constitution has favored the former position, to poor effect.
  - nathanaldensr 4y ago
    How?
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      How what?
- stormbrew 4y ago
  When one side wants things to change and the other side wants things to "stay the same" (in order to deconstruct them), the current state of affairs is one side having the upper hand. The US founding fathers were so worried about a tyranny of the majority they built a system where a tyranny of the minority was likely to come to pass.
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > When one side wants things to change and the other side wants things to "stay the same" You've misdescribed the sides. Most of the time in the US, one side wants to impose something on everyone and the other side doesn't want to be imposed on. Maybe the root of the problem is the idea that the only way to have "change" is to impose your views on everyone.
- joshuamorton 4y ago
  Yes, because it leaves constitutional meaning up, not up to the people, but up to the whims of the supreme court. The easiest way to amend the constitution is to hold or pack the supreme court. That is dysfunctional. An easier to amend constitution, that better reflected the people's will, would likely reduce political polarization, as it would be possible to actually pass national laws that have 60 or 70% support.
  - nathanaldensr 4y ago
    The Constitution does not represent the People's will; it represents the States' will. Amendments are not passed by popular vote. The Constitution is not a human rights document; it is a document created specifically to allow the States to agree on certain baseline rights and expectations.
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      Yes, this is a bug, not a feature. A government that privileges certain arbitrary subdivisions over the citizenry is not great, and there's a reason that while many parts of the US constitution have been copied, that one hasn't.
      - jakeogh 4y ago
        Boundaries, states in this case, but it's a general principal, are exactly what give the people within them self-determination.
        joshuamorton 4y ago
        Only if those boundaries are individually self-governing! And they are not, since California and New York cannot outlaw handguns due to the influence of Wyoming and Idaho. And as soon as you say "well the voters in Wyoming and Idaho deserve...", you've dropped any pretense of the internal boundaries mattering, because we're now just talking about federal representation, where those citizens have disproportionately large representation.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  It absolutely is a feature. The government already has tons of power and there are few policies that everyone agrees on. No wonder we dont have new amendments.
rwmj 4y ago
https://archive.ph/PXhv8 https://archive.ph/PXhv8
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ggm 4y ago
A two sided story and I think they succeed in unpacking aspects of the two sides. I believe the most likely constitutional change attempts in the short term would be libertarian revisionist windback and amplification of states rights. Reproductive rights would be next but I suspect is less likely to get up because of the impending shift in power balance in government. The revisionist thing, is to me likely because it's like the supreme court stacking and vote shenanigans already seen by the GOP. It's an easy sell to the state governments and wider republican voter.
golemotron 4y ago
The alternative is a Constitutional Convention. Considering that each state would have equal representation, I can't imagine anyone on the Left liking that idea.
- bena 4y ago
  The alternative is basically the same thing. It takes proportionally just as many states to call a Constitutional Convention as it does to propose an Amendment. You're not getting around 2/3s. And once an Amendment is proposed, it still takes 3/4 of the states ratifying it in some manner. The mechanisms are slightly different, but the numbers are the same.
- zuminator 4y ago
  I was disappointed that the article didn't elaborate on this possibility. The possibility of a Convention of States [0] looms closer than many realize [1]. Only 34 states are needed call the Convention. Although only 19 have officially voted in favor so far, it's believed that the potential number may be higher if slightly different but equivalent provisions are counted. Given a charismatic enough President whose party controls most of the statehouses, getting over the 34 vote threshold is not impossible. Depending on your political leanings, the possibility could be either thrilling or dire. [2] [0] https://conventionofstates.com/ https://conventionofstates.com/ [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/closer-than-most-people-realize-alarm-over-gop-plot-to-drastically-change-the-constitution/ar-AA123ZIR https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/closer-than-most-peo... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/19/conservative-supreme-court-amend-constitution https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/19/conser...
  - jessaustin 4y ago
    You're absolutely right; this could happen at any time. For instance, when the midterm election of an uninspiring administration coincides with recession and rising oil prices... Inevitably, the first amendment to come out of such a circus will govern who can use which public restroom.
akomtu 4y ago
What are the amendements that they want to pass, but cannot?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- advisedwang 4y ago
  Some examples: * Equal rights ammendment * DC representation * Abolish electoral college * one person one vote * End the death penalty * Campaign finance reform
- jfengel 4y ago
  The Equal Rights Amendment would have been nice. A Supreme Court member did say that without it, the Constitution does not prohibit discrimination based on sex. There are certain rights that are broadly popular, such as the right to birth control and the right to be gay, which are currently only protected by Supreme Court judgment. A member of that court explicitly called for reconsidering them. They are so broadly accepted that nobody even does polling for them, but there is so little chance of passing an amendment to protect them that nobody is even trying.
  - prottog 4y ago
    You don't need a constitutional amendment -- just pass a law. If they're so broadly accepted, it shouldn't be difficult. > the right to birth control You mean the right to contraceptives paid for by the public, covered by insurance, or administered by people who may have sincerely-held religious beliefs against contraception? No state, Supreme Court judgments aside, forbids an adult from paying for birth control pills on their own prescribed by a doctor who sees it fit. > the right to be gay What? Obergefell requires states to grant and recognize marriages between two people of the same sex. That seems like a pretty narrow part of "being gay".
    - ausbah 4y ago
      inalienable rights shouldn't be subject to the whims of what most people want. sure that kicks the fan down the road by having to define what is an "inalienable right", but "mob rulel, "tyranny of the majority" whatever you like to call it shouldn't be a basis to deprive certain peoples of basic rights
johnthuss 4y ago
"Seventy-two per cent of Republicans think that the Constitution is basically fine as is; seventy-two per cent of Democrats disagree." Of course this has nothing to do the actual Constitution. It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. The optimist in me wants to believe that even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise and find a middle ground on many issues, conceding to the other side on one issue in order to get something for their side for another issue. That could be done without any changes to the Constitution. But alas, the middle ground has been lost.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  > even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise Not when refusing to compromise is your parties main platform.
  - nvahalik 4y ago
    > refusing to compromise Unfortunately the left has won in this regard. The left moves so hard and fast to the left that even the right can no longer "refuse to compromise." If they don't, they are bigots at worst and uncultured, out of touch imbeciles at best.
    - TremendousJudge 4y ago
      As somebody not from the US, the mainstream "left" seems very right wing. When compared to the rest of the world, there is no left wing political party in the United States.
      - johnthuss 4y ago
        Wow, please give some examples.
        PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        The US "left wing" party does not (collectively) support: * nationalized health insurance * higher upper marginal rate income taxes * expanded public transportation * higher corporate taxes * unions/employee members of corporate boards * longer parental leave * more vacation time These and many other policies are common across other democratic nations' left-ish parties, and are actual policy in many of those nations.
george-in-sd 4y ago
Russia and China recently amended their constitution to ensure their respective leaders can stay in power permanently. Having some unchangeable bedrock in a country seems very valuable as we are all vulnerable to tyrants at some point in history.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  There's no such thing as an unchangeable government. Even if there was, the US is certainly not one: we have lots of constitutional amendments (including ones that prevent exactly what you just said).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jimmytidey 4y ago
  I think I'd take the opposite lesson from these examples: if an individual gets sufficiently powerful, they will change the constitution irrespective of how much you formally considered it an 'unchangeable bedrock'.
  - prottog 4y ago
    Some constitutions, like that of the US, are designed to prevent any individual from amassing such power. The Russian and Chinese constitutions aren't in that same school.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    Yeah, but it's a lot harder.
- fuoqi 4y ago
  You are factually wrong about Russia. The new constitution removes the loophole used by Putin which restricted presidency of a single person by two consecutive terms. Thus in past he has used Medvedev as a seat warmer for one term, while holding most of the real power. Because it's a new constitution, his old terms got "reset" (it's quite debatable whether such reset is legitimate or not). In theory, after the new two terms he will not be able to get a third one and any future Russian president will be limited by two terms similarly to the US (well, unless of course the constitutions does not get changed again...). Also, you call the US constitution unchangeable? It's quite laughable. Not only there is a bunch of amendments, but real power structures have changed as well. Starting from the increased size and power of the federal government as opposed to what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers, following by the two terms restriction on presidents, and ending with the creation of the central banking system, which arguably goes against the spirit of the Constitution.
gjsman-1000 4y ago
I propose a constitutional amendment to ban political parties. ;) But seriously, that would be interesting. Our Founding Fathers never intended there to be this entrenchment of two parties. It would make polarization harder because, well... what are the sides? It would also force greater civic participation to know what candidates actually stand for, and not just at the federal level.
