10 ms·

So many people are okay with unconstitutional things as long as it supports their side and beliefs. It is genuinely unsettling. Personally, I don’t care about

by Dig1t 3y ago

So many people are okay with unconstitutional things as long as it supports their side and beliefs. It is genuinely unsettling. Personally, I don’t care about the underlying thing the protests are about, the important aspect is that if you allow unconstitutional government action like this, eventually it will be used against you. A decade from now we have no idea what the political climate will be. If the precedent is allowed to be set, there’s a good chance the power will be used against your cause in the future.

vkou 3y ago
I don't think my political enemies need any kind of precedent to piss on my rights. If one doesn't exist before they take power, they'll happily establish it.
joseph_grobbles 3y ago
[dead]
kiawe_fire 3y ago
Additionally, I find it a bit concerning that people are ok with violating one principle or right on the basis that it’s fighting against another violation. If we identify A, B, C, and D as potential rights, and you and I agree on rights A and B, but we disagree on the principles of C and D, then it’s ok that my side violates your rights A and B because if we can’t agree on all of them, then you deserve none. It’s the kind of thing that ensures that compromise, understanding, and legislation won’t happen by way of conversation or respectful debate, but instead by name calling and force.
- paulgrant999 3y ago
  [dead]
- drewcoo 3y ago
  > people are ok with violating one principle or right on the basis that it’s fighting against another violation It's as if they never heard of or disagree with the sentiment of the ninth amendment . . . https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-9/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-9/
kneebonian 3y ago
It is because my side is made up only of good virtuous people who really want to do what's best and only want the power to do good things, and the other side is full of evil horrible people that want to bring about oppression and sadness my favorite media outlet proved it.
giantg2 3y ago
"unconstitutional government action like this" Is this unconstitutional? I was wondering what case law there is about the government buying data like this.
- vkou 3y ago
  > Is this unconstitutional? Probably not.
majormajor 3y ago
> Personally, I don’t care about the underlying thing the protests are about, the important aspect is that if you allow unconstitutional government action like this, eventually it will be used against you. Words won't protect you. Precedent won't protect you. Guns won't protect you. If you are in a society where others want you surveiled or dead or removed or heavily restricted, and you're outnumbered, it's already too late. As you say, for many people already "Constitutional" is just a weapon to be wielded when it suits them and ignored when it doesn't. But the reason why that's bad needs to be much more than "because this piece of paper says so," it needs to be "because these are things we all agree are important."
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Yes, absolutely. And what's changed is that we now have a massive number of people (on both sides) who no longer agree that these things are important, or at least who think that other things are more important - so much more important that "these things" (constitutional protections) can be circumvented when they get in the way of the "more important things". Constitutional protections are largely running on institutional inertia at the moment. That's good - the institutions were supposed to do that - but it won't last forever.
  - colpabar 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - CyberDildonics 3y ago
      Do you evaluate everything based on how you can label the people who made it or just this?
      - nebulousthree 3y ago
        I agree that the expression is tired but it is not wrong. The context has changed.
jandrese 3y ago
I get what you're saying, but on the other hand abortion protesters have a habit of assassinating doctors that perform abortions.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  In this case, the relevant fact is pro-abortion protestors have a habit of firebombing things. > Twitter, alerted a federal law enforcement agency to pro-abortion protests and rallies in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, according to documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    Which also seems like a reasonable reason for the FBI to get involved. The discussion tends to veer into "this is politically motivated" territory, when the law enforcement angle is more in the "preventing death and destruction" category.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    > In this case, the relevant fact is pro-abortion protestors have a habit of firebombing things. Which is ridiculous, given that there have been two fire bombings claimed by pro-choice groups since 2010, one in NY and another in WI, vs. eighteen committed by anti-abortion groups. That, and the fact that anti-abortion violence is fairly common in the US, compared to pro-choice violence [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence
    - zmgsabst 3y ago
      https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251553/map-vandalism-attacks-continue-at-pro-life-centers-across-us https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251553/map-vandalism...
      - sbuk 3y ago
        Can we have another, unbiased source please. That one is state-sponsored and doesn't provide a credible source.
