Are you a constitutionalist?

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This question applies more to people living in the United States or who has knowledge about the U.S. Constitution. I fully support all 27 amendments to the Constitution. I don't believe that anybody's rights should be infringed upon. Everyone should be allowed to freely exercise their constitutional rights without consequences. So many people it seems do not know what rights they and others have under the Constitution. There are people who want to infringe on our rights and make adjustments to the Constitution. The Constitution should be left alone and nothing should be revised. If you don't live in the United States, do you support your country's laws or constitution?

The Constitution is a phony document meant to make you feel good, but in truth it grants practically absolute power to the federal government.

The Constitution's "commerce clause" is used to argue that the government has authority to govern everything, since nearly everything can be argued to "affect interstate commerce".

We saw this with the "ACA mandate" that SCOTUS accepted the argument that a person's non-behavior affects interstate commerce therefore, the government has the power to tax a person for not doing something the government wants.

So, all amendments might be superseded with a regulatory "non-behavior" interstate commerce tax.

For example, if the government wants to end gun ownership it needs only to pass a daily $10,000 interstate regulation gun ownership tax. Poof! There goes your 2nd amendment "right".

The “natural born citizen clause” in it needs to go. It’s utterly discriminating and makes zero sense as it was originally written.

Back during the days of the Constitution they had no idea we’d have something commonly referred to today as “foreign adoptees” -

Basically people who have lived here since they were A WEEK OLD can’t become President even if they wanted to because of a couple lines on a document that couldn’t predict the future.

It NEEDS to be amended to say the person must have lived here for at least thirty five years to run for President. Or that the person running must have lived here as a citizen with american parents since they were ten years old or younger. Even there I might be restricting it too much for some people.

The overall gist is - foreign adoptees who were raised here their entire lives are the EXACT SAME as the natural born citizens who were born here. The notion behind it - block a President from being installed by a foreign power (hmm...) makes a lot of sense, just the way it’s written doesn’t because it couldn’t have predicted the notion of foreign adoption by American parents. Currently Superman couldn’t even become President if he wanted to.

Last edited by Spooky_Mulder on 15 Jun 2018, 1:29 am, edited 4 times in total.

As a Brit I envy Americans for having a constitution. Here in the UK our government imprisons people for speech, you cannot have a real democracy without free speech. A country without a constitution is at the mercy of the government or the mob.

Intriguing, can you elaborate or point to situations where that’s happened in the UK?

Don’t think those reports ever hit the US, or I may have missed them...

I know that Russia is very fond of no free speech or press, I just didn’t know that happened in the UK as well?

Out of interest I did some research into it a few months ago. In 2015 233 people in Russia were convicted for hate speech, whilst the UK with less than half of the population convicted 1399 people.

Politicians claim these censor us for our own good and its to stop extremists from coming to power (which in itself is anti democratic), in reality its about political control. Politicians will do what ever they can to gain power and keep hold of it, a constitution is a great way to limit that.

You almost had a constitution before we (in the US) did: the Agreement of the People in the 1640s would have established a constitutional republic with popular sovereignty well over a century before the United States. Your constitutional republic didn't stick, however, and soon collapsed back into that oddball system under which sovereignty resides in The-King-in-Parliament.

Cromwell was A King in all but name, he actually turned down the title of King because it would restrict his power. The landowning class are the real problem. It wasn't until 1997 that Tony Blair abolished Hereditary peers automatically getting a seat within out government.

The Puritan revolution, like many revolutions, collapsed into an effective dictatorship. But before it did, there was a wonderful flowering of republican constitutionalism. The Agreement of the People would have established proportional representation, freedom of religion (within protestantism, which was an advance for the time), and much more. Over the next 350 years, most of its original provisions were gradually enacted. As for hereditary peers having a seat in government, the House of Lords was first abolished in 1649. Alas, that one didn't stick either:

http://www.constitution.org/eng/conpur089.htm

An interesting hypothetical for historical debate: should the American Revolution just be considered the final phase of the English Civil War?

(I'm not really an expert on this period. I just find it very fascinating, and I've found that people often don't know very much about it.)

Some British observers of the time suggested that the American revolutionaries were picking up where Cromwell left off.

I am not an expert either but I imagine it was easier to move to America than try fixing Britain.

I guess I support my laws on the whole but there are some I disagree with the worst one being that drugs are illegal in particular that weed is illegal.

Yes it was, and that's exactly what 20,000 Puritans did from about 1628-1640. And 150 years later, the result was the US (more or less).

The constitution doesn't go far enough.

We need an amendment that prevents the U.S. government from practicing economic oppression and imperialism through proxy wars.

Yes I am, whichbis odd for a Democrat.

Democrat strongly believe in the Constitution, too.

Trump seems like he’s not particularly thrilled with the Bill of Rights.