The bill of rights would have no shot of making it into our constitution today. It would be a disaster
Why do Libs riot ?
- Thread starter lawpoke87
- Start date
You think people would start tossing the freedom of speech? Or unreasonable search and seizure? I mean, I suppose if the representatives from each state that were chosen were as incompetent and corrupt as our current legislative branch, then it's possible, but if the representatives actually acted as weather vanes for the people, then it shouldn't happen that way.
Ideally, you would have proportional representation to the event based upon population, but each issue would be voted upon by the people of each state and their representatives would vote based upon that vote. So if you had a "Virginia Plan", a "California Plan" and a "Nebraska Plan" on a certain issue the only thing left up to the representatives would be the structuring and conglomeration of ideas into several different plans for the populous to vote on concerning any certain issue the freedom of speech for example.
Basically:
Step 1 - Bipartisan committees of reps (apportioned via population) gather with various improvement ideas, using our current constitution as a basic outline.
Step 2 - The national convention would first determine the appropriate "winning percentage" necessary for a article or amendment to be adopted by a simple vote majority vote.
Step 3 - The committees confer among each other and consolidate common issues into plans (maybe a plan from Florida and a plan from North Carolina have similar ideas / wording on xyz natural right)
Step 4 - The various plans are reduced to 2-5 via voting in among a group meeting of the national delegation
Step 5 - The plans are voted on by the people
Step 6 - The votes are tallied and the delegates inform the convention of their state's vote voting percentages and those percentages are assigned to whatever number of delegates a state has (If an issue's vote tally was 40% to 35% to 25% in California, and California had 65 delegates then 26 of California's votes on the issue would go to the winning plan with 23 and 16 going to the others)
Step 7 - The article or amendment would pass with the necessary "winning percentage".
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Most of them would theoretically still exist, but not truly be protected. Sort of like "I'm all for protecting free speech, just not hate speech." So they would be gutted to the point that they don't really provide protections.
The problem I see is that the majority would be able to outlaw speech from the minority or speech with which they did't agree. Something we are now beginning to see rear it's head across the country. Dangerous, dangerous precedent as we see throughout history where opposition speech is the first thing outlawed when freedoms and rights are being taken away. I scenerio where the Nazi's labeled any speech derogatory of Hitler (especially spoken by Jews) as "hate" speech would have certainly been likely. Castro did similar things in Cuba when he came to power in order to silence the opposition.
Or there would be plans that were proposed with various wordings that addressed that issue, the people would vote on them.
Yes and what I'm saying is that under the current climate/popular opinion the public and representatives would not support broad protections for much of the bill of rights. I can see the ad campaigns now: "The free speech absolutists are supporting racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia and passage of this amendment will hurt people." "The due-process extremists would rather have your daughter raped than her attacker behind bars." Most important rights would be curtailed.
It's pretty easy to insert adequate phrasing to ward off that danger.
Something like, "All Americans will be allowed a total freedom of speech, barring occasions in which speech is used to denigrate the cultural or religious beliefs or heritage and / or sexual preference, of another individual or group of people. Speech relating to the characteristics of individuals, groups, or government entities, unrelated to the aforementioned beliefs, heritage, or preferences will be protected by every means of law"
That's up for the public to decide. If our society agrees to give up their right to racist speech (while protecting other forms of speech) so be it. That's what a social contract is.
I think in another life you would have been a torrie. You don't think that's exactly what the rest of the world said about the constitutional convention we had in 1786?
In some instances, it is necessary to reform a society's social contract. That is one MAJOR ideal that came out of the enlightenment era.
...and who makes the decisions as to which speech meets those requirements? Also...you failed to list speech which promotes or advocates violence against another group. Plus....if a group or person at one time makes a speech which meets the restrictions guidelines can that group organize and speak again? Do we stop speech from violaters before they speak or slap their hands after another violation?
Ok. I think in another life you would have been a fascist. The utility and goodness of conservatism depends entirely on what you're trying to conserve. Conserving principles that limit government and maximize individual liberty is not the same as Tory cowardice and social order. Transplant me to Syria and I'm certainly not a Syrian Tory.
