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The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

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Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#271

Post by akiselev »

crazygringo wrote: post #227
PinesOfRome wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elaborate on this. How do political parties affect the equation here, and what would the more modern approach be? Any texts you can recommend regarding this?

Well, checks and balances in the American constitution were founded on the idea that there would be no "factions" (parties), and so the three branches (legislative, executive, judicial) would balance each other without any single group ever taking over. In reality, when Democrats or Republicans capture all 3 branches, it utterly defeats the entire premise of the Constitution. The modern approach is generally a parlia…

>* Well, checks and balances in the American constitution were founded on the idea that there would be no "factions" (parties), and so the three branches (legislative, executive, judicial) would balance each other without any single group ever taking over.*

I’m not a constitutional scholar but I take issue with that characterization.

Federalist #10 by James Madison is all about factions, how they are inevitable, and how the system of government should be structured so that their self interests balance out for the good of the nation. Madison wrote the Virginia Plan which proposed the three branches of government and he wrote down exactly what his thinking was at the time. For most of the 18th century the British empire was a single party state ruled by the Whigs which is what they were trying to avoid by explicitly allowing room for many factions.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#272

Post by lettergram »

anonymousiam wrote: post #229
cm2187 wrote: post #222

Author complains these amendments cannot be passed because of political polarisation. That polarisation is the very reason why those amendments shouldn't pass. You can only change the constitution if there is a consensus, by design. If you want to make a change that half the country is dead against, all the systems of balance of power will work against it (two chambers - one by headcount the other by states, filibust…

Exactly! In addition, the 10th amendment should prevent, but has not stopped Congress from passing most of the laws it has passed. https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-10/

There's a few reasons this broke down...

1. The 17th amendment (1912) - Electing senators by popular vote broke the state representation in the federal government. States no longer had representation to protect their sovereignty.

2. The federal reserve act (1913) - enables government to self-fund by printing money and enforces everyone onto a single, centrally controlled bank.

3. The 16th amendment (1913) - Federal income tax - allows the federal government to directly tax citizens for the first time.

Those three amendments, in effect, decimated the federal system and centralized power. After that, they could pass what ever they wanted.

IMO the internet is re-igniting a public debate and push towards populism -- that and that's why you saw the 2008 rise of Ron Paul, Occupy Wallstreet, Tea Party, Bernie Sandars and now MAGA.

(yes, it was coupled with a financial crisis, but the government response led to push back).

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#273

Post by dragonwriter »

lupire wrote: post #202
johnnyanmac wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I think she should take a wider view and look at things like how speech and free association would be impacted. I feel like the first amendment is one of the few bipartisan issues of the constitution, though. The only issue seems to stem from those who misinterpret it as some almighty protection against being abrasive. It's simply meant to say that the government can't punish you for your speech or other associ…

The 1st Amendment has always been widely hated, going back nearly to the very first year, ateast as far back as the Alien and Sedition Acts.

> The 1st Amendment has always been widely hated

Not really. Everyone loves what it says, they just all think that what they dislike falls into a hidden “but...” clause.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#274

Post by pyuser583 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #46
johnthuss wrote: post #15

"Seventy-two per cent of Republicans think that the Constitution is basically fine as is; seventy-two per cent of Democrats disagree." Of course this has nothing to do the actual Constitution. It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. The optimist in me wants to believe that even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise and find a middle ground on man…

> It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. This requires clarification. If our government was elected based on a "one person one vote" principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress. Since 1992 there have been 8 presidential elections. Republicans only won the popular vote once (2004) but also won the presidency in 2000 and 2…

> If our government was elected based on a "one person one vote" principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress.

The Republicans are competing under the rules that exist - and they’re very, very good at it. Do you think they would blindly wander from defeat to defeat without seriously changing tactics?

