Yesterday commemorated the day in which the American Constitution was adopted. This document guranteed the rights and freedoms of American citizens. I'm not going to bore you all with the history, but I think it'd be nice to discuss it.
Here you can show your appreciation of it and maybe list some ways in which you'd like to revise it, like slight alterations to the amendments or Articles of the Constitution.
And no, I don't mean stuff like "they should change the age of consent to 6 LOL" or "the presidents should have to be adept in the language of the elves!!"
We're learning about the Constitution in school. I probably wouldn't change anything. Actually, I'm not sure if anything about gay marriage is in there. If it is, I'd change that so that gay marriage was legal.
Yeah, that's why I brought it up. I'm pretter sure a law was passed that history of the American Constitution must be discussed in Social Study classes on September 17th or the next school day after it.
take out that freedom of speech part
What's wrong with freedom of speech?
[IMG]http://www.bustedtees.com/images/secondamendment.680.gallery_normal.jpg[/IMG]
Legalise it. You know what I mean.
I am against drugs, LoS, but I actually agree with you on this. Some people are just not themselves without weed. This kid Chris I know, he is wild, and he would probably be normal without pot.
You realize that's horrible reasoning for legalizing drugs, right? You suck.
I'd like the draft to be more thorough. Rather than choosing people for being able-bodied and training them physically, I'd like to see some intense mental training. More than just "I'ma go shoot me some E-rack-ee scum! Yeehaw!" I know that seems a bit far-fetched, but after reading speccops' posts, I feel I can't trust some troops, our fighters and ambassadors, with any kind of arm. The last thing I'd want is for our troops to hide behind "we're protecting you so stfu" when they have the right to question why they are there and what they should be doing rather than nodding along to every operation as if they were half-dead.
[quote=Iris]You realize that's horrible reasoning for legalizing drugs, right? You suck.
I'd like the draft to be more thorough. Rather than choosing people for being able-bodied and training them physically, I'd like to see some intense mental training. More than just "I'ma go shoot me some E-rack-ee scum! Yeehaw!" I know that seems a bit far-fetched, but after reading speccops' posts, I feel I can't trust some troops, our fighters and ambassadors, with any kind of arm. The last thing I'd want is for our troops to hide behind "we're protecting you so stfu" when they have the right to question why they are there and what they should be doing rather than nodding along to every operation as if they were half-dead.
Mental training? As in, you want to make soldiers intelligent? What for? They're there to fire weapons at people our higher ups don't like, they don't need any mental training. Also, teaching them won't really matter once they're in the military. When they're in there they obey every order given to them regardless of what they think.
also, I'm pretty sure a lot of poor people enlist, have fun trying to educate the people that don't want to learn or can't
As for 2nd Ammendment, Militia is anyone over the age of 18, so thats why lawabiding citizens should be able to keep and bear arms. In most states to cary a concealed weapon you have to apply with the state and they do a full criminal backround check and make sure you have had no mental conditions in the past and make sure you have had or have any restraining orders. Once you pass the backround you then have to take a 8 hour class and show that you can actually hit a target with a gun. Once you pass all that you can carry a weapon.
If you want to actually buy a gun you have to go threw a FBI criminal backround check aswell.
I think the founding fathers did the best they could. They knew they couldn't think of everything so they left it up to interpetation and they also left a amendment saying that they maybe rights not listed, and just because they aren't listed doesn't mean the people have that right.
I think one of the most interesting things about comparing the politics of the US with Australia is the differences in our constitutions.
I didn't even realise we had one until a couple of years ago and I'm pretty widely acknowledged as a politics nerd. Basically our Constitution is an adaption of the British parliamentary act called the "Australia Act" which lays out the groundwork for how government operates--the role of the Governor General and the Senate and the House of Reps and so forth, the areas in which the Commonwealth can take over state powers. There's no bill of rights of any description, no fancy preamble, I'm pretty sure it doesn't mention Western Australia by name because they weren't going to join when it as drafted.
Yet the system still, sort of, works.
Whereas in the US the Constitution basically means ONLY the Bill Of Rights to a lot of people... as opposed to all the other bits in it, the procedural stuff about how the government is run. Some of that procedural stuff is important and I think the source of some of the bigger problems in the US political system. The bit that makes it constitutionally impossible to give the District of Columbia proper representation, for example, is absurd. Likewise I think "full faith and credit" needs to be strengthened in light of the gay marriage furore.
I'd also amend the US constitution to change how elections are run. I'd amend it to specifically make federal elections be administered by an indpendent but central Federal Electoral Authority or something, inependent like the Federal Reserve. That way you would get rid of irregularities when elections are organised at a state and county level, irregularities that presently plague the system. Uniform rules, uniform procedures.
An anti-gerrymandering clause for congressional districts, requiring them to be drawn up by this independent electoral body, and setting rules for how they are to be drawn, would work well as well. Requiring them to correspond to recognisable geographical and demographic units as much as possible, rather than being tailored to fit incumbents supporters, would go some way towards reversing the disgustingly high incumbency rate in the House of Reps by taking the power to draw districts from out of the party's hands.
I'd mess with the bill of rights to specifically ADD a right to privacy since one is recognised to be important but can only be read into the constitution by a somewhat convoluted reading. Probably also some other stuff like consumer rights and other things the original drafters wouldnt have thought of. The problem with an explicitly spelled-out Bills of Rights is when you codify rights you automatically exclude others... and that leads people to wrongly assume OTHER rights don't matter. Especially as time passes and new rights become issues. And ESPECIALLY in a system where the constitution is so sacrosanct it's almost impossible to change (unlike, say, the Dutch constitution which is historically much more malleable).
So that's the two big ones--fix the electoral process and update the bill of rights.
Yesterday was also the anniversary of Jimmy Hendrix's death.
COINCIDENCE? YOU DECIDE!
So what do you guys think about direct democracies? I kind of like that idea, but I'm curious as to what other people think.
As for the Bill of Rights and what Arwon said, there have been a lot of cases in the U.S. that have been solved because of the loopholes in the right to privacy that we know. It'd be good to add, but I'm not sure if the right to privacy is something endowed to all human beings to coexist.
Well, no rights are absolute, because they contradict. Then you have to balance them on a situational basis. Legislating privacy into the mix would give it a greater weight, an explicitly recognised weight, that's all.
[COLOR="Yellow"]I like it just as it is actually. I just wish there was an Amendment saying something like "It is the people's right to do whatever the **** they want with their own bodies and minds as long as they don't put anyone else in harm's way. And Government shall make no law against it".[/COLOR]
"To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;"
"Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State."
Not the most helpful of passages...
lol whats a constitution?
magna carta get
I think the United States Constitution is a brilliant document written by brilliant men who had to put a lot of ideas together and try to develop a system that was both fair and stable.
My only beef with the constituion is the vague wording. I suppose it's necessary given that times change, and solid wording wouldn't apply later on as it did at the time. For example, I don't believe that the phrase "seperation of church and state" actually appears. It's just something we've interpreted to fit our modern culture. So did the founding fathers actually want a country where church and state were seperate? I think they did, but I've met many who think they did not. And we can't exactly ask them.
But I bet they wanted it that flexible. I bet they knew that making a set-in-stone system that doesn't adapt to the population would never work out. I bet they wanted us to be squabbling about it later on down the road.