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The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

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Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#741

Post by dctoedt »

jdkee wrote: post #294
lupire wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was because the slave states didn't want to lose slavery in a Senate vote. If you think CA is too populous for it's people deserve an equal vote, CA should be 6 states. But the slavers fought that too (Missouri Compromise). State boundaries are legal constructs inherited from obsolete aristocracy, not meaningful cultural boundaries. It makes no sense to solve a hypothetical tyranny of large states by replacing…

No, the Several States are the Sovereigns. They ceded a small amount of authority to the Federal government in a limited Federal Constitution that outlines the powers of the Federal government. See the 10th Amendment.

> No, the Several States are the Sovereigns. They ceded a small amount of authority to the Federal government in a limited Federal Constitution that outlines the powers of the Federal government. See the 10th Amendment.

That ended at Appomattox and with the ensuing Civil War Amendments - see the 14th Amendment.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#742

Post by jquery »

prottog wrote: post #721
jquery wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without it, we have a race to the bottom with social services and infrastructure. A state with better infrastructure cannot be tax-competitive with another state that simply sucks on the federal government’s teat for all its needs. The biggest handout of all is small states getting two senators despite having 1/50th the population. SALT deductions are nothing in comparison, you could always redirect federal money to…

> another state that simply sucks on the federal government’s teat It's antithetical to the federal nature of the US that the overwhelming majority of tax dollars are paid to the federal government and not to state and local governments. The federal government's share of taxation should be limited to support its constitutional mission, and more should remain at the state and local level to achieve state and local mis…

Okay, I see you and I are coming at this from very, very different philosophical viewpoints. I do not care what the founders intended, I don’t live in 1786. I am sympathetic to Elie Mystal’s view from the book Allow Me To Retort towards the Constitution.

To summarize:

“Our Constitution is not good. It is a document designed to create a society of enduring white male dominance, hastily edited in the margins to allow for what basic political rights white men could be convinced to share. The Constitution is an imperfect work that urgently and consistently needs to be modified and reimagined to make good on its unrealized promises of justice and equality for all. And yet you rarely see liberals make the point that the Constitution is actually trash. Conservatives are out here acting like the Constitution was etched by divine flame upon stone tablets, when in reality it was scrawled out over a sweaty summer by people making deals with actual monsters who were trying to protect their rights to rape the humans they held in bondage.”

Excerpt From Allow Me to Retort Elie Mystal https://books.apple.com/us/book/allow-me-to-retort/id1549926... This material may be protected by copyright.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#743

Post by bumby »

yencabulator wrote: post #723
bumby wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair that you were downvoted, at least without that person elaborating on why. I would tend to agree that larger, more pluralistic societies may have a larger downside to the ability to rapidly changing their laws. As one group gets within power, they have the ability to make lots of changes, only to be upset by the next group that ascends to power. The U.S. has a history of voting out the current…

> The U.S. has a history of voting out the current party in power and that constant whipsawing of policy might be a recipe for instability. That's largely a US two-party thing. Elsewhere, there's not as much a singular "party in power", and they all need to compromise and tamper their more radical agendas to gain the votes needed.

I don't know if I'd say there's a 'singular party in power' in the US either. It seems pretty common to have, for example, the White House governed by one party and the House by another.

I wonder, too, if it's part of the primary voting process.

We did away with the people in smoke-filled rooms selecting candidates, which seems great. But it also creates more polarized candidates which seems to constantly alienate voters.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#744

Post by yencabulator »

bumby wrote: post #743
yencabulator wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The U.S. has a history of voting out the current party in power and that constant whipsawing of policy might be a recipe for instability. That's largely a US two-party thing. Elsewhere, there's not as much a singular "party in power", and they all need to compromise and tamper their more radical agendas to gain the votes needed.

I don't know if I'd say there's a 'singular party in power' in the US either. It seems pretty common to have, for example, the White House governed by one party and the House by another. I wonder, too, if it's part of the primary voting process. We did away with the people in smoke-filled rooms selecting candidates, which seems great. But it also creates more polarized candidates which seems to constantly alienate vo…

> I don't know if I'd say there's a 'singular party in power' in the US either. It seems pretty common to have, for example, the White House governed by one party and the House by another.

For each electable organization, in a two-party system, one of the parties is always in power. The different organizations in the US government (president/senate/house) are more like stages of decisionmaking with intricate interplay. They can be ruled by different parties, but any change of power within one of those organizations is always a full flip-flop within that "stage".

Contrast that to a multi-party system, where such an organization might have power split in ratios like 6:5:3:2. The party with representation of 6 still needs to cooperate with at least two of the others. Even if they lose votes and the 6:5 flips to 4:7, cooperating with the other parties tempers the rule of the new rising party, 4+3 is 7 and all that.

This means the system is much more likely to evolve into the parties making deals with each other and compromising, as opposed to the flip-flop between opinions A and B.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#745

Post by edmcnulty101 »

dang wrote: post #726
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You can't do this here. We've banned this account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That was clearly a joke. Look at my previous comment in my comment history.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#746

Post by dang »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #745
dang wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't do this here. We've banned this account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That was clearly a joke. Look at my previous comment in my comment history.

It wasn't clear that it was just a joke.

If it were a one-off, that might be different, but you've been posting tons of unsubstantive comments. That's not what this site is for.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#747

Post by edmcnulty101 »

dang wrote: post #746
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was clearly a joke. Look at my previous comment in my comment history.

It wasn't clear that it was just a joke. If it were a one-off, that might be different, but you've been posting tons of unsubstantive comments. That's not what this site is for.

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