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#275

Post by hedora »

cm2187 wrote: post #222

Author complains these amendments cannot be passed because of political polarisation. That polarisation is the very reason why those amendments shouldn't pass. You can only change the constitution if there is a consensus, by design. If you want to make a change that half the country is dead against, all the systems of balance of power will work against it (two chambers - one by headcount the other by states, filibust…

Population shifts mean an ever-shrinking minority of the population can block changes to the constitution. It’s barely even double digits at this point.

Constitutional amendments were supposed to be easier than right to rebellion. That’s not really the case any more. At the same time, the supreme court is just ignoring the law, over the objections of 66-75% of the population (depending on the ruling).

These are dark times for US democracy. There’s no evidence things are working as intended.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#276

Post by edgecasestdio »

ETH_start wrote: post #201
crazygringo wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's not. Constitution design is an academic field, a very niche area of political science, and nobody would ever implement anything like the US Constitution today. It would be like using ALGOL for a new project today instead of Python or Java. The US Constitution was very much a version 1.0 project, written before people even knew political parties would be a design constraint. Constitutions are on like ver…

You can't compare Constitutions to programming languages in terms of the prevailing consensus on their utility. While the latter has a vast test bed of real world utilization that reveals PL efficacy, the former can only be evaluated from the standpoint of theory, with a heavy heap of ideology.

I'm also wary to use programming languages as a metaphor to advance a view about writing constitutions.

I can agree with the broad point that inertia is a major cause for constitutions to stay the same over time. But I disagree with the original commenter's implication that more recently-written constitutions tend to be better than older ones due to lessons from the past, because of the idea (perhaps relating to yours) that contemporary political and ideological considerations can introduce weaknesses into more recently-written constitutions, which overlook potential lessons from the past.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#277

Post by jonnycomputer »

If at times the Constitution is not responsive enough, it does have one big benefit: it is almost impossible to change it to do something like, allow a President to serve life tenure, and yet we see a number of places where such constitutional changes were pushed through by those who would be dictators, or sought more powers as executive(Russia's in 2020, China in 2018, Ecuador in 2016, Turkey in 2017, etc.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#278

Post by StanislavPetrov »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #255
anonymousiam wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! In addition, the 10th amendment should prevent, but has not stopped Congress from passing most of the laws it has passed. https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-10/

Quoted post unavailable.

A conspiracy theory is, by definition, a secret. That the government routinely ignores the Constitution isn't a conspiracy, just a sad fact. How many wars have we been in over the last 70 years? Vietnam? Korea? Iraq? Afghanistan? Just to name a very few. Read Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution. How many times has the Congress voted to go to war? Is this just a conspiracy, or another example of our government's disregard for the document that purportedly grants them their legitimate legal authority? Congress actually voted against going to war against Libya in 2011, but Obama ignored them and destroyed Libya anyway. Conspiracy or disregard for the highest law in the land?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13908202

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#279

Post by psudmant »

cm2187 wrote: post #222

Author complains these amendments cannot be passed because of political polarisation. That polarisation is the very reason why those amendments shouldn't pass. You can only change the constitution if there is a consensus, by design. If you want to make a change that half the country is dead against, all the systems of balance of power will work against it (two chambers - one by headcount the other by states, filibust…

The author does not "complain these amendments cannot be passed because of political polarisation [sic]" - she points out that even prior to polarization most amendments couldnt be passed. There are many other important and nuanced points in the article as well, it's neither pro- nor anti- amendment.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#280

Post by Tomte »

WalterBright wrote: post #174
tptacek wrote: post #33

It's an interesting article and if you bounced off it because you had a visceral reaction to the premise, like I did at first, I'd recommend taking another whack at it. Jill Lepore, if you're not familiar with her work, is a historian with a reputation as a more rigorous version of people like Howard Zinn. I don't think it's a good article though. In particular, I don't think it coheres. It's about how the modern Con…

The US Constitution is still the best one in the world. The 18th Amendment (Prohibition) is an example of what can go wrong with amendments.

Why does all the "nation building" around the world by the United States never result in a US style constitution, but seemingly inevitably in something closer to the German one?

I mean, Americans always talk about their Constitution's supremacy, but they never want to give it to others (not even to Puerto Rico).

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