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How about we create a new constitution?

I'm wondering if we should scrap the original constitution and rewrite a new one - which would be exactly the same, the only difference being that it isn't dated in the 1700s and wasn't drafted by the founders. We'd still have the same constitutional law, but the "cult aura" that surrounds the Constitution and the founders wouldn't be here anymore - which would be a good thing, since the "Constitution cult" mentality that Americans have causes nothing but disruption and keeps politicians fighting over different interpretations of the constitution instead of using just plain common sense to get things done in this country.

How about this one -- what say you copy a Nazi flag micron for micron and adopt it as your personal standard? Why, it shouldn't have the stigma given to it by history -- it's not actually a Nazi flag, it's a NEW one you made just today.

If you think your idea would work, why wouldn't that one?
 
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I do find it funny that Jefferson would likely have sided with the OP

Jefferson was opposed to the Constitution on its merits. Why would he favor a word-for-word copy of it?
 
How about this one -- what say you copy a Nazi flag micron for micron and adopt it as your personal standard? Why, it shouldn't have the stigma given to it by history -- it's not actually a Nazi flag, it's a NEW one you made just today.

If you think your idea would work, why wouldn't that one?
In the Far East the Swastika's actually a Buddhist symbol for harmony. Hitler ripped it off from them. ;)
 
In the Far East the Swastika's actually a Buddhist symbol for harmony. Hitler ripped it off from them. ;)

So? I'm talking about a Nazi flag. Are you game? You know, a nice red banner with a white circle and a clockwise black swastika offset 45 degrees?

Why wouldn't that work for you?
 
I'm wondering if we should scrap the original constitution and rewrite a new one - which would be exactly the same, the only difference being that it isn't dated in the 1700s and wasn't drafted by the founders. We'd still have the same constitutional law, but the "cult aura" that surrounds the Constitution and the founders wouldn't be here anymore - which would be a good thing, since the "Constitution cult" mentality that Americans have causes nothing but disruption and keeps politicians fighting over different interpretations of the constitution instead of using just plain common sense to get things done in this country.

No need. The Constitution is fine the way it is. The Founders weren't idiots. That's why it is written the way it is. It's in plain English.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Doesn't get any more straightforward than that. Yet we have idiots who say things like "the Founders couldn't have known about assault weapons, yada, yada..." Um, yeah they did. I'm quite sure cannons were common in colonial America. I don't see an exception made for cannons. And remember back then that muskets were capable of holding a bayonet. Can't get much worse than that. So, no, the Constitution as it is written is fine the way it is.
 
No need. The Constitution is fine the way it is. The Founders weren't idiots. That's why it is written the way it is. It's in plain English.

Doesn't get any more straightforward than that. Yet we have idiots who say things like "the Founders couldn't have known about assault weapons, yada, yada..." Um, yeah they did. I'm quite sure cannons were common in colonial America. I don't see an exception made for cannons. And remember back then that muskets were capable of holding a bayonet. Can't get much worse than that. So, no, the Constitution as it is written is fine the way it is.

Why do you think they felt the need to put the little preamble on the second?
 
No we didn't, you don't understand what you are suggesting. The Constitution isn't broke, the politicians are.

Absolutely Norris. When the Supreme Court upholds the constitutional law it is what is the backbone of the law.

As far as the Founders were concerned, there was no substantial difference between virtues, ancient and modern.

Why change it?
 
Why do you think they felt the need to put the little preamble on the second?

I would like to hear why you think they did . . .

If your contention is that those words place a condition or qualify the exercise of the right than you are arguing a position that forces many legal, logical and philosophical incongruities.

The declaratory clause is nothing but an inactive declaration of principle. It does not create any authority or modify or expand upon the powers granted in Art I, § 8, cl.16. The 2nd Amendment has never been held to inform on any aspect of militia powers either federal or state.

You need to understand that when discussing the issue of domestic military affairs (particularity when limiting the scope of military powers) the founders often combined three independent concepts.

1) Their derision of standing armies as dangerous to liberty (liberty being of course a personal right of the citizenry)
2)The republican maxim that the militia stands as a barrier to both invasion and domestic tyranny and that an armed citizenry eliminates the need to maintain a standing army.
3) And the active, restrictive part, the protection of the unconditioned right of the people to keep and bear arms.

The framers were well acquainted with constitutional rights provisions securing the citizen's pre-existing right to arms that included inactive statements of principle regarding standing armies. An examination of the state provisions of the day demonstrates this well:
1776 North Carolina: That the people have a right to bear arms, for the defence of the State; and as standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by the civil power.

1777 Vermont: That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the State—and as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

1780 Massachusetts: The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority, and be governed by it.

1790 Pennsylvania: That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination, to, and governed by, the civil power.

Nobody believed these provisions really forbade the forming and maintaining of a standing army; these were state constitutional provisions with zero effect beyond the state line. They were merely stating an ideal.

The 2nd Amendment's declaration, "[a] well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State" is inextricably meshed (philosophically) with, "as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up." To the founders each represented the same sentiment.

The proposals that eventually became the provisions of the Bill of Rights came from the states and of course the states ratified those proposed Amendments. Are you really arguing that the states ratified an Amendment that allowed the federal government to dictate to them who the protected class of citizens would be?

To read the 2nd Amendment as demanding that only the federal government's approved class of "people" shall exercise the right to arms means you believe the 2nd Amendment not only permits what it was intended to restrict but demands it be so!

