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... the Roman Republic amended itself often enough to last 450 years. It did so not by declaring rights on paper, but rather by setting up institutions whose natural, structural interests tended to secure the liberty of the people.... The only worthwhile amendments are therefore structural.... The faux US republic will not bring back slavery, stop women or blacks over 18 years of age from voting. These are hardwired, structural aspects of our government that cannot be disregarded or lawyered away....

Thank you so very much, Jacquerie, for your outstanding insights!

It bothers me that some people seem to feel that if you just "get the law right," on paper, that all will automatically be well with our Republic.

Yet even the best laws do not make the people good. As Plato pointed out over 2,000 years ago, a political society is only as good as the human material that composes it. If the people are disordered, "bad," then there really is no political solution that will make society "good."

I think this is what John Adams had in mind when he observed that the Constitution was intended for a "moral people," and no other.

Which I imagine is why left progressives of all stripes in our society today are joining in a concerted, full-scale frontal attack on Christians and Christianity, currently spearheaded by the so-called "Gay Revolution." And they will never stop....

....."As Plato pointed out over 2,000 years ago,...

"A political society is only as good as the human material that composes it. If the people are disordered, "bad," then there really is no political solution that will make society "good."

...."I think this is what John Adams had in mind when he observed that the Constitution was intended for a "moral people," and no other."....

Indeed betty, indeed..

I certainly don't disagree with either Plato or John Adams.

Plato referred to tiny city-states. John Adams expounded on the necessity of republican virtue, yet also knew very well the problems associated with total reliance on virtue across an expansive territory to secure freedom. It didn't work. It was that very problem, the reliance on virtue alone that lead to rewrites of state constitutions in the mid-1780s and the combined federal/democratic constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation in 1787.

I haven't studied Adams' Defense of the Constitutions of the United States but IIRC he so much as determined that mixed government in the form of the British Constitution was the theoretical best structure. It is why the book fell fairly flat in 1787.

America didn't have the three formal, hierarchical estates of British society. Every man is born equal to another in a republic. So the problem was how to give voice to the people yet prevent them from slitting each other's throats. The answer was to be found in a complex plan of government that famously divided power between the states and the government they created.

Back in the 1780s those stupid, breeches clad, slave owning white dudes recognized the shortcomings of an only six year old confederacy and sought to correct them. Contrast that to America 2015 that is too smart to correct the horrible mistake of the 17th Amendment. We'll bring back booze, but not a federal government.