How dare you try and change an amendment
Reminds me of this classic Jim Jefferies bit
Because the constitution is the document that lays out the foundation for all of our legal rights and the limitations placed on the government that are intended to keep it accountable to the people. It’s not perfect, but it does cover a hell of a lot, even more gets expanded on through legislation and the courts, and when necessary it can be (and has been) amended.
But it’s also just ink and parchment. It can’t do anything if the government decides to ignore it. It’s the people who give power to the constitution. The more it is valued by the people across the country, throughout the political spectrum, both inside and outside the halls of power, the more likely it will be that those protections are respected. And when those protections are violated, people are far more likely to push back. And many within the government are also more likely to push back. That’s literally the only reason we didn’t have an overturned election, because numerous people at all levels of government said no, many despite being aligned with the assholes that were trying to stay in power.
So yes, I would very much prefer it if everyone would treat the constitution with some reverence if that’s what it takes. The alternative is not pretty.
Maybe.
But we don’t have people storming the capital in an attempt to overthrow elections here (UK) and we don’t have a formal constitution.
The two things might be unrelated.
And we did have some guys trying to storm the Reichstag in Berlin, we do have a constitution, but we don’t call it constitution and it’s also more of a permanent draft.
IMO the constitution is that important to Americans, because they don’t really have tradition or culture to draw from. The USA is a very young country. Yes I know that technically modern day Germany, Italy and others are younger. However, those countries have many centuries of tradition and culture to draw from.
Pretty much every country has some form of ‘the highest law’, which is intentionally kept rather abstract. Afterall it is the framework for more specific laws to fill in and regulate daily life. But an identity and feeling of self for the USA pretty much started with the civil war. Which lead to the writing of the constitution, their ‘highest law’. The constitution is part of the creation mythos for the USA. A marking point of when people start to think of themselves as Americans, a sovereign entity. Since the USA, compared to other countries, doesn’t have much more culture to draw from, the relative importance of that one piece is inevitably higher.
Honestly, it’s been in continual decline my entire life. Thatcher put an end to any sense of social responsibility, New Labour ushered in the era of post-truth politics, Boris and his bunch didn’t even have to pretend that they were acting in the interest of the country.
Anything short of full political reform will only end up being the next phase in this hell spiral.
That is not the issue at all though, you can change the constitution and still hold it in reverence, in fact it would probably be easier to have reverence for it if that was possible.
The problem is that all political constructs does become antiquated over time. It needs to be updated and modernised through amendments or even a rewrite, but the way the US political system is dictated to be makes it virtually impossible to do now. Even mundane legislation cannot be passed any longer, let alone amendments. It is a problem which should have been taken care of long ago, but now it is basically too late for even the slightest attempts at tweaking it.
We do change the Constitution. 26 times so far. There is a process for it, laid out in the Constitution itself. But the process is designed to avoid being used for flavor of the week, and requires a broad consensus.
This comment and this title are two separate things in my opinion. I don’t give a shit what the founding fathers wanted either. That’s why we’ve amended the Constitution several times. The originalist viewpoint of the Constitution is ridiculous and completely counter even to how the founders wanted the document to act, funny enough.
As for why it’s treated like a holy book – it’s basically a set of rules for our government and what laws are okay and which laws aren’t okay. Think of it like a social contract that everyone signed. It’s how we’ve agreed to live together and treat each other. Unlike a holy book though it can and has been changed.
It’s quite literally the legal foundation of the country.
I don’t give a shit what the founding fathers wanted either. That’s why we’ve amended the Constitution several times.
Repeating myself here, but, the founders wanted us to adjust the Constitution over time, to meet the needs of the current generation.
Can we please not turn microblog memes into the new whitepeopletwitter where we just post unnuanced political opinions rather than funny memes? Microblogs are a bad platform for political discourse.
Why? Because a lot of their ideas were good. Creating a system of government that is immune or even resilient to corruption is very difficult, but the US has done pretty good all things considered.
I would say the Swedish constitution is substantially better, yet I never see anybody cite it as a supreme authority of morality. We have also changed it regularly since its total revision in 1974. I am not saying that the American one is necessarily bad, but I am saying it is just a law and should not be worshipped.
Edit: if you want to give it a read, the official translation can be accessed here (pdf)
Treating the constitution as if it cant be changed because it is “perfect” is wildly different than not wanting the government to boundary test how it can skirt the constitution to get what it wants. When the US government doesnt follow the rules that it was supposed to be bound to via the constitution, it is almost never a good thing.
The constitution set rules for how to change it legitimately. It was designed to be changed over time not flagrently ignored.
That’s the problem, it cannot be changed anymore, the base problems with the system itself prevents it from doing so.
