Wait. Don’t. It would be better for me if he is not joking. I have a solution for that.
I’ve come across this demented idea before, on the college campus. Essentially, the thought process goes that every generation should have the opportunity to write out their own framework for a government, based on their wants, needs and morals of the time.
When you point out that all that would have to happen is for one generation to put language in their constitution stating that the following generations can no longer make changes and the experiment is done, they have a frothing conniption and call you a fascist.
Reality is too tough for some, I guess.
So, for the guy with the mind so open that his brain has fallen out, I propose this:
Fine, we’re rewriting the Constitution (and Bill of the Rights). Since I am sure that there will be limits to speech in the new constitution, I will lobby against freedom of speech for academics, as well as no Tenure system in our universities. When this passes, he will be fired for being an idiot.
Proof that education and wisdom are not synonymous.
Same logic applies to the endless calls for Congress to pass a law restricting a future Congress from doing something.
All a future Congress has to do to void that law is to simply do the restricted thing.
This always made sense to me, but there were more than a few folks for who this was a counterintuitive concept. It took a full class day in Constitutional Law class for everybody to get this.
“But the Supreme Court!” No, the Supreme Court will consider the prior restricted law to have been, in effect, voided by the future Congressional act in violation of it.
Makes sense if you think about it for a minute, but most folks don’t.
You want to restrict future Congresses, it takes a Constitutional amendment.
I don’t hold the constitution in any esteem.
That shit doesn’t mean anything to me.
Talk to me about individual liberty and you have my ear.
It would seem that the first document to recognize and codify into the law of the land the respect for individual liberty might carry some weight in such a conversation. Or, you know… not.
Great!
If the US Constitution is scrapped, that means that each of the 50 States revert to being independent nations! Cool!
And please don’t quote that old trope about the Civil War proving that the Union cannot be dissolved. If the world can celebrate and support the dissolution of the Soviet Union into several sovereign nations (and Yugoslavia splitting even further), surely the United States can’t object to the same treatment. Respect for International Law and all that.
Unfortunately, this guy seems pretty serious. I saw an editorial to this effect, either written by him or a fellow traveler a short time back. Now, this video is being posted on gun control blogs, drawing cheers from that crowd. True colors are being shown.
Individual liberty is one thing.
A government’s foundational document is another. If you’ve seen a better one, I’d like to hear about that. Our only other option is to try and write a better one, which probably wouldn’t work out for folks like you or it, seeing as who has been in power for the last 100 years or so.
Well when you guys finally realize that the foundational document of the American experiment is the DoI and not the constitution we can talk again.
Billy Beck said quite rightly that the constitution is/was a counter revolutionary document.
The DoI provided no framework for how the nation was going to function. That was what the Articles of Confederation tried to do (and they failed… miserably).
It was “counterrevolutionary” in that a good many men who took part in the Revolution looked askance at the Constitutional Convention, and gave it a miss. But it laid a far more stable foundation than had existed previously.
Was it perfect? Of course not. It was written by human beings. Bit it was pretty good, for Government work.
The DoI is a foundational document in the same way that a weekly grocery list is a recipie for pie. Beck is a nice guy and all, but he is wrong.
As Mollbot said, it mentions nothing as to how a governing body is to function or cooperate with the rights of the people, and without that you have nothing.
So again, until you show be a better contract of governance, I’ll work around the one I have.
Can you imagine paying money to attend Georgetown, so you can learn enough to become a productive member of society, and you sign up for what sounds like a real class, constitutional law, and then you get this useless idiot? I didn’t bother to Google him, but I know he has a degree from Harvard, Princeton or Yale.
I understand that the DoI is not a framework of government is it the founding principles of the American Experiment like I said above.
The constitution got us where we are today. I’d hardly call that a “good thing”.
Personally I kind of like the idea of not having a federal government, but what the hell do I know I like freedom over servitude.
Taking *shortcuts* with (and around) the Constitution got us where we are today. If it were still being followed faithfully I think we would not have these same problems.
We would STILL HAVE PROBLEMS. We are, as I said, human: we all have problems.
Just on the issue of the 2nd Amendment, NFA ’34, GCA ’68 and the FOPA ’86 all appear to blatantly violate it from where I’m standing, as did AWB ’94. But I am not, nor am I likely ever to be, a Justice on the Supreme Court. Which is likely a good thing because I would probably fall asleep on the bench or something else embarrassing.
You’re not terribly familiar with Rothbard are you?
I know he is a dead economist, one of many. Libertarians, the hard core borderline-anarchy types, commit the same error that Communists do; they fail to account for human nature, even while patting themselves on the back for doing just that.
Say what you will about the founding fathers, they were cognizant of human nature and tried hard to correct for it.