brilliant :)

Good stuff.

Too bad they don't teach that stuff to third graders.

I think the quartering business has something to do with prisoners of war. It is prohibited to give "no quarter"; that means that the victorious army cannot kill all enemy combatants but must instead take them prisoners. Bush and co. found a way to get around that too. Lock them up in a prison until they commit suicide.

Understandable irony apart, the way I recollect it, the 3rd Amendment provides yet another--well really, the first--Constitutional guarantee to the privacy of the individual domicile. Iirc, it was a particular complaint in the NE, where the Brits imposed on locals to accept troops into their houses. Reifies in law the principle of that one's home is one's castle. Anyhow, that's how I read it. The 4th secures your personal documents and effects against the same kinds of Imperial edict.

It's good American dog poop so love it or go back to Frenchland, you frenchified frenchy Frenchman.

Alright Bernard! This is the best post I have read in ages.

Quartering Troops means giving them a place to sleep and food in YOUR own home as opposed to building them a barracks. YOU provide them "quarters" in YOUR home.

I dunno, but isn't Jury Duty supposed to be GOOD in that gives the informed citizen an ability to participate in the goings-on of his society?

Mike: The German Wehrmacht took over my dad's house during WWII. Damn, I wish the French Constitution had had a Third Amendment...

EMH: Have you served on a jury? They pick 120 people off the street and "screen" them to keep 12. In other words, a jury is the least representative sample of a population you can get.

Another problem is the one raised by Rob: the adversarial nature of American justice. The goal is not to find out the truth but to persuade a bunch of people. I have a scientist's bias perhaps, but I find the concept repugnant.

Rob: Indeed. Exceptionalism is really the point of my post. The US Constitution is no worse and no better than many others. But it is aging, deeply flawed, and nothing to worship. And yet worship is what it's all about.

In 1776 Voyager was a rowboat and headed no where near the edge of the solar system. 1776 is who WE were, 2008 is what WE've become. ALL government is an experiment and OUR CONSTITUTION is a model for change in human behaviour. Slavery isn't legal today but look at the human abuse WE peform just stepping out of those CONSTITUTIONAL guidelines for the last 8 years. THE FOUNDERS gave US a start. Its up to the following generations (U&I) to improve OUR world and OUR government. Those FOUNDING FATHERS awoke to the dawn of a world without slavery, with women's rights, true equality all yet to be born anywhere on planet earth. HOW can ANY scientist rationalize asking a caveman to describe in detail the innerworkings and functions of a starship, when He himself cannot. LOOK at YOUR government oh most advanced man of 2008, where is the improvement in just the last 8 years(to make it easy)? Why WE have only in the last couple of weeks discovered Habeas Corpus. THE FOUNDING FATHERS gave US a start, something to improve upon AND a way to improve. Just because WE didn't isn't their fault, but OURS.

Bernard, would you trust the "people"--who nominated and elected George Bush, after all, and seem to find BHO a plausible replacement--to write a new Constitution which protected your rights from corpoRat appropriation or "the national security" State?

Under the circumstances, pal, given the nearly century-long, amazingly successful program of propaganda and consumerist infantilization, I think we need to struggle along with what we got...

Bernard: Just as in 1776, so it is now. Tinkerbell WON'T wave her magic wand and improve the human condition or this country, WE MUST DO IT OURSELVES.

THE CONSTITUTION IS NOT THE PROBLEM. The problem is in the character of OUR nature a miscalculation, an underestimation, a bad guess if one may. WE got greedy but figured WE could x out stupid and hypocricy simply by eating smartpills from the ass end of a goat. Its a simple matter of letting go of greedy and WE may lose stupid and hypocricy also. But as long as WE hang on---???

Bernard,
I think you are wrong-- you say that worship of the constitution is bad-- I'd argue that the enormous reluctance to tear the constitution apart is a brake on the dissolution of civil society that prevents our oligarchs and authoritarians from trampling on the rights of others even more recklessly than they presently do.

Yes, we are living in a dark time, when the federal government seems particularly craven and corrupt and the judiciary frequently lets patently unconstitutional behavior get a pass in the name of "defending" against terrorism-- or just to avoid making the president look bad.

