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The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

newyorker.com

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Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#81

Post by tastyfreeze »

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…

Senators were meant to represent each state's government not the people directly. The Senate, by being once removed from the people, was supposed to take a longer more measured view on issues. The 17th Amendment[1] broke that and made senators elected by the people. The people have the House. The House has also been broken over time. In 1929 the House was capped at 435 members. Since then the number of people that a given representative represents has increased dramatically from 209,447 people in 1910 to 747,184 in 2018.[2]

I agree that the Electoral College needs reform but I am sure that we will not agree on the solution. I think that each state, being an equal member in the union, should have an equal number of electoral votes. Equal votes per state reinforces the purpose of the republic. The republic is supposed to ensure that each state can live the way they want and have military protection. Having one state with more say in the executive is antithetical to a republic. The president is supposed to represent the union, not the people, on the international stage.

Doing away with the Electoral College and going for a direct democracy is a recipe for disaster. Direct democracy does not work on a large scale.

The answer to much of the contention we have today is to return to the limited government that was originally described in the Constitution. Power has become too concentrated in DC and now everybody is playing the game of thrones.

[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-17/

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/31/u-s-populat...

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#82

Post by prottog »

jfengel wrote: post #72
BitwiseFool wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Lepore talks about national abortion, immigration, and firearms policy and how they'd be impacted by a more readily-amended Constitution, 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 author is looking at using amendments as a way to implement legislation that is permanent. Our Federal constitution is fairly concise, whereas some…

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 says practically nothing.

Is that not the whole point? "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#83

Post by iconjack »

user3939382 wrote: post #49
nvahalik wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> refusing to compromise Unfortunately the left has won in this regard. The left moves so hard and fast to the left that even the right can no longer "refuse to compromise." If they don't, they are bigots at worst and uncultured, out of touch imbeciles at best.

Quoted post unavailable.

It's interesting that a platform of pro-worker, anti-war, anti-censorship, which used to be central tenants of the left (and I would say the best of the left), now make up the core of Trumpism.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#84

Post by prottog »

jimmytidey wrote: post #41
george-in-sd wrote: post #16

Russia and China recently amended their constitution to ensure their respective leaders can stay in power permanently. Having some unchangeable bedrock in a country seems very valuable as we are all vulnerable to tyrants at some point in history.

I think I'd take the opposite lesson from these examples: if an individual gets sufficiently powerful, they will change the constitution irrespective of how much you formally considered it an 'unchangeable bedrock'.

Some constitutions, like that of the US, are designed to prevent any individual from amassing such power. The Russian and Chinese constitutions aren't in that same school.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#85

Post by cvwright »

dragonwriter wrote: post #77
cvwright wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No intelligent person thinks that we got 250 years of relative peace and prosperity by random luck.

> No intelligent person thinks that we got 250 years of relative peace and prosperity by randon luck Yes, to the extent that the US had more peace and prosperity than, say, European states, most intelligent people with even modest knowledge attribute that not to random chance but to three major factors: (1) The Pacific Ocean, (2) The Atlantic Ocean, (3) The extremely small number of remotely near-peer powers that hav…

Which of course explains why the rest of the Americas have also been so peaceful and prosperous.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#86

Post by ohCh6zos »

jeffbee wrote: post #6
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

At this point, is the difficulty in amending the Constitution actually a bug? Seeing the polarization, I could see our Founding Fathers deciding that's actually a feature right now because it prevents one side from getting the upper hand and telling the rest to stuff it.

No rational person gives a damn what some guys who died 200 years ago would have thought about our present.

Why would you reject something based on the age? Either the idea has value or it does not without regard for the age.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#87

Post by prottog »

dragonwriter wrote: post #77
cvwright wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No intelligent person thinks that we got 250 years of relative peace and prosperity by random luck.

> No intelligent person thinks that we got 250 years of relative peace and prosperity by randon luck Yes, to the extent that the US had more peace and prosperity than, say, European states, most intelligent people with even modest knowledge attribute that not to random chance but to three major factors: (1) The Pacific Ocean, (2) The Atlantic Ocean, (3) The extremely small number of remotely near-peer powers that hav…

You're right that the geography of the US confers such an advantage that it seems as though it could have had literally any form of government since its founding and still come out ahead in the end, but I'm not sure if that's actually true. There are plenty of historical examples of resource-rich (in all senses of the word "resource") nations that have failed to prosper and resource-poor nations that thrived despite their challenges. A key difference between those nations is culture and governance.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#88

Post by colinmhayes »

iconjack wrote: post #83
user3939382 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

It's interesting that a platform of pro-worker, anti-war, anti-censorship, which used to be central tenants of the left (and I would say the best of the left), now make up the core of Trumpism.

trump isn't pro-worker or anti-censorship though. He's anti-censorship of himself/his people, but he's completely pro censorship of everyone else as can easily be seen on his twitter clone.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#89

Post by dragonwriter »

cvwright wrote: post #85
dragonwriter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No intelligent person thinks that we got 250 years of relative peace and prosperity by randon luck Yes, to the extent that the US had more peace and prosperity than, say, European states, most intelligent people with even modest knowledge attribute that not to random chance but to three major factors: (1) The Pacific Ocean, (2) The Atlantic Ocean, (3) The extremely small number of remotely near-peer powers that hav…

Which of course explains why the rest of the Americas have also been so peaceful and prosperous.

> Which of course explains why the rest of the Americas have also been so peaceful and prosperous.

The rest of the Americas benefit from (1) and (2), but most other countries have done less well with (3), in large part due to the US, which has had its “peaceful” hands in much of the conflict in the hemisphere.

Re: The United States’ Unamendable Constitution

#90

Post by sokoloff »

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…

The Constitution doesn't explicitly forbid changing the Senate composition by amendment. It does require consent from states whose representation would be reduced by such a change.
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