Article: Is The Constitution Outdated?

[Cabal]

Of course there's also the variance in interpretation of certain clauses which have been the basis for the passage of certain federal laws in contention with state laws as well.

 

[Travlyr]

It's not, but the Constitution gives congress to author laws. It's called the USC (United States Code). Literally a byproduct of the Constitution.

True. However read carefully what Chief Justice Marshall had to say,

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).
This is one of the leading cases in the history of the U.S. The opinion of the court was “Anything that is in conflict is null and void of law; Clearly for a secondary law to come in conflict with the supreme was illogical; for certainly the supreme law would prevail over any other law, and certainly our forefathers had intended that the supreme law would be the basis for all laws, and for any law to come in conflict would be null and void of law. It would bear no power to enforce, it would bear no obligation to obey, it would purport to settle as though it had never existed, for unconstitutionality would date from the enactment of such a law, not from the date so branded by a court of law. No courts are bound to uphold it, and no citizens are bound to obey it. It operates as a mere nullity or a fiction of law, which means it doesn‟t exist in law.”

The "Bill of Rights" are supreme. No lesser law can prevail over the supreme law.

 

[Cabal]

The "Bill of Rights" are supreme. No lesser law can prevail over the supreme law.

And yet that hasn't been the case in practice throughout our own history, including throughout the earliest administrations.

So again, the question is: has it been effective?

 

[Travlyr]

And yet that hasn't been the case in practice throughout our own history, including throughout the earliest administrations.

So again, the question is: has it been effective?

The question is: Who do you believe? The Law? Or the Media?

 

[heavenlyboy34]

The question is: Who do you believe? The Law? Or the Media?

Who to believe is a different question. Cabal's point is exactly right-which is what you should have been addressing.

HTH
Rev9

 

[Travlyr]

Who to believe is a different question. Cabal's point is exactly right-which is what you should have been addressing.

HTH
Rev9

Cabal's point is irrelevant. The "Bill of Rights" are supreme by definition. The fact that early participants did not force their representatives and administration to adhere to the supreme law of the land is a testament to their self-interest. They were so content with opportunity that they didn't care. Their liberty and prosperity overwhelmed them to the point of indifference or apathy.

 

[otherone]

And yet that hasn't been the case in practice throughout our own history, including throughout the earliest administrations.

So again, the question is: has it been effective?

When has a piece of paper ever been 'effective'? You can't blame the document because we have failed to hold our representatives accountable to it.

 

[otherone]

They were so content with opportunity that they didn't care. Their liberty and prosperity overwhelmed them to the point of indifference or apathy.

+REP
A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.
Napoleon Bonaparte

 

[Cabal]

When has a piece of paper ever been 'effective'? You can't blame the document because we have failed to hold our representatives accountable to it.

I'm not placing blame on a document; nor have I intended to place blame on anything in this particular discussion--that has not been my intent or purpose here. If I were to be looking to direct blame, I would probably respond by saying that blaming a document is as nonsensical as believing a document has any real power over the institution of the State.

I'm also not sure of what you mean by this notion of "we". I have no control over who is or is not held accountable to this or that; moreover, even if I could hold individuals accountable, I don't see how that would necessarily change anything--the system would still persist.

 

[otherone]

You expect the state to hold itself accountable?

 

[Cabal]

You expect the state to hold itself accountable?

Of course not.

 

[Bonnieblue]

The thirteen colonial republics at their very inception had by virtue of distance as well as their varying charters a certain autonomy from the mother country, specifically the Crown to which they owed allegiance. Although new charters were issue, old charters were amended, and the Crown itself eventually took nominal control of most of the colonial republics, the republics, in their day-to-day social interactions and indeed at the functional level of their respective polities, such as the House of Burgesses in Virginia, remained very autonomous. It was the attempts of the Crown to place these quasi-independent colonial republics under the direct control of the British Parliament through the various acts thereof now well known and famous in American history which brought those colonial republics to secede from the Crown and to declare their independence from it. Several of the colonial republics had seceded on their own prior to the joint secession as articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Although these now seceded colonial republics cooperated more or less through the Continental Congress, it would be later that they would formulate this cooperation in terms of the Articles of Confederation which was a formal compact articulating what essentially already was namely a confederation or federation of republics, with diverse yet common histories.

Setting aside the intrigues of Hamilton and Madison and their cronies for the moment, those same republics, each exercising its sovereign authority by placing its people in convention, decided through the ratification process to secede again from the union which they had established under the Articles of Confederation and to accede to a new union under the Constitution, the validity of which is predicated on the ratification by their sovereign assemblies. Thus, the Constitution provided the framework for a realigned union of constitutionally federated republics who were the principals of the compact known as the Constitution, and the Constitution became the means by which those principals, the thirteen republics known as states, notedly not "provinces or jurisdictions" created, thereby being the creators, their agent, i.e. their creature, known as the general government to which for the common good of all of the thirteen republics they delegated and carefully enumerated certain powers just as a group of business men, all equal partners, my create or hire a agent to assist with those things which they, the business men, had in common.

