I don’t know about holy but I definitely see it as the most important document in the American system of government (a Republic if we can keep it).
Literally all authority in America flows from our Constitution. The only reason the President is in charge is because the Constitution says so. The only reason laws passed by Congress are laws is because the Constitution says so. The only reason the judiciary exists as a place to go and settle disputes and apply the laws is because the Constitution says so.
Without the Constitution the only way society would run is by force.
I know that people with Gadsden flags and dog eared copies of Atlas Shrugged think that’s how society works today, but it’s not. But that’s a whole other discussion.
We mostly just agree to abide by the laws which derive their legitimacy from Constitution. If it weren’t there, we’d have no foundation. That’s why it’s like a holy document. Except it’s better than a holy book, because there’s no claim of infallibility. It is expected to be modified, and it has been modified.
Thomas Jefferson actually expected there to be constitutional conventions on a regular basis to rewrite the thing from time to time. A part of me thinks that might be a good idea. Maybe reconstitute the Congress as two proportional representation parliaments (one with single 8 year terms, one with unlimited 2 year terms or something, people vote for parties not people). Eventually abolish the Second Amendment or at least rewrite it to make it clear that “well regulated” is important, and there can be limits to personal armament. Expand the Fourth to cover modern data creation and storage. Do a better job with patents & copyright. On and on.
In any governing system, something has to be supreme. Something has to be the final word in settling disputes. There are basically three options: Fiat, convention, or consensus. Consensus is really only practical in small groups, so we can put that option to the side. What remains is the choice between rule by the whims of a person or group, and the rule of law.
Despite their many flaws, the founders of the American republic were at least smart enough to realize that there would be a constant temptation to set aside the rule of law and let a person dictate things. So the foundational law (the constitution) was made sacrosanct in the way that the king had been. To lose the rule of law is to lose the republic, and return to tyranny.
It’s a document laying down the tenets and laws that our government has to follow and specifies what rights we as citizens have that cannot be infringed. That being said the reason is propaganda. And no. Not all Americans.
Its part of the brainwashing to preserve the illusion that they live in a real Democracy even though there has been a duopoly on Power for way over a century and that they are Free even though only a small number of them is born in wealthy enough families that they can actually do what they want, whilst everybody else has to do what they have to merelly to survive and are even constrained in that (for example, if they invade long unused land, to build their home and do subsistence farming there - i.e. try to have freedom via self-sufficiency - they will be kicked when the owner calls the “authorities”).
Also treating the Constitution as almost sacred means that people can’t challenge or even just criticize the very mathematical rigging that makes Power in their country be controlled by a duopoly (and hence not a Democracy) because it was set down on said Constitution so doing so would be challenging/criticising said “holy” Constitution.
Thinking people should always ponder on the answer for the good old Cui bono? (“Who gains from it?”) question (so old it comes in Latin) whenever something or somebody is relentlessly portrayed as beyond questioning.
Other than that pesky wording on the 2nd amendment, the US Constitution is pretty good.
It includes the electoral college though, which treat’s peoples votes differently based on where they live, which is undemocratic.
Okay fair enough. Disproportionate representation is stupid. Any other egregious amendments? I’m not American and I welcome the education.
As far as amendments go, the most egregious that comes to my mind is the 13th:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Slavery is still legal within the united states, but only in the case of prisoners. Slavery should be illegal in all forms no matter what, but we’re still stuck in the 1800s. People commonly think the U.S. ended slavery after the civil war, but instead we just turned to neo-slavery, with a million Jim Crow laws on the books to put black people right back out in the fields.
Nowadays instead of Jim Crow, we have the war on drugs which largely does the same thing. The U.S. has the largest per capita prison rate out there for a reason.
The needs of people in LA or NYC are very different than the needs of people in Wyoming. No one is, or will ever, ignore the massive population centers. They will get attention, they always get attention. Eliminating the electoral college would make it very easy to completely ignore certain states, as it would make more sense to campaign in very large population centers, where you get more bang for your buck.
A lot of people only complain about the electoral college when it doesn’t work out in their favor. If Trump won the popular vote in 2016, but lost in the electoral college, the same people demonizing it today would be praising its wisdom.
I looked it up a few years ago. Trump went to several states that Clinton didn’t, and it paid off for him. The president has to be the president for all 50 states, not just the ones with the most people.
