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The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

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Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#731

Post by dang »

PubliusMI wrote: post #510
HaZeust wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your entire argument falls under when you take into consideration that the very judicial power that's "vested" to the Supreme Court in its jurisdiction is solely delegated to Judges that Congress appoints. Congress should not get to seat its own checks and balances, and it doesn't particularly matter if Congress is only allowed to establish and ordain inferior courts to that of the Supreme Court, if they already effe…

Quoted post unavailable.

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Please don't create accounts to do that with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#732

Post by dang »

HaZeust wrote: post #653
PubliusMI wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Quoted post unavailable.

Posting like this will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.

I'm not going to ban you right now because (unlike with the other account) I didn't see a lot of this in your history—but please don't do it again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#733

Post by DebtDeflation »

rayiner wrote: post #729
tptacek wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is weird, because you're crediting sovereign states for having their "own" national health care, retirement, unemployment, and housing systems, and in the wildest dreams of the Democratic party we wouldn't have a national system for all of these things. It makes sense if you sort of skim over the idea that Germany, Sweden, and Spain are just "states" in a federation. But obviously, they are not.

@debtinflation was making a pragmatic argument: that modernity renders these granular state lines obsolete. My point is that the EU manages to keep chugging with all these little sovereign states of 5-10 million people managing their own healthcare and retirement systems Maybe a US state is something legally different than an EU country, maybe not. I would say the two weren’t intended to be different, and whatever tr…

Look at the specific examples I provided. European countries closely coordinate their regulation of radio spectrum, air traffic control, nuclear power, and pollution through the EC even if individual countries have separate national regulators on paper.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#734

Post by refurb »

sokoloff wrote: post #713
refurb wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what happens when one party controls the Senate and another the Presidency? Which has happened quite often?

What used to happen is the President nominated someone qualified and the Senate confirmed them. Now, it causes a political circus.

I'd disagree there. You've heard of Robert Bork?

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#735

Post by rayiner »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #733
rayiner wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@debtinflation was making a pragmatic argument: that modernity renders these granular state lines obsolete. My point is that the EU manages to keep chugging with all these little sovereign states of 5-10 million people managing their own healthcare and retirement systems Maybe a US state is something legally different than an EU country, maybe not. I would say the two weren’t intended to be different, and whatever tr…

Look at the specific examples I provided. European countries closely coordinate their regulation of radio spectrum, air traffic control, nuclear power, and pollution through the EC even if individual countries have separate national regulators on paper.

Sure. Obviously the US does stuff. But that’s very limited compared to what happens (and people want to happen) at the federal level US.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#736

Post by walleeee »

whatshisface wrote: post #251
ralph84 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the newer versions are better why do they end up being so short-lived?

Because the constitution is nothing compared to the intent to follow it.

if fictional explorations of this idea are worth anything, le Guin's Dispossessed are a people whose determination to abide by a set of principles led them to write their constitution not just on paper but directly into the human language faculty

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#737

Post by jaybrendansmith »

abigail95 wrote: post #157
jaybrendansmith wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The propaganda of the media, both intentional and accidental, is impacting our Democracy more than I would have thought possible. Being a critical thinker, I made the classic error of assuming that others could not easily be duped, and would actually do their own research on the issues. Boy was I wrong. We are all entitled to our own opinions, but we cannot survive as a Democracy if the citizenry believe they a…

Democracy is majority rule. Democracy is nothing about facts or opinions. You are the one impacting democracy by saying we cannot survive if we keep current democratic rules. You can have the best argument for improving society by limiting who is allowed to vote, what things you're allowed to vote on, and what facts you are allowed to talk about. It can even be a true argument that would make everyone better off. But…

So the winner in a Democracy or Republic should be the one who most successfully implements weaponized propaganda? The one who fills the airwaves and has the loudest megaphone and the money for the most ad buys? That is emphatically not what the founders of the United States intended, however much they may have initially limited the definition of a citizen. They expected the citizens to make reasoned choices, to be educated, to be well-read and to be rational actors. I highly suggest 'Common Sense' by Tom Paine.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#738

Post by dctoedt »

rayiner wrote: post #523
zhoujianfu wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah! As long as we have fptp elections there will be two parties each getting about 50% of the vote, because they will evolve to be competitive. The question is just should that 50% line be about the middle of all citizens, or should that “middle” be randomly skewed towards people who happen to live nearer to farms.

That’s not the only “question.” We’re a federation of 50 sovereign states, not a single state. You can’t just sweep that part under the rug. In general, people tend to get really upset when you act like certain lines on the map just don’t exist.

> We’re a federation of 50 sovereign states, not a single state.

Not since Appomattox and the subsequent enactment of the Civil War Amendments — and arguably not even then (see the Supremacy Clause and the Oath of Office Clause in the original Constitution).

State "sovereignty" (a.k.a. "states' rights") is basically a fig leaf that occasionally gets dragged out — often by racists — in pushing back against national standards of decent behavior. Just one example: In 1957, President Eisenhower invoked the Insurrection Act, federalized the Arkansas National Guard, and sent in the 101st Airborne, to enforce compulsory desegregation of Little Rock schools, after local officials and the state's governor cited "states' rights" as a purported justification for flouting the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling. [0] The Supreme Court's subsequent Cooper v. Aaron decision rejecting the Arkansas view was — uniquely in the Court's history — signed, not merely joined, by all nine justices. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_v._Aaron

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#739

Post by twblalock »

pasquinelli wrote: post #325
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…

> 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, filibuster, presidential veto, high threshold of consensus for changing the constitution), as it should. which is why prohabition never happened.

Prohibition and the temperance movement in general enjoyed wide popular support, and many states had already introduced restrictions on alcohol before the constitution was amended.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#740

Post by _-david-_ »

int_19h wrote: post #725
_-david-_ wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All residents of the state are represented by their representatives even if they don't support and didn't vote for the representative.

Suppose they did support and voted for their representative, and that representative voted against ratification, but the legislature still voted to ratify. Does the ratification then meaningfully represent all residents of the state? I don't think so, but I can see how others might take a different perspective here. It doesn't really matter to the point I was originally making, though - if 40% of the population can r…

>Suppose they did support and voted for their representative, and that representative voted against ratification, but the legislature still voted to ratify. Does the ratification then meaningfully represent all residents of the state?

Yes. That is the way some representative democracies work. Your representative may not have voted for something that passed. Your representative may not have been voted for by you.

I understand wanting changes to it, but you still are properly and meaningfully represented in my view.

>I don't think so, but I can see how others might take a different perspective here. It doesn't really matter to the point I was originally making, though - if 40% of the population can rewrite the constitution over the heads of the other 60%, it's still badly broken.

It is only broken if you think people are supposed to be making the decisions. In the past some state legislatures would vote for the president not the people. Prior to the 17th amendment the states were represented by the senators. The states are the ones who decided many of these things, not the people. There has been a shift in the US pushing more and more for the people to directly have more power, but that isn't the way the system was set up. It isn't broken when you think about it from that perspective. The people don't change the constitution, the states do. The states are the ones who formed the Union so they are the ones who can change it. The US is quite unique in that perspective.

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