robomartin 3y ago
> A decade from now we have no idea what the political climate will be. When I was young, due to my family's business, I lived in multiple cultures outside of the US. I have personally experienced precisely the kind of political shift you mention in your post as a teenager, living in Argentina. I am referring to the military take-over. Imagine a world where the police or military thugs can kick down your front door in the middle of the night and take some or all of your family, never to be seen again. Imagine a world where, rock and roll was declared illegal and you could be arrested, tortured or worse if found "guilty" --not by a jury, by a single thug-- of anything remotely associated with it. Or how about being in a bus going somewhere, the bus gets pulled over and they beat the shit out of a bunch of people, just because they can (and justify it in some form). If you were known to not be in alignment with the prevailing ideology your life was worth nothing. Thousands died. Thousands disappeared. I had the personal experience one evening of getting pulled over by a couple of police cars while just walking home with friends after going to the movies. They threw us (and I do mean threw us, violently) up against the wall, harassed the shit out of us, slapped a couple of us around, took whatever money we had and sent us on our way. We were LUCKY that it didn't go beyond that. Americans are alarmingly ignorant of history outside their own borders. Our system of education is so one-sided, in an ideological sense, that kids leaving high school, and, in particular, college, become adults with truly distorted and troubling ideological programming. You talk to ANY immigrant who came from anywhere where the ideologies promoted by our universities and mass media are the "law of the land" and you are far more likely to get a treatise on how horrific this is rather than enthusiastic support for it. This ideology has proven to be a generational disaster across the world and across time. And yet, we, collectively, have allowed this to happen. > So many people are okay with unconstitutional things as long as it supports their side and beliefs. This is a major point that, once again, isn't taught in schools. The consequences will not be favorable over the long term. The idea that you should protect the rights of those you do not agree with is so fundamentally unique that it is rare, very rare, around the world. The US, in that sense, was unique. I say "was" because, today, I believe this is history. The fact that university students will riot when someone their puppeteers do not agree with comes to give a presentation at their school is evidence enough of the intolerant society we have manage to "educate" ourselves into. In this twisted world, the reality is that those espousing such things as tolerance, equity, freedoms, etc. actually, through their actions, actually do the opposite and represent the opposite: intolerance, non-equity, a desire and willingness to curtail freedoms, etc. We have managed to create an entire generation of adults full of hatred and intolerance. This is not a good outcome. This is the kind of thing that, in the chess game of a globally competitive world, your enemies absolutely rejoice about. While the US is busy polarizing its own population --alarmingly, through education-- actors around the world spend ever day placing one foot in front of the other. The result of this massive lack of foresight will not be pretty. > It is genuinely unsettling. Yes. I'll add, scary, disappointing, unproductive and dangerous. I do realize that a good percentage of the HN college-educated audience is in the grips of ideology that was pounded into their heads. It's Plato's Allegory of the Cave. All you can do is try to lead them out of the shadows. Yet, they have to be the ones open to viewing the world with their own eyes, rather than the shadows they were presented with. I would highly recommend watching a series on Netflix: "BREAK IT ALL: The History of Rock in Latin America" https://www.netflix.com/title/81006953 https://www.netflix.com/title/81006953 One of the very interesting things about this series is that they actually explore the political shifts you hinted at in your comment. They, of course, cover this in the context of Rock, but also provide a generalized view. This kind of thing has happened in nearly every Latin American country. It is disturbing that Americans don't know this history well. If they did, many of the political actors and most of the militant academics in this country would be laughed off the stage. There is HISTORY to prove that these people are not only demented, they are actually dangerous to society.
IntrepidWorm 3y ago
You have highlighted the core basis of Foucault's Boomarang: it doesn't matter the target of oppresive technologies and practices. Sooner or later, their scope will be turned on you.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  "At first they came for X and I said nothing". Unfortunately, we are about 10 lines into that, and the election of 1 president and 1 key turn from the rest. To emphasize this, if Facebook knows who practically everyone is in the US (indirectly or directly), then sure as fucking hell the government does. All it takes is one guy that wants to do the McCarthy "unAmerican" bullshit and has enough to do it and the US Government will know EXACTLY who to target.
at-fates-hands 3y ago