(this isn’t an endorsement of Trump, it’s just that the 2016 is what brought the electoral college thing to the forefront again)
No one is, or will ever, ignore the massive population centers. as it would make more sense to campaign in very large population centers, where you get more bang for your buck.
That is the current situation. Presidential candidates only ever visit the biggest cities in swing states.
Eliminating the electoral college would make it very easy to completely ignore certain states
They already do. No candidate visits any state other than a stronghold state for funding, or a swing state. That’s it. The rest of the states get ignored.
I live in Pennsylvannia. My state recieves the most attention, and every single election at least one of the candidates shows up at my town. Do you know where they don’t visit? They don’t visit any of the small cities in PA, let alone some place in the surrounding states. If the reason to keep the electoral college around is to prevent un-even focus from candidates, then the electoral college spectacularly fails at this goal. If instead all votes were equally regardless of location, candidates would far more often visit the cities in other states.
It’s unavoidable that they’ll stick to higher population regions, because that’s always going to be the most effective strategy no matter the system. Since that’s unavoidable, we may as well have a system that is fair.
If Trump won the popular vote in 2016, but lost in the electoral college, the same people demonizing it today would be praising its wisdom.
I don’t think so. The people who hate the electoral college are pretty consistent in my experience.
And for the record, I don’t think we should be doing a FPTP system even if we moved away from the electoral college due to the numerous problems with FPTP. Either STAR or approval voting would be far better.
This outlines what I’m talking about pretty well…
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trumps-campaigns-numbers/story?id=43356783
Sure, most of the time was spent in battleground states, but Trump went to 8 states Hillary didn’t show up in at all. Trump didn’t show up in 10% of states, Hillary didn’t show up in nearly 30%. That’s a big difference. She instead spent her time at fund raisers, 350+ vs 50-60. Trump talked to the people, while Hillary talked to her donors.
And for the record, I don’t think we should be doing a FPTP system even if we moved away from the electoral college due to the numerous problems with FPTP. Either STAR or approval voting would be far better.
I agree. I think this would go along way to help reduce the divisiveness in politics. I had to look up STAR and Approval, I’ve mostly been looking at Ranked Choice. All of them pretty much look to accomplish the same goal and can move us away from the 2 party, winner-take-all system.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trumps-campaigns-numbers/story?id=43356783
I don’t doubt any of this is true. But if anything, I think it just supports my point that under our current system, candidates do not pay attention to anything other than a select few cities. So the pro electoral college argument over candidates focusing on select few cities is a moot point.
All of them pretty much look to accomplish the same goal and can move us away from the 2 party, winner-take-all system.
They’re all better than FPTP, but ranked choice voting in a way suffers from the same sort of issues as FPTP. The spoiler effect of FPTP is still present, not nearly as bad, but still present. Because at the end of the day, ranked choice voting is basically FPTP over several rounds. If FPTP is bad, then repeating it several times isn’t good.
The other thing is that ranked choice isn’t as secure as STAR or approval, which are purely additive, whereas ranked choice is not. Pure addition makes it much easier to audit results, which is incredibly important. Additive results also allow us to see the results being collected in real time so to speak, which goes a long way towards trust in the system. Ranked choice just doesn’t have that ability.
The other problem with ranked choice is that it doesn’t really give somebody a quantitative say in how much they like/dislike candidates. I might prefer a candidate order of B, C, then E. But if I absolutely revile E, don’t care either way about C, and am in love with B, the vote won’t really show that. Approval has this problem as well, but it is a minor gripe to be honest.
Either way, all 3 of these will help deal with the 2 party situation. But if we have a choice, STAR is the best in my opinion.
Fair points. I’ve seen the most traction around ranked choice, so even if it isn’t ideal, it’s still a step in the right direction, and seemingly the one with the best chance of happening right now. I think I prefer ranked choice over Approval. I don’t want to just say, “these 3 wouldn’t be the end of the world,” I want to be able to give more weight to the candidate I actually want to win. STAR still does that.
I do see where the transparency around ranked choice could be harder to see and make voting a lot more confusing. In an era of people claim election fraud left and right, that’s not a good thing. I guess I’d go STAR > Ranked Choice > Approval > The current system.
