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> I think the rigidity of the Constitution is probably it's greatest strength It's not just the Constitution, it's the entirety of the American system, which s

> I think the rigidity of the Constitution is probably it's greatest strength It's not just the Constitution, it's the entirety of the American system, which seems designed to use "checks and balances" as veritable roadblocks to slow everything down. I agree that - in theory - it's great and very smart, because if the government was indeed designed around truths that are self-evident (i.e. inherently "true" and immutable) than everything should settle at the mean of those truths. The problem is that when the country was being formed, incredible compromises to those self-evident truths were made left, right and center. So we ended up with a country that claimed that all men are created equal but did not actually adhere to this. Further, the Constitution & Bill of Rights is full of things not related to these core truths. They tend, often, to be functions of their time. Those are the things that should be open for change, and the core truths should be canonized and unbreakable.

EricE 4y ago
"So we ended up with a country that claimed that all men are created equal but did not actually adhere to this." lol - and yet we did eventually fix it. So much for the unchangeability of US government. So yeah, the rigidity still worked - and continues to work. It's absolutely not a bug, but the most important feature in preserving our republic.
- heywoodlh 4y ago
  > "So we ended up with a country that claimed that all men are created equal but did not actually adhere to this." > yet we did eventually fix it. So much for the unchangeability of US government. As far as I understand, African Americans were still not considered equal in many states over 100 years after the very bloody Civil War to abolish slavery of African Americans. I don't consider this a good example of a highly changeable government. Or am I misunderstanding your point of the US "eventually fixing it"? 100 years is not a trivial amount of time in a country that is only a little over 200 years old.
  - bavell 4y ago
    You're confusing government with citizens. The letter of the law changed but the culture lagged behind.
    - nkozyra 4y ago
      > You're confusing government with citizens. The letter of the law changed but the culture lagged behind. I don't they are. The law that abolished slavery changed, but racial segregation was - by definition - inequality. That it was postfixed "but equal" really underscored how hard they tried to dress it up. It was confirmed - by governments - in a number of cases, Plessy v. Ferguson being the canonical one.
- nkozyra 4y ago
  > So much for the unchangeability of US government. I didn't say it was "unchangeable," and ... well, that's obviously not true. This is all about the difficulty of changing. My premise is that changes that push closer to the stated core principles of the founders are more likely to happen than others. I wouldn't say rigidity "works" in this case, as several generations of slaves and women and other minorities might attest. Had we been more open to change in the spirit of the constitution rather than the word, perhaps there'd be less resistance.

EricE 4y ago

"So we ended up with a country that claimed that all men are created equal but did not actually adhere to this." lol - and yet we did eventually fix it. So much for the unchangeability of US government. So yeah, the rigidity still worked - and continues to work. It's absolutely not a bug, but the most important feature in preserving our republic.

heywoodlh 4y ago
> "So we ended up with a country that claimed that all men are created equal but did not actually adhere to this." > yet we did eventually fix it. So much for the unchangeability of US government. As far as I understand, African Americans were still not considered equal in many states over 100 years after the very bloody Civil War to abolish slavery of African Americans. I don't consider this a good example of a highly changeable government. Or am I misunderstanding your point of the US "eventually fixing it"? 100 years is not a trivial amount of time in a country that is only a little over 200 years old.
- bavell 4y ago
  You're confusing government with citizens. The letter of the law changed but the culture lagged behind.
  - nkozyra 4y ago
    > You're confusing government with citizens. The letter of the law changed but the culture lagged behind. I don't they are. The law that abolished slavery changed, but racial segregation was - by definition - inequality. That it was postfixed "but equal" really underscored how hard they tried to dress it up. It was confirmed - by governments - in a number of cases, Plessy v. Ferguson being the canonical one.
nkozyra 4y ago
> So much for the unchangeability of US government. I didn't say it was "unchangeable," and ... well, that's obviously not true. This is all about the difficulty of changing. My premise is that changes that push closer to the stated core principles of the founders are more likely to happen than others. I wouldn't say rigidity "works" in this case, as several generations of slaves and women and other minorities might attest. Had we been more open to change in the spirit of the constitution rather than the word, perhaps there'd be less resistance.