541–550 of 747 posts
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Oh knock it off. Having a conservative opinion =/= “far right”
You're talking about Americans. The democrats are far right and the republicans are extremely far right. Look at the rest of the world
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Our Federal constitution is fairly concise Concise to the point of vacuous. It says practically nothing. It describes only the barest outlines of government, and effectively all of the actual implementation has been a matter of legislation, judicial decisions, and tradition. Individual words are scrutinized as if they will somehow be unambiguous if we stare at them long enough, or bring in enough cherry-picked outsid…
It may appear that way, especially if someone doesn't make it their life's work. But although concise, it is rich in meaning. You call out Article III, for example, so I'll focus on that. It doesn't say "we should have a Supreme Court and other courts Congress may establish." It says the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in them, and that judges shall be appointed. It isn't magisterial or clerical p…
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> 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…
The answer is, it is a Republic, not a Democracy. It's set up to make it difficult for the majority to trample on the rights of the minority. More colorfully, having two wolves and a sheep vote on what's for dinner. It's still a good thing.
And that's why black and white people couldn't intermarry until 1967.
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 rigidity of the Constitution is probably it's greatest strength Yeah. I’m with you there. It’s that way by design along with things like the presidency not having ultimate power. The system’s not perfect, but let any modern politician make substantive changes, and I’d bet heavily on the system getting worse.
I tend to agree more with Thomas Jefferson:
"On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.—It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to 19 years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be indeed if every form of government were so perfectly contrived that the will of the majority could always be obtained fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves. Their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils. Bribery corrupts them. Personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents: and other impediments arise so as to prove to every practical man that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal."
https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/tho...
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.
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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…
The Supreme Court is, in no sense of the word, ignoring the law. They are interpreting the laws in ways you disagree with and in ways which have historically not been how it was interpreted by the same court, but this is not what ignoring means. Further, the objections of the population have nothing to do with the judicial branch and everything to do with the legislative branch. The courts are not and have never been…
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Comparison is "dumb"? Is it now a logical fallacy? Better ban history 101. No more comparison. I'll just... uh... compare things against some theoretical ideal I make up. Maybe get some psychological warfare experts and brand it? Historyaboutisim?
> No more comparison There's no need for a strawman. The comment didn't say "no more comparison", it said comparing to the lowest of the low is dumb. I agree. If you're a sporting team, is it productive to say "We're better than the team on the bottom of the ladder" ? (Even though you're second-last) When you're a country, it's equally as pointless to say "We're doing better than The only reason a person would ever m…
Consequently, to those people, it's an excellent reply.
Maybe it wasn't for you.
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Supreme Court rulings are not a popularity contest. It’s intended as an independent (as independent a nominated body can be) that interprets the laws the Congress passes within the confines of the Constitution. I for one would fear living in a country where the courts were swayed by public sentiment.
The SCOTUS is "independent" in the sense that it does not have any person or institution they have to answer to, but I'm not sure if that's really all that relevant. The individual members have vastly different views on how to interpret the law, and are clearly put in place for political reasons. And courts should be "swayed by public sentiment". A judge's job is "to judge", and general societal attitudes play part o…
That's problematic.
Part of the function of courts and judges is to convince people not to "take the law into their own hands", and mete-out punishment by mob. That incentivizes courts to hand-down more severe sentences, especially in scandalous cases. Another part is to interpret the law fairly (Justice as Fairness), a function that is often at odds with the former function.
I don't think it's at all the business of courts to try to appease the mob; that leads inevitably to trial-by-tabloid, which is no kind of justice.
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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.
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…
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> individual rights over everything else I used to admire the US constitution. I've grown up now. Who could possibly be opposed to human rights - i.e. human beings having rights? And indeed, the US constitution does appear to be largely about rights. Over the years I've increasingly leaned to the view that these rights are mostly a legal fiction, and that the things that are supposedly rights are highly subjective po…
> Who could possibly be opposed to human rights - i.e. human beings having rights? And indeed, the US constitution does appear to be largely about rights. What do you mean? US citizens have pretty much the most rights of any people in the world. Can you list the countries that guarantee freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, freedom from unreasonable searches and freedom to stay silent (not incriminate yourself)? (…
In practice the US performs rather badly when scores on civil liberties.
Here is one methodology https://knoema.com/atlas/ranks/Civil-liberties-index?mode=am... but you can find similar results across many others.
Just take our prison population per capita if you want a glaring metric on how poorly we do at freedom.