STAR > Ranked Choice > Approval > The current system.
Not far from where I’m at. The auditing of approval being easier means that I think it should be at #2, but that’s a minor gripe.
We can agree that the current system is the worst option, which is enough for me.
The Senate itself was specifically designed to degrade the democratic power of more populous states.
That was the intention of the house, not the senate. But regardless, the design of congress isn’t too great either. The power of a person’s vote on the legislature should be as close to equal as is possible with everyone else’s. No vote should have more weight/power.
Can you expand on that? I was referring to the distribution of senators because it gives small states the same number of votes as large states. That means that each individual voter in larger states has proportionately less representation.
Yeah, I think that is wrong, as it gives people an unequal voice over legislature. Ideally the entirety of congress would looks something far closer to the house of representatives, with each representative being representative of the population.
This comment and this title are two separate things in my opinion. I don’t give a shit what the founding fathers wanted either. That’s why we’ve amended the Constitution several times. The originalist viewpoint of the Constitution is ridiculous and completely counter even to how the founders wanted the document to act, funny enough.
As for why it’s treated like a holy book – it’s basically a set of rules for our government and what laws are okay and which laws aren’t okay. Think of it like a social contract that everyone signed. It’s how we’ve agreed to live together and treat each other. Unlike a holy book though it can and has been changed.
It’s quite literally the legal foundation of the country.
I don’t give a shit what the founding fathers wanted either. That’s why we’ve amended the Constitution several times.
Repeating myself here, but, the founders wanted us to adjust the Constitution over time, to meet the needs of the current generation.
Right, and we have, but the bar being high seems reasonable.
All americans? damn! I guess I missed the american memo from the big american group chat.
guys apparently we’re treating the constitution as a holy book now. some random guy on the internet posted an image of text so it must be true.
We didnt invite you to the group chat cuz all you do is send unsolicited cat pics
well yeah but like…
…they’re some pretty fucking sweet cats.
Are cats even in the US constitution??
no, they are not. but they’re still pretty sweet.
The OP never said “all,” and there are certainly many who do.
I’m sure there are. but it’s getting tiresome to be lumped in with loudmouth twitter morons.
Yeah, but it’s tiresome because of those loudmouths, not because of the observations that they exist.
right, but the loudmouths are the minority.
Yet they are still the ones holding the US in the current stranglehold. They have a disproportionate amount of power, which is exactly one of the main problems with the constitution.
Do they? seems quiet outside my window. People just going about their day.
nice weather too. I wasn’t alerted that any twitter nerds had anyone in a “chokehold”.*
It’s not quite death and destruction out today because someone tweeted an opinion about the constitution. the world doesn’t just exist online.
*stranglehold is the term you used. but nobody is being strangled because of twitter dorks either.
that’s what happens when you give idiots a voice
Because many of those men were flat-out geniuses. They penned a fine constitution and outlined ideals we should strive to achieve. That doesn’t mean they knew the best way to legislate modern issues though , like the internet. That brings us back to their genius. They outlined a process to revise, or amend if you will, the laws of the land. The biggest problem that they didn’t foresee is that America would regress into fervent tribalism, completely unwilling to amend anything that might benefit another tribe. So we’re stuck, locked in the year 1992 when the last amendment was written. Actually that’s not completely true. Many of them did foresee the dangers of a bicameral partisan system, and issued abundant warnings about it. Unfortunately they really didn’t anticipate just how insulated and shameless many of our politicians would become, probably because tar and feathers in the public square was still a possibility back then.
Thing is, yesterday’s geniuses are today’s average person, average intelligence is going up and there’s tons more people on the planet today vs back then, that’s a whole lot of geniuses that could create a much better constitution but that are unable to because some people at the other end of the spectrum act like some dude 250 years ago could predict the world we would live in today (when they in fact predicted that the Constitution would need to be amended in the future).
Nope, the political leaders that founded the USA were extremely well educated and would probably put the average modern person to shame on any topic or skill that wasn’t invented after their death. Motherfuckers these days can barely read and write.
The average dumbass knows how to Google stuff now, and feels like they are smart because they can operate a touch screen device and access information.
