Poll: How should the US Constitution be ammended

[Darth Rotor]

He does not misunderstand my statements, he is very bright. I have read plenty of his conversations, enough to know fully that he does understand what I am stating.


Suddenly, at what point did citizens of the individual States become citizens of the United States?

When the words We The People of the United States" was ratified in this constitutional republic? That would be in 1789.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Are you suggesting that We the People of 1789 were not citizens?

 

[Darth Rotor]

My own pet change is to remove the reference to "endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights," and instead include something along the lines of "in order to create a more perfect society, we hold that all men must be treated as equal and allowed certain inalienable rights."

That way it becomes purely reasonable and supportable instead of calling in a nonsense deity.

That was in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. Topic of this thread is the Constitution.

DR

 

[EGarrett]

That was in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. Topic of this thread is the Constitution.

DR

That's already been said. Multiple times.

 

[Darth Rotor]

It was worth repeating, for emphasis.

 

[applecorped]

I would turn the question around: Is the constitution perfect?

No. Nothing is perfect.

 

[gdnp]

When the words We The People of the United States" was ratified in this constitutional republic? That would be in 1789.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Are you suggesting that We the People of 1789 were not citizens?

Wow. Darth Rotor and I agree on something. I'll have to mark this down in the calendar.

 

[volatile]

I would abolish the electoral college, abolish the Senate, include balanced budget, include public financing of elections, include public education, include public healthcare, include explicit right to privacy, make the government unitary, not federal, include proportional representation, include instant run off voting, include equal rights amendment, include pacifist amendment (Military action must be defense of the nation or an ally and approved by Congress), include the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, include environmental defense, include rights of Native Americans and treaties to be recognized.

Okay, maybe I might re-write the whole thing .

I knew I liked you.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

I knew I liked you.

Ah a fellow Comrade!

 

[volatile]

Ah a fellow Comrade!

Communism'd be awesome if it wasn't for all the damn Communists giving it a bad name, huh?

 

[gdnp]

These are all unsupported assertions.

They give no reason why these exist or are in/unalienable. It's a bit ironic that this argument from the Declaration of Independence, were it not a founding document of the country, would not hold up in a court of law.

They don't have to be supported. These are the axioms on which they are basing their claim of the right to dissolve their connection with Brittan. The axioms may have been flawed, but they remain the basis for everything that came after.

But how do you defend besides Appealing to the Authority of the Constitution?

Because the constitution, right or wrong, is the highest authority. It is the basis of all the other laws. Laws are not struck down because they are unfair, or discriminatory, or contrary to the bible or the Koran. They are struck down because they are unconstitutional.

Do you just assert that the Constitution or Declaration are ALWAYS right?

It would be kind of silly to start a "how should the constitution be amended" thread if I did.

If you do that then how do you amend the constitution? You HAVE to bring in logic somewhere. Self-evident and unalienable aren't good enough. Without logical justification, it would be too easy for a smooth talking fascist or someone else with some reasoning that SOUNDS right to sweep them under the rug. Because how can you counter? By saying they're "self-evident?" That's not really convincing.

Yes, the devil can quote scripture. Once it is in the constitution, however, it does not matter if it is logical or not. The burden of proof is on the people who want to change it to show that it is bad. Otherwise, it remains law.

The constitution as originally written had a glaring inconsistency: the treatment of slaves as fractional people. Men yet not men. Kind of contradicts that "all men are created equal" line in the declaration. It took a civil war to fix legally and 100+ years to fix socially--well, at least partially fix.

if we talk verrrry quietly maybe Jerome won't notice we're here

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Communism'd be awesome if it wasn't for all the damn Communists giving it a bad name, huh?

 

[EGarrett]

They don't have to be supported. These are the axioms on which they are basing their claim of the right to dissolve their connection with Brittan. The axioms may have been flawed, but they remain the basis for everything that came after.

I know that, and it does not make them quality assertions. I'm pointing out that they aren't.

