I would not trust the present day to create a viable constitution. It would likely be dominated by whatever party is in charge to perpetuate their specific platform rather than to establish principle based rules.
The original constitution is really kind of amazing at how well it’s functioned. It has flaws, obviously, but seems really effective.
Those flaws are pretty massive though. Legalising slavery and letting anyone and his dog own guns? That barbaric and doesn't belong in any constitution in 2021.
But they are, as both are no longer necessary in a civil, functioning society. Consider Europe, much of Asia, which have been able to achieve democracy, stability, and little need for open carry or slavery.
Now, one has a lot of open supporters (gun rights exceeding the US second amendment, in that the regulated militia component gets left out).
1) A more fair interpretation of the pro-gun argument would be that firearm rights are designed to guarantee long-term stability and democracy. The current stability of a small amount of relatively young democracies in Europe and Asia that do not have gun rights does not debunk the claim that gun rights protect against tyranny over the long term.
2) Considering the EXTREMELY violent, turbulent history of the last 100-150 years of governance (democratic and otherwise) in Europe and Asia, I don't think this is the strong argument you think it is.
The original constitution did not address slavery until the passing of the thirteenth amendment in 1865 which made it illegal except as punishment for a convicted crime.
it's true that the word slavery is not used, but if you talk about free people and then note that there are not free people and make political rules for how those non free people should be counted, then in a slave holding society it becomes somewhat obvious who you're talking about.
Article 1, Section 9 specifically prevented slavery from being abolished until 1808. The three-fifths compromise (Article 1, Section 2) also addressed slavery. The word never appears, but there are plenty of euphemistic references.
» which made it illegal except as punishment for a convicted crime
It is time to revise this in my opinion. Just because I am in prison does not mean you can require me to work. If you can't afford to feed, clothe, house, and provide necessary medical services, release me. The fact that the state of Texas can deny air conditioning to inmates (when the temperature is ought to be enough for the US to require Texas to release all inmates in those conditions. How can states that are arguably in direct violation of basic human rights still have representation in the union is beyond me.
» Refusing to install air conditioning is a matter not just of short-term cost savings, but of appearing tough on crime. State and local governments go to astonishing lengths to avoid installing air conditioning in prisons. In 2016, Louisiana spent over $1 million in legal bills in an attempt to avoid installing air conditioning on death row, an amount four times higher than the actual cost of installing air conditioning, according to an expert witness. Similarly, in 2014, the people of Jefferson Parish, LA only voted to build a new jail after local leaders promised there would be no air conditioning.
It isn't just Texas. Prisoners throughout the country are malnourished and starving. It costs way too much to make a phone call so much so that public libraries offer assistance with phone calls.
Democracy should not mean tyranny of the majority. I don't understand how this is controversial. If states and local governments are in violation of the constitution, they should automatically lose representation in the union.
Slavery should have been outlawed, but the gun bit isn’t so bad, I think.
But I think, at the time, slavery was still legal in most of the world so while it would have been right to outlaw it, it’s understandable how it was allowed. And the amendments outlawing it actually show how the constitution works as ideas change over time.
If Americans change their opinion on guns then that could change as well. But I don’t think that will happen in 34 states.
> And the amendments outlawing it actually show how the constitution works as ideas change over time.
The amendment to end slavery happened on the backbone of killing several hundred thousand Americans. The compromise between two sides was to shoot people until one side agreed.
The southern states were required to ratify the 14th Amendment as a condition of having any federal representation, and it nullified a prior Supreme Court ruling on the Constitution. The 15th Amendment was specifically designed to counter anticipation of tactics to dodge the 14th Amendment.
You were just talking about how the 14th Amendment reflects how the Constitution adapts to the changing values of a nation. Yes, after one side shoots the other side into agreement, and after 750,000 lives ended. Then the victor decided the outcome of history.
One can only imagine how the course of the Constitution would have been "independent" to the course of the Civil War if the northern states had lost.
What I meant was that slavery was a big divide in the US. This was not caused by the constitution. I think any founding documents would have had the same effect: massive bloodshed to force part of the country to stop slavery.