Its always staggering to think people forget we only have a two party system. You'd think that would keep both parties in check from abusing their powers considering at some point the party you went after and did suspect things in order to win a few elections? Well, they're going to be back in power and what do you think they're going to do? The same thing you did. I feel like we're currently in this death spiral where its just a never ending war to get the other parties people out of power by any means necessary. While the entire time, its the people who have to suffer through it and pick sides. It appears the centrist moderate has evaporated from American politics - which to me was the last group of voters who kept both sides honest. There is no compromise either, its just a scorched earth approach now where nobody wins.
- mistermann 3y ago
  In my experience on social media, this sort of thinking is typically classified as "both sidesing" (or an assertion of "false equivalence", etc etc etc), and is considered to be highly inappropriate. And the people that say these things are often otherwise clearly intelligent, it is less common on HN perhaps, but certainly not uncommon.
  - watwut 3y ago
    Yeah, well, knee jerk both sides are the same which completely ignores major differences between those sides is really wrong. It is mental shortcut that leafs to wrong conclusions and often ends up being a lie.
    - iosono88 3y ago
      [dead]
    - TechBro8615 3y ago
      I think the bigger knee jerk reaction is the need to assign everybody to one side or the other, to the point that nobody perceives any outgroup moderates; anytime they encounter someone with a moderately out-group opinion, they assume the rest of the opinions held by that person must be the most extreme implied by their leaning. Thus people become entrenched in their position as it appears that the out-group is becoming more extreme, ironically leading to a feedback loop that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of increasing polarization. Or at least, it creates the perception of increased polarization, which is what causes the problems. I like to suggest that you should imagine the most absurd caricature of a member of the out-group that you can think of - whether that's a "leftist" or a "MAGA republican" - and then ask yourself how many people you actually know who fit that description. Are you creating a scarecrow that's an amalgam of all the viewpoints you oppose?
mistermann 3y ago
It seems to me that there may have been some sort of a strange, unrealized cultural change in Americans over the last few decades. I seem to recall that the abstract notion of freedom of speech/assembly/etc was considered a VERY big deal by all or at least most Americans. However, this seems to have morphed into people now holding most of their ideological beliefs at specific concrete, object level issue level. Assuming there is some truth to this, the rise of the internet and a daily deluge of culture war content seems like it could easily explain the transformation.
- watwut 3y ago
  People used to be literally killed or beaten for their expressed believes, so that hiatoeical abstract notion has quite a lot of asterisks in it. It is waaaay too easy to idealized past while ignoring what was actually happening.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  IMO it's because everyone is in a panic about the other side. One side believes that the other side is "grooming and sterilizing children" while the other side believes that they are working to "replace democracy with fascism". In turn both sides get more extreme and work each other more into a frenzy as extremists on each side will in fact say outrageous shit. Abstract values like "free speech" get lost in the war. Edit: even on here we have a comment openly calling for fascism (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35950813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35950813) and I'm sure others attacking the Christian roots of US society in comments here makes people on the other side who see that as the core of their value system feel equally threatened.
lazyeye 3y ago
Yes and I think alot of people are reading this and thinking "This is very true of the other side but my side is not doing these things".
JeremyNT 3y ago
> If the precedent is allowed to be set, there’s a good chance the power will be used against your cause in the future. I've become deeply cynical about this argument. The Constitution is a weapon, used by the powerful against the powerless. I think it's pretty clear that in many cases the Supreme Court decides cases on purely ideological grounds, then goes back and creates post hoc justifications from precedent and the text. Public opinion is useless here - it doesn't matter whether people are "OK" with something. What will you do, elect a new Supreme Court?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
_8j50 3y ago
Buying data from private companies is not unconstitutional so long as the company selling it to the government didn't break laws. As with so many american issues, just amend the fucking constitution! I swear this country needs to stop everything and do a constitutional convention (can be done, never be done before).
- kelnos 3y ago
  That "just" is doing a lot of work there. Even with a constitutional convention, you still need 3/4 of the states (38 of them) to ratify anything, which I don't think is feasible today. Hell, I'm not even sure the delegates to a hypothetical constitutional convention could even agree enough on what to propose for ratification.
  - _8j50 3y ago
    Everyone is unhappy. Plenty of middle ground.