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Granting those in charge the power to silence people based on some arbitrary "you hurt my feelings or was mean standard"....what could possibly go wrong? Haven't we learned the dangers throughout history of giving those in charge the power to silence people?
Firstly good point on the violent speech, secondly I imagine it would be treated like any constitutional violation is now, after the fact.
Haven't we learned throughout history the dangers of giving people the power to persecute outsiders? I'm sure there are plenty of families that were survivors or escapees of genocide in our country that would concur with that notion.
Jews
Gypsies
Catholics
Muslims
Latin American Hispanics
Gays
Armenians
Cambodians
Rwandans
Bosnians / Croats
Slavs / Serbs
Irish Americans
Ukrainians
Mormons
Italian Americans
African Americans
German Americans
Japanese Americans
Chinese Americans
Kurds
I think a lot more people (throughout the world) have been hurt by cultural persecution since the dawn of our country than would be hurt in the future by an agreed upon repression of inflammatory racial speech which refers to a group's ethnic heritage / culture rather than an individual's personal characteristics.
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The interesting thing is that in most if not all of the cases you listed the people in charge (ie...national government) were the ones doing the repression. The very people your wanting to give the power to suppress speech which they deem offensive.
Just figured you were looking to dispose of the less desirables... Gulags enabled by your new constitution, perhaps?
Why does everything have to be communist with you? Why can't we just make a better and more efficient / fair / peaceful republic?
The governments that did the persecuting and genocides didn't do it without the support of the people. It's not like Hitler was saying how awful all those racial minorities were and no one was listening to him. It was pervasive in their society. Little kids were calling each other racial slurs at school and their parents weren't challenging them not to do it because their parents were doing the same thing. People were having their homes vandalized by the public. It's not just the government we should be afraid of. It's ourselves. It's a group of people convincing enough followers that this or that other group of people is bad and should be eradicated.
These men in power don't run the government without the support of the people.
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There is a good reason we haven't had a constitutional overhaul, ever. Time is a much better ajudicator over rapid changes. You seem to talk of this utopia in which we would have this overhaul. I wouldn't want current politicians nor current voters getting near a constitutional overhaul. It makes me nervous just to think of what we might do to a single amendment. Being a weather vane for the people is not my idea of logical and moral changes. It's ourselves we should be afraid of, and ourselves we should have vote on these across the board changes?
Clearly what we need to do is give the government more power so majorities can more thoroughly oppress minorities. I'm sure we'd all love President Trump using the DOJ to crush Black Lives Matter for their racial hate speech violations under this new constitution. That would go over well
Isn't that the point. Hitler or (insert your own fascist/dictator) pushes an agenda and gets people behind it. Part of that process is to silence those who oppose said agenda by restricting speech against the same or by those in opposition. People are sheep by and large. Preventing them from hearing opposition speech is a recipe for disaster. We have seen this over and over throughout history. There's a reason that the first move in a coup is to take control of the ability of opposition speech.
Liberty, equality, fraternity.... now off to the guillotine!
Because all attempts to create paradise on earth have begun with noble intent and became Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, Castro's Cuba, PolPot's Cambodia, or name your dictatorship of choice...
The founders knew they weren't creating paradise, but they knew they were creating the opportunity for each man to create his own paradise. The problem with your solution is that you want to take the individual and make him a subject of the state rather than the state an arm of the individual. You believe that because people voted against your candidate that they are morons. By that reasoning any document you create would be at the expense of those " morons " and benefit those that think like you.
You want utopia... but so did Marx.
Could you imagine.. we would become like all these other country's that rewrite their constitution every one the wind changed direction...
A constitution written by twitter...
That's a very well thought response G$$$. I would argue that our society re-determining what we hold to be natural rights of man and privileges we choose to give to the government via a social contract through a convention and logical ratification system is a bit different than a group of 10 men standing at pulpits and telling you which types of people you shouldn't like. I never said a new constitution would create a utopia, just a more apt and more evolved society. I'd be stupid to promise perfection.
