Putting an end to Constitution worship

Yale Daily News ^ | 9/22/05 | JEFF MANKOFF

[PureTrouble]

Now that is pretty funny.

Hopefully his email address posted on this forum will lead to people with polite but enlightened comments being sent to him and his Dean of the History department.

Student: jeffrey.mankoff@yale.edu


Although I remember a movie where some bum off the street got to tell the professor that the Constitution did not have a flaw. it was that the creators realized that there would be times where the constitution needed changing and that the creators were smart enough to put a mechanism in the constitution for that change. Guess the professor still wants to teach the Flaw theory.

[Condor51]

"As Yale political scientist Robert Dahl has pointed out, the Constitution is grossly undemocratic. Since Wyoming, with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants, has the same clout in the Senate as California, with almost 34 million, each Wyomingite counts 68 times as much as each Californian.

Okay... either this 'scientist' guy Dahl is dumber than a bag of rocks or he's being intentionally deceptive. My money is on the first because:

• The Senate is not about "equal representation". That's why we have the HOUSE of Representatives, where representation IS determined by population.

• And as Sen. George Allen corrected nitwit gazillionaire Jon Corzine on the Senate floor a few months back during the "Filibuster Issue" (verbally spanked him goooood), the original purpose of the Senate was to look out for, protect and promote the rights of the various states. And not about as Corzine said, "looking out for the rights of the minority". Nor was it about "equal representation" of U.S. citizens - again that's the function of the House.

• That's also why Senators were originally 'elected' (selected is more like it) by the Legislatures of the states and not directly by the people. The 'Framers' figured who better to know what was important to each state that the legislature of that state. Direct election didn't happen until 1912(?) with the passage of the 17th Amendment.

Ergo, if this 'scientist' guy isn't aware of these little facts he's got to be a real maroon. There's no other way to explain his utter confusion over the original role of the two 'houses' of Congress. And saying this is "undemocratic" is preposterous.

So dam straight mr 'scientist', in the U.S. Senate Wyoming has just as much "clout" as California - deal with it. Or are you "stuck on stupid"?

[darkangel82]

Jeff Wankoff just hates the Constitution because it gets in the way of his socialist dreams.

[Ditto]

This is what passes for a PhD student at Yale these days? Good grief, this guy has no clue.

As Yale political scientist Robert Dahl has pointed out, the Constitution is grossly undemocratic.

Intentionally so. The Framers saw democracy for what it was -- two wolves and a sheep voting on the diner menu. I agree with them. Democracy in government is a short cut to dictatorship.

Take the Second Amendment, which mentions the need for a well-regulated militia and conferring the right to bear arms. Because of the Framers' unclear wording, no one has been able to establish definitively whether this right belongs only to the militia or to individuals.

Even a smidgen of history would have told this dolt that definition of "militia" in 1787 was all able-bodied males between the ages of 15 and 50. Even left-wing Constitutional experts like Lawrence Tribe agree that the term "militia" means citizens and not the National Guard.

"...denying the vote to women, blacks and poor people were both part of the Framers' desire to keep power in the hands of people like themselves

I would surely like to see this idiot point to any word in the Constitution that denied the right to vote to anyone. It isn't there and never was.

Really sad. A 6th year student without clue #1. I'd love to see him trying to define Federalism. I bet $100 he would get it entirely backwards.

[dfwgator]

Don't get stuck on stupid, Jeff.

[Sloth]

if only legislators, and the public, were not so deeply attached to the Constitution

ROTFLOL... stop it, I cant breathe!

[antiRepublicrat]

s Yale political scientist Robert Dahl has pointed out, the Constitution is grossly undemocratic. Since Wyoming, with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants, has the same clout in the Senate as California, with almost 34 million, each Wyomingite counts 68 times as much as each Californian.

And if we went by population alone, Wyoming would be insignificant, with almost no input to the federal government. I seem to remember the Constitution had a solution for that problem. What was it again? Oh yeah, the Senate.

