The constitution

[Guy_Montag]

Since my IT dept cut me off from listening to the BBC online, I've had to resort to finding dodgy American stations to listen to.

Regardless of which talk station I listen to, I only have to listen for say 10 minutes before the Constitution is mentioned.

So this raises the question: why is the US constitution considered almost a religious document?

Oh & when was the last amendment added.

Thank you in advance.

[bryant69]

1. Many Christian people do believe that God inspired the Constitution

It has generally worked (over the long hall) and done better than most other Constitutions. And of course it has the added advantage of being ours.

I don't know about the last ammendment, although taht shouldn't be hard to find.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[DrDebug]

2. But the first amendment says...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

So immediately we can drop God out of the Constitution, since there is no religion better or worse according to the same Constitution and everybody has a freedom to choose their own or none at all.

[bryant69]

4. I'm not arguing with that

I am a believer, and one of the things I believe is that this constant knocking ourselves around because of religion is something that greatly displeases God. I can't believe he is happy with how much anger and crap is dredged up in his name. The Seperation of Church and State, in my opinion (and realizing full well that people will disagree with me), is in fact something that God would be in favor of.

[DrDebug]

5. I agree with you on that displeased Christian God thing

Especially since it is always used for their own advantage. "God wants go to war". "Jesus is speaking to me". Remarks like that are horrible. Just like people like Jerry Falwell and George Bush trying to claim that they are Christians. Then again hypocrits always use God to justify their means and have so for ages.

I loved what Martin Luther King said about that:

"Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be - a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America "you are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God. Men will beat their swords into plowshafts and their spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore." I don't know about you, I ain't going to study war anymore."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.

Emphasis added

[H2O Man]

8. I think that those

who promote the Constitution as "divinely inspired" tend to hope that no one reads it.

[Just Me]

15. *LOL* n/t

[Charon]

26. First Amendment

,or prohibit the free exercise thereof;

[DrDebug]

3. The history of the amendments

Twenty-fifth Amendment (1967): Changes details of presidential succession, provides for temporary removal of president, and provides for replacement of the vice-president. (Full text)

Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971): Establishes right of eighteen-year-olds to vote. (Full text)

Twenty-seventh Amendment (1992): Limits congressional pay raises. (Full text)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Constitution

[sweetheart]

6. The constitution was designed to preserve a white man's property state

It has been re-marketed as having something to do with democracy in
american school propaganda, but it rather is designed to disenfranchise
most voters and people who are not in-property. The perversion is
rather complete, as liberals believe, with little grounds, that the
constitution has to do with democracy, due to this successful propaganda
con job.

Then we come of age and start wondering why so many people are
disenfranchised and how big-money, corporations and wealthy individuals
dominate what we were told was a representative democracy. New
americans are sworn to uphold the constitution, and as well public
servants and military people. So in effect, everyone has been duped
in to preserving a slave state, that, even today, disenfranchises blacks,
women, gays, drugs users, poor people and anyone who is not a white
property owner or a corporation.

These elite-powers that the constittion preserves, have their own
"religion" as it were, the absolute rule of property, that nothing shall
interfere with their right to property. So in effect, the public is
coerced in to supporting the property-slave state, or be disenfranchised.
They wisely gave people the right to believe whatever they want in
the first amendment, so that people will keep up the charade.

Otherwise, the actions of those people, are coerced in to supporting
wars, and very ugly things for the plantation masters, the corporations.

Everyone knows, intutitively, that it has something to do with the
constitution, the problems with america today, but most poeple still
are under the propaganda curse in believing the constitution a good
thing rather than a way to preserve slavery. So everyone talks about
it as the basis for society, and immovable bedrock in a culture of
white trash.

[tubbacheez]

13. I could agree with you that the US Constitution tends to preserve

social order.

And thus indirectly, preservation of social order tends to entrench the wealth and power of the already wealthy and powerful... which at the time the Constitution was written was composed of white property owners.

That much I can agree with.





But the US Constitution did not invent Anglo-American property law, which has a lengthy history outside of the Constitution.

The Constitution declares itself to be the supreme law of the land, which is powerless until ratified by member states. Now, it having been ratified by the States, it's no big surprise that officials are required to take oaths upholding it.






Maybe the U.S. really is a variant on The Matrix, but even if so, the Constitution is not the main cause. It's simply an inertia device. Social order is preserved by making it deliberately difficult, though not impossible, to effect sweeping changes.

To maintain a stable society, we actually want a high (but not insurmountable) barrier to rapidfire radical change. Without such barriers, society would change arbitrarily and at the mercy, mood, and whim of whoever was in power.

In fact, one could argue that these barriers have worked so well that ShrubCo has been forced to go to war using Executive Orders and Congressional Resolutions instead of the correct Constitutional requirement of a Congressional Declaration of War.

Furthermore, it has been well argued that the USA PATRIOT Act represents an alteration of the existing Amendments, without going through the proper process for Amending the Constitution.






