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I've always admired the German Constitution for that. The US Constitution was an extraordinary achievement in its time, but that time was two and a half centur

I've always admired the German Constitution for that. The US Constitution was an extraordinary achievement in its time, but that time was two and a half centuries ago. A lot has changed, and the various patches applied to fix the obvious failings can't change the fundamental failings locked in at the beginning. Including the fact that it is practically impossible to fix, and has not been meaningfully amended in a half-century. It's an interesting intellectual exercise to imagine how it might be written if excluded voices had some real say -- not just the rich, not just men, not just white people, not just the healthy, etc. The first article of the German constitution is an interesting take on benefitting from the world's increasing belief in the necessity of human dignity -- something noticeably missing from the US Constitution.

ryandrake 2y ago
I agree with your overall point that the concept of innate "human dignity" is missing from the US Constitution. But, I'm not sure it's simply because of something missing from the time period, like the exclusion of various minorities from the process. The idea of human dignity is not a recent invention, and white male landowners are/were capable of valuing or not valuing it. One could argue that if the US's Founding Fathers valued human dignity, they would have enshrined it in the constitution along side of the things they did value, like Freedom Of This and Freedom Of That. Its omission could very well have been deliberate.
- Turing_Machine 2y ago
  "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." That sounds an awful lot like "human dignity" to me. Not to mention pretty much the entirety of the Bill of Rights. Exactly what definition of "human dignity" are you using here?
  - jfengel 2y ago
    The preamble says practically nothing about individual people. It's all about group behavior. The Bill of Rights does say more, but it has large gaps. For comparison, have a look at the German Basic Law: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany_(1991) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Rep... Some choice bits: * Men and women have equal rights. * Everyone has the right to the free development of his personality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral code. * The dignity of man is inviolable. To respect and protect it is the duty of all state authority. These are vague, but no vaguer than the US First Amendment, which is rife with all kinds of unspoken limitations. One interesting one: * With regard to open-air meetings [the right to assemble] may be restricted by or pursuant to a law. The US Supreme Court decided that our right to assemble means that the Westboro Baptist Church has the right to be really horrific shitweeds, at funerals. Being abominable is their purpose. They want to make people feel shitty. The German constitution considered those possibilities and decided that the freedom of association could be limited. These are the kinds of things that we didn't consider in the Constitution. We've patched around it -- like the fact that libel and slander are illegal, despite that seeming to me as a pretty direct contradiction to the First Amendment. The German one goes on and on with details. They were written based on their experiences in the 20th century. We find it very hard to fix that.
    - Turing_Machine 2y ago
      > like the fact that libel and slander are illegal, despite that seeming to me as a pretty direct contradiction to the First Amendment. Libel and slander are civil torts. The First Amendment only applies to the government. You cannot, in general, be sued for libel or slander if the quasi-victim is the government, or a government official. You're free to call politicians every nasty name in the book and they can't do much about it. That's what the First Amendment is about.