"Pity the poor US constitution. It is the seminal document of our tattered republic, an instrument of legal ambiguity so susceptible to multiple interpretations that it makes the Bible look like a science textbook. It is hailed and hosannahed as a sacred and inviolable text, even though amendments have been made and unmade. It is used to support every position under the sun, from upholding the property rights of slavers to denouncing the consummate illegality of the south's 'peculiar institution'.
Currently, much hubbub over the second amendment and its supposed protection of the rights of every crackerhead redneck this side of Biloxi to possess semi-automatic assault rifles is being made, as Obama prepares to "take our guns away". The fact that the historic context in which the archaic language of that amendment was first crafted has long since disappeared troubles not these white trash Neoconderthals. They want guns so that when Obama suspends the constitution and sends the Army after all those weapons stashed in trailer parks around the nation, the TeaBagger patriots will be ready for 'em.
The easy solution to all this is to abolish the second amendment or revise it considerably to reflect modern reality, but this will happen when AR-15s are used exclusively to shoot pigs out of the stratosphere. The truth is that the constitution, like everything else in Wonderland, is all talk and no walk. Its ideals and hoary pronouncements have been routinely ignored when expedient (when was the last time Congress declared war?) and interpreted which every way the political, social and cultural winds were blowing. It is so elastic and fungible that Silly Puddy looks like quenched steel by comparison.
The constitution has justified every sin and crime of these United States, from slavery to Indian genocide to the suppression of workers, immigrants and minorities. It is a mirror by which all the hypocrisies of the Empire can be filtered, purified and exonerated. It is the tool, plaything and template by which the plutocrats on Wall Street can forge their Machiavellian schemes to loot Main Street. It will outlast the Empire, of course, like Hammurabi's stele, but like that Mesopotamian ruler's legal code, it will be a museum piece reminding the future of what men will say to justify their sins."
H Campbell
Texas (Jan 17, '13)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Letters.html
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Comments: 10
Liberty is one of those things that needs a Constitution and firearms to protect it. Something that takes more than a majority vote to destroy. The writer H. Campbell seems just a wee bit out of personal/scholastic depth right here? Lol
much hubbub over the second amendment and its supposed protection of the rights of every crackerhead redneck this side of Biloxi to possess semi-automatic assault rifles is being made
Those protections are only "supposed" in the sense that words on a piece of paper cannot protect anything; especially peoples' rights, and even more especially peoples' rights to build, buy, own, and carry firearms. And people do have that right. That right is not granted by any person or group of people, calling themselves "government" or anything else; and it's not granted by any document, called a "constitution" or anything else. It is an intrinsic, inalienable human right, and it pre-exists all governments, laws, or constitutions. Such institutions can only either respect and protect those rights, as all other rights; or they can infringe against and violate them. But they don't create them, and they cannot abolish them.
That's the long and short of it. In the final analysis, the only thing that can be safely relied on to guarantee the protection of the rights of the people, is the people themselves. And it is for that reason that the right to keep and bear arms is the most precious; if a society is unable to preserve and uphold that right, then the rest of their rights are most tenuous. Their hopes of remaining a free people for very long are doomed.
Ask the political dissidents of Germany 1940, or Russia 1940, or China 1950, or N. Korea today.
Oh, that's right. You can't. They were murdered. By their own governments.
The constitution has justified every sin and crime of these United States, from slavery to Indian genocide to the suppression of workers, immigrants and minorities.
Nonsense. Hyperbolic at best; for the most part outright fallacious. Sure, politicians always claim to be acting within the spirit and letter of the Constitution when engaging in any of their multitude of schemes of subjugation, plunder and murder.
But saying that makes it so is like saying the written words of Christ actually justify the torturing and slaughtering of innocent people as "heretics" or "witches."
If I didn't know any better, I might suspect that I'd just been called a hypocritical and ignorant narcissist...
Is there anything in particular that you would explicitly dispute? Do you deny that individuals have the right to produce, buy, sell, keep and carry firearms? In fact, any weapon whatsoever (short of nukes, which are guaranteed to take or destroy innocent lives and property when used properly and as intended)?
Do you deny that a disarmed populace is easy prey for would-be despots?
