4 ms·

And some Americans dismiss their constitution as out of date. It seems more relevant than ever.

• cinquemb 13y ago
  Even so, there are a lot of flaws within it unless some people are considered 3/5ths of persons on the basis of their skin. The idea is to transcend, not regress…
  • Afforess 13y ago
    That crap got tacked on at the end in the name of compromise. You should read the first drafts some time.
    • cinquemb 13y ago
      But it existed, and was the law of the land for some time right? But I guess since it was tacked on in the end in the name of a compromise all is forgiven, as people can tell from the current state of affairs today.
      • marshray 13y ago
        What I take away from it is that a document drafted by a bunch of slave owners has such miraculously little recognition for the practice of slavery.
  • smegel 13y ago
    But what if you transcend into something like modern day Britain? You let people start tweaking with some aspects, others will want to "modernize" its notion of free speech. It could be such a slippery slope.
    • cinquemb 13y ago
      If the people allow for something to happen and do nothing, then that is what will be (until otherwise confronted). The people who inhabited the world before us were no less immune to the philosophical issues that plague us today. Slippery slopes will always present themselves before us, as it has always been in our nature to create our own problems, but it matters more what will people do when the moment arises. I'm not condoning the actions of our nation states (Britain in this case), but as we have seen people and companies are standing in opposition with the issues at hand, and if people continue to do so to a point where it is agreed upon by more members of the community, then it will become the law of the land. Even the ideals brought forth in the constitution we're hardly original to it and we're fought for with the blood of about 1% of the population in the colony at the time [0]. But by no means does that some how make them more moral then the people who came before and those afterwards. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EiSymRrKI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EiSymRrKI4
  • enoch_r 13y ago
    That isn't the lesson of the 3/5ths compromise: The founders were hashing out how each state would be represented by Congress. They decided each state would have representation proportional to its population. The problem: some states had tons of slaves. Slaves weren't allowed to vote--that was never in question--but slave states still wanted them to be included in the population count to get more representation. Giving slave-owners more votes by counting their slaves fully would have been much worse, not better, for the slaves. (An irrelevant tangent, I know, but this historical event is always mentioned in the wrong context and I think the truth is more interesting.)
    • cinquemb 13y ago
      Interesting indeed. But as you noted, it is irrelevant to how people have been (and continued to be by some) treated according to he "original" law of the land, which is no less the "truth". People can learn many lessons from an event in history.
    • serge2k 13y ago
      Ah okay, so really they were just protecting the rights of slaves. Gotcha.
      • enoch_r 13y ago
        That is a totally unreasonable interpretation of my comment.