When I say independent of the constitution, I mean that no matter what legal foundational framework, I think we would have had the civil war to end slavery. Even if we had the magma carta or whatever.
I think they did based on my reading of the 13th amendment “ Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
> I think they did based on my reading of the 13th amendment
They didn't, and you quote the part that makes that clear:
“except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”
A whole lot of current social issues can be traced back to things rooted in the way penal slavery, and targeted over-criminalization and policing to supply bodies for penal slavery, immediately replaced chattel slavery with the 13th Amendment.
I don’t think imprisonment is slavery. There are many problems with the US prison system and it needs a lot of work to reform and correct. But at least it’s not chattel slavery.
Equating the two is not very helpful to the discussion because it distracts from a conversation about slavery by equating two different, but slightly similar topics.
Penal slavery was very much a thing in much of the US for quite a while after the civil war (the federal government has since taken statutory and administrative steps to eliminate it, and may or may not have generally succeeded depending on exactly how you bound the term, but previously penal slavery in the US differed from chattel slavery only in that it had (often extremely corrupt) criminal conviction as an entry gate. And while penal slavery itself has been mitigated and arguably eliminated as a deliberate state practice (rather than an aberrant corruption of individual officials) subsequently (though still Constitutionally permitted) a whole lot of the over-criminalization and police and correctional culture built originally around the institution remains.
Anyone convicted of a crime in the US can be turned into a slave as punishment, and that happens every day. US prisons are filled with slaves right this minute.
Technically I think you’re correct, but it’s a different form of slavery that isn’t nearly as bad as the slavery that was eliminated by the 13th amendment.
For example, the children of prisoners aren’t owned property to be sold and traded.
On the other hand, modern countries who once used the US Constitution as a starting point for their own version no longer do, because ours is stuck two centuries back and there is no reason to believe we have the ability to change that.
1865-1965 saw more than 1 amendment per decade which was a pretty good clip IMO, churning enough that the 21st was to repeal the 18th for example. It has only really been the last 50 years it slowed down with the long proposed and relatively minor 27th amendment catching a second wind of state approvals. Not the longest dry spell either, the early 1800s also had a 50ish year void.
No, it didn't. It averaged more than one per decade, which isn't the same thing.
In that period you had the post-Civil War Amendments (3, between 1865 and 1870), more than 40 years with nothing, another burst from 1913-1920 (3 amendments), a burst in 1933 (2 amendments), one by itself in 1951, and then a flurry overlapping the end of the period from 1961-1971 (4 amendments, 2 each before and after your 1965 cutoff).
And, just to be complete, after that you’ve got one solitary amendment in 1992 (the last of the 11 that have passed of the 12 proposed together as the Bill of Rights) and nothing since.
> Not the longest dry spell either, the early 1800s also had a 50ish year void.
61 from the 12th Amendment, the last of the fairly immediate post-Constitution ones, in 1804 to the 13th, the first of the post-Civil War ones, in 1865.
1865 to 1965 was just to show a 100 year period were activity stayed hot to not say there weren't amendments before or after. In regards to the 2 after '65 cutoff they are still older than the 50 year claim (the 26th as of this year) so I didn't feel the need to mention them, only noting the 27th which as you mentioned passed in '92.
If one is interested in an exact list of amendment ratification dates rather than a summary that it has been slow for the last 50 but quite busy since it was made https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Unit... is probably a more apt resource.
> 1865 to 1965 was just to show a 100 year period were activity stayed hot
But it wasn't a 100 year period where activity stayed hot. It was a 106 year period (stretching to 1971) starting with a 5 year period where activity was hot, followed by a 43 year period of complete inactivity, and them some brief periods of sporadic activity, ending with a the single most active decade since the 1790s.
A 100 year period where activity stayed hot is a complete misrepresentation.
Certainly there are different perspectives. I think many people don't trust that we have the ability to change the Constitution to suit modern American culture without ruining it. But it's also arguable that we could do much to clarify modern interpretation of principles that aren't as obvious given the dramatic shift in technology between 1789 and today.
I'll take a crack at it. How about a two-person consularship with a red consul and a blue consul? Together they wield full executive control, but nothing happens unless both agree on a particular action. Would you ratify?
