Is the Constitution a failed experiment?

[osan]

No. What he is saying is that the intent of the document does not matter, only what it produces. It has produced tyranny, thus it is a failure. It was a failure 140 years ago, and it is a failure today. Look at what it either has failed to stop, or has aided and abetted in. The largest Government in the history of the world (Even bigger than Rome in its last waning throes).

Ah - I must be comprehension-challenged because I did not glean that meaning from what he wrote. Thanks for clarifying. If that is what he meant, then I would have to agree.

 

[osan]

What it produced was the freest society in the history of mankind.

That is not where we are today. Even so, that is still a comparative statement. We are not only not free, we are nowhere even approaching it. We are, perhaps, the freest slaves on the planet, but slaves nevertheless.

 

[awake]

The Constitution is a contract between the people and their government, a very potent one at that. But what you have today is that both parties are failing to observe the terms in pursuit of progressiveness.

The liberty movement wishes to observe the terms of this contract in the literal sense of the words written. The people having the time of their lives looting and murdering their fellow man for lust of power do not want to go back.

If there isn't enough people who wish to uphold the contract, then indeed it becomes just "a g@d damned piece of paper".

 

[osan]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Vessol
I disagree, I think complete liberty is the default position of humanity. It wasn't until humans began fearing death that religions were formed and from religions came the State.

You have the order a bit reversed. Certain institutional religions arose initially because the would-be priests discovered one of the finest scams imaginable. With its establishment, institutions of certain religions then imbued their followers with the fear of death in order to cement their power. Consider the Roman church - during its early years, reincarnation was part and parcel of the belief system and of central significance. Origen of Antioch (Origen the Elder) wrote extensively on this. Upon his death, the remaining church elders anathematized him on 15 issues, posthumously excommunicated him and declared him damned to eternal torment. One of the anathemas railed against reincarnation and was declared heresy worth of excommunication. Reincarnation is a very empowering belief for the individual and therefore had to be dispensed with unequivocally, and that is just what the church did.

Hhmmm..... this doesn't seem to jive with the fact that totalitarian governments tend to prohibit religion, so that people will give their total allegiance to the government.

Not so. First of all, the Catholic church certainly constituted a totalitarian government by any reasonable definition of the term, and they were ostensibly all about religion. The many kings of Europe were totalitarians almost by definition as well, yet religion was central to their social structures. It really was not until the 20th century that full blown measures against religion were attempted. The Soviet Union is a prime example of what may have been good intentions that were seriously miscalculated in terms of strategy. Their near-total ban on religion utterly failed to extinguish the targeted belief systems and their institutions. What is suspicious about it is the fact that the Soviets did not destroy the physical edifices representing those establishments nor did they completely wipe out their administrative bodies. That is most curious for a materialist regime whose stated goal was to eliminate religion. Red China was far more effective in that they held no compunction to destroy temples that stood literally for thousands of years. Even they were unsuccessful in eliminating religion, though they have come far closer. Mao is quoted as having said that religion was the opium of the masses. I cannot disagree and I suspect the founders of this nation recognized this as well and made damned sure that the primary means of keeping people sated was not interferred with.

 

[Ricky201]

Everything is a stall in this world. The constitution stalled tyranny, but to think that a few pieces of paper would stop man from controlling the land that his brothers and sisters occupy is foolish. Whether a republic or a voluntary society there will always be a group of control freaks that will want to rule the land and government will always be inevitable. Just as breathing tubes stall a person from dying, things such as the constitution only stops the inevitable until the republic for which it represented falls into hand of tyrants and ultimately dies.

Voluntary societies sound great on paper, but while there are 195 established governments around the world the odds are slim that that these people would be free men for long.

 

[osan]

What was the alternative to establishing the Constitution?

Doing a better job.

