President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

If the right against quartering soldiers went away, I'd probably be OK with it. I'm not saying soldiers need to be showing up in people's houses tomorrow, just that it probably doesn't need to have the status of a "right".

 

You think speech is violence.

You’re clearly willing to due away with the First Amendment. Why not just say so?

 

The question wasn't amendments. It was "rights."

If we're talking parts of the Constitution, I'd be glad to scrap the whole thing and start over.

 

Prior to the start of the Revolutionary War, and oft-times during it. colonists were regularly forced to quarter British soldiers against their will. Hence the prohibition of said actions in the Constitution. This imposition and injustice was still very fresh in the minds of the Founding Fathers; it's another facet of civilian control over the military, a hallmark of our democracy.

Slavery, the lack of voting rights for non-property owners and women, and the direct appointment of senators of course, were still OK.

 

Yeah, I'm familiar with the history. We are governed by a document written by 18th century thinkers for 18th century problems that was never meant to still be around now.

 

And Mexico will pay for it.

 

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

Thomas Jefferson, 1816.

Sounds as if one of the most brilliant men of his (or any other) time thought a document written in the 18th century could evolve just fine, especially if leaders led. In Jefferson's day, somehow the leaders from various states and parties reached a compromise on the greatest issues of the day. Today's idiots can't agree what's for lunch. The problem isn't the document. It's the leaders sworn to uphold it, starting with the Clown-in-Chief.

The Constitution is hard to amend for a reason. Otherwise it would have more loopholes than the tax code.

 

The problem is also the document.

 

You're completely misreading that quote from Jefferson. He's saying 100% the opposite of what you are saying and thinking he's agreeing with you on.

He believed in "the sovereignty of the living" and that being stuck with outdated governing traditions and documents was "the tyranny of the dead." When he's saying he doesn't want "frequent" changes in laws or constitutions, he's talking about a completely new constitution every generation or so rather than every decade or so.

 

A more direct quote from Jefferson on the matter:

“No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. . . . The constitution and laws of their predecessors [are] extinguished . . . in their natural course with those who gave them being. . . . 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.”