But we've been through dark times before, and the only thing that made it possible to fix the damage and set things back afterwards has been the social compact that different groups have around the constitution. Maybe it's different this time, and the slouching towards fascism is irreversible-- naturally I hope not.

Think of it this way-- normally, the 1st and 2nd amendments protect each other, when liberals are actually doing their job-- as long as liberals lay off the 2nd amendment, conservatives lay off the 1st amendment.

Well, that's the way it was supposed to work, before the advent of George,Jr, Fox News, Nancy Pelosi, and that darn table of hers with nothing on it.

Jonathan: I don't believe that. Democracies do not function around constitutions. Constitutions function around democracies. The Brits have no constitution. On the other hand, the Soviet Union's constitution guaranteed freedoms of speech, assembly, religion, right to privacy, health, education, etc. And we know how well that worked.

The US Constitution is a profoundly conservative, anti-reform document. Most scholars agree that the New Deal was unconstitutional (to take just one example).

Worshipping the US Constitution is demonstrating a lack of confidence in the organic ability of this country to function as a democracy. It is assuming that the US is by default a tyranny that is kept democratic by a piece of paper.

My view is that the tyranny exists. But it does not come from government but from corporate interests. And the US Constitution puts no limit on private tyrannies.

This wasn't considered a problem in relation to women and (at the time) men with insufficient land or property to qualify for the franchise, as those non-voters were randomly distributed across the colonies in largely equal proportions, but slaves preponderated in the Southern colonies, ensuring that non-slave Southerners were over-represented in the new Congress. The 3/5 compromise forced by advocates of the free states partly reduced this imbalance, though it did not remove it entirely. . .

It was about nothing so honest, Rob. It was the opposite of democracy. It was a power-sharing agreement with the Southern states due to their political influence on some Northern representatives and it was a compromise that helped destroy the Union. (Note that political compromises do FAR more harm to the Republic than political resolutions: compare Roe v. Wade and the 3/5ths compromise to the Civil Rights legislation.) Even the reps at the time admitted that the compromise was designed to help hold the union together. They knew it was anti-democratic: that was the point.

. . . I can guess it must seem strange to be told that [oppression against blacks and minorities] and injustice are merely footnotes to America's historical status as a beacon of people's liberty rather than the most important criteria for assessing the kind of country America historically was.

No, it usually isn't mentioned at all. To overcome the cognitive dissonance when it MUST be mentioned, the policies are:

a) Disassociated with whatever peice of shit U.S. leader the instructor is currently waxing hagiographically upon (so slavery becomes no one's fault) and --
b) used as an example of the U.S. commitment to liberty because, hey, we eventually stopped institutional rape, right?

The latter is actually an aggravating method because anyone who thinks on the issue realizes that the U.S. stopped given overtly racist policies first and foremost for economic reasons each and every time, with the exception of the Civil War (a brief moment of honesty: that is the price we did and will pay when it comes time to pay are dues). Further, the policies were only stopped de jure: as this site has pointed out, slavery endured for some time after the Civil War, and de facto Jim Crow is even more economically useful to some U.S. leaders than de jure Jim Crow ever was.

I have always despised the common law. Why write this vast manifesto on separation of powers then put it into action only to blow the crap out of it on day 1? Most people in the U.S. encounter 3 levels of law more than anything else:

• Agency (not legislature) regulation
• Common law
• Criminal law

Con law and all that other sexy shit is a rarity (bonus points for minorities for that one, though). Agency rules are number 1 in people's lives (look out your windw and see the legal parking spots; check to see if your sockets all produce the same amount of power; regs are our very existance) but common law can and does modify those rules FAR more often than Congress. Most of the point of an agency is that Congress can wash their hands of the issue and pretend it isn't their responsibility.

Personally, I think that judicial review has it bass ackward. We need continuous legislative review. Because Congress is happiest when it is adbicating its responsibility, it must be forced to regularly review, in my opinion, certain rulings that groups of judges must kick to them. (And judges will do so happily for some issues where they have to keep litigating it and making up a stream of bullshit.) Force it to a vote in the leg.