By mid 1865, Lincoln and the Republican Party, having captured the taxing authority and military machinery of the general government by running and winning as a regional party, had through a war of aggression and a war of terror successfully destroyed not one but two unions of constitutionally federated republics: the United States of America and the Confederate States of America. In their stead and under the "tender" care of the Republican Party those two unions of constitutionally federated republics were replaced by a nascent Hobbesian state which is an abstract corporation with a monopoly on coercion and with the ability to define the limits of its own power. As of that moment, the Constitution became meaningless and remains meaningless. The reality for which the Constitution itself was created no longer exist. One cannot "restore" the Constitution until that reality is restored; and that is not on the horizon.

I was privileged to attend a conference on the Confederate Constitution, which in most respects as far as documents go, is superior to the U.S. Constitution, at least for those of us who believe in republican and limited government, particularly at the "national" level. The Confederate Constitution lies quietly in archives, there moldering in dignity like an ancient king in the tomb. Would it were so for the U.S. Constitution. In stead of being put to rest with the union of republics which she enabled and embodied, she was ripped away and made to become the whore of the empire which destroyed the union of federated republics. Today, this whore is presented to us as a goddess to whom we, right and left, living-constitutionalists and strict-constitutionalists, genuflect, while the princes of this age do nefarious and unsavory things under her skirts. She is America's political whore; just like the Queen of England is Great Britain's whore. Neither the Constitution nor the Queen have any authority left. They are both kept ladies. The Queen is trotted out to begin Parliament; and the Constitution is trotted out when the tyrants who lead us take an oath to her, chuckling with hidden Schadenfreude as they do.

This is what is real on the late night of 19 February 2012.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

You expect the state to hold itself accountable?

Not at all. This is one of the internal contradictions that constitutionalists have yet to resolve. IMO, if limited liability of every person in the government were removed, there would be reason to trust it. Till then, micro-secession is the only practical solution.

Rev9

 

[otherone]

This is one of the internal contradictions that constitutionalists have yet to resolve. Till then, micro-secession is the only practical solution.

How can someone who could not advocate for himself in a representative government suddenly look out for himself with micro-secession? "Constitutionalists" envision a government of, for, and by the people. People aren't even voting, for the most part.

 

[Bonnieblue]

How can someone who could not advocate for himself in a representative government suddenly look out for himself with micro-secession? "Constitutionalists" envision a government of, for, and by the people. People aren't even voting, for the most part.

The vote is the least effective way to check politicians; that is why they play it up; they want you to think that it can stop them. The Barons understood the elements which would stop a tyrannical king. Not found among them was the "vote."

 

[otherone]

The vote is the least effective way to check politicians

It's also the simplest, cheapest, and least-time consuming way to make ANY attempt at self-advocacy.....and 'we' still don't do it.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

How can someone who could not advocate for himself in a representative government suddenly look out for himself with micro-secession? "Constitutionalists" envision a government of, for, and by the people. People aren't even voting, for the most part.

How could one not? It would be in his rational self-interest. In the real world, the micro-secessionist would still interact with others who subject themselves to constitutionalism-except on his own terms. The relationship would no longer be State-subject, but State-sovereign citizen. I'm well aware of what Constitutionalists envision, but it has yet to materialize. If the Constitutionalist vision were to come to fruition, I would applaud them and likely work even more closely with them.

Hoppe writes in "On The Impossibility Of Limited Government": Rather, a modern liberal-libertarian strategy of secession should take its cues from the European Middle Ages when, from about the 12th until well into the 17th century (with the emergence of the modern central state), Europe was characterized by the existence of hundreds of free and independent cities, interspersed into a predominantly feudal social structure.[32]
By choosing this model and striving to create an America punctuated by a large and increasing number of territorially disconnected free cities — a multitude of Hong Kongs, Singapores, Monacos, and Liechtensteins strewn out over the entire continent — two otherwise unattainable but central objectives can be accomplished. First, besides recognizing the fact that the liberal-libertarian potential is distributed highly unevenly across the country, such a strategy of piecemeal withdrawal renders secession less threatening politically, socially, and economically. Second, by pursuing this strategy simultaneously at a great number of locations all over the country, it becomes exceedingly difficult for the central state to create the unified opposition in public opinion to the secessionists that would secure the level of popular support and voluntary cooperation necessary for a successful crackdown.[33]


Rev9

 

[heavenlyboy34]

edit: n/m

 

[BuddyRey]

Unfortunately, the media and the masses they instruct have become so inured to common sense that the debate today has devolved to "is the Constitution a perfect and divinely-inspired document that gave government just the right amount of power, or does it need to be replaced by something that gives government a lot MORE power?!?!"

Of course, there's a third possibility, and one neither the mainstream right nor the mainstream left wants to acknowledge, which is this; the U.S. Constitution was a document designed to empower big government influence peddlers, and we did perfectly fine for twelve years without it.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

Unfortunately, the media and the masses they instruct have become so inured to common sense that the debate today has devolved to "is the Constitution a perfect and divinely-inspired document that gave government just the right amount of power, or does it need to be replaced by something that gives government a lot MORE power?!?!"

Of course, there's a third possibility, and one neither the mainstream right nor the mainstream left wants to acknowledge, which is this; the U.S. Constitution was a document designed to empower big government influence peddlers, and we did perfectly fine for twelve years without it.

+rep