[CONS] Countering Reasons to Keep the Constitution

There are many reasons to do this, but I'm going to start with four and my counter argument against them.

1) "We should honor the Founding Fathers!"

There is this idea that somehow the Founding Fathers are somehow sacrosanct and holy individuals that should be revered. I have no problem with this. They were remarkable men that performed a remarkable act. They put together one of the most enduring documents of all time. Their work has stood strong for two centuries, and in truth could probably function for another two more. Having said that, I believe that there are people who hold more reverence for the Founding Fathers than they do their own diety, or (in the more common place) religious teachers of their own belief set. The Cult of the Constitution is alive and well.

Most people don't take it that far of course, but from our earliest days we are taught that the Constitution is a miracle and that it has helped our nation be set apart above all others.

And yet, many of the founding fathers thought that creating another constitution was a very good idea. In fact, they did it themselves. If we really honored the Founding Fathers we would be willing to repeat their steps when needed to revive the constitution. They actually put a clause in the Constitution itself that allows another Constitution convention. The Founding Fathers looked forward to the future despite the fact that they took inspiration from the past.

I believe we need to go farther than this, and I'll explain the reasons for that in another post, but regardless, if the Founding Fathers were so against the idea of a reboot, why did they put the very idea in Article V?

2) God Inspired the Constitution.

It is actually a component of the religious belief of some sects that the Constitution really IS a holy document albiet primarily as a vehicle to allow the said sect to come into fruition.

However they also cite a chain of documents from the Bible, down through the Magna Carta or even in certain cases ancient Babylonian Law or the Roman Senate as part of a chain of events allowed, created and enhanced by God.

If such were the case, why would God cease to inspire men to do something better, taking the lessons that He has taught them in the past? Is God dead? And if not, then why would He cease to inspire us to greater forms of government?

3) The Alternative Might Be Worse

A convincing argument can be made that given the charged political environment we live in right now, that a significant amount of representatives from Conservative states would try to incorporate things that would be dire, or highly undesirable. Right now we live in an environment where we not only have two different viewpoints (and there are many) but I argue that we have (at the least) two versions of reality itself, with different camps accepting basic scientific facts as subjective things. Science and the reflection of objective reality that it gives us has become optional.
Here is my counter argument.

We have many people in this day and age who are passionate about their viewpoints. However, unlike the last time we had a constitutional convention; we have no one who thinks it is perfectly acceptable to own another human being. We really don’t have many people who think the idea of a monarchy is a really good idea. We don’t have that many who believe that the poor deserve no right to vote (at least publicly anyway.) They also generally (with the possible exception of Texas) don’t hold more loyalty to their STATE than they do the union. Americans these days call themselves Americans before they call themselves Georgians, Texans or Californians.

The Founding Fathers were amazing human beings, but they had also just fought a war. That has its advantages and its disadvantages. It meant that they had a bonding experience, including such heroes such as George Washington who was able to bridge otherwise unbridgeable differences. But at the same time, they were all rich, white men who had very specific ideas about the way the world was supposed to work, long before the discovery of Evolution, Chaos Theory, Relativity or Quantum Physics.
More importantly, any ratification procedure will require at LEAST the majority of the states, and whichever version of reality you prefer is not going to be able to simply run roughshod over the other view point in order to make the constitution pass. Plus, remember that for this to become a reality you have to convince enough people that it is time to make a new constitution in the first place. That’s not going to happen unless you can convince people that THEIR viewpoint will be reflected in the constitution at least partially.

4) We Should Just Amend The Constitution
Amending the constitution is hard. It is ridiculously hard. Most people say that this is a feature, not a bug and they’d be right. The system of checks and balances has protected us from ‘the whim of the mob’ for quite some time. People act in a dumb fashion when given a chance to panic. People also act corrupt when they get too much power, so by channeling that power into divided aspects of time, to make change hard, the Constitution has above all given us STABILITY which I argue is the primary source of our nation’s wealth. Businesses thrive in a predictable climate and our constitution has allowed much of our government to thrive because change could be predicted until a huge portion of society was utterly outraged at the implications of something, like, for example, sending huge numbers of 18 year olds off to war but not allowing them to vote for the same politicians who were sending them out to die.
Here is my counter argument.

Entropy is the single law of the universe. Everything we know, or at least everything we can scientifically observe decays. No matter how well set up, things are born, they mature and then they die. Sometimes they are able to reproduce and give new life and thus the cycle is renewed, but nothing lives forever.

Our living constitution has reached a point where there are so many flaws, so many holes that I argue that a single amendment is not enough to fix it. A constitutional convention with numerous amendments is the second best way, because we need to fix A LOT, but I will argue in my next post why simple amendments will not do.

A Constitutional Post

Eleven Score and Four years ago, our forefathers set forth on a great experiment in government. For thirteen years, the Articles of Confederation, the first and failed attempt at a unifying government for the former colonies, had made America the laughing stock of the world. The confederation had several problems. It had no meaningful foreign policy, it had a complete inability to resolve problems between the states, and it was almost impossible to accomplish anything because it had no tax base and no ability to enforce its laws.