by Dig1t 3y ago

vkou 3y ago

I don't think my political enemies need any kind of precedent to piss on my rights. If one doesn't exist before they take power, they'll happily establish it.

joseph_grobbles 3y ago

[dead]

kiawe_fire 3y ago

Additionally, I find it a bit concerning that people are ok with violating one principle or right on the basis that it’s fighting against another violation. If we identify A, B, C, and D as potential rights, and you and I agree on rights A and B, but we disagree on the principles of C and D, then it’s ok that my side violates your rights A and B because if we can’t agree on all of them, then you deserve none. It’s the kind of thing that ensures that compromise, understanding, and legislation won’t happen by way of conversation or respectful debate, but instead by name calling and force.

paulgrant999 3y ago
[dead]
drewcoo 3y ago
> people are ok with violating one principle or right on the basis that it’s fighting against another violation It's as if they never heard of or disagree with the sentiment of the ninth amendment . . . https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-9/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-9/

kneebonian 3y ago

It is because my side is made up only of good virtuous people who really want to do what's best and only want the power to do good things, and the other side is full of evil horrible people that want to bring about oppression and sadness my favorite media outlet proved it.

giantg2 3y ago

"unconstitutional government action like this" Is this unconstitutional? I was wondering what case law there is about the government buying data like this.

vkou 3y ago
> Is this unconstitutional? Probably not.

majormajor 3y ago

> Personally, I don’t care about the underlying thing the protests are about, the important aspect is that if you allow unconstitutional government action like this, eventually it will be used against you. Words won't protect you. Precedent won't protect you. Guns won't protect you. If you are in a society where others want you surveiled or dead or removed or heavily restricted, and you're outnumbered, it's already too late. As you say, for many people already "Constitutional" is just a weapon to be wielded when it suits them and ignored when it doesn't. But the reason why that's bad needs to be much more than "because this piece of paper says so," it needs to be "because these are things we all agree are important."

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
Yes, absolutely. And what's changed is that we now have a massive number of people (on both sides) who no longer agree that these things are important, or at least who think that other things are more important - so much more important that "these things" (constitutional protections) can be circumvented when they get in the way of the "more important things". Constitutional protections are largely running on institutional inertia at the moment. That's good - the institutions were supposed to do that - but it won't last forever.
- colpabar 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - CyberDildonics 3y ago
    Do you evaluate everything based on how you can label the people who made it or just this?
    - nebulousthree 3y ago
      I agree that the expression is tired but it is not wrong. The context has changed.

jandrese 3y ago

I get what you're saying, but on the other hand abortion protesters have a habit of assassinating doctors that perform abortions.

zmgsabst 3y ago
In this case, the relevant fact is pro-abortion protestors have a habit of firebombing things. > Twitter, alerted a federal law enforcement agency to pro-abortion protests and rallies in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, according to documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request.
- jandrese 3y ago
  Which also seems like a reasonable reason for the FBI to get involved. The discussion tends to veer into "this is politically motivated" territory, when the law enforcement angle is more in the "preventing death and destruction" category.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  > In this case, the relevant fact is pro-abortion protestors have a habit of firebombing things. Which is ridiculous, given that there have been two fire bombings claimed by pro-choice groups since 2010, one in NY and another in WI, vs. eighteen committed by anti-abortion groups. That, and the fact that anti-abortion violence is fairly common in the US, compared to pro-choice violence [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence
  - zmgsabst 3y ago
    https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251553/map-vandalism-attacks-continue-at-pro-life-centers-across-us https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251553/map-vandalism...
    - sbuk 3y ago
      Can we have another, unbiased source please. That one is state-sponsored and doesn't provide a credible source.