That, however, was perhaps impossible because many of the founders were no less corrupt than what we enjoy today. If you read the various accounts of what was going on in those days it is painfully apparent that American Politics as we know it was alive and well. Those guys were on the ground floor of what I am sure they'd hoped would be one of the greatest opportunities for power and fortune in human history and they were going to have their slices and they'd be as large as possible, damn it!

You had the true idealists like Jefferson and Henry on the one hand, and the grabbers on the other. The result was the document we have. It is pretty and in many ways elegant, but it is indeed a failure as witnessed by what it has produced from even the earliest days (e.g. Marbury v. Madison). But that poor, if well intended and otherwise beloved document cannot take all the blame, nor even most of it. WE are to blame - our in-bred corruption as expressed in the vile decisions and actions made by the three branches, and far more importantly OUR failures as citizens to be on the bastards like stink on rice. We have been willfully naive and very lazy, entrusting the collective balls to strangers whose allegiances to our best interests are eminently questionable on the best of days. We fucked up by letting the Basturds (I think I may use this term to reference government officials from now on. Shall we make it a new term of derision for them? What say ye?) get away with all the shit they have. We fucked up by allowing ourselves to be ignorant. We fucked up by trusting the unworthy because it was convenient.

Were we, the People, worth more 1% of our own weight in bat guano, that elegantly written and seriously flawed document would indeed be sufficient to free liberty. But we're not, as judged by where we stand today, and so it is neatly demonstrated that our Constitution is indeed not sufficient to enable a small minority of determined lovers of liberty to preserve their state of freedom in the face of overwhelming tides of the masses calling for universal slavery and destruction. And therein lies the key issue for anyone endeavoring to design a system of government: what mechanisms are required to ensure that a minority of ONE is able to maintain their complete and absolute freedom no matter what the majority may otherwise say? That is what our Constitution ostensibly endeavored to do. It failed, and most notably at that.

The alternative was keeping the Articles of Confederation. We can't say for sure that it's a failure compared to the Artices because we don't know what would've happened were they kept.

It is an irrelevant point precisely because it is moot, unless we revert, and even then, all histories are unique, so it would still be moot.

Had I lived at the time and place, however, I would've fought against the Constitution. The Founding Fathers that warned us it would lead to an oppressive Central Government were right.

Yes, I fully agree. Years ago I wrote my own Constitution as an intellectual exercise. I came up with something far and away better than what we have. Were I to write yet another, I could come up with better still. But no matter how well written a constitution may be, it is still only as good as the people living by it, or in spite of it. Human beings are naturally lazy - this is readily demonstrable. They are readily corruptible in most cases, another readily deomonstrable truth about human beings. The problem lies not in a set of strructured concepts we call "government", but in the very fabric of the human animal. Given this, all we can do is produce the best set of concepts possible and hope that enough people will sufficiently educated and motivated to see to it that liberty is maintained. Sadly, I hold out little hope for this anymore. It does seem that we have fallen too far. Barring a cataclysmic cull of the global human population, I would say that liberty stands just this side of a snowball's chance in hell of surviving. With each day the prospect of that cull becomes less unattractive, even th ough I know I would stand to be one of those to fall. That is far less scary than the place to which we have come and those to which we appear yet to be heading.

 

[constituent]

People are not asleep. They believe in X before liberty.

Yep. One needn't look any further than ronpaulforums.com to see that dynamic playing out all of the time.

Not to say that there isn't a lot of cool folks still around...

 

[constituent]

Thus Jefferson's "tree of liberty" quote.

I have no problem with this idea.

Just because it is human nature to atrophy to tyranny over time, especially after living in the wealth and comfort that freedom brings, does not relieve the current generation of the duty to reset the clock to zero again, even if it turns out exactly the same way.

Better a little liberty, for a little while, then none at all, ever, which is the default position of the human condition.

Guess you better get to watering...

(don't hold your breath, folks.)

 

[osan]

Not yet, I think. It's still the bane of those in power when it's used against them properly and adamantly.