The Founding Fathers recognized this as a problem, and sent representatives to a convention to discuss changing the situation. But the more they looked at the situation, the more they became convinced that the old articles were broken...so instead, they took the more courageous step to start from scratch and put together a government. And for nearly two centuries, that government has served us well.

But where are we today?

The Supreme Court has recently said that it is constitutional for a corporation to spend an unlimited amount of money on political contributions. They say that money equals speech and that therefore it is protected by the freedom of speech clause of the constitution. In the entire history of the court, only a small handful have ever been investigated for impeachment and (so far as I can tell) NONE has ever been removed from office.

The President of the United States has violated both national law and international treaty to commit questionable acts of torture under the guise of protecting us from terrorism and not been held accountable for it. In the history of the United States, only two presidents have ever been impeached, both for highly charged political reasons, and even then neither was actually removed by the Senate. In the history of the office, the president has routinely taken power from congress or committed numerous historically criminal acts without any consequences. In fact, there are actually schools of thoughts among some that the President should essentially be unaccountable and this school of thought has clearly influenced at the LEAST the previous administration and demonstrably the current demonstration as well.

The Legislature recently had an 83% disapproval rating. They routinely exempt themselves from laws. Some legislators have been prosecuted and held accountable for their abuses of power, but they are by far in the minority. They alone are unaccountable to any other branch (not even the other legislature), determine their own pay rate and enjoy privileges that the rest of us can only dream of.

And yet the American people reelect them time and time again. The rate of reelection of incumbants is astonishingly high.

I will over time in this blog make the case that the system has become sufficiently broken that rather than trying to amend the current constitution, we need to start over from scratch, and do as the Founding Fathers did, which is take the best elements of the previous government and at the same time update the document to reflect modern ideas, needs and sensibilities.

Before I do that, however, I'm going to lay out some of my basic beliefs and principals. The reason I do this is as a courtesy to those who automatically filter out ideas they don't believe in or accept.

I have such a filter.

I consider Fox News Propoganda. And I discount any meme that I hear originates from them. I know them too well. If you have a problem with that, then this blog isn't for you. I believe in reality and facts, and while I might be sometimes misinformed, I know that Fox outright lies on its positions.

That's the big one.

I will have four tags to differentiate posts.

[Rant] - An emotionally based post based on current events, that might or might not be partisan.

[Const] - A post based on the central premise of this blog dealing with ways to fix the constitution, advocate the creation of a new one, and methods to help enact it.

[Phil] - Philosophical discussion about abstract concepts such as truth, justice and such.

[World] - International events and my views therein.

I had another Blog that I used to do this on, but that Blog has largely become about Poetry, and also the original central premise of the blog has since proven to be untrue. The experiment I engaged in to find a balance proved (to me) false. I also like the interface on Blogger better, at least for now.

I reserve the right to remove or change posts at any time because my beliefs have changed over time. I will "flip flop", not because I'm running for office but because I base my beliefs on reality, observed reality and what works.

Other belief to clarify where I am coming from:

I love America. I think Americans are dumb. The ideal of America is noble, patriotic, inspiring and a beacon to the world. Americans in 2010 decided that electing Republicans in their current state was a really good idea, and that essentially rewarding the behavior of Bush for the previous 8 years was a good idea.

I believe that both major parties are bad for America, but that they're not equally bad. I believe that to the degree a party is disconnected from reality then it is destined to harm people. Liberals and Conservatives have made major decisions that have greatly harmed people.

I believe Government should be as small as possible.

I also believe that the illusion that people are islands, and that they can achieve significant wealth without relying on the infrastructure and society provided by society is the most harmful delusion in society today and creates a sense of entitlement that somehow these individuals are more productive than others and that the weak, and the vulnerable that rely on government services provided by a more benevolent society thanks to the observed harshness of the 20th century and that individuals who follow the Randian creed are either naively unrealistic or harsh to the point of being borderline sociopaths.

I believe in fiscal responsibility of government. I think debt should be avoided at all costs.

I believe in Anthrogenic Global Warming.

I believe in evolution.

I think that abortion is morally wrong but that the government has no place in regulating a woman's body.

I believe that calling a fetus a human being is a religious argument, and therefore has no place in legislative agendas. More importantly, I believe that all my observed attempts to regulate this issue for the last 40 years bear my observation out on this issue and that there is a distinct thematically observable linkage between attempts to regulate abortion and to ban or alter the teaching of evolution in the schools.

I believe in nuclear power despite the risks. I think if you claim to be for the environment then you realize that climate change is far more dangerous than the other environmental risks for power and that if you are anti nuclear power you don't understand the risks of climate change, believe in magic, or want to reduce humanity to the stone age.

I believe in freedom of speech but I believe that if you claim to be a news organization you should be obligated to tell the truth and that there should be consequences for lying.

There are, quite frankly, a lot of things I believe but I wanted to get some of those out of the way so that we can avoid wasting each other's time on certain issues.

Normally I will allow comments, but on this first post I will not, because this is a declarative that I feel needs no response. If you want to make your own declaritive, start you own blog. If I change my position on any of those issues in the future, I'll change the position here.