- johnthuss 4y ago
  I'm excited about Ranked Choice Voting [1]. If it was adopted in more races I think we would start to see much more variety on issues rather than being limited to just two viewpoints (i.e. increased third party participation). 1. https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV) https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)
  - arcticfox 4y ago
    I’m voting for a 3rd party candidate likely to be a spoiler for exactly this reason, to try to give the dominant party in my state the kick in the ass they need to implement some version of RCV. Even though I support the dominant party, I don’t support the lack of RCV in their wins and the outcomes that causes, so this is my protest vote to put it on their agenda.
- johannes1234321 4y ago
  Even if you forbid parties there will be some form of alliances of people running for office. Especially if media focusses on the "big names" in many electoral districts the local candidate is less relevant than who they team up with. Having parties makes that aspect documented and allows for laws and other regulation on finances and procedures around that.
- bena 4y ago
  George Washington intended that. But realistically, it's the nature of the beast. Call it whatever you want, you're going to get people with roughly aligned goals exercising their Constitutional right to peaceably assemble to pool their resources to enact legislation they want. "Ban political parties" is about as much of a thought out solution as "fix problems".
tptacek 4y ago
It's an interesting article and if you bounced off it because you had a visceral reaction to the premise, like I did at first, I'd recommend taking another whack at it. Jill Lepore, if you're not familiar with her work, is a historian with a reputation as a more rigorous version of people like Howard Zinn. I don't think it's a good article though. In particular, I don't think it coheres. It's about how the modern Constitution has become "un-amendable", but it spends a big chunk of the middle of the piece demonstrating the Constitution was never really all that amendable: successful amendments are extraordinarily rare, especially when they're about big-ticket issues. Our biggest structural changes occurred after an enormous civil war. There's a sort of obvious framing to the piece that the Constitution should be more fluid and easy to amend. I think 2022 is a very weird time to prioritize that. I'm not a doomer about US politics, but they're not in a very good state right now. Lepore talks about national abortion, immigration, and firearms policy and how they'd be impacted by a more readily-amended Constitution, but I think she should take a wider view and look at things like how speech and free association would be impacted. I'm a liberal, in a cohort of people this article portrays as atypically open to changing the Constitution, and I think the rigidity of the Constitution is probably it's greatest strength.
- shin_lao 4y ago
  Totally agreed. The constitution should be hard to amend, its purpose is to give stability. That you disagree with parts of it is one thing, but remember that if it's easy to amend, there's no guaranteed it will be in a way you like.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  >"Lepore talks about national abortion, immigration, and firearms policy and how they'd be impacted by a more readily-amended Constitution, but I think she should take a wider view and look at things like how speech and free association would be impacted." I feel like the author is looking at using amendments as a way to implement legislation that is permanent. Our Federal constitution is fairly concise, whereas some State constitutions are so easy and readily amendable that legislation gets codified in almost every session [1]. The challenge with doing this is that the constitution itself converges into just another body of law. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Alabama Edit: Instead of "permanent", "decisively" would be more appropriate. A constitution that can easily be amended can just as easily be un-amended. A response to this comment said "way to settle national controversies" which seems far more fitting than what I originally wrote.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Controversial policy cannot and should not become amendments. There is very little that everyone agrees that the government should do and the government is already very powerful. That's why constitutional amendments are so rare.
- prottog 4y ago
  Absolutely! The constitution by its nature should dictate things that the overwhelming majority of people agree on, not the usual fifty percent plus one person slim margin that a lot of controversial policies end up being.
  - ausbah 4y ago
    there are some things that no amount of a majority ever makes moral
    - prottog 4y ago
      You are right, though of course no single person is the authority on what the ultimate moral truth is, so this is perhaps a non-operative statement when it comes to governance.
    - abigail95 4y ago
      if you think this, democracy is not the type of government you want to live in. given how poorly the alternatives have gone though, i think i'll be staying put.
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    > Absolutely! The constitution by its nature should dictate things that the overwhelming majority of people agree on, not the usual fifty percent plus one person slim margin that a lot of controversial policies end up being. You'd be surprised with how little people agreed with the Bill of Rights then and even now.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Controversial policy cannot and should not become amendments. The problem with making the Constitution hard to amend as the means of preventing that is that it stops new constitutional provisions that are controversial from being added, but it doesn’t prevent old constitutional provisions that are controversial among the people currently governed by them from remaining. This is why Jefferson thought that laws, including constitutions, needed to automatically sunset to prevent the living being ruled from beyond the grave by the dead.
machina_ex_deus 4y ago
I think the single biggest vulnerability of the constitution, which they had no chance of predicting, is mass media and the way it changed the dynamics of politics. Today it is a mediacracy undergoing a violent phase transition from tv and newspapers traditional media control to social media and search algorithms. At the root of the problem is that the media is owned by very few oligopolies, and they answer to no one. The potential power from controlling them outshadows their profits.
- jaybrendansmith 4y ago
  This. The propaganda of the media, both intentional and accidental, is impacting our Democracy more than I would have thought possible. Being a critical thinker, I made the classic error of assuming that others could not easily be duped, and would actually do their own research on the issues. Boy was I wrong. We are all entitled to our own opinions, but we cannot survive as a Democracy if the citizenry believe they are entitled to their own FACTS. This is truly the challenge of the present, and I feel we are going to shortly lose our Democracy to bad actors who are more than willing to use our own intellectual weaknesses against us.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - abigail95 4y ago
    Democracy is majority rule. Democracy is nothing about facts or opinions. You are the one impacting democracy by saying we cannot survive if we keep current democratic rules. You can have the best argument for improving society by limiting who is allowed to vote, what things you're allowed to vote on, and what facts you are allowed to talk about. It can even be a true argument that would make everyone better off. But if it's less democracy, then it's anti-democratic. If you care about minorities and people generally, that's good, if you care about democracy, that's bad. The only way you can lose a democracy is by voting to stop voting, or voting to stop other people from voting. The intelligence of the population has nothing to do with it.
aaron695 4y ago
OrvalWintermute 4y ago
I consider myself a patriotic American, but I don't know that the government even follows the Constitution in the first place. NSA has been hoovering up data of innocent Americans, and the IC in general, works with foreign ICs, to target Americans without reasonable cause, just blanket vacuuming. Much of the govt, including federal, state, and local, has been purchasing private data without a warrant signed by a judge. Or they tap incoming fiber. Am expecting the next shoe to drop around traffic buying, not just location, without a warrant. Civil forfeiture is rife, violating the 5th and 14th. It is mainly targeting minorities Likewise, traffic cameras proliferation, mainly targeting minorities. US Govt, state govts are actively pressuring BigTech to censor, causing them to become state "actors", and "agents of the State" themselves We're coming off multiple scandals of govt employees criminally pursuing regionally unpopular politicos and their allies, but escaping sanction through regionalized trials Large govt decrees ended rent collection, closed businesses, and did untold damage to the US. I can understand this, but not the lack of compensation to all the landlords that have been ruined by this. The problem we have is, the US Constitution isn't being followed in the first place.
- prottog 4y ago
  Indeed, why bother amending something that isn't being adhered to in the first place.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  > The problem we have is, the US Constitution isn't being followed in the first place. I hear this pretty frequently and often and I wonder, perhaps the constitution is inadequate to the task of governing the US in the 21st century? It seems like no one can agree on what it means - I'm told that we need highly educated legal scholars to properly interpret it before the Supreme Court, but there seems to be less consensus on it than there was in previous centuries.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Yes, it might not need to be re-written so much as it needs to be re-read.
dbrueck 4y ago
I like the idea of the Constitution as a living document, updated over time, but I'm also really glad it's so hard to amend. It's not perfect, but there are usually extremely good reasons for pretty much everything in there, and so if we're going to change something, it seems like a prerequisite should be a deep understanding of why something was put in there in the first place. Take the Electoral College. It's en vogue right now to talk about abolishing it (it's also popular to talk about it as if it's sacred, and in both cases, it seems a lot of people's feelings about it are based on whether or not their favorite candidate won a recent election, but I digress). If people want to change or even remove it, that's fine, but they should first have a very deep understanding of why it is how it is - an understanding that's a bit deeper than they got in their high school U.S. Government class. If you go back and read the Federalist papers, for example, you can't help but come away with a profound admiration for how much thought people put into these things, even if you don't agree with their conclusions. There's just a ton of wisdom and thought there. If you can come up with something better, great, but among other things you really should have to articulate their original reasoning and make a good case for how their concerns aren't relevant now, or that your idea is a better set of tradeoffs, etc. Just saying that the EC isn't fair falls way short of that - yeah, they thought about stuff like that, a lot. Another reason why it's good to have a hard-to-modify Constitution right now is because we are currently pretty terrible at negotiating politically and building any sort of consensus - the hard work of bridge building is often skipped, and so more legislation is passing with the slimmest of majorities, and each presidency seems to do more via executive action. (And to whoever is tempted to respond with, "yes, the X party is terrible at this" needs to take a closer look at their preferred party, because both of the 2 major parties are terrible at it, just often in different ways. But they are both corrupt and broken to the core, at least on the national level) If we can't pull back from this and get to a more sane working and collaboration environment, the "unamenadability" of the Constitution might be the thing that saves us (or, maybe, the thing that delays our drive off the cliff by a few years at least).