The right to keep and bear arms is the cornerstone of human rights. Its the linchpin the holds all of our rights together. For all the faults of the Framers of the Constitution, they were at least wise enough to recognize that fact. They understood that if that right were not codified and protected, then any bill of rights or explicit enumeration of government powers was pointless.
If you turn the civilian population into a herd of unarmed sheep, it's only a matter of time until the hungry wolves show up for dinner.
Hardy is H. Campell, the satirist from Texas (Houston).
I don't think he is in way suggesting Americans should give up their right to have guns? The nonsense about the Constitution, the Founders etc that many Americans ,who have little knowledge of American history (not you, I expect), speak about is his target. Militias were a necessity after the Revolution to maintain order (Washington had to make an army of four to suppress a rebellion) and defend against foreign invasion. When did more than 15% of the population have the right to vote? Many decades after the Constitution was written. States had different laws on who had the right to vote and in practice many still do. New Jersey gave the right to vote to women and blacks into the 1780's, but that ended with the Constitution.
I don't think he is in way suggesting Americans should give up their right to have guns?
Nooooo. Hardy there seems like a real strong supporter of the right to bear arms.
Militias were a necessity after the Revolution to maintain order
That's not the point. One could make a real strong argument that militias are a necessity now; and always will be so long as the condition persists where a large portion of society is intent on ceding a monopoly on coercive force to one group of people and considering the whole of society bound to obey the arbitrary whim and discretion of that group.
As to the right to vote and all that; I've never said the Constitution is or ever was perfect. In fact, to me it's no more than a defunct 200 year old document; which certainly no one today is obligated to even pay the least bit notice. But as far as explicitly-written "social contracts" go, it's probably still the most sensible ever created. I object to the whole rotten system as such; but if I'm going to be forcibly held bound to the terms and conditions of a contract I've never signed, then I don't think it's too much to ask that the other parties to the contract, namely the federal government, make some token efforts (if nothing else) to honor those same terms and conditions as they apply to themselves -- especially those parts that clearly and expressly forbid them to invade against the intrinsic, inalienable rights of individuals?
I think the establishment of the nation, after 100 years of experience in parliamentary government by relatively independent colonies, with their own courts and legislatures inspired and fostered the development of Western civilization and the industrial revolution in Europe and beyond. So the ideas embodied in the Constitution were an original creation, although flawed in some respects by compromises with different interests of various groups. The history of the American experiment has passed through many stages and the Constitution has served well on the whole as a guide and measure of the state of the nation and a support for the rule of law.
I think it is fair to say that America is increasingly resembling a soft police state, that the rule of law is widely violated and many rights declared in the Constitution and Bill of Rights denied. The Constitution can be modified but the value of its principles seems proven by history. Corruption is not new as a feature of America's history, and the current period is one such period. Your comments?
Perhaps, to the extent it has actually been observed; or at least to the extent legislators and judges have been faithful to the spirit of the document.
There are certain immutable, universal principles embodied in the text of the Constitution -- more so in the Declaration of Independence, which I believe was considered as a kind of mission statement of the principles which the framers of the Constitution set out to codify -- pertaining to the intrinsic, inalienable rights of individuals, and the proper sphere of any institution of organized coercion in relationship to those rights of all individuals subject to the jurisdiction of such institutions.
It is only the degree to which those principles have been upheld, that American society has been able to progress and prosper at all (and this is true of all human societies generally); and to the extent that the Constitution has been the means of establishing that, then it has indeed served us well.
But the more time passes, the more the Constitution is routinely ignored (or given attention in the most selective, self-serving ways; while the spirit of the document is conveniently shoved under the proverbial rug), and the more our society suffers on that account.
The fact is that the Constitution gave an exhaustive enumeration of explicit powers of the federal government, and established the innumerable rights of individuals, which the powers of government were never to infringe against.
Our modern statist society has allowed that syllogism to be completely reversed. Now, it is widely held, even if only tacitly, that it's the powers of government which are for all intents and purposes innumerable, while the rights of individuals are exhaustively and explicitly enumerated, and must never be allowed to infringe against the authority of "the majority" as ostensibly embodied by the power of the central government.