Is our U.S. Constitution being twisted into something it was never meant to be?

1. 61

   IDONOposted 12 years ago

   Is our U.S. Constitution being twisted into something it was never meant to be?
   
   I don't know if it's the cleverness of today's attorneys or what, but it seems like every radical cause, specialty group, criminal and even politicians have dissected it so much to fit their agenda, that we've lost what it actually stands for. All of this seems too much for 9 members of a Supreme Court to handle. What's your take?

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2. 81

   junksellerposted 12 years ago

   The Constitution is a tool, not a magical item. People who claim some sort of pure original intent are twisting things for their own purposes as much as anyone else, and most of those pure intents seem like romantic fictions anyway. The only thing it has ever been is that which a group of people decide at the end of the day that it will be. It has never stood still. Constitutional debates started before it was signed, continued throughout its signing and went right on happening after its signing. Look at the Alien and Sedition Acts, for instance, passed only a decade after the Constitution was signed by some of the same people.
   
   There has never been a point where we could just sit back and let it build good deeds for us. We are, and always have been, the wielders of the tool. We can't stand around blubbering about how our great-great-great-great-grand pappy used to rive wood with his froe club. The tool is in our hands and we need to bring ourselves up to be worthy of that task. Unfortunately we have set a very low bar for ourselves, and our leaders, and so we have a bunch of unworthy beings hammering away at the world. that's entirely our fault though. I don't see much reason to complain about radicals and specialty groups and such. We are astonishingly ignorant, terribly unkind to one another, and grievously apathetic.

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