- sokoloff 4y ago
  See also: Chesterton's Fence. https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/ https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/ There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
pc2g4d 4y ago
Good article, appreciated the charts, though the commentary on them seemed a bit selective. I was disappointed though that the case wasn't made for the actual cause of the recent unamendability (since 1971, as they say). Why did opposition to abortion make ALL amendments unpassable?
kelseyfrog 4y ago
Anyone who advocates for making the constitution more amendable should find a group to sit down and play a game of Nomic[1] until completion. It is the fastest way to internalize the meta-strategy around making it easier or more difficult to make amendments. Is there a disconnect between the current political ruleset[constitution] and the way the political game is played? Yes, but probably not for the reasons you think. 1. https://nomic.fandom.com/wiki/Rules https://nomic.fandom.com/wiki/Rules
D13Fd 4y ago
The constitution is perfectly easy to amend when we have consensus. The problem is achieving consensus. I don’t think making the constitution easier to amend would make it any easier to achieve national consensus.
- int_19h 4y ago
  The Constitution requires 3/4 of state legislatures to ratify any amendment. Given the extreme disparities between states in terms of population, it's entirely possible for something to be supported by >80% of the people - I'd say that reasonably qualifies as "consensus" - but still unable to be ratified. Conversely, it's possible for the small states representing less than 25% of the overall population to band together and ratify any constitutional amendment - and it would be binding on the rest of the country. It really is a broken system through and through.
  - floxy 4y ago
    >it's possible for the small states representing less than 25% of the overall population to band together and ratify any constitutional amendment I took the 2020 Census population figures from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... ...and came up with the 38 smallest states (75% of 50) had a total population of 134 million or 40.5% of the U.S. population; the largest 12 states had a combined population of 197 million (59.5% of the U.S. population).
    - int_19h 4y ago
      I'm accounting for indirection via state legislatures, since it's the latter who ratify by simple majority - so the MPs in the state legislature who vote to ratify don't necessarily represent all the residents of that state (in fact, given the quirks of FPTP and tricks like gerrymandering, things can be ratified against popular majority in the state).
      - _-david-_ 4y ago
smitty1e 4y ago
Call an Article V Convention per https://conventionofstates.com/ https://conventionofstates.com/ and belie The Famous Article. Americans will line up behind fiscal reform and a rejection of our globalist overlords.
- jakeogh 4y ago
  I'm not excited about it (and I agree with your last 5 words). It's too easy to subvert. We have so much history, see the SC link I put in the thread. The states are a much safer venue.
  - smitty1e 4y ago
    I disagree. The states are so many license plate stamping operations. Progressivism is a Tower if Babel.
chiefalchemist 4y ago
> An unamendable constitution is not an American tradition. U.S. state constitutions are much easier to amend than the federal Constitution. This is the problem and the solution. The more power and control that's been forfeited to the Federal gov, the less and less effective that entity has become. Yet the less effective it becomes the more push there is to give more power to Washington DC. The solution is simple. Return - at least temporarily - to more of a pre New Deal mindset.
gen220 4y ago
In the US, we used to amend constitutions fairly regularly (at the Federal, State levels, but I’m most familiar with Federal and New York), especially through WWII. With a few exceptions (the prohibition is the biggest one that springs to mind), the trend line has generally been progressive. We stopped making meaningful changes around the 1960s, read into that what we may. Regardless, our governmental institutions have proven to be fundamentally unmalleable (brittle?) in the last 60 years, which is a huge break from the norm. The only other period comparable to this was the three generations leading into the American Civil War, which went 60 years without a federal amendment. But that period saw tons of “progress” at the state level, whereas this period has none. I don’t have any conclusions, just food for thought.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  The 11th and 16th amendments are ones that I argue shouldn't exist. They were ratified in reaction to Supreme court cases that respectively denied state immunity and federal powers.
- mynameishere 4y ago
  It was progressives who outlawed booze. Don't retcon that word to mean "whatever I approve of today."
  - gen220 4y ago
    I think we’re using different definitions of “progressive”. I’m using the dictionary definition “favoring liberal ideas”. I think you’re referring to big-P “Progressive”? Regardless of whether the temperance movement identified itself as “progressive” or which political party germinated it, prohibition is not a liberal idea: restricting the liberty to consume alcohol is not an expansion of freedom. The policy was bundled into the nominally “Progressive” platform of the 20th Century, but that doesn’t make it a progressive policy. North Korea and the Congo are nominally Democratic Republics, but their claiming the name doesn’t change the definition of democracy or republic.
chris_wot 4y ago
One of the reasons I like the Australian Constitution is because it pretty much runs on convention. Our top leader is the Prime Minister. The PM is not even mentioned in our constitution.
MarinaTownson 4y ago
cm2187 4y ago
Author complains these amendments cannot be passed because of political polarisation. That polarisation is the very reason why those amendments shouldn't pass. You can only change the constitution if there is a consensus, by design. If you want to make a change that half the country is dead against, all the systems of balance of power will work against it (two chambers - one by headcount the other by states, filibuster, presidential veto, high threshold of consensus for changing the constitution), as it should. And the constitution should be the hardest of all paths, since it is senior to all others.
- m-p-3 4y ago
  So one way or another, the population will reach its breaking point, and the Constitution will change.
  - epicureanideal 4y ago
    If a population not significantly a majority of the country “reaches a breaking point”, that sounds like it would not go well.
    - rybosome 4y ago
      It won’t. This is going to be a decade of strife and instability.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > This is going to be a decade of strife and instability. “decade” is quite optimistic.
  - UberFly 4y ago
    No, more like one of the broken parts will create their own Constitution.
    - mlindner 4y ago
jdkee 4y ago
A commentator on a Federalist Society conference this evening mentioned this project: https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/special-projects/constitution-drafting-project https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/special-projects/... Interesting to read the varying contentions made by the respective groups on how to change the existing U.S. constitutional structure.
zajio1am 4y ago
Well, US constitution is still more amendable than EU constitutional treaties, which require unanimous agreement of all states.
- bigbacaloa 4y ago
  Not as bad as someone ele is one of the dumbest lines of argument.
  - jakeogh 4y ago
    Comparison is "dumb"? Is it now a logical fallacy? Better ban history 101. No more comparison. I'll just... uh... compare things against some theoretical ideal I make up. Maybe get some psychological warfare experts and brand it? Historyaboutisim?
    - grecy 4y ago
      > No more comparison There's no need for a strawman. The comment didn't say "no more comparison", it said comparing to the lowest of the low is dumb. I agree. If you're a sporting team, is it productive to say "We're better than the team on the bottom of the ladder" ? (Even though you're second-last) When you're a country, it's equally as pointless to say "We're doing better than <China/North Korea/Central African Republic/etc> The only reason a person would ever make a comparison "down the ladder" is because they want to paint themselves in a better light. They have no interest in improving anything, and when they spend enough time looking down the ladder, that's exactly where they'll go. Sporting teams, countries and people who are interested in improving make comparisons "up" - it gives them something to strive for. Do you want to improve?
      - knewter 4y ago
        I'd wager half of the people that would make the argument he's replying to believe that the EU government is kind of alright. Consequently, to those people, it's an excellent reply. Maybe it wasn't for you.
jonnycomputer 4y ago
If at times the Constitution is not responsive enough, it does have one big benefit: it is almost impossible to change it to do something like, allow a President to serve life tenure, and yet we see a number of places where such constitutional changes were pushed through by those who would be dictators, or sought more powers as executive(Russia's in 2020, China in 2018, Ecuador in 2016, Turkey in 2017, etc.
- crystalmeph 4y ago
  It does seem silly that someone would advocate making the supreme law of the land easier to change at the same time there is widespread concern about the government becoming more authoritarian, or even tipping into dictatorship. It screams unintended consequences.
- pjc50 4y ago
  However, it's possible to change the people who interpret the constitution to achieve the desired result. (See Poland)
bluecheese452 4y ago
There are a lot of comments here about how the founding fathers intended this or that as if they were a unified group of people with a single vision. This is far from the truth. The original attempt at a governing document wasn’t the constitution, it was the articles of confederation, which failed. The constitution was a compromise. Some wanted a king, some wanted direct democracy and there were people in every shade in the middle. I read an autobiography of Benjamin Franklin today. He spoke highly of a religious sect that refused to write their laws down. They felt it was absurd to think that they had come up with the perfect laws that would govern all future generations. If they wrote it down, future generations would consider it sacred and would dogmatically enshrine those views rather than improving upon them. Ironic that we do the same to him.
