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"The Congress shall have Power...To establish Post Offices and post Roads;" The wording "shall" is what I meant by weird wording. But no roads? No post offices

"The Congress shall have Power...To establish Post Offices and post Roads;" The wording "shall" is what I meant by weird wording. But no roads? No post offices? Whatever. The constitution is extremely flawed and should be abandoned.

AnimalMuppet 3mo ago
That's quite a non sequitur there. The wording is weird, so we should abandon the entire constitution? Not so fast, comrade. Not so fast. You've got a lot of work ahead of you to fill in the gaps in your logic here, before any of us are going to agree with your conclusion.
- deleted 3mo ago
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eru 3mo ago
> But no roads? What's so confusing about that? Presumably the constitution assumes that normal roads are for the more local layers of government to deal with. I interpret 'shall have power' to mean 'if they want to, they can do it'. Doesn't mean they have. Eg they have the power to levy tariffs on foreign trade, but the constitution is perfectly happy with free trade, too.
bulbar 3mo ago
"Just build it from scratch, can't be that hard" - every software engineer at some point in the past. It is that hard and even harder. An then you have the problem that politicians and societies have a hard time to decide on topics of much narrower scope and much smaller impact. That said, I would love to for the US having a solid checks and balances system instead of the current system. If you want to look at a case study regarding a 'more modern' constitution: the German (de facto) constitution is only around 80 years old.
- eru 3mo ago
  Interestingly, both the US and German constitution were written explicitly to limit the power of the federal level. But in both systems the federal level grabbed more and more power as time went on. (Partially because that's also popular with the voters.)
Leonard_of_Q 3mo ago
> The constitution is extremely flawed and should be abandoned. The Constitution is mostly fine and has carried your (?) country for 250 years. It is mostly fine because it is mostly interpreted in an originalist way, i.e. as a document meant to function as the underpinning of a society where all men are equal and endowed with unalienable rights by God. That last bit - God - is as important for those who believe in a god as it is for those who don't because it means those rights are not granted by government and as such can not be taken away. The wording of a constitution is one thing, the interpretation thereof a wholly different one. Read the constitution of the Soviet Union and you get the impression that there was a state where people really were able to live life to the fullest, helped and protected by the government. Compare it to how life actually looked in that state and you'll get the impression that you surely must have read the wrong document.

AnimalMuppet 3mo ago

That's quite a non sequitur there. The wording is weird, so we should abandon the entire constitution? Not so fast, comrade. Not so fast. You've got a lot of work ahead of you to fill in the gaps in your logic here, before any of us are going to agree with your conclusion.

deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]

eru 3mo ago

> But no roads? What's so confusing about that? Presumably the constitution assumes that normal roads are for the more local layers of government to deal with. I interpret 'shall have power' to mean 'if they want to, they can do it'. Doesn't mean they have. Eg they have the power to levy tariffs on foreign trade, but the constitution is perfectly happy with free trade, too.

bulbar 3mo ago

"Just build it from scratch, can't be that hard" - every software engineer at some point in the past. It is that hard and even harder. An then you have the problem that politicians and societies have a hard time to decide on topics of much narrower scope and much smaller impact. That said, I would love to for the US having a solid checks and balances system instead of the current system. If you want to look at a case study regarding a 'more modern' constitution: the German (de facto) constitution is only around 80 years old.

eru 3mo ago
Interestingly, both the US and German constitution were written explicitly to limit the power of the federal level. But in both systems the federal level grabbed more and more power as time went on. (Partially because that's also popular with the voters.)

Leonard_of_Q 3mo ago

> The constitution is extremely flawed and should be abandoned. The Constitution is mostly fine and has carried your (?) country for 250 years. It is mostly fine because it is mostly interpreted in an originalist way, i.e. as a document meant to function as the underpinning of a society where all men are equal and endowed with unalienable rights by God. That last bit - God - is as important for those who believe in a god as it is for those who don't because it means those rights are not granted by government and as such can not be taken away. The wording of a constitution is one thing, the interpretation thereof a wholly different one. Read the constitution of the Soviet Union and you get the impression that there was a state where people really were able to live life to the fullest, helped and protected by the government. Compare it to how life actually looked in that state and you'll get the impression that you surely must have read the wrong document.