When someone tells you the Consitution is a “living document” what they are really saying is that it is dead.
In passing the gavel to Speaker Boehner, Pelosi spoke of our Constitution as if she truly revered it when she in fact has trashed that document repeatedly.
The United States Constitution covers a larger 'area' than it originally did but with the same meaning as the first. It is our guiding laws, not some paper that is constantly argued in class rooms or court rooms. It means what it says. Just as the Bible's Ten Commandments, like them or not, mean what they say........Law and the Word of God from that instrument is America's great achievement for freemen.
That’s an easy one to answer! The Libtards and Communists want to Destroy Our American Constitution! Just as Obozo tried to Destroy the Honduran Constitution and the Kenyan Constitution! Thankfully, he was Unsuccessful in each case........
re: “Maddow reminded her listeners the other night that “the constitution is not the ten commandments,” though one wonders how seriously Rachel actually takes Mosaic Law, as well.”
Exactly - since liberals have very little, if any, respect for the Bible - why would they have it for our Constitution? Even those liberals who have some regard for the Bible don’t believe it to be taken seriously enough to hold any kind of moral or theological standards that we must actually live by - certainly not standards that we can “impose” on anyone else.
Our Constitution is held with even less esteem by liberals. Since they don’t really believe in the universal moral standards upon with the Constitution is established, then why not change it at whim? From their point of view, the Constitution’s precepts are “man-made, changeable,” and subject to a wide variety of interpretations and opinions because there is no such thing as transcendant moral absolutes. In other words, since right and wrong are subject to opinion, so is the Constitution.
Our Constitution: the New “Inconvenient Truth”
They advocate the same old and tired ideas which have led to tyranny and oppression in every country where they have practiced.
For an excellent discussion of the history of the "living constitution" school and its dangers to liberty, visit this web site and click on the essay entitled, "Do We Have A Living Constitution?" by Dr. Walter Berns. The essay originally appeared in National Forum, The Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Falll 1984, and then was published in "Our Ageless Constitution," in 1987.
Dr. Berns documents how "living constitution" ideologues actually distorted the words of Justice John Marshall in his advice in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) in order to justify what Berns calls their "erroneous views." Berns says, "Marshall's and the Founders' concern was not to keep the Constitution in tune with the times but, rather, to keep the times to the extent possible, in tune with the Constitution. And that is why the Framers assigned to the judiciary the task of protecting the Constitutiion as written."
Marshall made that point clear in Marbury when he wrote:
"That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected. The exercise of this original right is a very great exertion; nor can it, nor ought it, to be frequently repeated. The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental: and as the authority from which they proceed is supreme, and can seldom act, they are designed to be permanent."
A reading of Berns' entire essay explains and, at the same time, demolishes the false premise of the "living constitution" promoters.
The Constitution contains within itself the only valid means for amendment or change by what Justice Story called "its only KEEPERS," "We, the People."
"Until the people have, by some solemn and authoritative act, annulled or changed the established form, it is binding upon them collectively, as well as individually; and no presumption or even knowledge of their sentiments, can warrant their representatives [the executive, judiciary, or legislature]; in a departure from it prior to such an act." - Alexander Hamilton