As the author well notes, a Constitutional Convention, unchecked and unregulated, could be means for disaster. We take for granted our Bill of Rights, on the daily. That said, luckily there's an entire process to follow to introduce and put into law any legislation.
I was myself unaware of Article V. The speed at which the internet went from STOP SOPA to DEPLATFORM AND CENSOR EVERYTHING startles me, and if that is any model, a Constitutional Convention would likely repeal every last semblance of freedom, and the ability to defend it, that we have.
Certainly don't want people who have the above attitude messing around with the Constitution. It's already bad enough many of them have made it into elected office or appointed to the bench.
Please don't take threads on flamewar tangents, and especially not on flamewars that have already flamed and been rehashed god knows how many times already. You may not feel you owe someone else better, but you owe the community better, because doing that is really bad for discussion quality.
An Article V convention is in my opinion the most thoroughly boneheaded idea in American politics (which is saying a lot).
There is no way _at all_ to constrain the agenda _or_ the outcome per the current constitution. In particular you can’t say (afaik) “we are calling an article V convention solely on issue X.” The linked article describes this as the “runaway convention problem.”
If you are on the left, imagine the new constitution specifically forbidding abortion.
If you are on the right, imagine it specifically forbidding private gun ownership.
There is no way to prevent those outcomes because an Article V convention is effectively saying “start over again from scratch.”
Separately I think term limits for congressmen are a dumb idea too. It will make party organizations much stronger. For evidence on this, see Mexico where nearly every public office is term limited to a single term. Second, very few people actually want their own congressman term limited (unless you voted for the other guy). They want everyone else’s congressmen (or the junior senator from Texas) term limited.
The first constitutional convention was ratified by 9 out the 13 colonies, 2/3s. Rhode Island rejected it by referendum but ratified it by convention in 1790. It's a complex story. I remember reading that Washington avoided Rhode Island while it hadn't ratified.
That was for the Constitution, not the Bill of Rights which came later and were ratified by Congress + the State legislatures.
> The first constitutional convention was ratified by 9 out the 13 colonies, 2/3s.
That's because the ratification of the Constitution wasn't governed by the rules for amendments, whether introduced by Congress or Convention, under the Constitution.
Never underestimate the power of large groups of people to do irrational things in a state of mania, and to pressure/harass the rest of the population into silence.
There are a lot of people who want term limits. Even for their own candidates. I don't think we were ever supposed to have career congresspeople. Part of the problem is they start to lose touch with their constituents. I don't know the right length 2-4 for representatives and 1-2 for senators.
I used to agree with that. The problem, I've since been convinced, is that increases the power of lobbyists. If the only people that can stick around long enough to figure out how to get anything done are the lobbyists, they're going to have an even more outsized role in what laws get passed.
It's not just lobbyists. Congressional term limits would also increase the power of staffers, who would tend to just move from one Congressperson to another as they term out.
True, but is that much better? Ideally I think we want the main driving force behind what laws are written to be the actual people we elect, right? Otherwise, what's the point?
There are a lot of people who want term limits. Even for their own candidates. I don't think we were ever supposed to have career congresspeople.
That illustrates how ridiculous ideas get traction. Term limits are inherently anti-democratic. They don't end entrenched power but move it to unelected bureaucrats and lobbyists.
I don't think we were ever supposed to have career congresspeople.
The framers of the Constitution imagined wealthy gentleman farmers like themselves alternating positions in power. But term limits wouldn't bring that back, they just make sure that membership in congress would be even more held by the type of person who jump from CEO to congress to Federal bureaucracy and so-forth, reinforcing the "permanent government" situation that already quite strong here.
> The democratic peace – the regularity that democracies do not go to war with each other – is one of the most robust findings in political science. This column presents recent research showing that democratic leaders unable to seek another term in office behave like autocrats. Accountability to voters in the next election lies at the heart of the democratic peace.
Congress only has collective power, no individual can wage war etc. Yet it’s only the president that has any term limits that’s the opposite of what we should be doing if you’re worried about loose cannons.
~20 year term limits aren’t going to see most members of congress in their last term. However, it would still have real impacts as people aren’t going to end up nearly as complacent. We have 3 members that are currently in office for 40+ years and many on track to reach that point very soon.