I'm not really in support of many of our current politicians to be there either. Each state should select their representatives based on personal merit. One might be sad to see a state like Washington NOT choose someone like Bill Gates. I think the best people to man the committees would be Historians, Businessmen, Doctors / Scientists, Philosophers, and then Politicians; however, I don't think the society of the 18th century was any more or less viable to determine our nation's cultural philosophy and governance than today's society is. Hopefully it would create a more functional society because it would be a process that everyone from our current time period would have a say in. Eventually, the same process could happen again in the future as mankind continues to evolve as do their principals.
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Communist. Communist. Communist. Communist.
Did I ever say I wanted a communist, or even socialist for that matter, state?
How is collective determination of social contract not the exact definition of making the state the arm of the individual? Especially when we would be using our current constitution as a guide?
Then why not just amend it?
I still don't see why the blue states just don't secede?
Is not the " collective " not just another word for "commune" as the collective has little to do with the rights of the individual.
Amendments don't usher in the collectivist utopia fast enough. That's why they stopped trying and just changed the meaning through interpretation instead
You're such an advocate for the personal freedoms enumerated by the founding fathers, but as soon as someone suggests doing the same exact thing they did, in a peaceful and thoughtful manner, just with a difference of two and a half centuries and the invention of Flight, Automobiles, Mass Communication, Modern Computers, and Nuclear Weapons later... you shut off and call it communist?
Who gave the founding fathers the right to do what they did? The people. That's who.
No, it's the fact that the very process in place to amend the document is one of the things that needs to be amended, because it in itself is flawed. If, tomorrow, everyone in the US moved to Texas sans a handful of people in every other state, those states would hold just as much power as they do today and that is fundamentally and logically wrong.
You say fascists, fascists, fascists. As I have said before fascists and communists start out with different ideology but end up with similar dictators. Like two airplanes, one flying due East and one flying due West. They wind up meeting each other, assuming of course that they are refueled enough.
The constitution was born out of the chaos following a war as they struggled to put together a nation made up of states. It's not perfect, but, next to the Bible it is the greatest written document on the planet.
You want to rewrite it in an era born out of the hurt feelings of an election you didn't like. It's a chaos fueled by social media. That same media gave us Trump. What kind of a governing document will it give us?
Lol. I see some one woke up on the stars and stripes side of the bed today. 'Murica. F Yeah!
I don't want to reform it just because of this election. There's a lot of improvements I think that could be made, but won't under the current set of rules for the amendment process, and making an amendment to change the amendment process seems pretty outlandish doesn't it?
The founding fathers wouldn't have even called it the greatest next to the bible. I'm sure on their lists some of the following might have superseded it in importance:
The Magna Carta
The Declaration of Independence
Code of Hammurabi
The Rights of Man
The Cyrus Cylinder
Summa Theologica
Heck, even the famous greek stories have outlasted the Bible (New Testament) by about 1000 years.
But I'm not advocating a communist system. I'm advocating a reformed Republic, with representative democracy much like we have right now.
How does even a reformed republic satisfy your issues with the electoral college? As we've pointed out the difference in electoral votes even if the states were given votes based solely on population percentage is negligible.
It was negligible in this election because of the current makeup of the voting blocks around the country, but that may not always be the case. Like I said if (hypothetically) every citizen moved to 3 or so central states tomorrow except for a handful left behind in each other various state, the voices of 48 people could outweigh the voices of tens of millions.
Like let's say that 1/3rd of the pop. of the USA moved into Washington, Oregon, and California respectively (minus 48 stooges left in the other 48 states + D.C.)
Now, they have an election. California decides to vote for one party, while Oregon and Washington go for another. So, in reality the OR + WA party has basically 66% of the popular vote. Well, California gets all the other 48 people in the other 48 states to vote with California. So, in our system, each of those other states gets 3 votes. The final electoral count would be 276 to 262 in favor of 1/3rd of the US + 48 schmucks, over the other 2/3rds of the US.
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No body implied you are advocating communism.
As far as your (never happening) rewrite of the Constitution, it may not be because of this election, but I don't remember you pushing it before the election.
Your new American Government plan was interesting. But surely you understand that you are tilting at windmills.
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Of course the founders wouldn't have thought it so.. hell, they had just written it...
But you keep going back to the amendment process because you know that the changes you want would never be agreed to by the appropriate number of states. Thus as another poster put it: that's why you use the courts to water it down through interpretation and fabricatin.