Microblog Memes

How dare you try and change an amendment

Because the constitution is the document that lays out the foundation for all of our legal rights and the limitations placed on the government that are intended to keep it accountable to the people. It's not perfect, but it does cover a hell of a lot, even more gets expanded on through legislation and the courts, and when necessary it can be (and has been) amended.

But it's also just ink and parchment. It can't do anything if the government decides to ignore it. It's the people who give power to the constitution. The more it is valued by the people across the country, throughout the political spectrum, both inside and outside the halls of power, the more likely it will be that those protections are respected. And when those protections are violated, people are far more likely to push back. And many within the government are also more likely to push back. That's literally the only reason we didn't have an overturned election, because numerous people at all levels of government said no, many despite being aligned with the assholes that were trying to stay in power.

So yes, I would very much prefer it if everyone would treat the constitution with some reverence if that's what it takes. The alternative is not pretty.

This comment and this title are two separate things in my opinion. I don't give a shit what the founding fathers wanted either. That's why we've amended the Constitution several times. The originalist viewpoint of the Constitution is ridiculous and completely counter even to how the founders wanted the document to act, funny enough.

As for why it's treated like a holy book -- it's basically a set of rules for our government and what laws are okay and which laws aren't okay. Think of it like a social contract that everyone signed. It's how we've agreed to live together and treat each other. Unlike a holy book though it can and has been changed.

It's quite literally the legal foundation of the country.

Can we please not turn microblog memes into the new whitepeopletwitter where we just post unnuanced political opinions rather than funny memes? Microblogs are a bad platform for political discourse.

Why? Because a lot of their ideas were good. Creating a system of government that is immune or even resilient to corruption is very difficult, but the US has done pretty good all things considered.

Well the very first and most important thing they wanted was to give you the right to say that or whatever you want about them.

Before they enshrined that concept in their document, saying such things about members of your government would get you jailed or executed.

The Forefathers didn't come close to living up to their own words. We are still striving to meet them hundreds of years later. It's a good goal.

I like the constitution because I don't want Matt Gaetz to be able to propose whatever nonsense he wants. It's not a perfect document, but it enshrines certain fundamental protections that really shouldn't be fucked with.

In any governing system, something has to be supreme. Something has to be the final word in settling disputes. There are basically three options: Fiat, convention, or consensus. Consensus is really only practical in small groups, so we can put that option to the side. What remains is the choice between rule by the whims of a person or group, and the rule of law.

Despite their many flaws, the founders of the American republic were at least smart enough to realize that there would be a constant temptation to set aside the rule of law and let a person dictate things. So the foundational law (the constitution) was made sacrosanct in the way that the king had been. To lose the rule of law is to lose the republic, and return to tyranny.

Because according to our education system, we're the only country that has a constitution, and we used it to beat the greatest evil: taxing rich people.

Because many of those men were flat-out geniuses. They penned a fine constitution and outlined ideals we should strive to achieve. That doesn't mean they knew the best way to legislate modern issues though , like the internet. That brings us back to their genius. They outlined a process to revise, or amend if you will, the laws of the land. The biggest problem that they didn't foresee is that America would regress into fervent tribalism, completely unwilling to amend anything that might benefit another tribe. So we're stuck, locked in the year 1992 when the last amendment was written. Actually that's not completely true. Many of them did foresee the dangers of a bicameral partisan system, and issued abundant warnings about it. Unfortunately they really didn't anticipate just how insulated and shameless many of our politicians would become, probably because tar and feathers in the public square was still a possibility back then.

The forefathers had some of the most sensible ideology in the history of humankind. What other country established limits on the power of their government as a foundational document?

They're still very sound principles to this day.

Unfortunately our current government doesn't concern themselves with those principles.

But I will agree with what was likely the point of this post, which is that the Constitution is not and was never supposed to be timeless, and the founders would agree with that too.

Only narrow minded people do. The rest of us understand as our forefathers did, that the constitution is a framework, that is malleable. It is meant to be updated over time and fine tuned. That is why they left the ability to add amendments.

The constitution is the foundation of the entire US legal system. Without it the whole thing collapses.

Books and documents (any media, really) should be read, analyzed, and critiqued, not put into a shrine and worshipped, because texts written on paper aren't supposed to be immutable or even always right, or they could be appropriate for the time they are written in, but no longer meets the changing social environment of the current age, which is why it is best for these important documents to always be updated to reflect the practical needs of the time.

So, yes, I think the "do everything as the Founders wanted" attitude in the States is quite silly.

This is a pretty ignorant take. We can change the rules whenever we want. This is the whole process of amendments.

A lot of money is spent in order to propagandize Americans into thinking they're living in the greatest country in the world (tm), and the weird veneration of the founding document, and the people who wrote it is a big part of it.

Either the constitution has the ultimate authority in government, or our presidents do. And have you see the kind of people we elect president?

because it's a manufactured reverence for their idea of the country by our education system. Our history classes are laden with U.S. propaganda that makes a lot of Americans think a lot of incorrect things about our history. The infallibility of our founding fathers is one of those things.

Because we're taught to in school and everything we're meant to learn about enlightenment ideals and free, critical thinking is contradicted by our nonstop exposure to 'patriotic identity as a brand'. Our football games, our truck commercials, our news stations, everything is stamped with an American flag in the way a church might use iconography of crosses and saints. And since our education system is actually pretty bad at teaching nuance and critical thought, we latch onto it like "yeah, I like America, and I will glorify it because I'm being told to." And then you get into this really lazy binary of ideology as a commodity where people crave the dopamine hit of feeling like they're associated with a 'side', and a side which has all the most DeVaStAtInG hot takes to pwn the other side's strawmen. And then you're in "my country, do or die" territory because some wealthy person in the media is able to "rah rah" you into being a class traitor because of the trivial fandom associations they've taught you to make about culture war issues that actually have nothing to do with you or your day to day life.

It's only some Americans that treat it that way. That the way it was written is the only way to ever take it; ignoring the fact it lays down rules for how to change it or add to it, like we have done 27 times in the past.