sn0w_crash 4y ago
So it’s functioning as expected and as intended. These people don’t seem to understand that.
- topspin 4y ago
  > These people don’t seem to understand that. These people are operating under the false premise that their views are representative of some consensus that should be ratified in law. In truth the consensus they imagine is merely the prevailing group-think of their own preferred cohort.
kepler1 4y ago
I wish people (of both sides) who declare "the system is broken" etc would seriously ask themselves, is it because your particular issue didn't go your way? How would we run a stable country if that were the principle to follow? There was the line "it may backfire on you sooner than you thought" and I think there's some good caution in that statement. Take your own argument out of the picture -- would you be happy for the principle by which you're suggesting we operate be on the other foot and the majority be in the hands of your opponent? I come to think that democracy is, more than anything, learning how to lose gracefully and without a revolution. So many people now seem to believe, if I lose, it must be broken and deserves a revolution. On both sides.
jessaustin 4y ago
One had high hopes for TFA, only to discover another tired hagiography of wise "Framers" whose perfect work (which mentions, let us recall, both "free Persons" and "other Persons") has been failed by its stupid unworthy subjects. Bullshit. The constitution was a conspiracy of rich assholes who were tired of state legislatures occasionally favoring the interests of poor farmers, workmen, and merchants over those of rich assholes. They rammed through the constitution, and never again had to worry about legislatures cancelling debts owed to them. Forget amendments. The whole rotten thing should have been thrown out in 1790, and in every year since then. If we have ever made any progress, it has been in spite of the constitution, not because of it.
- SaberTail 4y ago
  Yeah, exactly. There's so much propaganda in the USA depicting the constitution as some sort of inspired document written by enlightened men, and then most people don't bother reading beyond what they learned in school. One only need look at how undemocratic the constitution was. Only one federal office, the House of Representatives, was elected by the people (and at the time the constitution was written, only men with property could vote). The president and vice president are elected by an electoral college. Senators were elected by state legislatures. Supreme Court Judges are even further insulated from the people, being appointed by the President. "The People" had extremely little influence on the federal government, and it's only gotten marginally better since. Hopefully everyone understands how much the constitution did to protect the wealth of slave owners, since this is taught in schools. But it also made western land speculators richer by creating a government capable of exerting sufficient power over those western lands to open them up for settlement. It made the holders of revolutionary war debt richer by creating a government that could assume that debt and pay it off. It made owners and investors in manufacturing enterprises richer by creating a government that could protect industry with tariffs while keeping states from taxing the flow of goods or interfering with contracts. Every framer of the constitution belonged to at least one of these groups, and they benefited when it was ratified. The book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles Beard goes into great detail on this. It's out of copyright and freely available online: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Economic_Interpretation_of_the_Constitution_of_the_United_States https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Economic_Interpretation_of...
dblohm7 4y ago
Canada points and laughs.
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
United States unamendable national and state borders are also a factor. Whatever one thinks about Brexit, it allowed EU to continue with countries that are committed to EU and for UK to consider what's best for UK, including welcoming Hong Kong residents not enthusiastic about takeover by China. If California and Texas go their own way and borders between states are adjusted to accommodate red and blue area, maybe current system is all that is needed. CA and TX can be still part of Nato and have a free travel arrangement with each other, changes do not have to be extreme.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  > can be still part of Nato and have a free travel arrangement with each other, changes do not have to be extreme I've spent the last past decade pointing that out to people. People act like a state being separate from the US and independent is soooo absurd, logistically. But the US can still assist on a natural disaster just like it does in all of the Americas. Common defense can occur, as you point out. Visa and waivers could be easy. I always like to imagine what level of state tax would I tolerate if I was only paying income taxes to just California. Since California doesn't get much/anything back from the Federal Government from its remittances, I bet California wouldn't even need to raise its states taxes.
  - rhino369 4y ago
    It's absurd because Californian's aren't really a nationality in the way the British or French are. People talk about red states and blue states, but that's just the mix of rural/surburban/urban people in the state. Rural Californians are much more in common with rural Texans than with Los Angelenos. There is more cultural variance within just Spain than the entirety of the USA. We truly are one people. Ironically, calling for a USA that is just an common defense alliance with open trade borders is pretty much what conservatives want. They'll be happy to cut taxes, and let California experiment with what it wants.
    - yieldcrv 4y ago
      The counterpoint being that the cultural similarities aren't a line in the sand on being separate. There are plenty of places that are similar and separately sovereign. But let me make it less absurd to you: "Hey Republican House and Senate, trade offer: California gets sovereignty, you make the democrats lose 55 electoral college votes and essentially never have to hear from them ever again for all eternity" I honestly think they would bite.
bigbacaloa 4y ago
The US constitution is an antiquated document written by men who enslaved others. It contains no explicit right to privacy or protection from government surveillance. It does not establish a secular state (only the right to worship as one chooses, which is different) and it features an overly broad freedom of speech that facilitates the spread of misinformation and lies. it chooses the president by an indirect mechanism and it nowhere guarantees the right to vote. It needs to be rewritten completely but this is impossible because it is treated as a sacred text.
- floxy 4y ago
  The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
avereveard 4y ago
looks confusely at 1992's 27th amendment
emptyparadise 4y ago
> It’s lasted more than two hundred years and hasn’t been amended in any meaningful way since 1971, more than half a century ago. 1971 again the baader-meinhof phenomenon is following me everywhere i go
betwixthewires 4y ago
> hasn’t been amended in any meaningful way since 1971 Already inserting subjectivity into the discussion to support it's premise. I'm not going to like this article. > It’s always been hard to amend the Constitution. But, in the past half century, it’s become much harder Yes, systems find stability, turbulence finds a local minima. Of course a lot more happened early on than later, if you expect a flat, linear, normal distribution of changes to something over time you don't know enough about what you're talking about to be talking about it. Maybe the constitution has lasted 200 years precisely because it is hard to modify. A constitution should be harder to change than just passing any old piece of legislation. If it's just as easy as passing any law it's not a constitution, just another law. If you think it's hard to amend the constitution, just wait until a constitutional convention convenes in DC in the next 5-10 years, we are almost there, something that hasn't happened since the Continental Congress, it's going to happen soon and it's going to be very interesting. I hope they ratify the equal apportionment amendment.
ShredKazoo 4y ago
The notion of amending the constitution in response to political dysfunction is a bit paradoxical, because dysfunctional politics are upstream of the amendment process. Dysfunctional politics will likely mean a dysfunctional amendment. Some thoughts on resolving the paradox: * If the constitution had been easier to amend in the 90s and 00s, perhaps some wise politicians would've seen whispers of the current dysfunction and passed an amendment to preempt it. Maybe there could be a "department of the future" that's trying to figure out how things could go off the rails and what amendments we could pass in advance to help. * If amendment was done according to an entirely different process (e.g. sortition https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/case_study_america_in_one_room https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/case_study_america_in_on... -- essentially a citizen's assembly), that could solve the paradox. Especially if the new process was something slower and somehow less prone to dysfunction. It'd be like an additional check & balance. Sadly, we don't have much experience with sortition or other very different processes, and it seems risky to entrust them with something as important as the constitution. Maybe the rule could simply be that the legislature is required to vote on whether to adopt the changes that come out of the sortition process?
jongjong 4y ago
People in power today are too corrupt to be trusted with amending the constitution. Most amendments have only served big financial interests by stifling free-market competition. Ideally, we should roll-back the entire legal system to how it was in the 1900s.
skymast 4y ago
The 2nd Amendment does not apply to semi-auto rifles, nor does it apply to bolt action rifles, pistols, or revolvers. The 2nd Amendment RESTRICTS GOVERNMENT. The technology of the firearm is irrelevant. The restrictions on government remain the same, regardless of the firearm. The Second Amendment was not written to grant permission for citizens to own and bear firearms. It forbids government interference in the right to keep and bear arms, period. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
IIRC, the first constitution placed more power in the hands of the Demos, which would have allowed more modifications. The framers scrapped it and churned out a second constitution with more limited powers for the people, partly to make it harder to amend.
TurkishPoptart 4y ago
The best thing about the Constitution is that it is very hard to amend. That protects it from the influence of short-sighted radicals who want to implement selfish policies at others' expense.
helloworld11 4y ago
TLDR: "All this democracy stuff would work so much better if I could just circumvent all those backwoods idiots who don't vote and think similarly to my clearly superior urban, progressive sensibilities"

