Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

The Constitution Bistro: Part 1

Hey Moosers!

I’ve been away for awhile, don’t really know why but things happen.  Well I’m back now and was hoping to start what I know this place is best at … a conversation.

This thought came to me after watching BookTV on CSPAN2 (which I watch since I’m super cool) about the Constitution and I basically took their title and changed one word.

I want to talk about our Constitution here in the US and what it might mean to change anything in it.

It starts with an article in the New York Times, “‘We the People’ Loses Appeal With People Around the World”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02…

Here’s the painful comment from one of the other nations that brought that home:

“America is in danger, I think, of becoming something of a legal backwater,” Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia said in a 2001 interview. He said that he looked instead to India, South Africa and New Zealand.

So what I think we should do is go one part of the Constitution at a time and see what we think.

Let’s start with the Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

That’s the beginning of our Constitution.  So, what do you think about our Constitution’s standing as a model for the world?  Would you use it if you were writing a Constitution today?  

Lastly, would you change anything about the Preamble and if so what; if not why not?


Categories: General.

/ 19 Comments

19 comments

  3. IL JimP

    has a certain poetry to it and a powerful message.  We the People in order to form a more perfect union.  It’s something that I think we all strive for to keep working on ourselves, hopefully making ourselves better.  

  4. Rashaverak

    The three/fifths clause  is obviously a horrible relic that stains the document.

    There needs to be language about equal rights regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

    And language about only natural persons being entitled to Constitutional rights, and that spending money is not the equivalent of speech.

    The clause about only natural born citizens being entitled to be President also seems a relic.

    It would also help to state explicitly that the Supreme Court has the power of judicial review.

    And perhaps a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court justices?  I go both ways on that one.

    And fleshing out the General Welfare clause?

  5. creamer

    Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

       As much as I like the preamble, maybe it needed a disclaimer that it was a product of its times, written by men and not gods. I find the insinuation that the document is infallible (as held by some) and timeless to be a continuing problem.

  6. IL JimP

    but looking at it as an introduction and the Constitution as a whole there’s a lack of mention of rights until the very end.

    How about combining a couple documents:

    We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights, among those are life, liberty, dignity, and the pursuit of happiness.  We establish this Constitution for the United States of America to protect those rights, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

    It’s a little longer but includes more of our founding ideas.

    What do you think?

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