The degree to which this is true diminishes visibly almost daily.

 

[constituent]

What it produced was the freest society in the history of mankind.

Correction: The freest exclusively white society in the history of mankind.

For 125 years or so.

Well, assuming that we all pretend there were never any slaves or natives...

 

[heavenlyboy34]

The Constitution is a contract between the people and their government, a very potent one at that. But what you have today is that both parties are failing to observe the terms in pursuit of progressiveness.

The liberty movement wishes to observe the terms of this contract in the literal sense of the words written. The people having the time of their lives looting and murdering their fellow man for lust of power do not want to go back.

If there isn't enough people who wish to uphold the contract, then indeed it becomes just "a g@d damned piece of paper".

Not so. It is a contract between the signers and the people who agreed with them 200+ years ago. It binds noone else. This is why, as you correctly observe, neither party heeds the Constitution-they are not truly bound by it.

As I consistently point out to "contract theorists" such as yourself, all government rules (like the Constitution) are null and void until all parties agree to said "contract". It is true that most politicians "swear" to uphold the constitution, but to equate this to a binding contract is wishful thinking.

 

[LibertyEagle]

Correction: The freest exclusively white society in the history of mankind.

Well, assuming that we all pretend there were never any slaves or natives...

Oh, bullshit, Constituent. Put down your violin. America did not start slavery; nor were we the only country to have it.

In fact, it was African tribes who themselves made slaves out of those they conquered and then discovered there was money to be made by selling them. Furthermore, whites have been sold as slaves too.

 

[low preference guy]

Oh, bullshit, Constituent. Put down your violin. America did not start slavery; nor were we the only country to have it.

In fact, it was African tribes who themselves made slaves out of those they conquered and then discovered there was money to be made by selling them. Furthermore, whites have been sold as slaves too.

His point was that America was not the freest country. There were countries at the time that didn't have slavery, and that fact alone makes the statement that "America was the freest country" false.

 

[LibertyEagle]

His point was that America was not the freest country. There were countries at the time that didn't have slavery, and that fact alone makes the statement that "America was the freest country" false.

You and I will have to agree to disagree.

 

[low preference guy]

You and I will have to agree to disagree.

Slavery=Freedom?

 

[LibertyEagle]

Isn't there a forum out there somewhere for those of you who hate this country and the principles it was founded upon, hate our Founding Fathers, the Constitution and want to see the U.S. dissolved?

This sure is going to be interesting to see what happens on here if Dr. Paul runs for President again.

 

[jazzloversinc]

Well this doesnt seem to be much of a Ron Paul forum...he's for limited government and the Constitution not anarcho capitalism, or voluntaryism.

 

[Andrew-Austin]

I'm not going to even try with this thread, I remember having this conversation before with some of the same people posting in here. I'll just have a tiny bit of fun by posting this:




Right on Mr Constitution, brilliant argument!

 

[low preference guy]

Let's be honest here: The Constitution was written full of loopholes. The central government advocates got away with it because, among other reasons, Jefferson was abroad and Patrick Henry didn't participate.

The Constitution shouldn't have had the General Welfare Clause, at the very least. The whole thing about mentioning a "militia" in the Second amendment was another failure. It created unnecessary controversy. I don't include the Commerce Clause among the failures because "regulate" might have meant "keep it free" at the time, but today the Commerce Clause should be repealed.

So the original Constitution had all those failures, but some amendments made it an even bigger failure. The 17th Amendment alone was more destructive than all the original mistakes combined (excluding the slavery clause).

 

[LibertyEagle]

What has turned out to be a major issue is the fact that some of the language in the Constitution is being misinterpreted in current times. However, if one looks back to the Founders' writings about the issues and also the language of the day, it's pretty easy to see what they intended. That was supposed to be what the Supreme Court was to do. Apply the Founders' intent. But, of course, we all know that is not what they have been doing for a long time. And the American people slept.