135 points by psteitz 4y ago

At this point, is the difficulty in amending the Constitution actually a bug? Seeing the polarization, I could see our Founding Fathers deciding that's actually a feature right now because it prevents one side from getting the upper hand and telling the rest to stuff it.

giantg2 4y ago
I mostly agree. At this point though, each side tries to circumvent it anyways by at least stretching "interpretations", and the courts tend to allow it.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  I'd rather have that than have the constitution easier to amend. Otherwise the whipping back-and-forth on constitutional issues as each party takes power would be extremely destabilizing and legally chaotic. It already is; don't make it worse.
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    Endlessly bending the structures of law just makes them snap that much harder when they break under the pressure. It's not a good thing.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    I don't see how the abuses in the current system make it less chaotic. Regardless of whether I like or hate the specifics of a topic where a legally dubious mechanism was used to accomplish it, I hate the concept that both parties abuse and mis-use the governmental mechanisms to accomplish what they want.
jeffbee 4y ago
No rational person gives a damn what some guys who died 200 years ago would have thought about our present.
- cvwright 4y ago
  No intelligent person thinks that we got 250 years of relative peace and prosperity by random luck.
  - xxpor 4y ago
    I don't consider 1860-1964 to be relatively peaceful.
    - _-david-_ 4y ago
      A war every now and again is relatively peaceful.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > No intelligent person thinks that we got 250 years of relative peace and prosperity by randon luck Yes, to the extent that the US had more peace and prosperity than, say, European states, most intelligent people with even modest knowledge attribute that not to random chance but to three major factors: (1) The Pacific Ocean, (2) The Atlantic Ocean, (3) The extremely small number of remotely near-peer powers that have ever existed not separated from the US by (1) or (2).
    - cvwright 4y ago
      Which of course explains why the rest of the Americas have also been so peaceful and prosperous.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > Which of course explains why the rest of the Americas have also been so peaceful and prosperous. The rest of the Americas benefit from (1) and (2), but most other countries have done less well with (3), in large part due to the US, which has had its “peaceful” hands in much of the conflict in the hemisphere.
nikanj 4y ago
I think the Founding Fathers pictured the government as being democrats and republicans versus problems, not democrats versus republicans.
- advisedwang 4y ago
  They didn't even intend for a party system to take hold
  - zerocrates 4y ago
    Famously the original presidential election rules don't really work in the face of partisanship and President-VP tickets and they quickly were replaced.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Famously the original presidential election rules don't really work in the face of partisanship and President-VP tickets and they quickly were replaced. Arguably, the main problem with the original rules was bullet voting in the electoral college; if they voted with preference ballots with winner elimination, instead of bullet ballots, having the second place be the VP would work well, and produce less incumbent protection even with an equally strong party system than the actual replacement system of separate election, which produced President-VP tickets.
      - zerocrates 4y ago
        The 12th Amendment enshrined tickets, certainly, but they were already present by the election of 1800.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  I remember reading about "factions" in the Federalist papers and I have a feeling that the Founding Fathers knew such partisanship was bound to arise. And indeed, it arose very early during George Washington's presidency. I don't think the development of political parties would have caught them by surprise, especially because many of them wound up joining them as time went on.
runnerup 4y ago
Or constant flip-flopping. That said, I do feel like we have hugely eroded its protections. It's not worth quite as much when it's just blatantly ignored (Andrew Jackson) or absurdly interpreted (civil asset forfeiture[0]). 0: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6918&context=jclc https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewconten... (1997)
ISL 4y ago
It is a feature. The Constitution defines a series of feedback loops with different time-constants: House: 2 yr President: 4 yr Senate: 6 yr President-term-limit: 8 yr Supreme-Court justice: ~16 years (per Google for average term) Constitutional Amendment: Hard. ~13.5 years between updates, potentially infinite duration. (231 years since Bill of Rights was added, 17 amendments since then) Each of these allows for differing response-times to a changing world. If you're a control-theory engineer, you might view Congress and the President as a PID loop, where the President is P, the House is D, and the Senate is I. The goal of the Constitution is to ascertain what the people want, in aggregate. This series of cascaded loops helps to serve that purpose.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
woodruffw 4y ago
Some difficulty is not a bug, but the current amount of difficulty was probably not intended. Most of the drafters understood that it was important for a government's founding document to strike a balance between two unsustainable positions: immutability (leading to a sort of tyranny of the old and dead) and excessive mutability (leading to short-term thinking and political instability). Our current approach to amending the constitution has favored the former position, to poor effect.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  How?
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    How what?
stormbrew 4y ago
When one side wants things to change and the other side wants things to "stay the same" (in order to deconstruct them), the current state of affairs is one side having the upper hand. The US founding fathers were so worried about a tyranny of the majority they built a system where a tyranny of the minority was likely to come to pass.
- pdonis 4y ago
  > When one side wants things to change and the other side wants things to "stay the same" You've misdescribed the sides. Most of the time in the US, one side wants to impose something on everyone and the other side doesn't want to be imposed on. Maybe the root of the problem is the idea that the only way to have "change" is to impose your views on everyone.
joshuamorton 4y ago
Yes, because it leaves constitutional meaning up, not up to the people, but up to the whims of the supreme court. The easiest way to amend the constitution is to hold or pack the supreme court. That is dysfunctional. An easier to amend constitution, that better reflected the people's will, would likely reduce political polarization, as it would be possible to actually pass national laws that have 60 or 70% support.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  The Constitution does not represent the People's will; it represents the States' will. Amendments are not passed by popular vote. The Constitution is not a human rights document; it is a document created specifically to allow the States to agree on certain baseline rights and expectations.
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    Yes, this is a bug, not a feature. A government that privileges certain arbitrary subdivisions over the citizenry is not great, and there's a reason that while many parts of the US constitution have been copied, that one hasn't.
    - jakeogh 4y ago
      Boundaries, states in this case, but it's a general principal, are exactly what give the people within them self-determination.
      - joshuamorton 4y ago
        Only if those boundaries are individually self-governing! And they are not, since California and New York cannot outlaw handguns due to the influence of Wyoming and Idaho. And as soon as you say "well the voters in Wyoming and Idaho deserve...", you've dropped any pretense of the internal boundaries mattering, because we're now just talking about federal representation, where those citizens have disproportionately large representation.
nonethewiser 4y ago
It absolutely is a feature. The government already has tons of power and there are few policies that everyone agrees on. No wonder we dont have new amendments.

rwmj 4y ago

https://archive.ph/PXhv8 https://archive.ph/PXhv8

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ggm 4y ago

A two sided story and I think they succeed in unpacking aspects of the two sides. I believe the most likely constitutional change attempts in the short term would be libertarian revisionist windback and amplification of states rights. Reproductive rights would be next but I suspect is less likely to get up because of the impending shift in power balance in government. The revisionist thing, is to me likely because it's like the supreme court stacking and vote shenanigans already seen by the GOP. It's an easy sell to the state governments and wider republican voter.

golemotron 4y ago

The alternative is a Constitutional Convention. Considering that each state would have equal representation, I can't imagine anyone on the Left liking that idea.

bena 4y ago
The alternative is basically the same thing. It takes proportionally just as many states to call a Constitutional Convention as it does to propose an Amendment. You're not getting around 2/3s. And once an Amendment is proposed, it still takes 3/4 of the states ratifying it in some manner. The mechanisms are slightly different, but the numbers are the same.
zuminator 4y ago
I was disappointed that the article didn't elaborate on this possibility. The possibility of a Convention of States [0] looms closer than many realize [1]. Only 34 states are needed call the Convention. Although only 19 have officially voted in favor so far, it's believed that the potential number may be higher if slightly different but equivalent provisions are counted. Given a charismatic enough President whose party controls most of the statehouses, getting over the 34 vote threshold is not impossible. Depending on your political leanings, the possibility could be either thrilling or dire. [2] [0] https://conventionofstates.com/ https://conventionofstates.com/ [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/closer-than-most-people-realize-alarm-over-gop-plot-to-drastically-change-the-constitution/ar-AA123ZIR https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/closer-than-most-peo... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/19/conservative-supreme-court-amend-constitution https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/19/conser...
- jessaustin 4y ago
  You're absolutely right; this could happen at any time. For instance, when the midterm election of an uninspiring administration coincides with recession and rising oil prices... Inevitably, the first amendment to come out of such a circus will govern who can use which public restroom.

akomtu 4y ago

What are the amendements that they want to pass, but cannot?

deleted 4y ago
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advisedwang 4y ago
Some examples: * Equal rights ammendment * DC representation * Abolish electoral college * one person one vote * End the death penalty * Campaign finance reform
jfengel 4y ago
The Equal Rights Amendment would have been nice. A Supreme Court member did say that without it, the Constitution does not prohibit discrimination based on sex. There are certain rights that are broadly popular, such as the right to birth control and the right to be gay, which are currently only protected by Supreme Court judgment. A member of that court explicitly called for reconsidering them. They are so broadly accepted that nobody even does polling for them, but there is so little chance of passing an amendment to protect them that nobody is even trying.
- prottog 4y ago
  You don't need a constitutional amendment -- just pass a law. If they're so broadly accepted, it shouldn't be difficult. > the right to birth control You mean the right to contraceptives paid for by the public, covered by insurance, or administered by people who may have sincerely-held religious beliefs against contraception? No state, Supreme Court judgments aside, forbids an adult from paying for birth control pills on their own prescribed by a doctor who sees it fit. > the right to be gay What? Obergefell requires states to grant and recognize marriages between two people of the same sex. That seems like a pretty narrow part of "being gay".
  - ausbah 4y ago
    inalienable rights shouldn't be subject to the whims of what most people want. sure that kicks the fan down the road by having to define what is an "inalienable right", but "mob rulel, "tyranny of the majority" whatever you like to call it shouldn't be a basis to deprive certain peoples of basic rights

johnthuss 4y ago

"Seventy-two per cent of Republicans think that the Constitution is basically fine as is; seventy-two per cent of Democrats disagree." Of course this has nothing to do the actual Constitution. It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. The optimist in me wants to believe that even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise and find a middle ground on many issues, conceding to the other side on one issue in order to get something for their side for another issue. That could be done without any changes to the Constitution. But alas, the middle ground has been lost.

colinmhayes 4y ago
> even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise Not when refusing to compromise is your parties main platform.
- nvahalik 4y ago
  > refusing to compromise Unfortunately the left has won in this regard. The left moves so hard and fast to the left that even the right can no longer "refuse to compromise." If they don't, they are bigots at worst and uncultured, out of touch imbeciles at best.
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    As somebody not from the US, the mainstream "left" seems very right wing. When compared to the rest of the world, there is no left wing political party in the United States.
    - johnthuss 4y ago
      Wow, please give some examples.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        The US "left wing" party does not (collectively) support: * nationalized health insurance * higher upper marginal rate income taxes * expanded public transportation * higher corporate taxes * unions/employee members of corporate boards * longer parental leave * more vacation time These and many other policies are common across other democratic nations' left-ish parties, and are actual policy in many of those nations.

george-in-sd 4y ago

Russia and China recently amended their constitution to ensure their respective leaders can stay in power permanently. Having some unchangeable bedrock in a country seems very valuable as we are all vulnerable to tyrants at some point in history.

