Posted on 11/01/2013 9:09:00 AM PDT by C19fan
America, we've got some bad news: Our Constitution isn't going to make it. It's had 224 years of commendable, often glorious service, but there's a time for everything, and the government shutdown and permanent-crisis governance signal that it's time to think about moving on. "No society can make a perpetual constitution," Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789, the year ours took effect. "The earth belongs always to the living generation and not to the dead.… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years." By that calculation, we're more than two centuries behind schedule for a long, hard look at our most sacred of cows. And what it reveals isn't pretty.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
What is funny is how the ignorance of the author comes through in this long winded piece. Let us look at two elements:
If he had to pick any country whose system we might like to try on for size, he'd pick Germany. "Some aspects of it do need to change, of course," he says. Yet it's a nice bicameral federal system for a large country, like ours, but it has a proportional representation parliamentary system.
Take the Senate. What started as a compromise to preserve states' rights lost even that pretext with the ratification of the 17th Amendment, which gave the people, and not state legislatures, the right to elect their representatives in the upper chamber. Today, the Senate is an undemocratic relic where 41 senators, representing just 11 percent of the nation's population, can use the filibuster to block almost anything and bring government to its knees.
In the first section, the author quotes someone saying the US should basically emulate Germany's government. In the second section, a paragraph later, same author blasts the US Senate for being "undemocratic" because 11% of the population elects 41 Senators.
Did the author do any basic research on the German model he touted? Germany has an upper chamber called the Bundesrat. The Bundesrat is in some ways even less democratic than the US Senate. Like the US Senate, the Bundesrat represents Germany's federal states and like the Senate less populous federal states get proportionally more seats. Unlike post-17th amendment Senate, the members of the Bundesrat are determined by the governing party or coalition from the federal state not the voters in a direct election. So does the author favor Germany abolishing the Bundesrat fundamentally altering the model he likes?
Hmm. Thought God’s contract with the Jews is still in place as are the rest of His promises. So, Jefferson is wrong: you can have permanent constitutions and promises.
I personally believe that He had a huge hand in the development of Constitution and the gathering of all the men who had a direct hand in putting it together.
The only reason it has been able to last this long is His direct care for it.
I would be very leery about trying to destroy something that is a work of God.
The king of evil really hates having people be so knowledgable about the liberty given to them by God.
You can have permanent ongoing covenants like that of the Jews. Provided that the other party ( the one pledged to eternally honor His promises ) is God. (Any contract with just human signatories has to be watched carefully )
Gee, just think what Harry Reid and Hussein could accomplish if they had all the power.
Let's not. I don't need any more reasons to blow my own head off.
Of course, that’s what the author is advocating: modernize by ensuring a TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY, overwhelming the states.
Agreed. I just think our Constitution was a divine instrument, not just an instrument of moral men.
If the current crop (or is that CRAP?) of politicians (who aren’t worthy of shining the boots of the men who crafted our original charter) get their hands on that process, THIS COUNTRY IS DEAD MEAT!!
Alex Seitz-Wald…
No need to read further. The article is a double-scoop of content-free blather, topped with a dollop of "look-at-ME!" whining.
I fought the gag reflex and read the entire column. What garbage.
Nowhere does the author acknowledge that we were supposed to be a confederated republic, where the bulk of governing was supposed to reside within the states. We were not supposed to have a central, consolidated set of rulers in a single capital telling us how to manage our lives.
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