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Disagreement with the Constitution is certainly not new and I am not describing an increase in disagreement with the Constitution. I am describing a diminishin

by bhauer 11y ago

Disagreement with the Constitution is certainly not new and I am not describing an increase in disagreement with the Constitution. I am describing a diminishing significance of the term "unconstitutional" as a counterargument to agendas that (strictly speaking) are in fact unconstitutional. In the country's earlier history, the constitutionality of laws was considered a more important factor to predicate their existence. If an argument were made that a law would be unconstitutional, that presented at the very least a significant hurdle to clear. Are you saying you disagree that the Constitution is considered less relevant today than it was in the earlier history of the United States? If so, that's fine; we simply disagree. Certainly the past were not "the good ol' days," and nothing about what I said is to suggest the past was a better time than the present. Technological progress alone makes today immeasurably more luxurious. Rather, my point was that the Constitution and the limits have been diluted with each circumventing event made for the sake of facile law-making and problem-fixing. And today the Constitution is more often than not seen as quaint. Maybe you're right; maybe the percentage of Americans who see the Constitution as outdated and irrelevant has remained steady over time. I don't have polling data. But from my personal experience, even in my lifetime, the marginalization of arguments based on the constitutionality of laws appears to have grown. It now seems that bringing up the Constitution as a roadblock to new lawmaking is considered a tired, predictable, and ultimately weak talking point in a debate.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Are you saying you disagree that the Constitution is considered less relevant today than it was in the earlier history of the United States? Yes. If anything, our First Amendment rights are now more robust than they were in the past. We have almost nothing like a modern-day equivalent to Anthony Comstock. The amount of obscenities you can get away with these days is higher thanks to people like Al Goldstein, Lenny Bruce and Larry Flynt setting historical free speech precedents. Labor movement violence is a thing of the past. The sexual revolution means pornography went from obscene to "meh, whatever". Film censorship no longer happens as much as it did in the period before the 1960s. The export restrictions on cryptography have been heavily softened to the point of being almost practically irrelevant. Left-wing politics, though hardly major, are no longer subject to any real suppression beyond punditry's ignorance. As for the other amendments you listed, I presume they're in reference to mass surveillance. In which case, civil asset forfeiture dates back to maritime law, NSA has been documented to intercept ingoing telegraphs as far back as 1945, Operation Mockingbird had the CIA meddle with U.S. media, FBI has had COINTELPRO, DCSNet and other operations, so on and so forth. Nothing here is new. You're viewing the past through exceptionally rose-tinted glasses, honestly.
- bhauer 11y ago
  Very well. I tentatively stand corrected on the historical significance of unconstitutionality as an effective means to stop unconstitutional government behavior. Nevertheless, and perhaps in part because the Constitution has in fact been routinely steamrolled in the past, it seems that bringing it up as a counterargument to any law today is just short of pointless.
  - ubernostrum 11y ago
    Part of the issue is that the very first people to steamroll the Constitution were... well, some of the very people we're supposed to look to as having known exactly what the Constitution meant. The Alien and Sedition Acts, for example, became law in 1798, and were passed and supported by some of the people who just a decade earlier had been expounding "the original meaning" of the Constitution to people in an attempt to get it ratified.
- tedks 11y ago
  >Left-wing politics, though hardly major, are no longer subject to any real suppression beyond punditry's ignorance. This is not really true. Left-wing political groups are still actively suppressed by police organizations on a regular basis, as well as Islamic groups (religious and secular), LGBT rights groups, and generally anyone involved in protesting. Police see protest groups as antagonists and act to disrupt them pre-emptively if possible. The sources for this claim are broad; I would recommend looking into the leaked maryland state police spying documents (which show infiltration of non-violent activist groups), the FBI, local police, and bank conspiracies to disrupt the Occupy movement (long before any actions in the real world had been conducted by any group identifying as Occupy), and the Green Scare. Combine this with "free speech zones," protest permits, and other before-the-fact restrictions on free assembly, and you can see very clearly how political speech outside the mainstream is suppressed in the United States. (Interestingly, right-wing groups, white nationalism groups, and similar are not often targets of these investigations and are often protected by police during their protests. In many cases this is the result of local connections, but you have to wonder why animal activists are such a higher priority than white nationalist extremists, especially after Charleston.)

by bhauer 11y ago

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

Are you saying you disagree that the Constitution is considered less relevant today than it was in the earlier history of the United States? Yes. If anything, our First Amendment rights are now more robust than they were in the past. We have almost nothing like a modern-day equivalent to Anthony Comstock. The amount of obscenities you can get away with these days is higher thanks to people like Al Goldstein, Lenny Bruce and Larry Flynt setting historical free speech precedents. Labor movement violence is a thing of the past. The sexual revolution means pornography went from obscene to "meh, whatever". Film censorship no longer happens as much as it did in the period before the 1960s. The export restrictions on cryptography have been heavily softened to the point of being almost practically irrelevant. Left-wing politics, though hardly major, are no longer subject to any real suppression beyond punditry's ignorance. As for the other amendments you listed, I presume they're in reference to mass surveillance. In which case, civil asset forfeiture dates back to maritime law, NSA has been documented to intercept ingoing telegraphs as far back as 1945, Operation Mockingbird had the CIA meddle with U.S. media, FBI has had COINTELPRO, DCSNet and other operations, so on and so forth. Nothing here is new. You're viewing the past through exceptionally rose-tinted glasses, honestly.

bhauer 11y ago
Very well. I tentatively stand corrected on the historical significance of unconstitutionality as an effective means to stop unconstitutional government behavior. Nevertheless, and perhaps in part because the Constitution has in fact been routinely steamrolled in the past, it seems that bringing it up as a counterargument to any law today is just short of pointless.
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  Part of the issue is that the very first people to steamroll the Constitution were... well, some of the very people we're supposed to look to as having known exactly what the Constitution meant. The Alien and Sedition Acts, for example, became law in 1798, and were passed and supported by some of the people who just a decade earlier had been expounding "the original meaning" of the Constitution to people in an attempt to get it ratified.
tedks 11y ago
>Left-wing politics, though hardly major, are no longer subject to any real suppression beyond punditry's ignorance. This is not really true. Left-wing political groups are still actively suppressed by police organizations on a regular basis, as well as Islamic groups (religious and secular), LGBT rights groups, and generally anyone involved in protesting. Police see protest groups as antagonists and act to disrupt them pre-emptively if possible. The sources for this claim are broad; I would recommend looking into the leaked maryland state police spying documents (which show infiltration of non-violent activist groups), the FBI, local police, and bank conspiracies to disrupt the Occupy movement (long before any actions in the real world had been conducted by any group identifying as Occupy), and the Green Scare. Combine this with "free speech zones," protest permits, and other before-the-fact restrictions on free assembly, and you can see very clearly how political speech outside the mainstream is suppressed in the United States. (Interestingly, right-wing groups, white nationalism groups, and similar are not often targets of these investigations and are often protected by police during their protests. In many cases this is the result of local connections, but you have to wonder why animal activists are such a higher priority than white nationalist extremists, especially after Charleston.)