Posted on 01/05/2011 10:53:11 AM PST by Kaslin
Almost every patriotic fiber of my body tells me that reading the Constitution aloud at the commencement of congressional sessions is a good idea. Heck, a pop quiz might even be in order. It is vital that members of Congress fully immerse themselves in the document if they're going to circumvent it effectively.
These same instincts demand that I embrace the new Republican rule requiring that every House bill contain a statement from the author specifically citing the constitutional authority on which he is basing the legislation. If not for anything else, watching politicians squaring a new law calling for "breast-feeding rights" with the founding document promises an entertainment value that is urgently missing in Washington.
Yet despite all my superhuman patriotism, I also find the whole effort a bit gimmicky and unnecessary. As you know, the Constitution is malleable, and we all believe deeply in our own version; that's if we're imbued with enough wisdom to understand it.
Recently, the wise liberal Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein explained that "the issue of the Constitution is not that people don't read the text and think they're following; the issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago."
Or, who knows, perhaps technocrats who believe societal progress is achieved through state control are not yet free to openly assert their aversion to a document conceived -- unmistakably -- to protect the individual from state intrusion.
The Constitution, curiously enough, always seems to get most convoluted when the wording is most precise. As you know, the First Amendment is fine if the result is "fair" and not too hateful. The Second is dangerous and misunderstood. To support the 10th is to pine for slavery. The Fifth is vitally important -- unless the environmental good is threatened.
Perhaps the flaw in the document is its ambiguity rather than its complexity. Giving Congress the wide-ranging authority to "make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper" to provide for the "general Welfare," for instance, gives every do-gooder who can cobble together 50 percent-plus-one of the vote the authority to define the common good.
This includes conservatives, who would often have trouble passing their own originalist constitutional purity test.
Under what authority does government dictate the parameters of marriage, for instance? What in the Constitution allows Washington to prohibit the peaceful economic transaction between individuals -- whether it be marijuana or anything else? (Alcohol prohibitionists had the decency to pass a new amendment.)
So, because the Constitution has become too complex for many of us to decipher -- and thus irrelevant -- it's time to boil the whole thing down to its troglodytic and/or graceful basics and engage P.J. O'Rourke's rules of governance in a free society:
1) "Mind your own business."
2) "Keep your hands to yourself."
If the public believes in the spirit of the founding and politicians are committed to the resurrection of the Constitution, those rules are a good guide when looking at new legislation. No need for gimmicks.
Let’s just hope this doesn’t simply become and empty ritual that certain parties voted for to make themselves look good without actually having to DO anything substantive.
ML/NJ
As "stunts" or "gimmicks" go it's pretty far down on the list, IMHO. Far more interesting is the demand that each new piece of legislation cite Constitutional authority. "I won" isn't going to cut it.
“What is amusing is how very threatening certain people consider the act of reading it to be...”
I’ve read comments dismissing the reading as a publicity stunt, but none from people that actually seem *threatened* by it.
Are all the amendments being read, as well?
Stopped reading here most definitely. Don't need to consider anything further!
The Constitution is an active contract between the People and the Government.
Period.
See tagline.
Immediately after 9/11/2001 when tens of millions of Americans proudly showed the Flag I recall liberal / progressive Americans rejecting the Flag because it was "too Republican."
The 1960s Marxist-Alinsky campus/street revolutionary rabble and their ideological issue (children)-cum-Rat Party (formerly the traditional, patriotic Democratic Party) DO IN FACT reject our Constitution, Flag, and everything about America that they feeeeeeeeeeeel is "too Republican" and that is of course everything about our founding, heritage, patriotism.. everything.
Symptom of a diseased mind, right there.
INPUT REJECTED.
Let’s just hope that the mere politicians will control their basic urge to change or modify the terms used by use of metaphysical refinements and tests of logical skill A problem seen all too often in the Despotic branch(the Courts specific
reminder of such the decision Tuesday that the Mt.Soledad Cross and Memorial are some violation of the establishment clause. When the decision is based not upon the terms of the First Amendment but upon modern myth and damned LIES.Reading the Constitution before the House would be fine —except I do NOT trust Congress -any more than I do the Courts to base their legal decision on the US Constitution.If it aint in their hearts to obey the written constitution what good does it do to read it.
Further, the Constitution is the contract under which the sovereign states formed the federal government.
When that created entity violates that contract,
the creating entities have the right to disregard any authority that the created entity claims to have.
The States are the People, as far as the Feds are concerned, I agree.
What’s going on with today’s “biblical” attack on the Constitution from the left is to get soundbites into peoples’ heads trying to re-define what the Constitution really is.
I am calling it a Contract which is easily understandable. It is a secular, legal and binding agreement.
They are calling it a “holy scripture” which is an arguable and optional mythology that one can choose to believe or not.
Defining the Constitution as essentially a “myth” is what they are up to.
I fight that with concrete language. I am not arguing against your more specific and more accurate definitions.
I am fighting their lying, marxist propaganda with a true, logical and concise argument. That is my goal.
You touch on the more general strategy for defeating any leftist argument.
Bring their abstract obfuscatory language down into the real and concrete and real realm of truth,
and they lose every time.
Speaking about/to our Constitution, I have a gnawing feeling that it is many times wrongly represented/referenced/thought as to ‘America’. Our Constitutution was written and dedicated for the ‘UNITED STATES’ of America.It doesn’t bother me to talk about ‘America’ as we are part of a distinct Continent but when it comes to governance I want to think of and speak to the ‘UNITED STATES’. Our Constitution was intended to be unique and it serve the ‘UNITED STATES’.We must keep it as such.
Speaking about/to our Constitution, I have a gnawing feeling that it is many times wrongly represented/referenced/thought as to ‘America’. Our Constitutution was written and dedicated for the ‘UNITED STATES’ of America.It doesn’t bother me to talk about ‘America’ as we are part of a distinct Continent but when it comes to governance I want to think of and speak to the ‘UNITED STATES’. Our Constitution was intended to be unique and it serve the ‘UNITED STATES’.We must keep it as such.
Speaking about/to our Constitution, I have a gnawing feeling that it is many times wrongly represented/referenced/thought as to ‘America’. Our Constitutution was written and dedicated for the ‘UNITED STATES’ of America.It doesn’t bother me to talk about ‘America’ as we are part of a distinct Continent but when it comes to governance I want to think of and speak to the ‘UNITED STATES’. Our Constitution was intended to be unique and it serve the ‘UNITED STATES’.We must keep it as such.
It is a modern, common error to interpret the necessary and proper clause as carte blanche to do whatever Congress wishes. As part of the original Constitution, before the Bill of Rights were added, it was regarded a bulwark to confine the reach of government to the enumerated powers.
I'd say the real challenge would be to find constitutional support for the government to control breast feeding.
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