But if you take that same “smart” average modern dumbass back to colonial USA times and they would not know how to survive at all. They would be like “where’s my cheeseburger? Where’s my shower?” and just fucking die of bacterial infection from stubbing their toe probably. Those old dudes were building their own houses, farming their own food, writing long political essays and shit. They were out there inventing all the stuff we take for granted now.
And today there’s more and more very well educated people around. Heck, compare the number of women that had access to university back then vs today.
Take the founding fathers and send them to today’s world and they’ll end up homeless.
My point is that they might have been very smart and educated back then, people like them exist today and there’s much more of them, we just don’t listen to them.
average intelligence is going up
Not anymore. Average intelligence in Western countries plateaud and started dropping around 10 years ago.
That’s still how many years of it going up since the US founding fathers?
Take the founding fathers and send them to today’s world and they’ll end up homeless.wrong comment chainMy point still stands.
Only because they lack knowledge, not because they lack intelligence. They were extremely intelligent men.
Oh sorry, that seconds part (added as an edit) should have went in my reply to the other comment that mentioned sending someone from today back in time to the days of the founding fathers!
Yeah you said it yourself, the constitution is meant to be amended. We haven’t seen a new amendment in 31 years because our politicians are thoroughly dedicated to blocking each other.
That’s not a problem with the constitution, though. That’s a problem with the backstabbing nature of politics/culture wars in the USA.
The idea is supposed to be that we only update the structure of our government as needed when there’s broad support for it. That should be easy when we’re considering a change that’s obviously in the public interest.
But right now, if someone from the “wrong” party says that the sky is blue, the other party will come up with all sorts of reasons why They Are Wrong And Evil. You can’t cooperate when the only rule is to badmouth the other guy.
Exactly.
Only narrow minded people do. The rest of us understand as our forefathers did, that the constitution is a framework, that is malleable. It is meant to be updated over time and fine tuned. That is why they left the ability to add amendments.
Americans like to have some sort of unquestionable rules they can point to. Whether it be religion or constitution they want impunity for their actions.
“Founding fathers”
White man came across the sea He brought us pain and misery He killed our tribes, he killed our creed He took our game for his own need
“Unfortunately our current government”, consults the holy book… vote
Take a closer look at any part of the lawbook. Every single change has likely a few regressions. Treat it as sourcecode.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/read-another-book but for tech bros
The forefathers had some of the most sensible ideology in the history of humankind. What other country established limits on the power of their government as a foundational document?
They’re still very sound principles to this day.
Unfortunately our current government doesn’t concern themselves with those principles.
But I will agree with what was likely the point of this post, which is that the Constitution is not and was never supposed to be timeless, and the founders would agree with that too.
Every country with a constitution?
Shhh, you’re screwing up their circle jerk.
Many constitutions of many modern liberal democracies are modeled or inspired off of the US Constitution. Though now newer ones are modeled instead of its derivatives (kind of lending credence to this thread’s message of, maybe we should update the constitution more).
Also, the US Constitution is a second attempt. Operating briefly under the Articles of Confederation outright did not work because the federal government couldn’t fund itself. They threw that away and created the present system which almost outright doesn’t work. That’s progress.
I will agree with what was likely the point of this post, which is that the Constitution is not and was never supposed to be timeless, and the founders would agree with that too.
established limits on the power of their government as a foundational document
I’d argue that’s a blessing and a curse.
The framers were coming off a monarchy. They saw government power as dangerous and thought that it had to be limited. But they didn’t really consider that other groups might gain greater power than governments.
Unfortunately, we have exactly that problem. Organizations with sufficient money often rival governments for power.
The checks and balances that were designed to protect ordinary citizens from government also protect large multinational corporations and ultra rich families and individuals. The result is often that those powerful non-government actors can often subvert government and ultimately cause the same, or even worse, problems.
The checks and balances that were designed to protect ordinary citizens from government also protect large multinational corporations and ultra rich families and individuals.
How do you figure?
The constitution doesn’t recognize groups of people as anything more than a group of people. Even if they’ve set up mechanisms that greatly magnify their power. It also doesn’t recognize any power imbalance. It just lumps everyone together and treats everyone as equal. (Some exceptions may apply)
That’s a good thing not a bad thing.
It’s both. Any policy has downsides.