The constitution was designed to be vaguely descriptive, so that in the case that society does change, then statements can be interpreted in a way that supports the new view of the modern country.
For instance, while not in the constitution, the government set up no offical state language or religion, in the case that society had changed making what they said redundant.
Constitutions form the foundation on which everything else–laws, the economy, public services, politics, culture, national security–is built.
It’s one thing to look at how a new constitution might solve our current social ills, or to demonstrate how the old one is imperfect, it’s another thing to really consider the side effects of a change in constitution. What things we would lose that we take for granted, and to do so honestly, and critically?
Would America still be an imperialistic hegemony with a swedish constitution? If no, are Americans really truly ready to give up the benefits they enjoy that come with being a global hegemony?
We won’t really find answers to these questions in a tweet.
Who is the head of state of Sweden? How are they selected? What is their term of service in the role?
On paper it is the hereditary monarch, but they have no real power, so de facto it is the prime minister. Their role is to lead and to appoint ministers in the government, which is considered Sweden’s leading body.
The prime minister is selected by the parliament, the representation of the Swedish public, which is also responsible for deciding on laws and holding them and the government in check overall.
The prime minister has no term limit but they tend to lose support from the parliament (which gets elected every four years) sooner or later. For instance, the last prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, stayed less than a year.
Edit: fixed typo
The West Wing S06 E14 - The Wake Up Call is a pretty good episode about the US constitution as a model.
We’re aware there are better constitutions, especially more modern ones. But if the US were to rewrite our constitution today, we’d be the United States of Bank of America. We have to appreciate what we do have or it’ll be gone.
The reverence for our constitution is important because it helps to enforce it. The piece of paper doesn’t do much on its own.
Yeah but a lot were also bad which is why it’s stupid when people act like the opinions of the founding fathers should matter more than the opinions of contemporary Americans when the same founding fathers were smart enough to realize the constitution should be a living document and not a holy totem to use as a club to stifle any progress.
I think we can find a middleground between “fuck em” and “their word is law”
In fact most of the time the people trying to make their word out to be law are using the most loose and self-pandering interpretation they can.
Like you said, the same founding fathers did not want it to be this way. I wish we’d argue harder how unamerican it is that people are treating the founding fathers with zealotry.
They literally designed the Constitution to be the foundation of all law in the country.
Their words (at least the specific ones in the Constitution) literally are law.
Fine. If you can get agreement across the states as to which of those ideas are bad - you can amend them away.
I know, but my point is that the founding fathers acknowledged they weren’t infallible which makes appeals to tradition and authority that many use to prevent progress in the US are extra dumb.
One of their ideas I personally think would be amazing: allegedly, Thomas Jefferson predicted the Construction would only last less than twenty years before we would completely overhaul our core document of governance. I believe rebuilding the specific details every couple decades would’ve helped tremendously…
Can’t even imagine rebuilding constitution in our current political environment.
~Every single generation since the founding of this country
I agree though. I can think of many times in history that a rewriting of the bill of rights would have excluded free speech. Imagine if the current supreme court had the authority to revoke the separation of church and state, and mandate that all public schools have a Protestant focus.
One party is seeking a constitutional convention. In order to install a permanent Republican dictatorship.
It pains me to admit I see your point. If we had developed some mechanism early on where problematic passages or even sections could be democratically identified, as well as a system to propose possible changes for vote…but now? Yikes.
Somehow, I want to believe it is possible to revolutionize our government, but without the usual bloodshed. I just wish I had any clue how… :p
It has done a horrible job of it all things considered. Basically all the fabled checks and balances have turned out to be based on nothing but good faith. The founders refused to consider that partisanship would evolve at all, let alone to the extremes it has turned into today.
Lots of other Western democracies are doing a lot better job at it, not least because they have been allowed to evolve and change with the times, while the core of the US political system has petrified in all its archaism.
Creating a system of government that is immune or even resilient to corruption is very difficult, but the US has done pretty good all things considered.
What cave were you living in between 2016 and 2020?
Creating a system of government that is immune or even resilient to corruption is very difficult, but the US has done pretty good all things considered.
Really? You think so, even tho we are essentially an Oligarchy with a huge amount of corruption, especially in the Supreme Court
Okay, but consider the fact that you are able to write that, and even take to the streets vocally demand change. Things might be bad, but you truly have no idea what it means to live in fear of your government.
More than others. There are mechanisms for change. Most old world change meant conquer and then you might change things. If you don’t die first.
More than others, but definitely not more than other Western democracies, considerably less than them in fact.
We made it less than a century before the first civil war. That’s an epic failure in my book.