If you’re worried about the parties selecting yes men to fill seats then at a mandatory primary. As it stands with gerrymandering we are already in a situation where people get selected by the party and sent to congress without any meaningful voting by the general public. Look up how many congressional seats don’t have any opposition running at all, that’s the antithesis of democracy.
If there are regular primaries, then how are “party leaders” selecting who’s in office? At most it’s through funding campaigns which already happens.
Term limits are simply there to empower primaries. People who have already been elected have vast advantages in primaries which means they rarely face any real competition. Put another way winning 20 competitive elections in a row is never going to happen. Which means none of the local members of the party has had any say in who represents them in the election and the opposition party has also had no say for decades. That’s no more democratic than China’s “elections.”
I don't think unelected bureaucrats and lobbyists would have more power than they do now.
One issue with term limits is that there is some power in trying to get reelected. On the other hand I'm not sure how much that matters considering how hard it is for an incumbent to lose
No more than age limits to be allowed to vote or hold office. Limits don't halt democracy.
> membership in congress would be even more held by the type of person who jump from CEO to congress to Federal bureaucracy and so-forth
Term limits don't change that. The problems to address are:
1) they are underpaid while in office,
2) they are allowed to act in the interests of their previous industry ties while in office, and
3) when they are out of office they are allowed to profit from having held office.
To address #1 pay them ridiculous FU money while in office. And make #2 and #3 very strictly policed, harsh felonies.
Term limits only benefit bureaucrats and lobbyists if you let them. People seem to think that the rules wouldn't change if term limits were introduced, but that is a faulty stating point. Current rules in the House and Senate are arbitrarily complicated and slated towards those who served longer, in a term limited world those rules would likely change to be simpler and grant power faster because no one has 30 years to sit around any more.
Serving in congress is always going to be biased towards the rich, but there are plenty of positions besides CEO that would be acceptable to have a 2-15 gap especially for a prestige position. If anything term limits make this better because currently politician is a career that can last for 30+ years, but that would require extreme skill to string together a 30+ year career of 5-15 year limited positions.
> If you are on the left, imagine the new constitution specifically forbidding abortion.
> If you are on the right, imagine it specifically forbidding private gun ownership.
What if it became a 3/5s compromise sort of deal? No more fights over guns (we get to keep ‘em) and no more fights over abortion (women decide). We have that sort of today, but what if it were specifically enshrined as a formal recognition that each side got something it wanted, rather than the current state where both sides are doing something the other side wants to compel them to stop.
Or even weirder thought experiment, what if both sides did a compromise that flipped both. “We’ll turn in all our guns if you have the babies”.
I’m not advocating either position. I just find the thought experiment of a Great Compromise around two issues like this interesting to ponder through.
Do something that gives the south too much power and slavery will soon be too deeply enshrined in federal law to be rid of. Count slaves as 0/5ths like the north wanted and the south won't ratify the constitution and you'll get two nations, one of which definitely won't be outlawing slavery.
The past is full of situations where people needed to chart the least bad course through a sea of bad options and they wound up doing an ok job at that. It's easy to sit in an air conditioned ivory tower and cook up internet comments that shit on those people for not having modern morals but other than the internet points I don't know of any useful end that behavior serves.
Slavery isn’t an issue of “modern morals”. Any Black person in the 1700s could have told you that it was wrong. The fact that slaveholders disagreed doesn’t mean it was some unsolved moral conundrum.
Remember who started the civil war? We had the civil was because the writing was on the wall for slavery. The south seceded because it seemed highly likely that slavery would be abolished through legal means.
In a sense, it is, because otherwise the original Constitution may not have been ratified and a possible outcome would be the Balkanization of North America.
In another, it justified and enshrined in foundational law the abhorrent practice of chattel slavery, and allowed the United States to form a strong centralized government capable of colonizing and subjugating the native people who were living there for thousands of years.
It's just a bizarre example of a compromise if you're looking for a positive example.
At _very best_ it was a necessary evil, with a large emphasis on the "evil".