robomartin 3y ago

> A decade from now we have no idea what the political climate will be. When I was young, due to my family's business, I lived in multiple cultures outside of the US. I have personally experienced precisely the kind of political shift you mention in your post as a teenager, living in Argentina. I am referring to the military take-over. Imagine a world where the police or military thugs can kick down your front door in the middle of the night and take some or all of your family, never to be seen again. Imagine a world where, rock and roll was declared illegal and you could be arrested, tortured or worse if found "guilty" --not by a jury, by a single thug-- of anything remotely associated with it. Or how about being in a bus going somewhere, the bus gets pulled over and they beat the shit out of a bunch of people, just because they can (and justify it in some form). If you were known to not be in alignment with the prevailing ideology your life was worth nothing. Thousands died. Thousands disappeared. I had the personal experience one evening of getting pulled over by a couple of police cars while just walking home with friends after going to the movies. They threw us (and I do mean threw us, violently) up against the wall, harassed the shit out of us, slapped a couple of us around, took whatever money we had and sent us on our way. We were LUCKY that it didn't go beyond that. Americans are alarmingly ignorant of history outside their own borders. Our system of education is so one-sided, in an ideological sense, that kids leaving high school, and, in particular, college, become adults with truly distorted and troubling ideological programming. You talk to ANY immigrant who came from anywhere where the ideologies promoted by our universities and mass media are the "law of the land" and you are far more likely to get a treatise on how horrific this is rather than enthusiastic support for it. This ideology has proven to be a generational disaster across the world and across time. And yet, we, collectively, have allowed this to happen. > So many people are okay with unconstitutional things as long as it supports their side and beliefs. This is a major point that, once again, isn't taught in schools. The consequences will not be favorable over the long term. The idea that you should protect the rights of those you do not agree with is so fundamentally unique that it is rare, very rare, around the world. The US, in that sense, was unique. I say "was" because, today, I believe this is history. The fact that university students will riot when someone their puppeteers do not agree with comes to give a presentation at their school is evidence enough of the intolerant society we have manage to "educate" ourselves into. In this twisted world, the reality is that those espousing such things as tolerance, equity, freedoms, etc. actually, through their actions, actually do the opposite and represent the opposite: intolerance, non-equity, a desire and willingness to curtail freedoms, etc. We have managed to create an entire generation of adults full of hatred and intolerance. This is not a good outcome. This is the kind of thing that, in the chess game of a globally competitive world, your enemies absolutely rejoice about. While the US is busy polarizing its own population --alarmingly, through education-- actors around the world spend ever day placing one foot in front of the other. The result of this massive lack of foresight will not be pretty. > It is genuinely unsettling. Yes. I'll add, scary, disappointing, unproductive and dangerous. I do realize that a good percentage of the HN college-educated audience is in the grips of ideology that was pounded into their heads. It's Plato's Allegory of the Cave. All you can do is try to lead them out of the shadows. Yet, they have to be the ones open to viewing the world with their own eyes, rather than the shadows they were presented with. I would highly recommend watching a series on Netflix: "BREAK IT ALL: The History of Rock in Latin America" https://www.netflix.com/title/81006953 https://www.netflix.com/title/81006953 One of the very interesting things about this series is that they actually explore the political shifts you hinted at in your comment. They, of course, cover this in the context of Rock, but also provide a generalized view. This kind of thing has happened in nearly every Latin American country. It is disturbing that Americans don't know this history well. If they did, many of the political actors and most of the militant academics in this country would be laughed off the stage. There is HISTORY to prove that these people are not only demented, they are actually dangerous to society.

IntrepidWorm 3y ago

You have highlighted the core basis of Foucault's Boomarang: it doesn't matter the target of oppresive technologies and practices. Sooner or later, their scope will be turned on you.

