Stop using the US Constitution as a crutch

I am so tired of people using the US Constitution as a crutch to avoid the advancement as a nation.

Either it's an infallible document, or it's open to change.

We are talking about original intent. Whites males. They can have guns, they can vote. Fast forward a couple of hundred of years, people want to change what the USA was based upon.

The US Constitution changes to reflect it's citizens. It isn't some Aryan ideal that our forefathers thought-up. Actually, it is some Aryan ideal that our forefathers thought up.

A racist, sexist country. But we have advanced. People with different skin colours can drink from the same water fountain. They are not property. Women can receive the same salary as a man for the same job (what year was that)? If the USA was 90% Hispanic, and 5% black, and the language was Esperanto, the USA would not change. The flag would still wave in glory. It's a nation built upon an ideal of liberty and justice. It doesn't matter whether white people, or women, (at least it doesn't mater now), who runs it. It's an ideal.

So the next time you say, "Well our founding fathers..." think about what our 'founding fathers' really thought.

You can't say, "Ok, blacks are human, and women aren't property, those parts were bad, but everything else... Some parts change whether it be 1806, um I mean 1906, um.. I mean 2005. This is it, we have reached the pinnacle of all the changes we should make. This year is it. Our founding fathers, and other politicians messed up, but now, the US has reached perfection. "

You can't pick and choose, this isn't the Bible, this is the Constitution of the United States of America. It represents an ideal of liberty and justice for all, regardless of your beliefs..

I don't want to hear any more what Thomas Paine or John Adams thought. Sure, it's interesting, but for the black woman who votes (as an example) it's pretty antiquated to what the USA can become. And then to turn around and use the same document for another purpose, citing its holiness. It's just dishonest.

So lets live in the now, and leave your Federalist Papers at home. This is the real world, we don't use muskets, and there are other people other than white males who have a say in how our nation shall achieve it's goal. Liberty and justice for all.

Originally posted by curme
So lets live in the now, and leave your Federalist Papers at home. This is the real world, we don't use muskets, and there are other people other than white males who have a say in how our nation shall achieve it's goal. Liberty and justice for all.

Believe it or not, I agree with you. I always preach about the Constitution and (as you've pointed out) it's not perfect and it's over 200 years later. Things change.

But this is precisely why people argue over laws, rights and so on. Some want to keep the Constitution and its amendments frozen in time, as if they are written in stone and others realize that things change and in fact the amendments have come out of change.

I do believe, however that the Constitution is a very stable and reliable groundwork from witch to move forward. There are certain ideals (and there I go, picking and choosing) that shouldn't be messed with.

So I'd have to say sure, it's open to change, but for the most part, we shouldn't mess with it.

And yeah, I don't think the individual forefathers' particular ideas or even intent mean that much any more. It doesn't matter. But they did write a hell of a document on government and it's worked pretty well for us so far, even though we've made changes over the years and it's built to evolve and grow.

I would just hope it didn't 'grow' too much to the point of irrelevence.

I am so tired of people using the US Constitution as a crutch to avoid the advancement as a nation.

It depends on what you consider advancement. I suppose its subjective.

Either it's an infallible document, or it's open to change.

Of course its open for change, thats why it was written with this....

Article V. - Amendment
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

A racist, sexist country. But we have advanced.

Hence the 13th 15th and 19th amendments, see it works.

I don't feel that the constitution is open for changing interpretation, if something needs to be "fixed" it needs to be done by amendment. If you allow interpretation changes to happen for something you believe strongly in chances are there will be a day that its interpreted in ways that you don't like.
Besides all that its dangerous to allow it to be changed on a whim, all it takes is to appoint a few sycophants to the supreme court and basically they can interpret all of our rights away.

dats why we have amendments dat adjust to the changes. unless u dink white supremacists right now should have the right to change the Consitution that would include killing all the minorities and its consitutional.

dats ,dat , dink

Huh? Perhaps you could clarify your point, I'm having a difficult time making out what your point is.

Originally posted by Skibum

dats ,dat , dink

Huh? Perhaps you could clarify your point, I'm having a difficult time making out what your point is.

making a comment to curme about needing changes to the Consitution. as for yer post i agree with u on the amendments that have been added to the changing country. i mentions white supremacists as an example who if they could, would want to change the Consitution that would meet their own interests.

Cool, any large group could do it. I don't have a problem with the constitution being changed by 3 quarters of the states agreeing to it, I do have a problem when it comes from the often politicized opinions of 9 people.

You obviously have never read the Constitution and you have never read the writings of the Framers themselves or else you couldn't say what you said. The Constitution was the most forward thinking document in history at the time it was written and adopted and its existence has opened the door of freedom to more people than any document before or since.

You really should do some reading before you start writing. It makes you sound, well...ill-informed and bigoted.



[edit on 2005/10/21 by GradyPhilpott]

curme are you implying just because omitting rights, it means they didnt want those rights? like women voting, freedom from slavery, etc?

i guess you missed the 9th amendment...
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

and the constitution is not open to change, only to addition of recognised rights and logical limit of power or to declare by amendment guaranteed rights when abuse occurs.