There's a direct line from there to more slavery, the Civil War, a couple of centuries of mistreatment of a large portion of the American citizenry, internal strife, and the current clusterfuck of race relations and politics in America.
Put against that there's the other option of "maybe there might have been one extra country".
> Put against that there's the other option of "maybe there might have been one extra country".
That 'extra country' would have all the things you describe, possibly without the check of the Free States on them to eventually apply pressure to get rid of slavery.
There was even a possibility of improvement: was it Andrew Johnson that cut a deal to allow the slavers back into power?
Not sure unioning up with slavers for ~a century, extending their influence, undermining the morality of your founding document, etc. can be judged to be worth it if you're just going to have to shoot them until they stop slaving anyway.
"I'm not advocating either position" sounds like you are referring to abortion and gun rights. I didn't read it as applying to the 3/5th compromise itself.
If you say that wasn't your intent, then I believe you.
Just so it's clear why I read it as intending to be positive:
The rest of that paragraph is fairly grounded and with emphasis on the benefits. "No more fighting", "each side got something it wanted", etc. That's typically the kind of thing you emphasize when you're pro-compromise.
I read the "not advocating either position" part as referring to gun rights and abortion.
It is trivial to view the process of rejecting the scourge of slavery as binary, and reject the 1787 Constitution for its disgusting 3/5ths compromise.
And yet: what if the course of history as it unfolded was roughly optimal?
> And yet: what if the course of history as it unfolded was roughly optimal?
Sure, but what if it wasn't?
It seems like there's a bias to viewing history where we judge _our_ outcome as the best one even if it had huge downsides.
I don't see why we should assume the outcome we have is any better than average or why those decisions generally judged to be "necessary evil"s actually were necessary. They were only necessary to get exactly our outcome, there's nothing saying that it was actually good.
Look at any large-scale, peacetime organizational change. It ain't beanbag, even before beong as fraught as abolition.
Those tearing down the Founders (looking at you, 1619 Project) need to have done more than point fingers and cast stones before being regarded seriously.
Conservatives are a only a segment of the right. I’d argue republicans are a mix of libertarians, conservatives and moderates.
I think the only thing linking them together are the “leave me alone” argument. That’s why I’m not concerned about women’s choice on abortion in a convention of states.
I can only think of a few federal things they all want: secure border, gun rights, freedom of speech, states rights, etc.
Idk if you can even all get them to “end the fed” lol
They only favor states' rights when it gives them the power to pollute the environment or eliminate individual rights.
Example: Was it "conservatives" or "libertarians" or "moderates" who prevented California from enforcing its own standards for auto emissions and fuel efficiency within its own borders?
>republicans are a mix of libertarians, conservatives and moderates.
>only thing linking them together are the “leave me alone” argument. That’s why I’m not concerned about women’s choice
I think you're confusing ideologies with practice. Ideologues in the coalition you reference find a home in the Republican party in our binary system, because that's the traditional Republican brand. But, the real ethos and practice of the party itself are decidedly not one of "leave me alone".
Women's choice is actually one of the more prominent indicators of this, and recent action in Republican-led Texas on that issue is a harbinger.
The party also routinely lobbies against equal rights for "outgroups", proposes book bans, and answers dissenting voices with vitriol, hostility and (recently) violence.
I've also never seen the modern party rally for free speech with which it did not agree. It is instead most-often wielded when defending itself against those who find its positions to be repressive towards other groups.
Aside: I've earnestly never understood how libertarians reconcile the party's staunch opposition to gay marriage, women's reproductive rights, etc. with a "leave-me-alone" worldview.
In any case, it seems the true underlying theme of the party is the imposition of its will and enforcement of its regime, resulting in a "very particular brand of freedom". So, I'm not convinced that a convention of states (where that party is influential) would reflect anything but that.
If the “right” actually wanted this they wouldn’t fight against it when it didn’t benefit them, like cutting the defense budget. They routinely vote against slashing funding of arguably the largest government entity we have (department of defense). They also have no trouble with broadly trying to pass laws that regulate their version of social norms
I support this lateral-thinking approach of finding a Great Compromise, and I think it just needs a slight alteration to make it more palatable to both sides, and to harness the logic and tradition of federalism. So how about this:
If the amendment passes, then each state can decide for itself at what point (from conception to birth) human life begins, and decide for itself what constitutes a well-regulated militia.