I’ll use one of the internet’s current favorite villains as an example. If the Lemmy admins decide to kick out some set of users, it won’t have much effect on the world. When Elon decides who is and isn’t allowed to have an account on his servers, it can have a massive impact on legislation and public behavior. Our laws mostly treat those the same.
The result is often that those powerful non-government actors can often subvert government and ultimately cause the same, or even worse, problems.
Only if we treat corporations like they are citizens/people, and money as speech.
We could legislate those away in a heartbeat, if “We the People” wanted to.
I sort of agree but I think it’s much more complicated than that.
Our current legal framework have any specific mechanisms for reigning in the power of powerful non-government actors. At best, a bunch of people can realize that such an actor is doing something shady, then ask their legislators to do something about it, then hope that enough other people have asked their legislators the same thing. People can try to accelerate that by creating awareness campaigns (essentially adopting some of the power of such actors).
The problem is the well heeled actors can do all the same things much faster. When some rich private organization decides that they want a change, they can speak directly to legislators across state lines, they can openly or secretly fund massive (dis)information campaigns. “We the people” are at a severe disadvantage against that.
Consider that there are several initiatives that the majority of US citizens support that US legislators still refuse to implement.
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I sort of agree but I think it’s much more complicated than that.
Complicated doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
Our current legal framework have any specific mechanisms for reigning in the power of powerful non-government actors.
It does, they could re-enable Citizens United for a start.
Without going down the rabbit hole and getting stuck in the weeds, generally speaking, Congress can pass any laws it wants, and as long as they’re constitutional they affect us.
Consider that there are several initiatives that the majority of US citizens support that US legislators still refuse to implement.
Well if we voted in legislators who would implement the initiatives we wanted, then it wouldn’t be a problem, but that’s a whole different subject to discuss.
We can and should try but we’re going to be doing so against a much better funded lobbying group. Those lobbyists can fight that consistently while we try to maintain concentration across countless other political issues.
The Citizens United decision was years ago. Rage against it has moved on and many don’t even know about it. Remember Net Neutrality? We had the regulations and media companies still managed to get rid of it.
The Citizens United decision was years ago. Rage against it has moved on and many don’t even know about it.
Actually I still hear people talk about it now and then, and I mentioned it myself as well. So I don’t think it’s fair to say that people have moved on, it’s just on the back burner, waiting for the next Congress that hopefully has a more decisive percentage so more voting can be done.
And besides, my point in mentioning it was to show that you can affect change and curb individuals with excessive power who can corrupt the process for everyone else via new laws and brought back old laws.
Remember Net Neutrality? We had the regulations and media companies still managed to get rid of it.
Actually, it was the former president who installed a chairperson of the FCC that got rid of it.
Also, Net Neutrality is coming back, since the current President put in a new chairperson to lead the FCC.
Which party you vote for does matter.
Responding to your overall tone of your opinions, the thinking that change will never happen is not correct.
Things just go back and forth, because we’re divided nation, but things do get done, and everyone should have a voice and how that’s done, even if it means to change takes longer to happen.
It would be a herculean effort to change Citizens United. It was a Supreme Court decision. So it would require either swapping out several justices or convincing a large number of Republicans to join in on a legislative change. The Democrats had both chambers and the White House since then and either it was still out of reach or just not a priority.
I’ve also heard rumors that Net Neutrality is coming back but it hasn’t happened yet. We handle it at the regulatory level rather than the legislative level. So even if Biden does manage to get it re-instated, it will likely disappear again with the next Republican president. Policies like that need to be consistent or they don’t really work. Otherwise we’re essentially telling large media companies, “You can totally mess with competitors access capabilities but only every other presidential term.” That give them plenty of time to bankrupt competitors.
My tone isn’t meant to suggest that change will never happen. Change is inevitable. Any system will favor some changes over others. Powerful entities are pretty good at tilting the playing field in their favor. Citizens United is just one such example. Over time that creates an environment that favors those powerful entities over less powerful entities. It’s a self re-inforcing decision in that it makes it easier for groups like Citizens United to promote legislation sympathetic to it’s own power.
Which party you vote for does matter but it’s not everything. Democrats where happy to join with Republicans in passing the PATRIOT act. After Ross Perot had a non-trivial showing they were eager to join up with Republicans in pushing 3rd party candidates out of the debates.