Rules for restricting corporations were proposed for the U.S. constitution -- and some states had them (TX used to have them, of all places). I think, while the framers were fairly aristocratic (not as bad as some -- they weren't really rich, despite the popular meme) that the failure to restrict them was more a matter of stupidity than pro-corporate bias. Do recall, the colonies had just rebelled against a corporation during their revolution -- Britain was merely the corp's enforcement department. Lincoln recognized corps as a bigger threat to the Republic than the Confederacy (easy to do since he used to work for him) but died before he could do anything singificant about them.

Really, it was a judicial coup that brought corps to their present hieghts. Santa Clara is destroying us. And note that the language in that case that declared corporations to be persons was put in by a fucking clerk, not a judge, and, as such, isn't even law. (But don't even think about challenging it.) The judiciary seems to be a net burden on our system.

Rob Weaver sez, Or perhaps I'm wrong in thinking American children are taught anything other than "this country wasn't really a democracy until after the Civil Rights era."

Pffft, I wish. Here's what our ultra-liberal black Presidential candidate has to say about American history:

Meanwhile, some of those in the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties reacted not merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself - by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day.

and

[T]here is nothing smart or sophisticated about a cynical disregard for America's traditions and institutions.

and

I believe those who attack America's flaws without acknowledging the singular greatness of our ideals, and their proven capacity to inspire a better world, do not truly understand America.

Okay, gotta stop now, because this is one of the most morally backwards, disgustingly vile speeches I've read in a long time.

No One of consequence: I also find that second form of cognitive dissonance to be appaling for the same reason I find Obama's speech appaling: Humans are not fungible goods. The fact that you're nice to one doesn't absolve you of responsibility for cruelty to another. If somebody shoots me during a mugging then I'm justified in calling them a criminal scumbag no matter how nice they are to their sister.

Lynching victims didn't get a whole hell of a lot from this country, and the civil rights movement didn't bring them back to life to give them another go at it. The people this country has murdered are dead no matter how many times we apologize.

Fuck Obama for suggesting that any good victim should go out of their way to praise their victimizers.

Also, fuck him for saying that while simultaneously lauding a Revolutionary movement that never felt the need to be nice to the British Empire or respect its symbols.

Oh, and the bill of rights is a pretty important and impressive document, but is the body of the American constitution really that great? It seems pretty mediocre, to me.

I LIKE MY CONSTITUTION JUST THE WAY IT IS. Finding an administration to follow it would be a hoot too.

ITS A CONTRACT between WE The People and our government. Like any contract, ya read the fine print and ya watch the other side to see if they full fill their part and YOU do YOUR part of the contract. Then it works if one side or both fall down then it doesn't, JUST LIKE ANY CONTRACT.

And the US Constitution puts no limit on private tyrannies.

innat what the 9th Amendment's supposed to answer?

ITS A CONTRACT between WE The People and our government.

You wouldn't be saying that if Tom Paine was around.

"It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of Freedom to say that Government is a compact between those who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with.

"The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist."

I'm with Paine: governments are created by constitutions*, they can hardly be a party to one. We contract with each other to create a government; the constitution defines the government's nature. Although we might put this in the form of a description of what the government may or may not do, these are not permissions or prohibitions extended to a pre-existing entity.

--

Yeah, NOoC, that Santa Clara thing is astonishing. My copy of Jack Beatty's Age of Betrayal is still somewhere within my depressingly large to read pile, but I got to hear my flatmate, who I gave the spare copy I mistakenly ordered, periodically remarking "Jeezus Christ!" as he read that history.

* OK, constitutional monarchies technically aren't, but nobody takes them seriously.

Tom Paine is The Shit.

I should be reading him right now instead of fucking around on the web.

In fact. . .

And I need to read Age of Betrayal now -- thanks Rob.

And I second the "fuck Obama" meme. First black president is gonna be an oreo. Damn, Satan, what did we ever do to you?

I'll also agree with Paine on who the contractors are, its STILL a contract, AND SOMBODY ain't keeping up THEIR half. I'll call Nan @1-202-225-0100 and see if she can clue me in.