If That’s What They Wanted……

[Rexedgar]

…why didn’t they write it?

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Yeah really, what with Jesus having written the Constitution and all...

 

[dseag2]

They didn't write it because they could never have imagined a narcissistic slime ball who would try to overturn democracy and who was indicted over 80 times running for President.

 

[Allan]

…why didn’t they write it?

Because The King was immune from prosecution.* They would never have included such a provision as they seemed hell bent on not replacing one totalitarian with another.

*interesting note is that the British Monarch is to this day immune from prosecution or civil cases.

 

[Jessie C]

…why didn’t they write it?

Our founding fathers are screaming at the top of their airless lungs and rolling over in their graves....

 

[Phys251]

…why didn’t they write it?

Deafening silence from the righties.

 

[Ishm]

Anyone remember when Trump was in office him complaining that he couldn't do the things the country needed because he lacked immunity from prosecution if he did something illegal? Or is it just something that is suddenly relevant now his illegal actions are being exposed?

 

[Ginger Ale]

He's just begging for his freedom here. Please, I'm afraid of jail, I take it all back, just let me get away with my shit, please!

 

[Rich2018]

…why didn’t they write it?

So presidents are above the law....

 

[medi]

Rexedgar, I'll ask for your approval in/for this post, right here and now.

…why didn’t they write it?

Permission to take your thread to a new sort of destination. I am always trying on a community platform such as we have here NOT to create a new thread, if it is reasonably possible not to do so. It is an old, old habit from many years ago in the early days of these platforms when I was sort of like an employee admin on a site. And I still try hard to use the same technique on my own sites, even in the admin/mod sub-forums.

So why am I yakety-yakety here?

In another thread some hours ago one of our community members posted that the Constitution was some sort of outdated document and such. Also posted that changing the Constitution in all sorts of ways should be possible. Maybe offering that the Constitution should just be tossed. Please note my use of "maybe".

So I just went looking to see if maybe that point of view was posted by others and even though this thread doesn't seem to have anyone posting that exact view, this thread is, nevertheless, very much about our Constitution, correct?

In fact, JessieC made a direct reference to one key point I have in mind:

Our founding fathers are screaming at the top of their airless lungs and rolling over in their graves....

I wish to sort of ask the Founding Fathers some questions. I wish to ask y'all some questions about what the Founding Fathers were thinking about as they worked all those years on writing the Constitution.

Now I am not going to start with Mr. Madison. I wish to start with this letter in some of the archives we can find and this one from Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Madison, dated December 20th of 1787:

Founders Online: From Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 20 December 1787

From Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 20 December 1787

founders.archives.gov

I used that site because it is a gov.

I'd like to ask if any of our Debate Politics Community members would care to criticize anything that Mr. Jefferson wrote in that letter.

Eventually, I would like to ask the same with regard to other letters between some of the Founding Fathers, but it seems okay to start with just the one cited above, for now.

IF you don't mind my using your thread for this project, Rexedgar?

By the way, I made a reference to not starting with Mr. Madison because he actually provided a whole bunch of the input, but that can be further explored later. These days it seems many folks seem to prefer to gloat over Mr. Jefferson more than Mr. Madison.

 

[Rich2018]

In another thread some hours ago one of our community members posted that the Constitution was some sort of outdated document and such. Also posted that changing the Constitution in all sorts of ways should be possible. Maybe offering that the Constitution should just be tossed. Please note my use of "maybe".

So I just went looking to see if maybe that point of view was posted by others and even though this thread doesn't seem to have anyone posting that exact view, this thread is, nevertheless, very much about our Constitution, correct?

IMO, the US Constitution has had too many amendments now and really needs a re-write
Trouble is that the only way to do this is via a Constitutional Convention, and nobody knows what such a convention looks like or how it can be convened.

 

[medi]

IMO, the US Constitution has had too many amendments now and really needs a re-write
Trouble is that the only way to do this is via a Constitutional Convention, and nobody knows what such a convention looks like or how it can be convened.

Well, I'll go ahead and respond here without yet seeing approval for this turn of the discussion in Rexedgar's thread.

Actually, Rich2018, that basic point was the first question I wanted/want to "ask" our Founding Fathers.

So, we obviously are not able to ask in the normal manner where we will receive a verbal/written response; but if we collectively study the letters that somebody was gracious enough to archive for us we might see if any of the Founding Fathers wrote anything in any letter about how one of them was thinking the Constitution had a lifespan. Had a sort of expiration date.

One other point I would like to add here, Rich2018; why can't we start the Constitutional Convention right here?

 

[ModernDiogenes]

…why didn’t they write it?

Right… and it took over 200 years for Donald “Wiley Coyote Super Genius” Trump to tell us what the Founding Fathers meant. What do all those Constitutional scholars know. [Washington, Adam’s and Hamilton are spinning in their graves]

 

[medi]

As I see no dissent posted by Rexedgar, but a "Like" button tap to the presently last post that was placed there by ModernDiogenes, I am going to move forward with a strange idea I earlier posted that discussion of how to start a new Constitutional Convention could start right here, and I am moving forward with a sort of salute to those that attended the first one:

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/founding-fathers

 

[Rich2018]

Well, I'll go ahead and respond here without yet seeing approval for this turn of the discussion in Rexedgar's thread.

Actually, Rich2018, that basic point was the first question I wanted/want to "ask" our Founding Fathers.

