4 ms·
Why wait for 19 years? Lets change constitution along administration change in DC.
by geodel 2y ago
Why wait for 19 years? Lets change constitution along administration change in DC.
- baggy_trough 2y agoYou can! Just have to get the votes.
- gs17 2y agoJefferson wanted 19 years to make it something each generation gets the chance to do, based on life expectancy at the time. >And the half of those of 21 years and upwards living at any one instant of time will be dead in 18 years 8 months, or say 19 years as the nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation, nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly extend a debt. >[...] On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. [...] The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.