woodruffw 4y ago
There's no such thing as an unchangeable government. Even if there was, the US is certainly not one: we have lots of constitutional amendments (including ones that prevent exactly what you just said).
deleted 4y ago
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jimmytidey 4y ago
I think I'd take the opposite lesson from these examples: if an individual gets sufficiently powerful, they will change the constitution irrespective of how much you formally considered it an 'unchangeable bedrock'.
- prottog 4y ago
  Some constitutions, like that of the US, are designed to prevent any individual from amassing such power. The Russian and Chinese constitutions aren't in that same school.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  Yeah, but it's a lot harder.
fuoqi 4y ago
You are factually wrong about Russia. The new constitution removes the loophole used by Putin which restricted presidency of a single person by two consecutive terms. Thus in past he has used Medvedev as a seat warmer for one term, while holding most of the real power. Because it's a new constitution, his old terms got "reset" (it's quite debatable whether such reset is legitimate or not). In theory, after the new two terms he will not be able to get a third one and any future Russian president will be limited by two terms similarly to the US (well, unless of course the constitutions does not get changed again...). Also, you call the US constitution unchangeable? It's quite laughable. Not only there is a bunch of amendments, but real power structures have changed as well. Starting from the increased size and power of the federal government as opposed to what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers, following by the two terms restriction on presidents, and ending with the creation of the central banking system, which arguably goes against the spirit of the Constitution.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

I propose a constitutional amendment to ban political parties. ;) But seriously, that would be interesting. Our Founding Fathers never intended there to be this entrenchment of two parties. It would make polarization harder because, well... what are the sides? It would also force greater civic participation to know what candidates actually stand for, and not just at the federal level.

johnthuss 4y ago
I'm excited about Ranked Choice Voting [1]. If it was adopted in more races I think we would start to see much more variety on issues rather than being limited to just two viewpoints (i.e. increased third party participation). 1. https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV) https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)
- arcticfox 4y ago
  I’m voting for a 3rd party candidate likely to be a spoiler for exactly this reason, to try to give the dominant party in my state the kick in the ass they need to implement some version of RCV. Even though I support the dominant party, I don’t support the lack of RCV in their wins and the outcomes that causes, so this is my protest vote to put it on their agenda.
johannes1234321 4y ago
Even if you forbid parties there will be some form of alliances of people running for office. Especially if media focusses on the "big names" in many electoral districts the local candidate is less relevant than who they team up with. Having parties makes that aspect documented and allows for laws and other regulation on finances and procedures around that.
bena 4y ago
George Washington intended that. But realistically, it's the nature of the beast. Call it whatever you want, you're going to get people with roughly aligned goals exercising their Constitutional right to peaceably assemble to pool their resources to enact legislation they want. "Ban political parties" is about as much of a thought out solution as "fix problems".

tptacek 4y ago

It's an interesting article and if you bounced off it because you had a visceral reaction to the premise, like I did at first, I'd recommend taking another whack at it. Jill Lepore, if you're not familiar with her work, is a historian with a reputation as a more rigorous version of people like Howard Zinn. I don't think it's a good article though. In particular, I don't think it coheres. It's about how the modern Constitution has become "un-amendable", but it spends a big chunk of the middle of the piece demonstrating the Constitution was never really all that amendable: successful amendments are extraordinarily rare, especially when they're about big-ticket issues. Our biggest structural changes occurred after an enormous civil war. There's a sort of obvious framing to the piece that the Constitution should be more fluid and easy to amend. I think 2022 is a very weird time to prioritize that. I'm not a doomer about US politics, but they're not in a very good state right now. Lepore talks about national abortion, immigration, and firearms policy and how they'd be impacted by a more readily-amended Constitution, but I think she should take a wider view and look at things like how speech and free association would be impacted. I'm a liberal, in a cohort of people this article portrays as atypically open to changing the Constitution, and I think the rigidity of the Constitution is probably it's greatest strength.

shin_lao 4y ago
Totally agreed. The constitution should be hard to amend, its purpose is to give stability. That you disagree with parts of it is one thing, but remember that if it's easy to amend, there's no guaranteed it will be in a way you like.
BitwiseFool 4y ago
>"Lepore talks about national abortion, immigration, and firearms policy and how they'd be impacted by a more readily-amended Constitution, but I think she should take a wider view and look at things like how speech and free association would be impacted." I feel like the author is looking at using amendments as a way to implement legislation that is permanent. Our Federal constitution is fairly concise, whereas some State constitutions are so easy and readily amendable that legislation gets codified in almost every session [1]. The challenge with doing this is that the constitution itself converges into just another body of law. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Alabama Edit: Instead of "permanent", "decisively" would be more appropriate. A constitution that can easily be amended can just as easily be un-amended. A response to this comment said "way to settle national controversies" which seems far more fitting than what I originally wrote.

nonethewiser 4y ago

Controversial policy cannot and should not become amendments. There is very little that everyone agrees that the government should do and the government is already very powerful. That's why constitutional amendments are so rare.

prottog 4y ago
Absolutely! The constitution by its nature should dictate things that the overwhelming majority of people agree on, not the usual fifty percent plus one person slim margin that a lot of controversial policies end up being.
- ausbah 4y ago
  there are some things that no amount of a majority ever makes moral
  - prottog 4y ago
    You are right, though of course no single person is the authority on what the ultimate moral truth is, so this is perhaps a non-operative statement when it comes to governance.
  - abigail95 4y ago
    if you think this, democracy is not the type of government you want to live in. given how poorly the alternatives have gone though, i think i'll be staying put.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  > Absolutely! The constitution by its nature should dictate things that the overwhelming majority of people agree on, not the usual fifty percent plus one person slim margin that a lot of controversial policies end up being. You'd be surprised with how little people agreed with the Bill of Rights then and even now.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Controversial policy cannot and should not become amendments. The problem with making the Constitution hard to amend as the means of preventing that is that it stops new constitutional provisions that are controversial from being added, but it doesn’t prevent old constitutional provisions that are controversial among the people currently governed by them from remaining. This is why Jefferson thought that laws, including constitutions, needed to automatically sunset to prevent the living being ruled from beyond the grave by the dead.

machina_ex_deus 4y ago

I think the single biggest vulnerability of the constitution, which they had no chance of predicting, is mass media and the way it changed the dynamics of politics. Today it is a mediacracy undergoing a violent phase transition from tv and newspapers traditional media control to social media and search algorithms. At the root of the problem is that the media is owned by very few oligopolies, and they answer to no one. The potential power from controlling them outshadows their profits.

jaybrendansmith 4y ago
This. The propaganda of the media, both intentional and accidental, is impacting our Democracy more than I would have thought possible. Being a critical thinker, I made the classic error of assuming that others could not easily be duped, and would actually do their own research on the issues. Boy was I wrong. We are all entitled to our own opinions, but we cannot survive as a Democracy if the citizenry believe they are entitled to their own FACTS. This is truly the challenge of the present, and I feel we are going to shortly lose our Democracy to bad actors who are more than willing to use our own intellectual weaknesses against us.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- abigail95 4y ago
  Democracy is majority rule. Democracy is nothing about facts or opinions. You are the one impacting democracy by saying we cannot survive if we keep current democratic rules. You can have the best argument for improving society by limiting who is allowed to vote, what things you're allowed to vote on, and what facts you are allowed to talk about. It can even be a true argument that would make everyone better off. But if it's less democracy, then it's anti-democratic. If you care about minorities and people generally, that's good, if you care about democracy, that's bad. The only way you can lose a democracy is by voting to stop voting, or voting to stop other people from voting. The intelligence of the population has nothing to do with it.

aaron695 4y ago

OrvalWintermute 4y ago

I consider myself a patriotic American, but I don't know that the government even follows the Constitution in the first place. NSA has been hoovering up data of innocent Americans, and the IC in general, works with foreign ICs, to target Americans without reasonable cause, just blanket vacuuming. Much of the govt, including federal, state, and local, has been purchasing private data without a warrant signed by a judge. Or they tap incoming fiber. Am expecting the next shoe to drop around traffic buying, not just location, without a warrant. Civil forfeiture is rife, violating the 5th and 14th. It is mainly targeting minorities Likewise, traffic cameras proliferation, mainly targeting minorities. US Govt, state govts are actively pressuring BigTech to censor, causing them to become state "actors", and "agents of the State" themselves We're coming off multiple scandals of govt employees criminally pursuing regionally unpopular politicos and their allies, but escaping sanction through regionalized trials Large govt decrees ended rent collection, closed businesses, and did untold damage to the US. I can understand this, but not the lack of compensation to all the landlords that have been ruined by this. The problem we have is, the US Constitution isn't being followed in the first place.

prottog 4y ago
Indeed, why bother amending something that isn't being adhered to in the first place.
hotpotamus 4y ago
> The problem we have is, the US Constitution isn't being followed in the first place. I hear this pretty frequently and often and I wonder, perhaps the constitution is inadequate to the task of governing the US in the 21st century? It seems like no one can agree on what it means - I'm told that we need highly educated legal scholars to properly interpret it before the Supreme Court, but there seems to be less consensus on it than there was in previous centuries.
sokoloff 4y ago
Yes, it might not need to be re-written so much as it needs to be re-read.