In effect, this means that some states could choose to have no (legal) abortions, and others could choose to have no (legal) private gun ownership, but they wouldn't be allowed to punish people for travelling to a different state for an abortion or to fire a gun.
Even with such a change in the laws, the number of abortions and gun crimes probably wouldn't change very much, but the real benefit would be reducing the level of political tribalism when it comes to the presidency, and hopefully allowing some nuance into the primaries and election campaigns.
first of all, trading guns for abortion isn't much like the 3/5ths compromise to begin with; it's just wrapping two unrelated issues into the same deal. that doesn't seem more stable than compromising on the issues individually (eg, "you can own guns as long as they don't look too scary" and "you can have abortions, but only up to the yth trimester).
second, the only thing the 3/5ths compromise really settled was the balance of power between slave states and free states, and only temporarily. that balance was continually perturbed during western expansion and we eventually fought a war over it. AFAIK, it was probably necessary for the US to exist at all, but it doesn't seem that "great" in retrospect.
If a constitutional convention actually happened it would be a mere formality. The new government would effectively have already been established by an informal process and written a new constitution. The convention would have exactly one item on its agenda: vote to accept the new constitution.
I agree with you largely, at the same time this is designed to avoid a civil war. Aka if the federal government over reaches the states can reduce the central authority.
All that said, to call a convention, you’ll need a super majority of states. Theoretically, that super majority would also be the ones deciding what goes into the changes.
For one, you’d probably get that much needed clarification on the second amendment. Although, I suspect it’ll be weaker than initially intended (ie the original 2nd amendment was owning any kind of weapon for any purpose, including equivalent of battle ships today).
At the end of the day, it’s not perfect. Even what you brought up about abortion I don’t think would be considered. The “right” believes most of the regulations should be reserved to the states. I suspect instead you’d see an increased strengthening of states rights and a greater restriction on federal authority — which “helps” anti-abortion advocates but at also “helps” with California’s policies around Marxist policies.
I’d much rather see a convention of states than a civil war. I personally think we’re at the “bleeding Kansas” timeframe of the coming conflict. I see no reason we won’t have a civil war at this point, unless we have something like a convention of states.
Based on what evidence are we heading to a civil war conflict? I know partisanship is really high and such, but what recourses are failing so bad that we are heading into a situation that only armed conflict resolved?
Yes, some idiots tried to storm congress and extremism is a real problem, that isn’t an oddity of absolute occurrence. If the UK can avoid civil war even with persistent IRA bombings I think we will too
> If the UK can avoid civil war even with persistent IRA bombings I think we will too
That wasn’t exactly the same, that was people from an occupied territory using terrorism. That occupied territory was effectively converted to a “free trade zone” and other agreements were made for a treaty.
I’d argue something such as a convention of states may be a treaty or a negotiated settlement with the government that’s necessary.
In terms of a civil war this is a pretty common opinion
We have half the country with different values. To the point where people in Florida today can’t travel to NYC and eat food at a restaurant inside (unless private medical records are disclosed).
Take a step back to history. Nazis in Germany or marxists in Russia took power in a similar way. They had burnings of businesses, removal of statues, firing people for not being part of the party, concentrating them based on the fact they spread disease (Germanys excuse for concentrating undesirables in camps in the 30s).
Yes, we are already in the throes of a civil war, it just hasn’t been (too) kinetic yet. I personally don’t know if it will be a civil war or authoritarian take over, but what ever happens I think there’s a struggle happening right now.
I guess I see this differently. I see the last gasp of the Republican Party more than anything, as the younger you go (and not terribly younger, at that[0]), they are losing influence, and are trying every trick in the book to maintain that influence.
Note too, that things like the statues being removed tend to be because we are finally acknowledging our historical issues, like having prominent statues celebrating slave owners may not be a trend we want to continue, its not being done in way to silence political opposition. Is there any reason we need to hold slave owners in such high esteem we keep statues around of them? Even our founders don't deserve to be forever enshrined in the American conscious in that way, no?