[edit on 20-10-2005 by namehere]

The Constitution is not "liquid", it was not penned to be fundamentally changed or altered.

Calling the Founding Fathers racist, sexist, or bigoted is ignorant at best. The basic societal make-up of the day was NOT any of those things...it was just the way things were. In the following 226+ years since, societal make-up has changed dramatically, but the INTENT of the document has not.

Wherever it says "men", has long been interpreted to today meaning "all persons", regardless of gender, race, creed, or religion.

But the absolute INTENT cannot be changed:

Free speach still means just that, for ALL people.
The right to bear arms is also for ALL people (a militia of 1776 was composed of all able bodied men that were not members of the Continental Army....still is, but ALL people are now included).
Obviously, the right of protection against unlawful search and seizure of property now applies to ALL people that own property, not just men.

The words can be changed to reflect society as time marches on, but the words CANNOT be changed to alter the intent.

It is STILL the worlds greatest document of an established state.

I have noticed that people who are very lacking in constitutional knowledge prefer to attack it.
A nation that is founded upon a constitutional republic doesn't change with the whims and novelties of a faddish society. That is what makes it different from a constantly changing democracy, and makes it more stable as well.

There is nothing that needs to be changed in the constitution; and I do not believe anyone is trying to "hide" behind it. I think maybe someone is trying to rationalize getting it out of the way.

Gee, you now are in the same class as the likes of the Clintons and the Bush family. I'll bet you feel kind of uppity now, curme!

Like was posted earlier, the mechanism for change is called an Amendment. But you have to watch out for that stealthy part of the holy trinity, the courts. They can do or undo whatever they like, judicial caveat, I think that's what they call it.

Jefferson warned about judicial oligarchy, but I don't want to bring up what some old white guy wrote about 200 + yrs. ago. That might just confuse things.

Originally posted by sharkman
Like was posted earlier, the mechanism for change is called an Amendment. But you have to watch out for that stealthy part of the holy trinity, the courts. They can do or undo whatever they like, judicial caveat, I think that's what they call it.

The courts have no say on an ammendment. As far as the whole of the government is concerned, after an ammendment passes, it is part of the Constitution. As a result, Congress cannot make any law negating any aspect of the ammendment. As it is the court's job to interpret the Constitution, they cannot nullify an ammendment, either. One possibility is to start to attack the ammendment by making exceptions and assumptions as has been happening with our first ammendment, but only the Supreme Court has the power to add "except" to any ammendment (ex. You have full freedom of speech [except when someone doesn't want you to say something -SC]) Since it takes 5 justices to agree to change the Constitution (they call it interpret), and those justices are appointed for life negating any needed political manuvering, it is rather difficult to have the court influenced by the trends of today.

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
Gee, you now are in the same class as the likes of the Clintons and the Bush family. I'll bet you feel kind of uppity now, curme!

You know as well as I, that when the Constitution was written, it was not to even include women. They weren't even part of the equation. Welcome to the 1700's. A woman's role when the Constitution was written was to be seen, but not heard.

Are you mad at Clinton and Bush for taking away rights you, as a woman, never had in the first place?

Until a bunch of liberals came along and gave women a voice?

I'm a white male. The original intent doesn't hurt me at all.. It's you that should be upset.

EDIT: Women and non-white males need to get and rise up for their rights! We need to recognize that a bunch of white slave holders from the 1700's had some stuff wrong.


[edit on 28-10-2005 by curme]

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Looks like it has the power to change, if the majority of the country wants it to change. Supermajority, actually. But it can't really work, right? It only supports white males, right?

Article [XIX].

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Article XIII.

Section 1. 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.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Oh...looks like it can work...odd...

Originally posted by curme

You know as well as I, that when the Constitution was written, it was not to even include women. They weren't even part of the equation. Welcome to the 1700's. A woman's role when the Constitution was written was to be seen, but not heard.

Are you mad at Clinton and Bush for taking away rights you, as a woman, never had in the first place?

Until a bunch of liberals came along and gave women a voice?

I'm a white male. The original intent doesn't hurt me at all.. It's you that should be upset.

EDIT: Women and non-white males need to get and rise up for their rights! We need to recognize that a bunch of white slave holders from the 1700's had some stuff wrong.

but...., that has already been recognised as contempory, and the constitution has been amended to reflect that.

you are attacking the constitution on the grounds that it doesn't reflect the current views regarding 'rights'. i think it is wrong to suggest that a backbone can be used as a crutch. that's a little cart-before-the-horse-y. it is the patriot act that is the crutch, and it is not 'we the people' who are using it.




[edit on 28-10-2005 by billybob]

I don't want to turn this into a liberal bashing thread, I just want to say that the problem w/ today's democratic party is that they share the same ideas as you do curme. They want to intrerpret and make that document reflect their ideology in the name of 'modernizing america'. Government administrations that pooh pooh on the citizenry like clinton did at waco and ruby ridge tell me if they had it their way w/ out the constitution and bill of rights, they would have a hay day making up laws that put a stranglehold on the citizenry and their freedoms including taking powers away from we the people and giving their administration more... I'm not a fan nor will i ever be one of those who want to do away w/ the constitution.