A “living Constitution” is in fact, NO CONSTITUTION.
The term “Living Constitution” came about after the failed ERA amendment. The left decided it was too hard to get a true Constitutional Amendment through the congress and the States.
Making the US Constitution a “Living Constitution” means that is says what I tell you it says!
Leftists love the Big Leader making all the rules as he goes along. Like what Obama is doing at the moment. They're instantly hypnotized by the charismatic pol who will lead the faithful to glory on earth. That many of them are themselves consumed by the out of control fires they create is lost on them.
Evangelical Christians of the 1820’s may have pushed for more vigorous federal enforcement actions against “demon rum,” but that is hardly the same thing as the progressives' “living Constitution.”
Secondly, the Constitution reserves the police powers to local government and the states: the Constitution does not forbid prohibitions against alcohol at the local level.
The Constitution is designed to ensure that the federal government is a limited government, that it can only engage in those activities laid out for it in the Constitution.
The idea of the federal government as a limited government is what the progressives wanted to undermine, and what they have achieved. Christian evangelicals of the 1820’s didn't want to create a leviathan, and to attribute that motive to them is nothing but ideologically-driven scholarship.
Chapman has long been associated with the Disciples of Christ, a mainstream Protestant denomination generally hostile to evangelical Christianity and which now is embracing homosexual marriage and homosexual clergy.
What is missing is any mention of the 16th, 17th Amendments which fundamentally upset our Framers’ constitution and lead to today's tyranny.
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Ben Franklin believed in a living Constitution and Thomas Jefferson assumed it would be drastically changed over time.
The living Constitution “theory” was explained/warned about brilliantly by ‘Brutus’/Robert Yates, thus the “theory” has been around since the Constitution was ratified. BTW, this is not a “theory”, this is a feature in the Constitution.
Granted, though, that moral reform should have been pursued solely through local and state governments.
The Constitution is NOT a “living document”. It is ink on paper, inanimate, and immutable. It cannot grow or change of its own volition. That is WHY it is written down. In their (compared to today’s morons) infinite wisdom, its authors included the means by which it could be changed, and it CANNOT AND MUST NOT be altered by any other means.
This has always been one of the stupidest pieces of “conventional wisdom”, along with, “rules are made to be broken”, and “its the exception that proves the rule”, that are accepted simply because someone said them, and it sounds confusing enough that it must be really, really smart.
So what is an 1820 Evangelical, if it is a category that we have had since almost the beginning of the nation, why don’t we have more complete and historical data on the “Evangelical”.
I maybe be wrong, but my understanding is the fact that you could take a lottery ticket or a hip flask across state lines wouldn't have made either lotteries or alcohol production "interstate commerce" in those days. So far as I can see, no "living Constitution" would have been required to allow for state regulation of such activities in those days.
Don’t worry, if he thinks that some of these Christians weakened the Constitution ... just wait until Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, gets here ... He’s going to absolutely DESTROY the Constitution!