So, we obviously are not able to ask in the normal manner where we will receive a verbal/written response; but if we collectively study the letters that somebody was gracious enough to archive for us we might see if any of the Founding Fathers wrote anything in any letter about how one of them was thinking the Constitution had a lifespan. Had a sort of expiration date.

One other point I would like to add here, Rich2018; why can't we start the Constitutional Convention right here?

"A convention to propose amendments to the US Constitution, is one of two methods authorized by Artic V whereby amendments to the Constitution may be proposed, (if 2/3 of the State legislatures call a convention for proposing amendments, which become law only after ratification by 3/4 of the states. The Article V convention method has never been used;
While there have been calls for an Article V Convention based on a single issue...but law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen has suggested that such a convention would have the "power to propose anything it sees fit", whereas law professor Michael Rappaport believe that a limited convention is possible."

Convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So we don't know for sure what powers a constitutional convention might have, nor what it would look like.

 

[medi]

Thank you, Rich2018, for the idea to go to Wikipedia.

I am going to copy this section of that page you posted the link for:

Attempts to call an Article V convention

Every state except Hawaii has applied for an Article V Convention at one time or another. The majority of such applications were made in the 20th century. Before any official count had been taken, one private count puts the total number of applications at over 700.

Even though the Article V Convention process has never been used to amend the Constitution, the number of states applying for a convention has nearly reached the required threshold several times. Congress has proposed amendments to the Constitution on some occasions, at least in part, because of the threat of an Article V Convention. Rather than risk such a convention taking control of the amendment process away from it, Congress acted pre-emptively to propose the amendments instead. The Bill of Rights, which includes the first ten amendments, as well as the Twenty-seventh Amendment, were proposed in part because of a Convention application by the New York and Virginia legislatures at the suggestion of a letter from the New York State Convention to ratify the Constitution. The convention would have been limited to those changes discussed at the various State ratifying Conventions. At least four other amendments (the Seventeenth, Twenty-First, Twenty-Second, and Twenty-Fifth Amendments) have been identified as being proposed by Congress at least partly in response to the threat of an Article V convention, bringing the total to 15 out of 27, a majority of the Amendments.

Within that section we can also find a link:

Second Constitutional Convention of the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And from that I wish to copy some of the closing paragraphs in the section titled "Particular views".

Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, in a keynote speech at Harvard Law School, said the movement for a new convention was a reflection of having in many ways "the worst political class in our country's history."

Political scientist Larry Sabato believes a second convention is necessary since "piecemeal amendments" have not been working. Sabato argued that America needs a "grand meeting of clever and high-minded people to draw up a new, improved constitution better suited to the 21st century."

Author Scott Turow sees risks with a possible convention but believes it may be the only possible way to undo how campaign money has undermined the "one-man one-vote" premise.

Few new constitutions are modeled along the lines of the U.S. one, according to a study by David Law of Washington University in St. Louis. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg viewed the United States Constitution as more of a relic of the 18th century rather than as a model for new constitutions. She suggested in 2012 that a nation seeking a new constitution might find a better model by examining the Constitution of South Africa (1997), the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950).

I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 2012

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

They didn't write it because they could never have imagined a narcissistic slime ball who would try to overturn democracy and who was indicted over 80 times running for President.

Yeah well, they were overly optimistic.
I imagine more than a few wished they'd have tempered their optimism with some healthy skepticism.

 

[medi]

< < < truncated > > >

So we don't know for sure what powers a constitutional convention might have, nor what it would look like.

As we can see from the link you posted, and then the link I posted after you, we are going to be trying to be doing a sort of pre-convention style because I don't think we have any law professionals yet involved here, unless you are a law professional, Rich2018.

And this might gain the attention of a law professional that is a community member now, or a guest that then becomes a community member.

This situation is just a bunch of ordinary citizens that are thinking outside the box and actually thinking about some sort of action related to out-of-the-box thought processes.

Plus we might have some non-citizens that are willing to help us. As this is all informal and without any rules, for now, we can do just about anything we wish. BUT WITH SERIOUS INTENT! Personally, I am not viewing this as a game. And we are not bound by some sort of rules some folks we don't even know wrote before we got started here. I mean rules about how to run a discussion/convention about upgrading/updating/changing/rewriting the present U.S. Constitution. This is basically a free-for-all with us deciding the boundaries.

I think the first boundary is please don't enter if you aren't serious.

The second boundary would have to answer the question: What the heck are we doing here?

 

[Rich2018]

Thank you, Rich2018, for the idea to go to Wikipedia.

I am going to copy this section of that page you posted the link for:

Attempts to call an Article V convention



Within that section we can also find a link:

Second Constitutional Convention of the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And from that I wish to copy some of the closing paragraphs in the section titled "Particular views".

Always willing to inform others

"A convention to propose amendments to the US Constitution, is one of two methods authorized by Artic V whereby amendments to the Constitution may be proposed, (if 2/3 of the State legislatures call a convention for proposing amendments, which become law only after ratification by 3/4 of the states. The Article V convention method has never been used;
While there have been calls for an Article V Convention based on a single issue...but law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen has suggested that such a convention would have the "power to propose anything it sees fit", whereas law professor Michael Rappaport believe that a limited convention is possible."

So whilst every state except Hawaii might have, at one time, applied for an Article V convention, it has never been successfully applied for (ie: never have 2/3 of the states tried to do so at one time)
Secondly, no-one knows what such a convention would look like
And thirdly, there is no legal consensus on what the scope of such a convention would be, if ever it was convened

Just another flaw in the Constitution itself.