The thing people forget about the Nazi rise to power is it wasn't just predicated out of nowhere, it was a ripe time where the beliefs espoused by the Nazi party where a lot more popular and acceptable in that era, unfortunately.
> The “right” believes most of the regulations should be reserved to the states. I suspect instead you’d see an increased strengthening of states rights and a greater restriction on federal authority — which “helps” anti-abortion advocates but at also “helps” with California’s policies around Marxist policies.
They believe in state's rights in theory, but I'm not sure they do in practice. The right in the US has repeatedly sought national mechanisms to address issues that they would theoretically consider states rights (abortion, gay marriage, etc).
I'd also love to hear your definition of "Marxist" and how you believe California's state policies are Marxist.
> (ie the original 2nd amendment was owning any kind of weapon for any purpose, including equivalent of battle ships today)
Citation? As it originally reads, the purpose as written is for the people to keep and bear arms for use within a well-regulated militia. The supreme court has ruled (almost 100 years later) that it does mean people can own guns, generally for the purpose of state defense [1]. This is the first I've heard of a regular citizen having the right to parade around in their own battleships.
> The supreme court has ruled (almost 100 years later) that it does mean people can own guns, generally for the purpose of state defense [1].
That's not really a fair reading of Presser. That case merely upheld Cruikshank and by extension Barron. Since the Second Amendment was only a limitation on Congress (pre-incorporation) the State could effectively do anything. Presser just added on that States couldn't go so far as to deprive the Federal government the resource of the militia.
> This is the first I've heard of a regular citizen having the right to parade around in their own battleships.
People definitely had their own canons and ships back in the day and it wasn't solely a United States thing [1].
As written, the First Amendment restricts Congress, while the Second restricts at least all parties to the document, both Federal and State levels. Obviously, such plain readings aren't popular.
These were called "privateers", and they were very, very common all through the Age of Sail, not just in the United States, but in essentially all countries with a merchant or naval service.
How it worked was that during the (rare) intervals of peace, you'd keep a stockpile of guns on shore, and run your ship as a more or less ordinary merchant vessel (virtually all of which were armed at the time, though not as heavily armed as a naval vessel or a kitted-out privateer).
When war broke out, as it always did eventually, you'd cram your ship to the gills with guns and crew and get a license from some government (not necessarily your own!) to cruise against that government's enemy. This was called a "letter of marque". It was entirely possible for a (say) Dutch privateer to get a letter of marque from the (say) British government to attack (say) French vessels.
Normally privateers would limit themselves to attacking enemy merchant ships, or occasionally looting enemy ports, as their primary motivation was profit. They typically did not want to tangle with full-blown naval vessels.
Privateers were outlawed in the 19th Century by an international treaty signed by most countries. Interestingly, the United States has never signed that treaty.
The relevant constitutional authority in the United States is Article I Section 8, which explicitly grants Congress the authority to "grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal".
The advantage to the government was that it effectively had a secondary navy it could hot-swap in without having to pay to support it during peacetime.
The advantage to the privateers was that they got to keep the lion's share of the value of any ship, and any ship's cargo, they captured (the government did take a rakeoff, of course, because that is what governments do). It was essentially legalized piracy.
Figure out how much an entire container ship would be worth if you were allowed to just go out and grab one, and you'll be in the right ballpark, except back then it was expensive spices, precious metals, silk, etc. rather than electronic trinkets.
Though it was obviously a high-risk business, some privateer owners (and even crews) became incredibly wealthy from this practice.
Into the early 1800's, privately-owned warships were not at all rare. During the Revolutionary War the vast majority of the Navy consisted of privateers (aka private citizens warships).
Thank you all for your replies. I suppose I was meaning battleships in modern day (since I assumed that's what was meant to what I was replying), but the historical context is interesting and relevant.
There has never been a proposed amendment to reverse a right within the Bill of Rights. Doing so is antithetical to the entire concept of natural rights. But…
If that’s what they want, that is the only honest way to do so. Good luck.
> There is no way _at all_ to constrain the agenda _or_ the outcome per the current constitution.
