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When you add the ancillary documents and treaties that are also part of the Constitution, by reference. The base Constitution is absurd enough. It gets much worse when the other documents are added to the mix.

John / Billybob

The EU Constitution is different from the American one in that it opens with a Preamble that begins with the idea government is based on the consent of the rulers - not the governed. And its subsidiary premise is that the purpose of government is to codify traditions, laws and practices and to streamline an incoherent bureaucracy and speed up decisions. In other words, make the trains run on time. A very Continental fashion. The American Constitution is based on the notion power belongs to the people and its organizing principle is that government power should be limited to preserve freedom. In a word, the difference between the two documents, aside from their length, is that the EU Constitution exalts government while the American Constitution exalts freedom. The State vs. The People. It doesn't get any simpler.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

When you add the ancillary documents and treaties that are also part of the Constitution, by reference. The base Constitution is absurd enough. It gets much worse when the other documents are added to the mix.

The bureaucratic mind lives my means of jargon, obscurity, ambiguity, and incoherence. The language they use is intended to make you think that they are really smart since they wrote this dense document, and you are really stupid because you cannot understand the incomprehensible, so you should just submit without protest. I think that the French and Dutch rejected the EU constitution from a gut reaction. And that is the proper response to claptrap, regarless of your politics.