This article embodies two maladies of the mainstream media that Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out on another occasion also afflicts the Left: (1) they don’t really understand conservative arguments; and (2) they don’t really understand the Constitution.
It’s nothing new. Actually, I’d go further and say they don’t understand arguments, period. They’ve grown up in a propagandistic cocoon in which they’ve never had to actually make arguments, or rationally defend or question their own beliefs, because it is simply given by all around them that they are correct.
I’m not so sure the argument is whether it is constitutional to amend. Rather, it is coherent to call for strict interpretation of the constitution from judges yet call for amendments to the constitution. In short, the left doesn’t understand logic.
it is coherent to call for strict interpretation of the constitution from judges yet call for amendments to the constitution.
It’s logically consistent, but not intellectually coherent. The right calls for amendments including provisos that are utterly out of place when set next to the language of the original Constitution. Take the GOP’s balanced budget amendment that limits spending to 18% of GDP. Can you imagine Madison thinking in 1787 that he should put such a specific and arbitrary regulation into the Constitution? He might as well have put in rules for how the Army should stable its horses, and how many candles Congress should be allowed to burn.
The incoherence is people claiming to revere the timeless wisdom of the Constitution and then hurrying to muck it up with political tallking-points-of-the-day. It’s like admiring the Parthenon and rushing to put on vinyl siding.
No, the incoherence is people claiming the Constitution should be a “living document” and that political talking-points-of-the-day should be injected into it through judicial interpretation.
The point you make is precisely why the Founders made it so difficult to ammend the constitution in the first place. They wanted to avoid precisely the sort of frivolous ammendments that you refer to, and by creating as many barriers to ammendments as possible, they felt that they could safely accomplish this.
As to whether or not the ammendment in question fits into the frivolous category or not, we will have to agree to disagree, but clearly there is no intellectual incoherence here. If a sufficient majority of several different aspects of the body politic can be convinced to go along with this reform, then it might be successfully argued that the ammendment in question is hardly frivolous….
As stated, it’s rational to argue over the specifics of an amendment. The only problem I see with the amendment you suggest is the set level. However, many states have a balanced budget amendment at no set level. The difficulty in passing an amendment should take out the bad parts and leave the good. For instance, we are starting to learn the problems in maintaining a constitution that provides citizenship simply by being born on US soil. And there was a time when Democrats lead the way in passing the 18th Amendment. Mistakes get made, but they are fewer and easier to fix when done through the appropriate process.
What’s really crazy is changing the law of the land via the Judiciary (Kelo, Wickard, Plessy, Roe).
but not intellectually coherent
So where’s the argument that anything you complained about was so? Madison didn’t initially see the need for the Bill of Rights either, though he ended up drafting it. So maybe he originally wouldn’t have seen the need for some sort of balanced (or merely near-balanced) budget amendment, but seeing what we’ve experienced, would either out of necessity or political convenience, change his mind. The fiscal deficits of the last three years (along with the qualitative easing schemes) have been a remarkable abuse of federal power.
Half the things ‘the right’ wants to press for Amendments on are things that “the Founders” probably considered ‘dealt with’ by sane interpretation of what they’d already written.
That is:
You wouldn’t need a ‘balanced budget Amendment’ if you hadn’t passed the 16th Amendment allowing income taxes. (Or if the 16th had included the tax tables. Congress spends virtually the entirety of their time deciding who gets a break and who gets shafted on taxes – all other issues end up as collateral damage this way.)
There’s interest in basically repassing the 10th Amendment, with the only change being the words “And we mean it this time.”
There’s interest in trying to do -something- about the interstate commerce clause. There was no thought or intent at the time that this was allowing the Feds control over what you planted in your own backyard for your own personal consumption.
The Second amendment could be reworded without the mention of ‘the militia’ that baffles the historical ignoramuses.
You could add a ‘define the word marriage’ amendment too.
The current usage for all of these is so laughably different from the historical understanding there wouldn’t have been much point to adding them at the time. “Interstate. That means -between- states. And Commerce, that means actual sales. Or those things done in preparation for a sale. How much clearer can we get?”
You can pass all the “Make them Follow the Law Acts” you like, but it should be more than obvious that the root problem is not the source code, but the present run-time compilers. As MFK notes, the Constitution was not written in Klingon.
You wouldn’t need a ‘balanced budget Amendment’ if you hadn’t passed the 16th Amendment allowing income taxes.
Are you under the impression that the federal government always ran balanced budgets before the 16th Amendment?
We’ve gone nearly a century with an income tax and no balanced budget amendment, and our public debt has never been more trusted or sought after. At the moment investors are paying us to take their money. A balanced budget amendment would do more harm than the 18th, and hopefully be repealed as quickly.
At the moment investors are paying us to take their money.
Yeah, well you voted for Hope and Change, and guess what’s changing.
Rand wrote: They’ve grown up in a propagandistic cocoon in which they’ve never had to actually make arguments, or rationally defend or question their own beliefs, because it is simply given by all around them that they are correct.
That this reality should be so evident to anyone who observes the state of political discourse from the left makes it all the more amazing that so few of today’s so-called “liberals” realize what a disadvantage they’ve put themselves at by not bothering to learn about things like logic, history (beyond the p.c. bromides), and the nature of conservative thought.
The Constitution isn’t written in a dead language, mystic runes, or obscure quatrains. It’s written in (very) plain English. Interpreting it is a euphemism for pretending that it says something it very clearly does not say. But that’s the favorite pastime of the Left, because it’s so much easier than amending the document.
On the other hand, Americans ignorant of the Constitution occasionally do stupid things such as confusing it with the U.S. Code. Then they add to it things like the 13th and 18th Amendments which apply only to the people and not at all to the government, and consequently don’t belong in it at all.
I’m not sure we’re at the point where we as a country are aware enough of what the Constitution actually is to risk amending it….