Because the constitution, right or wrong, is the highest authority. It is the basis of all the other laws. Laws are not struck down because they are unfair, or discriminatory, or contrary to the bible or the Koran. They are struck down because they are unconstitutional.

Your first sentence is incorrect. If the constitution was the highest authority, then it could not be amended. Logic and reason are higher authorities...because we use those when we determine if the constitution needs to be changed.

It would be kind of silly to start a "how should the constitution be amended" thread if I did.

I didn't accuse you of doing that. You took that line out of context. I hate when people do that.

Yes, the devil can quote scripture. Once it is in the constitution, however, it does not matter if it is logical or not. The burden of proof is on the people who want to change it to show that it is bad.

If it's illogical, it IS bad.

Otherwise, it remains law.

The constitution as originally written had a glaring inconsistency: the treatment of slaves as fractional people. Men yet not men. Kind of contradicts that "all men are created equal" line in the declaration. It took a civil war to fix legally and 100+ years to fix socially--well, at least partially fix.

if we talk verrrry quietly maybe Jerome won't notice we're here

Okay, the First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. The Declaration of Independence says that men are "endowed by their creator," thus using a religious concept as the foundation of the country. There's your contradiction.

 

[marksman]

There are many contradictions between the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

That's because the Declaration in 1776 was intended to explain why the representatives of 13 colonies were justified in liberating themselves from central authority, while thirteen years later the Constitution of 1789 had the representatives of those same (now independent) colonies agreeing to yoke themselves once more to a central authority.

These were different documents written by (mostly) different men. Expecting them to be perfectly consistent is like examining Clinton's Presidential State of the Union address in 1992 and comparing it to Bush's State of the Union Address in 2005. Yes, they were both addresses by the President of the United States, but in 13 years, the country had changed, and the President had changed.

Only a handful of people signed both documents: Benjamin Franklin (PA), George Clymer (PA), George Read (DE), James Wilson (NC), Robert Morris (PA), and Roger Sherman (CT). Benjamin Franklin was involved in drafting the Declatation, and George Read in the Constitution, and that's about as far as we can go in seeing common authorship.

The documents were not intended to be perfectly consistent with one another, nor could they. Contrary to popular belief, the Founding Fathers were no monolith and both documents were compromises by the people in their respective Conventions addressing very different issues.

 

[WildCat]

I think there should be an amendment requiring everyone to know how to spell amended.

 

[gdnp]

I think there should be an amendment requiring everyone to know how to spell amended.

I screwed it up in the title and it's been down hill since then.

How about an amendment to make English the official language, with fines for spelling and gramerical* errors?


*my daughter coined this word while correcting her younger sister.

 

[JEROME DA GNOME]

Oh, for goodness sakes.

Article I, section 2: No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

Article I, section 3: No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

Article II, section 1: No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President

These sections existed in that language at the time of the Constitution's adoption. Now, since we had no problem electing Senators and Representatives, there must have been people who were "Citizens of the United States" and thus qualified to serve in Congress.

So, yes, as soon as the Constitution was ratified, citizens of the various States were also deemed "Citizens of the United States".

In Federalist Paper No. 2, Hamilton specifically notes that this proposed Constitution would expressly establish what had been the unwritten practice during the Articles of Confederation: national citizenship:

To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection. As a nation we have made peace and war; as a nation we have vanquished our common enemies; as a nation we have formed alliances, and made treaties, and entered into various compacts and conventions with foreign states.​

The Fourteenth Amendment did not create a new class of citizenship.

When the words We The People of the United States" was ratified in this constitutional republic? That would be in 1789.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Are you suggesting that We the People of 1789 were not citizens?

Well done fellows!

 

[luchog]

What I like about this phrase is that it is useful in countering those who say that there is no right to X because the constitution does not promise one.

Except, of course, that it does. That's what the 9th and 10th Amendments are for.

 

[JEROME DA GNOME]

Except, of course, that it does. That's what the 9th and 10th Amendments are for.

We are on a roll!!!