dbrueck 4y ago

I like the idea of the Constitution as a living document, updated over time, but I'm also really glad it's so hard to amend. It's not perfect, but there are usually extremely good reasons for pretty much everything in there, and so if we're going to change something, it seems like a prerequisite should be a deep understanding of why something was put in there in the first place. Take the Electoral College. It's en vogue right now to talk about abolishing it (it's also popular to talk about it as if it's sacred, and in both cases, it seems a lot of people's feelings about it are based on whether or not their favorite candidate won a recent election, but I digress). If people want to change or even remove it, that's fine, but they should first have a very deep understanding of why it is how it is - an understanding that's a bit deeper than they got in their high school U.S. Government class. If you go back and read the Federalist papers, for example, you can't help but come away with a profound admiration for how much thought people put into these things, even if you don't agree with their conclusions. There's just a ton of wisdom and thought there. If you can come up with something better, great, but among other things you really should have to articulate their original reasoning and make a good case for how their concerns aren't relevant now, or that your idea is a better set of tradeoffs, etc. Just saying that the EC isn't fair falls way short of that - yeah, they thought about stuff like that, a lot. Another reason why it's good to have a hard-to-modify Constitution right now is because we are currently pretty terrible at negotiating politically and building any sort of consensus - the hard work of bridge building is often skipped, and so more legislation is passing with the slimmest of majorities, and each presidency seems to do more via executive action. (And to whoever is tempted to respond with, "yes, the X party is terrible at this" needs to take a closer look at their preferred party, because both of the 2 major parties are terrible at it, just often in different ways. But they are both corrupt and broken to the core, at least on the national level) If we can't pull back from this and get to a more sane working and collaboration environment, the "unamenadability" of the Constitution might be the thing that saves us (or, maybe, the thing that delays our drive off the cliff by a few years at least).

sokoloff 4y ago
See also: Chesterton's Fence. https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/ https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/ There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

pc2g4d 4y ago

Good article, appreciated the charts, though the commentary on them seemed a bit selective. I was disappointed though that the case wasn't made for the actual cause of the recent unamendability (since 1971, as they say). Why did opposition to abortion make ALL amendments unpassable?

kelseyfrog 4y ago

Anyone who advocates for making the constitution more amendable should find a group to sit down and play a game of Nomic[1] until completion. It is the fastest way to internalize the meta-strategy around making it easier or more difficult to make amendments. Is there a disconnect between the current political ruleset[constitution] and the way the political game is played? Yes, but probably not for the reasons you think. 1. https://nomic.fandom.com/wiki/Rules https://nomic.fandom.com/wiki/Rules

D13Fd 4y ago

The constitution is perfectly easy to amend when we have consensus. The problem is achieving consensus. I don’t think making the constitution easier to amend would make it any easier to achieve national consensus.

int_19h 4y ago
The Constitution requires 3/4 of state legislatures to ratify any amendment. Given the extreme disparities between states in terms of population, it's entirely possible for something to be supported by >80% of the people - I'd say that reasonably qualifies as "consensus" - but still unable to be ratified. Conversely, it's possible for the small states representing less than 25% of the overall population to band together and ratify any constitutional amendment - and it would be binding on the rest of the country. It really is a broken system through and through.
- floxy 4y ago
  >it's possible for the small states representing less than 25% of the overall population to band together and ratify any constitutional amendment I took the 2020 Census population figures from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... ...and came up with the 38 smallest states (75% of 50) had a total population of 134 million or 40.5% of the U.S. population; the largest 12 states had a combined population of 197 million (59.5% of the U.S. population).
  - int_19h 4y ago
    I'm accounting for indirection via state legislatures, since it's the latter who ratify by simple majority - so the MPs in the state legislature who vote to ratify don't necessarily represent all the residents of that state (in fact, given the quirks of FPTP and tricks like gerrymandering, things can be ratified against popular majority in the state).
    - _-david-_ 4y ago

smitty1e 4y ago

Call an Article V Convention per https://conventionofstates.com/ https://conventionofstates.com/ and belie The Famous Article. Americans will line up behind fiscal reform and a rejection of our globalist overlords.

jakeogh 4y ago
I'm not excited about it (and I agree with your last 5 words). It's too easy to subvert. We have so much history, see the SC link I put in the thread. The states are a much safer venue.
- smitty1e 4y ago
  I disagree. The states are so many license plate stamping operations. Progressivism is a Tower if Babel.

chiefalchemist 4y ago

> An unamendable constitution is not an American tradition. U.S. state constitutions are much easier to amend than the federal Constitution. This is the problem and the solution. The more power and control that's been forfeited to the Federal gov, the less and less effective that entity has become. Yet the less effective it becomes the more push there is to give more power to Washington DC. The solution is simple. Return - at least temporarily - to more of a pre New Deal mindset.

gen220 4y ago

In the US, we used to amend constitutions fairly regularly (at the Federal, State levels, but I’m most familiar with Federal and New York), especially through WWII. With a few exceptions (the prohibition is the biggest one that springs to mind), the trend line has generally been progressive. We stopped making meaningful changes around the 1960s, read into that what we may. Regardless, our governmental institutions have proven to be fundamentally unmalleable (brittle?) in the last 60 years, which is a huge break from the norm. The only other period comparable to this was the three generations leading into the American Civil War, which went 60 years without a federal amendment. But that period saw tons of “progress” at the state level, whereas this period has none. I don’t have any conclusions, just food for thought.

Dracophoenix 4y ago
The 11th and 16th amendments are ones that I argue shouldn't exist. They were ratified in reaction to Supreme court cases that respectively denied state immunity and federal powers.
mynameishere 4y ago
It was progressives who outlawed booze. Don't retcon that word to mean "whatever I approve of today."
- gen220 4y ago
  I think we’re using different definitions of “progressive”. I’m using the dictionary definition “favoring liberal ideas”. I think you’re referring to big-P “Progressive”? Regardless of whether the temperance movement identified itself as “progressive” or which political party germinated it, prohibition is not a liberal idea: restricting the liberty to consume alcohol is not an expansion of freedom. The policy was bundled into the nominally “Progressive” platform of the 20th Century, but that doesn’t make it a progressive policy. North Korea and the Congo are nominally Democratic Republics, but their claiming the name doesn’t change the definition of democracy or republic.

chris_wot 4y ago

One of the reasons I like the Australian Constitution is because it pretty much runs on convention. Our top leader is the Prime Minister. The PM is not even mentioned in our constitution.

MarinaTownson 4y ago

cm2187 4y ago

Author complains these amendments cannot be passed because of political polarisation. That polarisation is the very reason why those amendments shouldn't pass. You can only change the constitution if there is a consensus, by design. If you want to make a change that half the country is dead against, all the systems of balance of power will work against it (two chambers - one by headcount the other by states, filibuster, presidential veto, high threshold of consensus for changing the constitution), as it should. And the constitution should be the hardest of all paths, since it is senior to all others.

m-p-3 4y ago
So one way or another, the population will reach its breaking point, and the Constitution will change.
- epicureanideal 4y ago
  If a population not significantly a majority of the country “reaches a breaking point”, that sounds like it would not go well.
  - rybosome 4y ago
    It won’t. This is going to be a decade of strife and instability.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > This is going to be a decade of strife and instability. “decade” is quite optimistic.
- UberFly 4y ago
  No, more like one of the broken parts will create their own Constitution.
  - mlindner 4y ago

jdkee 4y ago

A commentator on a Federalist Society conference this evening mentioned this project: https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/special-projects/constitution-drafting-project https://constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/special-projects/... Interesting to read the varying contentions made by the respective groups on how to change the existing U.S. constitutional structure.

zajio1am 4y ago

Well, US constitution is still more amendable than EU constitutional treaties, which require unanimous agreement of all states.

bigbacaloa 4y ago
Not as bad as someone ele is one of the dumbest lines of argument.
- jakeogh 4y ago
  Comparison is "dumb"? Is it now a logical fallacy? Better ban history 101. No more comparison. I'll just... uh... compare things against some theoretical ideal I make up. Maybe get some psychological warfare experts and brand it? Historyaboutisim?
  - grecy 4y ago
    > No more comparison There's no need for a strawman. The comment didn't say "no more comparison", it said comparing to the lowest of the low is dumb. I agree. If you're a sporting team, is it productive to say "We're better than the team on the bottom of the ladder" ? (Even though you're second-last) When you're a country, it's equally as pointless to say "We're doing better than <China/North Korea/Central African Republic/etc> The only reason a person would ever make a comparison "down the ladder" is because they want to paint themselves in a better light. They have no interest in improving anything, and when they spend enough time looking down the ladder, that's exactly where they'll go. Sporting teams, countries and people who are interested in improving make comparisons "up" - it gives them something to strive for. Do you want to improve?
    - knewter 4y ago
      I'd wager half of the people that would make the argument he's replying to believe that the EU government is kind of alright. Consequently, to those people, it's an excellent reply. Maybe it wasn't for you.

jonnycomputer 4y ago

If at times the Constitution is not responsive enough, it does have one big benefit: it is almost impossible to change it to do something like, allow a President to serve life tenure, and yet we see a number of places where such constitutional changes were pushed through by those who would be dictators, or sought more powers as executive(Russia's in 2020, China in 2018, Ecuador in 2016, Turkey in 2017, etc.