Yes, there is, and it is specifically per the current Constitution; that is, the Constitution itself limits the agenda and outcome by excluding certain matters from amendment (a lot more earlier on, now most notably the equal representation of states in the Senate.)
> If you are on the left, imagine the new constitution specifically forbidding abortion.
I can imagine a convention proposing such an Amendment. I can't imagine it getting the support of 3/4 of the states needed for ratification, which is the main constraint on the impact of a convention—that it's outcome only matters to the extent a sufficient supermajority of states signs on to Amendments it proposes.
Term limits have also been cited as one factor in the dysfunction of the California legislature after the mid seventies. Essentially the party leadership controls everything because the rank and file are all inexperienced and just vote the way the party tells them to.
I think it's worth nothing that prohibition was passed as an amendment because they had yet to establish the judicial precedents that allowed them to do those sorts of things through normal legislation. As controversial as it was then we'd only need a simple legislative majority and presidential signature to pass something even more onerous today.
I personally think this is a great idea as a Constitutional Convention will be a free-for-all with no rules. We can then start from scratch on U.S. Constitution 2.0.
With a new codebase, we can do a total rewrite, getting rid of bad lines, and not having to have that explicit patch for slavery to be included during every recompile. We can also clean up some dumb redundant code like the 18th and 21st Amendments. Should have been done years ago.
And given we're a democracy, we should all vote yes/no for the new Constitution. I know where the majority of the people in this country stand on the issues (81 million to 74 million during the last presidential election) so I'm fine with this.
That would not work in actuality since a large portion of American politics is based on an extreme and literal interpretation of the Bible that is inconsistent with logic.
> Article V allows the states to call a Constitutional Convention if two-thirds (or 34) of 50 states submit a resolution proposing an amendment on one or many topics (or just a general call for convention without proposing a specific topic). Amendments proposed during a Constitutional Convention must also be ratified by three-fourths of the states. Since the first Constitutional Convention, Congress has proposed 33 constitutional amendments and 27 have been ratified.
In other words, it’s highly unlikely anything would pass a convention of states. That said, we are getting close given the dramatic over reach by the federal government
I’m very worried about the US turning into a one-party theocracy. The actual institutional norms have been violated and the path has been laid. A very large portion of the country supports an authoritarian Christian theocracy as the future of America and it is terrifying. They are concentrated in smaller states that give these extreme voices outsized power in our current constitutional structure. I worry for the future.
It’s based on the nature of the Senate and Republican gerrymandering of the house. A minority of extreme views from rural areas control the politics of America.
A poll of “all Americans” is useless when the Senate exists.
The runaway convention is a real problem, but what would be odds of each outcome? I can't imagine the Constitution would be replaced in its entirety, that would be difficult to implement. I also can't imagine contentious issues going strongly either way, that would probably also be difficult to pull off politically.
A constitutional convention right now would only serve the interests of hostile foreign powers. At best the US would be twiddling its thumbs while the world moves onward from it. The US would become something like a geographic average between a third world country and a first world country. At worst, the US looks weak enough for a hostile power to actually, successfully invade and occupy.
While the idea of Article V is indeed fraught, anyone who thinks a lesser remedy obtains places excessive face in leaky vessels, IMO.
For this audience, consider the problem as a badly needed refactor. Whereas there were originally local, state, and federal government levels in addition to the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, the last century has seen collapse.
We're close to a unitary executive atop a Deep State, with a hollow congress/judiciary rubber-stamping the fiats.
A proper Article V plan would redistribute power, not wealth, and be fully sorted and in the can ahead of any convention. Such a meeting should be called to rubber-stamp said plan and preclude these runaway convention fears.
The more technically-minded audience of this site should be instrumental in delivering a plan that can't be commandeered (as easily) by the usual pencil necks.
For example: putting all of the legislation in a public git repo that anyone can read, hit with AI, and track what these congresscritters are getting up to, especially who is making the commits (!), which would obviously be people who stand for election.
No, a constitutional convention isn't close, and, contrary to the suggestions in that article, no particular threat to established rights would be posed by the lack of procedural guidelines for such a convention because any Amendment proposed by a convention would still need a 3/4 of the states to ratify it.
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