This is what Yale is putting out for political scientists these days? I learned this in junior high!

[Aquinasfan]

The Constitution in particular needs to be stripped of much of the mystic awe surrounding it

He's just mad because Yale has been stripped of much of the mystic awe surrounding it because of fools like him.

[veracious]

Thank you billybob.

As for me and my family (extended too), we chose to defend the US Constitution & the republic of the United States of America, from _all_ attacks, foreign or domestic.

[KarlInOhio]

Left off this one.

Amendment XVII
The seventeenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

[Itzlzha]

As Yale political scientist Robert Dahl has pointed out, the Constitution is grossly undemocratic. Since Wyoming, with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants, has the same clout in the Senate as California, with almost 34 million, each Wyomingite counts 68 times as much as each Californian. The Constitution is also responsible for burdening us with the Electoral College, a body designed to purposely undermine popular sovereignty.

Geez...is this clown REALLY this stupid?

The 2000 election, when Al Gore outpolled George Bush but was denied the presidency by the Electoral College (with an assist by the Supreme Court), is the most recent example of 18th-century oligarchy trampling 21st-century democracy.

Yup..I guess he has his PhD in STUPIDITY with a co-major in Socialist Drivel!

Here's my best response to this Proto-Marxist buffoon!

"I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid.

You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid.

Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know.

I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel."

[RightWhale]

the document's adoption in 1787

Hmm. Something like 160,000 men were involved in creating this 'document'. Some of them may have discussed the issues contained in the proposed Constitution with their wives and mistresses, some may have not. 1787 was the year of the Convention. Historical analysis of what actually happened and why began about a century later and is still under discussion.

[Freebird Forever]

Recognizing them as crucial pieces of American history is one thing, but worshiping them like sacred texts goes too far.

It appears that young Mr. Mankoff is attempting to gain the favor of the CFR and other members of the ruling elite. They've been subtly pushing this agenda for decades.

[abigailsmybaby]

His edgumacation has been a gross waste of money.

[Itzlzha]

What is patent in this article, is that the author worships the Leftist mantra of "Democracy"--i.e., rule by numbers--and a completely utilitarian view of political societies, where nothing is really predictable, and the end sought by the most noses, at any moment, justifies whatever is desired at that moment.

Democracy is 4 wolves and a sheep voting on the dinner menu!

DemonRATs, Socialists, and Marxists all delude themselves that they will always be the wolves.

When things change...they are the FIRST to whine that the rules are unfair...and they need to change for them to be represented better (Remember the Jeffords lesson!)

[Billthedrill]

Hey, I've got an idea kids, how's about we start another legislative body that represents the people with the number of representatives allocated according to the population of the st...

Don't be ridiculous. Who ever heard of a legislative branch with two houses in it? Are you some kind of commie?

Seriously, this is a truly painful thing to read out of pen of a PhD candidate in history. It is simply astonishing to hear a bleat for "wise legislation" that might alter the Constitution - evidently the poor guy hasn't heard of that "Amendment" thingy. Or how the bicameral legislature came about, or why.

It's bad enough that any young person sees fit to quote secondary sources instead of reading the Constitution for himself or herself, a process that takes under an hour even if he's moving his lips; but this is a prospective historian. In his field this level of laziness is a guarantee of failure.

[tacticalogic]

I expect to be hearing from them about how unfair it is that schizophrenics only get one vote next.

[Ditto]

Drop him a note anyway Billbob. Maybe you can make him feel a little sheepish that they haven't maintained their standards.

[Owl558]

"Jeff Mankoff is a sixth-year Ph.D. student in the History Department."

Dummy has obviously never read the Federalist Papers. Such ignorance in a PhD student is simply staggering. He relies on the reader's ignorance to sound credible.

People like this is why I remain an armed citizen.

[LexBaird]

No he is not a PhD yet, so there is still a (vanishingly small) hope that his advisor will fail him.

After authoring this sterling example of ignorance and idiocy, his advisor should bust him back to pre-bachelorate and make his start over.