Argues Louis Michael Seidman, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, who would subsequently need a new job in a new, post-Constitution world were his wishes to come true:
Our obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues and inflamed our public discourse. Instead of arguing about what is to be done, we argue about what James Madison might have wanted done 225 years ago.
As someone who has taught constitutional law for almost 40 years, I am ashamed it took me so long to see how bizarre all this is.
Explore and discuss how bizarre all this is, if and as you will.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
“Our obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system,”
To the Founding Fathers, this was not a bug, but a feature. An inefficient central government was desired so the foxes who wrote the Constitution could keep watch on their various henhouses.
It’s hard to ignor the absurdity of a professor at a Catholic university ranting about dysfunctional systems and the problem of what was wanted by someone 225 years ago. Georgetown has become a hot bed of radical thought, priest and professor Thomas Reese of Georetown has made wome waves lately too. All this coming from a university that has openly practiced racism in its basketball program.
Dumping the Constitution has become a favorite theme of the left because the Constitutions, far from being completely dysfunctional, is operating too closely to how it was intended to functino for their pleasure. It’s hard to rob people of their individual rights and impose the fascist desires of the left when the very cornerstone of our republic prevents that.
As an ivory tower professor, who probably believes his life won’t be negatively affected if he and his cohorts establish their fascist utopia, he may argue what James Madisoin wanted done 225 years ago. For most of us, it’s more real than that. Plus, seems I remember more people signing and the Constitution than just Madison. Seidman’s an old white man with worn out ideas preaching hate against old white men whose ideas, like freedom and individual rights, he doesn’t like.
“The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every government. The course of reflection in which we are immersed here on the elementary principles of society has presented this question to my mind; and that no such obligation can be transmitted I think very capable of proof. I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self evident, “that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;” that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. …..
On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished them, in their natural course, with those whose will gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.”
Thomas Jefferson letter to James Madison. Bizarre guy.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=2220
So, basically, the argument that the 1st Amendment sets the wall of separation between the government and the Church is pretty much moot. Who cares what Jefferson said, right? Of, if we are to take his opinion seriously, then we need to also agree with his opinion on the guns as well as the property rights.
If we are to take his opinion seriously, we would have to renew those amendments on a periodic basis if they actually reflected the values of those alive when the renewal takes place. At least on the issue of guns, it would be very easy to write a simpler, more clear law, I think.
Steve
Sounds like the reason for an amendment process is lost on Seidman and Steve. Once again, an insight as deep as the surface of a pond.
The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another…
Too bad the question of whether one generation can bind another to trillions of dollars of debt isn’t being seriousl discussed.
Seidman, and others, note that outside of the Bill of Rights and the Reconstruction Amendments, both groups passed under special circumstances, we have passed very few amendments. This has required a lot of work arounds by the judiciary, an unelected body for the most part. This has lead to some inconsistency in interpretation of the Constitution. Contra the textualists and originalists, its meaning has always been debated since it was written. As values and the way we live has changed, it requires increasing creativity to make it work.
Steve
If you read the Jefferson letter, he addresses that issue of debt. Quoting Jefferson is a lack of insight?
Steve
Allow me to assist both sides with this observation: the values of the founders of our nation ultimately – that is, upon finalizing the Constitution – held that the strictures of governance should be as difficult for a free people or any unexpected unfree alternatives to a free people to impose on that free people as possible and so designed a constitution which would render the imposition of the strictures of governance on a free people by themselves or any unexpected unfree alternatives to a free people as difficult as possible to create and as difficult as possible to maintain at every turn, legislative, executive, and judicial, year in and year out.
In determining where you stand vis-a-vis our founding values on governance and the original Constitution which enshrines them and, here, dispensing with them or changing them radically as per this article referenced, then, determine and tell us where you stand today on the very simple starting point value of how facile or how difficult you believe it should be for a free people or any unexpected unfree alternatives to a free people to impose and maintain the limiting strictures of government on that free people.
In case for any reason you are not sure, laws = the limiting strictures of government; the absence of laws = the absence of the limiting strictures of government.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria