One thing I just wanted to write about is the issue of the Constitution of the United States and whether or not it is a "living document." There seems to be some confusion on this. Among the conservatives, Republicans, and Libertarians, the Constitution is sacred and we should strive to appoint strict constructionist justices to the Court. Many on the Left, however, do not like (and have never liked since the days of Woodrow Wilson) the Constitution. They say that the Constitution is out-dated (according to Woodrow Wilson it was out-dated even then!), and should be flat-out replaced even, as the Founding Fathers never could have envisioned all of the things that have come about now (nuclear weapons, satellite, computers, the Internet, etc...). They say that the conservative view of interpreting the Constitution "as it is written" is too restrictive and not realistic for modern times.
Well I am not a lawyer, but I wonder if some of people saying this have the first clue what they are talking about on the subject (there was an article written not too long ago in either Time magazine or Newsweek where the author makes these claims, and they are supposed to be some scholar of the history of the Constitution). The thing is, the people saying this seem to completely misunderstand just how the Constitution was written. For starters, they are correct, in that the Founders couldn't have forseen all of the ways in which society would change. But the thing is, the Founders themselves were well aware of this, and included a provision in the Constitution that was revolutionary at the time, called the amendment clause. The amendment clause allows the nation to amend the Constitution, i.e. to adapt and change it if we need to. Which we have done throughout the years, starting with the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments), and then with the following amendments that have been added (such as the 13th Amendment which outlaws slavery, the 19th Amendment which protects a woman's right to vote, and so forth). The Constitution is not meant to be some unchanging, inflexible document. To the contrary, it is very much meant to be changed according to the times.
Which means that the Leftists implying that the conservative view of the Constitution in that it is to be rigid and unchanging is simply incorrect. This was really exemplified I think when Whoopie Goldberg asked John McCain in 2008, when he was saying on the show "The View" that he would like to appoint strict constructionists to the Supreme Court, whether she needs to worry about becoming a slave. McCain, unfortunately, had no clue how to handle the question, and instead responded by saying he understands her concern, while the audience gave Whoopie a huge applause. In other words, neither Whoopie, John McCain, or the audience, understood just how the Constitution is written! Many on the Left and even some on the Right do not seem to really understand the Constitution (that it is meant to be a flexible document)
The other reason I think many on the Left call for the Constitution to be re-written is that many do not like that it is written to limit the powers of the government. Afterall, when your political ideology calls for the government to regulate and control all sorts of aspects of people's lives and the economy, and for the government to have a lot of power, a document that specifically limits the powers of said government is not going to be viewed very favorably by said people (similarly, many on the religious Rightwing don't like the part of the First Amendment that separates church and state). We have seen this from Woodrow Wilson as I mentioned when he was President, to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, under whom the Supreme Court declared un-Constitutional multiple pieces of his New Deal, not because they disagreed with the legislation itself, but because they saw it that the legislation was combining the powers of the Executive and the Legislative branches. FDR responded by threatening to pack the Supreme Court.
Now the Left's idea thus of the Constitution being a living document is essentially that you can interpret it to mean what you want it to mean. The problem with this view is that this essentially renders the whole document worthless. It doesn't make much sense to have a document that the government can just twist to justify whatever legislation they please.
Many on the Left scoff at the view held by many on the Right that the Constitution is sacred. They see this as a way of sort of deifying the Founding Fathers in a way that is illogical and based on false nostalgia. But I disagree. The U.S. Constitution, when you look at it in comparison with other Constitutions, is an absolutely brilliantly-written piece of work. Since being written, there have been thousands of other constitutions written throughout the world. Most are hundreds or even thousands of pages long, because they try to cover every possible issue, and as such, after a few years, become obsolete. They thus fail to sustain the governments created by them for more than a few decades at the most.
The American Constitution, on the other hand, is timeless, because the Founding Fathers, in their incredible wisdom, created what is a very short, brief document (around only ten pages) that only covers the really big stuff, and leaves all the other stuff up to others. It creates a framework of rules, values, and ideas that guide the three branches of government created by it in legislating, interpreting, and enforcing the various laws we as a society need.
In creating the laws however, they are to be in-line with the often silent Constitution. If there is a disagreement in how the Constitution should see those laws, then it is the job of the Supreme Court to decide whether they are Constitutional or not, and justices on the Court are supposed to put their politics away and interpret the Constitution according to how it is written, not how they would like it to be written. As such, our Constitution has sustained our government for thus far 200+ years. And it is for these reasons that, to me, the Constitution is in fact a document that we should consider sacred. In terms of how it checks the powers of the government, the Founders did a very fine job. Now if we find that the Founders got something wrong with the Constitution, or flat-out forgot somethng, or just some part of it is now flat-out out-dated and in need of change, well then, that's what the amendment process as I mentioned is for.
And in this, the Founders were also smart. They understood that while we as a nation need the ability to change the Constitution if necessary, that the process should not be too easy, because then all you'd need is the proper political majority and the Constitution would end up getting amended all the time to suit particular political agendas (both of the religious Rightwing and the big-government Leftwing). For example, you have people among the religious Right who want a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. And you have people on the Left who want to amend the Constitution to get rid of the Second Amendment (because according to them, no sophisticated, progressive society in the modern 21st century can possibly be one in which the people are to be entrusted with the ownership of firearms (eyeroll on my part)), and also amend it to say things such as food, housing, healthcare, etc...are all to be considered rights (rights are abstract things, not goods and services however...by that line of reasoning, then the Second Amendment "right to bear arms" should mean the government has to use taxpayer money to make sure every citizen is armed with a firearm).
So the Founders made the amendment process difficult. To amend the Constitution, you either need a two-thirds vote from both houses of Congress and then three-fourths of the state legislatures, or you can call a Constitutional convention (which requires two-thirds of the state legislatures) in which at least one or more amendments can be proposed to the Constitution, and then you again need three-fourths of the state legislatures to vote in favor of it. In the history of our nation thus far, the Constitution has only been amended by the former method, never via a Constitutional Convention. Despite the difficulty of getting an amendment passed, quite a few of them have been passed, including very important ones (outlawing slavery and protecting a woman's right to vote along with others), so it isn't as if the amendment process makes it impossible to amend the Constitution. Just it isn't something that can be done with any simple political majority.
Now when one sees all of this, it really throws a wrench into the whole left-wing idea that the Constitution should be re-written to "bring it up to speed with the times." Because if you give it a few years (let alone a few decades), the Constitution will AGAIN likely be obsolete if it was re-written in such a manner. So it would be silly to try re-writing it.
So to conclude, the Constitution is very much meant to be a flexible, changing, adaptable document, but it is a timeless document as well that spells out pretty clearly the limitations of the government's powers.
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