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    There is a hint of it in "promote the general Welfare" but they could have elaborated further. Also, choosing to use the word "promote" rather than "ensure" or "guarantee" is telling. They valued human dignity and wellness, but not enough to guarantee a right to it. For example, they could have guaranteed humans have the right to (physical and economic) access to adequate food. I think we can all agree that food security is a human dignity issue. But they didn't include such a right, and indeed even as recently as 2017, the USA was one of only two countries in the world that voted[1] against a Right To Food at the UN Human Rights Council. Same goes for any right to access to clean water, sanitation, clothing, shelter, and so on. None of these are actually guaranteed by the USA, although some states have taken steps in this area. 1: https://geneva.usmission.gov/2017/03/24/u-s-explanation-of-vote-on-the-right-to-food/ https://geneva.usmission.gov/2017/03/24/u-s-explanation-of-v...
Turing_Machine 2y ago
> Including the fact that it is practically impossible to fix, and has not been meaningfully amended in a half-century. Many would argue that it doesn't need to be "fixed". I note in passing that Germany was controlled by Nazis (real Nazis, not just "disagrees with a communist" Nazis) within living memory, and until 1990, half of it was a communist slave state that sucked so bad that it needed armed guards to keep people from leaving. > It's an interesting intellectual exercise to imagine how it might be written if excluded voices had some real say What exactly do you think the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments were about? https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Additional_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Additional_amendments_to_the_...
- eqvinox 2y ago
  > Many would argue that it doesn't need to be "fixed". There are a whole bunch of things that I'm 120% certain need to be fixed with U.S. laws, but of course whether they need to be fixed in the constitution (or even an amendment) is a different question. (Off the top of my head: Gerrymandering needs to be illegal, the Supreme Court needs oversight, elector based voting needs to go away, corporations need to be "not people" in terms of politics.) > I note in passing that Germany was controlled by Nazis (real Nazis, not just "disagrees with a communist" Nazis) within living memory, and until 1990, half of it was a communist slave state that sucked so bad that it needed armed guards to keep people from leaving. Thanks for pointing this out, that is indeed why the German Grundgesetz (constitution) is so good — it was written in 1949 in the Western part as a specific reaction to Nazis in order to ensure it never happens again. That's why it starts with "human dignity is sacrosanct" as article 1, and "everyone has the right to freely develop their personality as long as they don't infringe others" as article 2.
  - Turing_Machine 2y ago
    > There are a whole bunch of things that I'm 120% certain need to be fixed with U.S. laws That is why there is a Constitutional Amendment process, which has been carried out successfully 27 times. > elector based voting needs to go away Essentially no major country practices direct election of the chief executive. It's not just the United States. For instance, in Canada individual voters did NOT vote for Justin Trudeau. He wasn't even on their ballot. They vote only for their local MP, and a bunch of party hacks from the party (or group of parties) with the most MPs pick the Prime Minister. The same is true for most countries with a parliamentary form of government. At least here Trump and Biden were actually on the ballot. Canadians don't have that luxury. What's worse, only the party's registered members get a vote on their party's selection, and most of the parties actually charge money to belong to them (to its credit, Trudeau's party is not one of these -- you can join the party without having to pay any money, though even with that party it wasn't the case until quite recently). > Thanks for pointing this out, that is indeed why the German Grundgesetz (constitution) is so good The Weimar Republic Constitution was widely believed to be good as well, but it sure didn't turn out that way in the long run. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_48_(Weimar_Constitution) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_48_(Weimar_Constitutio... Note that Hitler wasn't the first to exploit this flaw.

ryandrake 2y ago

I agree with your overall point that the concept of innate "human dignity" is missing from the US Constitution. But, I'm not sure it's simply because of something missing from the time period, like the exclusion of various minorities from the process. The idea of human dignity is not a recent invention, and white male landowners are/were capable of valuing or not valuing it. One could argue that if the US's Founding Fathers valued human dignity, they would have enshrined it in the constitution along side of the things they did value, like Freedom Of This and Freedom Of That. Its omission could very well have been deliberate.

Turing_Machine 2y ago
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." That sounds an awful lot like "human dignity" to me. Not to mention pretty much the entirety of the Bill of Rights. Exactly what definition of "human dignity" are you using here?
- jfengel 2y ago
  The preamble says practically nothing about individual people. It's all about group behavior. The Bill of Rights does say more, but it has large gaps. For comparison, have a look at the German Basic Law: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany_(1991) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Rep... Some choice bits: * Men and women have equal rights. * Everyone has the right to the free development of his personality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral code. * The dignity of man is inviolable. To respect and protect it is the duty of all state authority. These are vague, but no vaguer than the US First Amendment, which is rife with all kinds of unspoken limitations. One interesting one: * With regard to open-air meetings [the right to assemble] may be restricted by or pursuant to a law. The US Supreme Court decided that our right to assemble means that the Westboro Baptist Church has the right to be really horrific shitweeds, at funerals. Being abominable is their purpose. They want to make people feel shitty. The German constitution considered those possibilities and decided that the freedom of association could be limited. These are the kinds of things that we didn't consider in the Constitution. We've patched around it -- like the fact that libel and slander are illegal, despite that seeming to me as a pretty direct contradiction to the First Amendment. The German one goes on and on with details. They were written based on their experiences in the 20th century. We find it very hard to fix that.
  - Turing_Machine 2y ago
    > like the fact that libel and slander are illegal, despite that seeming to me as a pretty direct contradiction to the First Amendment. Libel and slander are civil torts. The First Amendment only applies to the government. You cannot, in general, be sued for libel or slander if the quasi-victim is the government, or a government official. You're free to call politicians every nasty name in the book and they can't do much about it. That's what the First Amendment is about.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  There is a hint of it in "promote the general Welfare" but they could have elaborated further. Also, choosing to use the word "promote" rather than "ensure" or "guarantee" is telling. They valued human dignity and wellness, but not enough to guarantee a right to it. For example, they could have guaranteed humans have the right to (physical and economic) access to adequate food. I think we can all agree that food security is a human dignity issue. But they didn't include such a right, and indeed even as recently as 2017, the USA was one of only two countries in the world that voted[1] against a Right To Food at the UN Human Rights Council. Same goes for any right to access to clean water, sanitation, clothing, shelter, and so on. None of these are actually guaranteed by the USA, although some states have taken steps in this area. 1: https://geneva.usmission.gov/2017/03/24/u-s-explanation-of-vote-on-the-right-to-food/ https://geneva.usmission.gov/2017/03/24/u-s-explanation-of-v...

Turing_Machine 2y ago

> Including the fact that it is practically impossible to fix, and has not been meaningfully amended in a half-century. Many would argue that it doesn't need to be "fixed". I note in passing that Germany was controlled by Nazis (real Nazis, not just "disagrees with a communist" Nazis) within living memory, and until 1990, half of it was a communist slave state that sucked so bad that it needed armed guards to keep people from leaving. > It's an interesting intellectual exercise to imagine how it might be written if excluded voices had some real say What exactly do you think the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments were about? https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Additional_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Additional_amendments_to_the_...

eqvinox 2y ago
> Many would argue that it doesn't need to be "fixed". There are a whole bunch of things that I'm 120% certain need to be fixed with U.S. laws, but of course whether they need to be fixed in the constitution (or even an amendment) is a different question. (Off the top of my head: Gerrymandering needs to be illegal, the Supreme Court needs oversight, elector based voting needs to go away, corporations need to be "not people" in terms of politics.) > I note in passing that Germany was controlled by Nazis (real Nazis, not just "disagrees with a communist" Nazis) within living memory, and until 1990, half of it was a communist slave state that sucked so bad that it needed armed guards to keep people from leaving. Thanks for pointing this out, that is indeed why the German Grundgesetz (constitution) is so good — it was written in 1949 in the Western part as a specific reaction to Nazis in order to ensure it never happens again. That's why it starts with "human dignity is sacrosanct" as article 1, and "everyone has the right to freely develop their personality as long as they don't infringe others" as article 2.
- Turing_Machine 2y ago
  > There are a whole bunch of things that I'm 120% certain need to be fixed with U.S. laws That is why there is a Constitutional Amendment process, which has been carried out successfully 27 times. > elector based voting needs to go away Essentially no major country practices direct election of the chief executive. It's not just the United States. For instance, in Canada individual voters did NOT vote for Justin Trudeau. He wasn't even on their ballot. They vote only for their local MP, and a bunch of party hacks from the party (or group of parties) with the most MPs pick the Prime Minister. The same is true for most countries with a parliamentary form of government. At least here Trump and Biden were actually on the ballot. Canadians don't have that luxury. What's worse, only the party's registered members get a vote on their party's selection, and most of the parties actually charge money to belong to them (to its credit, Trudeau's party is not one of these -- you can join the party without having to pay any money, though even with that party it wasn't the case until quite recently). > Thanks for pointing this out, that is indeed why the German Grundgesetz (constitution) is so good The Weimar Republic Constitution was widely believed to be good as well, but it sure didn't turn out that way in the long run. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_48_(Weimar_Constitution) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_48_(Weimar_Constitutio... Note that Hitler wasn't the first to exploit this flaw.