Why would states ratify an Amendment which gave to the federal government the power to declare who the protected class is and condition that protection? Isn't that an argument that is logically at odds with the theory that the 2nd Amendment protects the "state's right" to organize and train its militia without federal interference?

So which is it?
 
I'm wondering if we should scrap the original constitution and rewrite a new one - which would be exactly the same, the only difference being that it isn't dated in the 1700s and wasn't drafted by the founders.

At the risk of repeating anyone in the preceeding 9 pages (most of which I didn't bother to read), this is a bad idea.

Aside from the very apt observation that we can't trust any of our elected officials not to totally screw the pooch, the Constitution as it was written was not a perfect document.

For example, we wouldn't want to include the 3/5ths compromise, even if we struck it out again. I love to bring up that one with anyone who insists that anything Constitutional is a good thing.

Additionally, I really don't think Senators should be popularly elected. They should be appointed by state governments as they originally were.

Bills of attainder and martial law need additional definition.

The rights and immunities outlined for the people need to be fleshed out, and the sentiment that rights not written do in fact exist needs to be expounded upon.

The question of whether or not the feds have the right to borrow our great-grandchildren into slavery needs to be addressed.

I could keep going, but I think my point has been made.
 
Read my posts. I explained why. If the Constitution didn't have it's historical significance, then maybe people would actually read it and interpret it critically instead of treating it like a demigod (even though most self described "constitutionalists" I'm betting haven't even read more than a few sentences from it).

Are you proposing we divorce the document from the principles it is based on?

The principles embodied in the document and that form the basis for the legitimate actions of the government (otherwise known as "constitutionality") are not of the founder's invention or design. The principles of the DoI and the Constitution were embraced as a rebuttal and counter to the "divine right" of the King to rule however he wished and those treatises were written decades before our revolution.

That your opening message challenges us to consider scrapping the original constitution and rewriting a new one, "which would be exactly the same, the only difference being that it isn't dated in the 1700s and wasn't drafted by the founders" and isn't burdened by "historical significance" tells me that you believe the Constitution should exist in a philosophical vacuum and that its "power" is derived only from the "demigod" status assigned to the framers.

But that can't be so, I don't think anyone could be that ignorant. . .
 
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I do find it funny that Jefferson would likely have sided with the OP

As a great student of the Classical Greeks and with his embrace of the political theories of Locke and Sidney I really doubt he would endorse writing a constitution devoid of historical significance and based in 'common sense.'

(Unless it was Thomas Paine's)
 
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As a great student of the Classical Greeks and with his embrace of the political theories of Locke and Sidney I really doubt he would endorse writing a constitution devoid of historical significance and based in 'common sense.'

(Unless it was Thomas Paine's)

Jefferson believed that the Constitution should be rewritten every twenty years or so... for the life of me my google fu sucks and I can't find the quote for it, though I know I've posted it other places.
 
I agree with Ethreal. That one preamble shouldn't be extrapolated to mean anything beyond being a helpful reminder. After all, the framers were obviously big on direct language, and if they meant anything more than what they said, they would've said more in order to make sure they were clear. Certainly at the time the Constitution was ratified, nobody had to be a member of a militia in order to own or handle a firearm. Virtually everybody had guns in their homes and/or on their persons, and that was standard accepted practice.

Just like how the very few mentions of the word "citizen" in the Constitution shouldn't be extrapolated to mean that Constitutionally guaranteed liberties only apply to citizens, seeing as how there was no such thing as the INS when the founders cut the blue ribbon on this lovely nation of ours.

:D
 
I think the most important fact to remember is that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right that predated the Constitution. There's absolutely no reason to believe the Framers would have altered the nature of that right upon drafting the Constitution. It simply doesn't make any sense.
 
Jefferson believed that the Constitution should be rewritten every twenty years or so... for the life of me my google fu sucks and I can't find the quote for it, though I know I've posted it other places.

His theory was in relation to life expectancy; that a majority of those living when a law is written will be dead after 19 years and 2/3's or more after 40 years.

He shared a theory of complete fixed expiration writing from Paris in 1789 to Madison (1) and apparently held a tempered version of it for an extended time sharing his thoughts on a requirement (by amendment) of periodic revision in a letter to Samuel Kercheval in 1816 (2).

Of course all Jefferson could do was suggest the concept because he was not in the US when the Constitution was being debated and ratified.

Jefferson expressed (later) that he did not believe the fundamental principles were up for periodic rewriting only the execution of powers . . . Execution could evolve through enlightenment and progress, but guided by the unchangeable fundamental principles of the inherent and inalienable rights of man, again, note the date:
"A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:48

Perverting those principles or ignoring them was not in his plan; nor was eliminating all "historical significance" upon which legitimacy is based. Jefferson quoted Sidney in his Commonplace Book, "All human constitutions are subject to corruption and must perish unless they are timely renewed and reduced to their first principles." That is the present circumstance; as American said in this thread, it isn't the Constitution that's broke, it's the politicians. The fundamental "self evident" principles aren't only forgotten and ignored now, mentioning them will get you labeled a right-wing extremist.

Jefferson would not have endorsed a rewriting of the Constitution following the parameters set out in the OP.

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Citations:

(1) "Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen 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 nineteen 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." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:459, Papers 15:396

(2) "Let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods. What these periods should be nature herself indicates. By the European tables of mortality, of the adults living at any one moment of time, a majority will be dead in about nineteen years. At the end of that period, then, a new majority is come into place; or, in other words, a new generation. Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself that received from its predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years should be provided by the constitution, so that it may be handed on with periodical repairs from generation to generation to the end of time, if anything human can so long endure." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:42
 
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