crystalmeph 4y ago
It does seem silly that someone would advocate making the supreme law of the land easier to change at the same time there is widespread concern about the government becoming more authoritarian, or even tipping into dictatorship. It screams unintended consequences.
pjc50 4y ago
However, it's possible to change the people who interpret the constitution to achieve the desired result. (See Poland)

bluecheese452 4y ago

There are a lot of comments here about how the founding fathers intended this or that as if they were a unified group of people with a single vision. This is far from the truth. The original attempt at a governing document wasn’t the constitution, it was the articles of confederation, which failed. The constitution was a compromise. Some wanted a king, some wanted direct democracy and there were people in every shade in the middle. I read an autobiography of Benjamin Franklin today. He spoke highly of a religious sect that refused to write their laws down. They felt it was absurd to think that they had come up with the perfect laws that would govern all future generations. If they wrote it down, future generations would consider it sacred and would dogmatically enshrine those views rather than improving upon them. Ironic that we do the same to him.

sn0w_crash 4y ago

So it’s functioning as expected and as intended. These people don’t seem to understand that.

topspin 4y ago
> These people don’t seem to understand that. These people are operating under the false premise that their views are representative of some consensus that should be ratified in law. In truth the consensus they imagine is merely the prevailing group-think of their own preferred cohort.

kepler1 4y ago

I wish people (of both sides) who declare "the system is broken" etc would seriously ask themselves, is it because your particular issue didn't go your way? How would we run a stable country if that were the principle to follow? There was the line "it may backfire on you sooner than you thought" and I think there's some good caution in that statement. Take your own argument out of the picture -- would you be happy for the principle by which you're suggesting we operate be on the other foot and the majority be in the hands of your opponent? I come to think that democracy is, more than anything, learning how to lose gracefully and without a revolution. So many people now seem to believe, if I lose, it must be broken and deserves a revolution. On both sides.

jessaustin 4y ago

One had high hopes for TFA, only to discover another tired hagiography of wise "Framers" whose perfect work (which mentions, let us recall, both "free Persons" and "other Persons") has been failed by its stupid unworthy subjects. Bullshit. The constitution was a conspiracy of rich assholes who were tired of state legislatures occasionally favoring the interests of poor farmers, workmen, and merchants over those of rich assholes. They rammed through the constitution, and never again had to worry about legislatures cancelling debts owed to them. Forget amendments. The whole rotten thing should have been thrown out in 1790, and in every year since then. If we have ever made any progress, it has been in spite of the constitution, not because of it.

SaberTail 4y ago
Yeah, exactly. There's so much propaganda in the USA depicting the constitution as some sort of inspired document written by enlightened men, and then most people don't bother reading beyond what they learned in school. One only need look at how undemocratic the constitution was. Only one federal office, the House of Representatives, was elected by the people (and at the time the constitution was written, only men with property could vote). The president and vice president are elected by an electoral college. Senators were elected by state legislatures. Supreme Court Judges are even further insulated from the people, being appointed by the President. "The People" had extremely little influence on the federal government, and it's only gotten marginally better since. Hopefully everyone understands how much the constitution did to protect the wealth of slave owners, since this is taught in schools. But it also made western land speculators richer by creating a government capable of exerting sufficient power over those western lands to open them up for settlement. It made the holders of revolutionary war debt richer by creating a government that could assume that debt and pay it off. It made owners and investors in manufacturing enterprises richer by creating a government that could protect industry with tariffs while keeping states from taxing the flow of goods or interfering with contracts. Every framer of the constitution belonged to at least one of these groups, and they benefited when it was ratified. The book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles Beard goes into great detail on this. It's out of copyright and freely available online: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Economic_Interpretation_of_the_Constitution_of_the_United_States https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Economic_Interpretation_of...

dblohm7 4y ago

Canada points and laughs.

cat_plus_plus 4y ago

United States unamendable national and state borders are also a factor. Whatever one thinks about Brexit, it allowed EU to continue with countries that are committed to EU and for UK to consider what's best for UK, including welcoming Hong Kong residents not enthusiastic about takeover by China. If California and Texas go their own way and borders between states are adjusted to accommodate red and blue area, maybe current system is all that is needed. CA and TX can be still part of Nato and have a free travel arrangement with each other, changes do not have to be extreme.

yieldcrv 4y ago
> can be still part of Nato and have a free travel arrangement with each other, changes do not have to be extreme I've spent the last past decade pointing that out to people. People act like a state being separate from the US and independent is soooo absurd, logistically. But the US can still assist on a natural disaster just like it does in all of the Americas. Common defense can occur, as you point out. Visa and waivers could be easy. I always like to imagine what level of state tax would I tolerate if I was only paying income taxes to just California. Since California doesn't get much/anything back from the Federal Government from its remittances, I bet California wouldn't even need to raise its states taxes.
- rhino369 4y ago
  It's absurd because Californian's aren't really a nationality in the way the British or French are. People talk about red states and blue states, but that's just the mix of rural/surburban/urban people in the state. Rural Californians are much more in common with rural Texans than with Los Angelenos. There is more cultural variance within just Spain than the entirety of the USA. We truly are one people. Ironically, calling for a USA that is just an common defense alliance with open trade borders is pretty much what conservatives want. They'll be happy to cut taxes, and let California experiment with what it wants.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    The counterpoint being that the cultural similarities aren't a line in the sand on being separate. There are plenty of places that are similar and separately sovereign. But let me make it less absurd to you: "Hey Republican House and Senate, trade offer: California gets sovereignty, you make the democrats lose 55 electoral college votes and essentially never have to hear from them ever again for all eternity" I honestly think they would bite.

bigbacaloa 4y ago

The US constitution is an antiquated document written by men who enslaved others. It contains no explicit right to privacy or protection from government surveillance. It does not establish a secular state (only the right to worship as one chooses, which is different) and it features an overly broad freedom of speech that facilitates the spread of misinformation and lies. it chooses the president by an indirect mechanism and it nowhere guarantees the right to vote. It needs to be rewritten completely but this is impossible because it is treated as a sacred text.

floxy 4y ago
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

avereveard 4y ago

looks confusely at 1992's 27th amendment

emptyparadise 4y ago

> It’s lasted more than two hundred years and hasn’t been amended in any meaningful way since 1971, more than half a century ago. 1971 again the baader-meinhof phenomenon is following me everywhere i go

betwixthewires 4y ago

> hasn’t been amended in any meaningful way since 1971 Already inserting subjectivity into the discussion to support it's premise. I'm not going to like this article. > It’s always been hard to amend the Constitution. But, in the past half century, it’s become much harder Yes, systems find stability, turbulence finds a local minima. Of course a lot more happened early on than later, if you expect a flat, linear, normal distribution of changes to something over time you don't know enough about what you're talking about to be talking about it. Maybe the constitution has lasted 200 years precisely because it is hard to modify. A constitution should be harder to change than just passing any old piece of legislation. If it's just as easy as passing any law it's not a constitution, just another law. If you think it's hard to amend the constitution, just wait until a constitutional convention convenes in DC in the next 5-10 years, we are almost there, something that hasn't happened since the Continental Congress, it's going to happen soon and it's going to be very interesting. I hope they ratify the equal apportionment amendment.

ShredKazoo 4y ago

The notion of amending the constitution in response to political dysfunction is a bit paradoxical, because dysfunctional politics are upstream of the amendment process. Dysfunctional politics will likely mean a dysfunctional amendment. Some thoughts on resolving the paradox: * If the constitution had been easier to amend in the 90s and 00s, perhaps some wise politicians would've seen whispers of the current dysfunction and passed an amendment to preempt it. Maybe there could be a "department of the future" that's trying to figure out how things could go off the rails and what amendments we could pass in advance to help. * If amendment was done according to an entirely different process (e.g. sortition https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/case_study_america_in_one_room https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/case_study_america_in_on... -- essentially a citizen's assembly), that could solve the paradox. Especially if the new process was something slower and somehow less prone to dysfunction. It'd be like an additional check & balance. Sadly, we don't have much experience with sortition or other very different processes, and it seems risky to entrust them with something as important as the constitution. Maybe the rule could simply be that the legislature is required to vote on whether to adopt the changes that come out of the sortition process?

jongjong 4y ago

People in power today are too corrupt to be trusted with amending the constitution. Most amendments have only served big financial interests by stifling free-market competition. Ideally, we should roll-back the entire legal system to how it was in the 1900s.

skymast 4y ago

The 2nd Amendment does not apply to semi-auto rifles, nor does it apply to bolt action rifles, pistols, or revolvers. The 2nd Amendment RESTRICTS GOVERNMENT. The technology of the firearm is irrelevant. The restrictions on government remain the same, regardless of the firearm. The Second Amendment was not written to grant permission for citizens to own and bear firearms. It forbids government interference in the right to keep and bear arms, period. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

IIRC, the first constitution placed more power in the hands of the Demos, which would have allowed more modifications. The framers scrapped it and churned out a second constitution with more limited powers for the people, partly to make it harder to amend.

TurkishPoptart 4y ago

The best thing about the Constitution is that it is very hard to amend. That protects it from the influence of short-sighted radicals who want to implement selfish policies at others' expense.

helloworld11 4y ago

TLDR: "All this democracy stuff would work so much better if I could just circumvent all those backwoods idiots who don't vote and think similarly to my clearly superior urban, progressive sensibilities"