AtlasBarfed 3y ago
"At first they came for X and I said nothing". Unfortunately, we are about 10 lines into that, and the election of 1 president and 1 key turn from the rest. To emphasize this, if Facebook knows who practically everyone is in the US (indirectly or directly), then sure as fucking hell the government does. All it takes is one guy that wants to do the McCarthy "unAmerican" bullshit and has enough to do it and the US Government will know EXACTLY who to target.

at-fates-hands 3y ago

Its always staggering to think people forget we only have a two party system. You'd think that would keep both parties in check from abusing their powers considering at some point the party you went after and did suspect things in order to win a few elections? Well, they're going to be back in power and what do you think they're going to do? The same thing you did. I feel like we're currently in this death spiral where its just a never ending war to get the other parties people out of power by any means necessary. While the entire time, its the people who have to suffer through it and pick sides. It appears the centrist moderate has evaporated from American politics - which to me was the last group of voters who kept both sides honest. There is no compromise either, its just a scorched earth approach now where nobody wins.

mistermann 3y ago
In my experience on social media, this sort of thinking is typically classified as "both sidesing" (or an assertion of "false equivalence", etc etc etc), and is considered to be highly inappropriate. And the people that say these things are often otherwise clearly intelligent, it is less common on HN perhaps, but certainly not uncommon.
- watwut 3y ago
  Yeah, well, knee jerk both sides are the same which completely ignores major differences between those sides is really wrong. It is mental shortcut that leafs to wrong conclusions and often ends up being a lie.
  - iosono88 3y ago
    [dead]
  - TechBro8615 3y ago
    I think the bigger knee jerk reaction is the need to assign everybody to one side or the other, to the point that nobody perceives any outgroup moderates; anytime they encounter someone with a moderately out-group opinion, they assume the rest of the opinions held by that person must be the most extreme implied by their leaning. Thus people become entrenched in their position as it appears that the out-group is becoming more extreme, ironically leading to a feedback loop that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of increasing polarization. Or at least, it creates the perception of increased polarization, which is what causes the problems. I like to suggest that you should imagine the most absurd caricature of a member of the out-group that you can think of - whether that's a "leftist" or a "MAGA republican" - and then ask yourself how many people you actually know who fit that description. Are you creating a scarecrow that's an amalgam of all the viewpoints you oppose?

mistermann 3y ago

It seems to me that there may have been some sort of a strange, unrealized cultural change in Americans over the last few decades. I seem to recall that the abstract notion of freedom of speech/assembly/etc was considered a VERY big deal by all or at least most Americans. However, this seems to have morphed into people now holding most of their ideological beliefs at specific concrete, object level issue level. Assuming there is some truth to this, the rise of the internet and a daily deluge of culture war content seems like it could easily explain the transformation.

watwut 3y ago
People used to be literally killed or beaten for their expressed believes, so that hiatoeical abstract notion has quite a lot of asterisks in it. It is waaaay too easy to idealized past while ignoring what was actually happening.
ajmurmann 3y ago
IMO it's because everyone is in a panic about the other side. One side believes that the other side is "grooming and sterilizing children" while the other side believes that they are working to "replace democracy with fascism". In turn both sides get more extreme and work each other more into a frenzy as extremists on each side will in fact say outrageous shit. Abstract values like "free speech" get lost in the war. Edit: even on here we have a comment openly calling for fascism (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35950813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35950813) and I'm sure others attacking the Christian roots of US society in comments here makes people on the other side who see that as the core of their value system feel equally threatened.

lazyeye 3y ago

Yes and I think alot of people are reading this and thinking "This is very true of the other side but my side is not doing these things".

JeremyNT 3y ago

> If the precedent is allowed to be set, there’s a good chance the power will be used against your cause in the future. I've become deeply cynical about this argument. The Constitution is a weapon, used by the powerful against the powerless. I think it's pretty clear that in many cases the Supreme Court decides cases on purely ideological grounds, then goes back and creates post hoc justifications from precedent and the text. Public opinion is useless here - it doesn't matter whether people are "OK" with something. What will you do, elect a new Supreme Court?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

_8j50 3y ago

Buying data from private companies is not unconstitutional so long as the company selling it to the government didn't break laws. As with so many american issues, just amend the fucking constitution! I swear this country needs to stop everything and do a constitutional convention (can be done, never be done before).

kelnos 3y ago
That "just" is doing a lot of work there. Even with a constitutional convention, you still need 3/4 of the states (38 of them) to ratify anything, which I don't think is feasible today. Hell, I'm not even sure the delegates to a hypothetical constitutional convention could even agree enough on what to propose for ratification.
- _8j50 3y ago
  Everyone is unhappy. Plenty of middle ground.