If one wishes to challenge the existing social order, one can do so either with or without taking aim at the mechanisms for preserving social order in general.

Personally, having read the Constitution all the way through, I find no logic that would support scrapping it. American society has some serious problems, but I don't see the Constitution as directly relevent to solving them.

Human societies are incredibly complex things that are the evolving product of multiple forces. There are bigger and better fish to fry, in my view, for tacking the issues in American society.

[sweetheart]

17. It only needs 1 amendment

"No corporation or legal non-person may have the rights reserved for
individual persons."

An end to corporate personhood would terminate the flaw that is
corrupting the entire experiment.

Some would call the rigid failure of the constitution to adapt and
evolve, a real problem, one that will force an age of caesars, that
take bush's precedent, and simply shift over to running the entire
country on executive order.

The constitution these days is irrelevant to governance, it is rather
corporations and their hidden adgendas that rule the country, and these
are bound by no laws. Bush has simply modelled his imperial presidency
on his corporate heros.

[tubbacheez]

19. Corporate rights goes a very long way back.

I agree that corporations -- having the ability to be considered as persons when it suits them and then being something else at other times -- wind up having the effective status of higher class citizens than private individuals.

That's fine, and I've heard of such rumblings elsewhere.





However, the U.S. Constitution did not create this problem.
Corporate entities were establishing rights and legal precedents in English law long before the U.S. Constitution was written.

The Constitution is again merely perpetuating the social order which existed at the time of its creation. Should we desire to change this aspect of social order, a change in the Constitution may or may not be required.

Some well-decided court cases could create sufficient common law. The existing Constitution could be interpreted (by sufficiently persuaded judges) more strictly in favor of individual persons. States could enact statutory laws on their own to address the issue.



So here I'll agree with you on the principle that corporate rights should not infringe upon the rights of individual persons. There are a few possible avenues to make this social change. Some involve the Constitution. Others do not.

[sweetheart]

23. British corporate entities, where charters of the queen

These were quite different animals than the modern corporation.
They were pseudomilitary extensions of the government, chartered to
have monopolies in colonies such as india. I can't really say that
the american corporation has that much similarity.

American corporate personhood, granted in that santa clara county
lawsuit of 18-something-or-other showed that the american corporation
can't really claim roots in the british one, as much as the idea
of a collective of interests, yes, but not in terms of its rights
under the law.... the history is distict. Rather europe borrowed
in reverse the american principals of corporate tyranny of the
unfettered trusts of the early 1900s.

[tubbacheez]

25. Well, sure, there were differences.

I had not claimed modern corporations were identical to their predecessors.

Instead, I was pointing out that corporations had a long history of being given rights similar to - and perhaps better than - individual persons.

This evolution of corporate rights was not claimed to be static throughout history. Nor did I say that modern corporations need to possess the same rights as those from past centuries.

The actual point I was making was that corporate rights have a long history. This means the concepts we currently use have a long history. Thus, the U.S. Constitution is not the primary enabler of what modern corporations get in society.

[chomskysright]

7. You're British, right?: you got NO Constitution there or similar document.

figured you were re:'dodgy' and the query.

my husband is British. great people. great community life.

[sweetheart]

9. The human rights act

Was adopted in to law and has become a written constitution of sorts
in britain, although indeed things are "unwritten".

In an unwritten common law system, the law is written by situations,
and evolves over time with the status quo of life and the culture.

[ultraist]

10. And your system and laws are riddled with white male privilege...

Get real.

[sweetheart]

16. Yes, and lets look at contrast

Britain had womens sufferage before america did.
Britain has a female head of state, and has had a female prime minister.
Britain preserves a woman's absolute right to an abortion to 24 weeks
without a reason.

There is no question that it is a white patriarchal society, and i
never said it wasn't.

It is by no means a utopia, but progress is indeed being made, and
provided liberals come to the surface in this next poll, things might
improve for women even more.

[H2O Man]

20. I like Great Britain just fine.

I think it was nice that they came to visit Ireland. I just wish they would go home now. (smile) Both Great Britain and the USA have some outstandingly bad behavior in the past, as well as in the here and now.

[BurtWorm]

11. Did Mill really say what's in your signature?, he asked skeptically.

In answer to your question, it is a religious document and only a religious document to American conservatives. They regard it as scripture, handed down from heaven by Jesus Christ. This is why they never bother to actually read it.

The part Americans of all stripes say they revere the most is called the Bill of Rights. This was actually an afterthought to the Republic-creating main part. American liberals tend to worship the First Amendment, which covers a mess of civil liberties including speech and choice of religion, and wingers masturbate to the Second, which allows states to form militias and uses the phrase "right to keep and bear arms," which many Americans believes gives them the right to own automatic weapons.

[Guy_Montag]

12. Well I wasn't there when he said it

but I've found it in several books of quotes & online quotes dictionaries.

Yeah, I find "the keep & bear arms" one a bit weird, in terms of what I consider important human rights, that's right down there with right to wear slip-on shoes, only slightly more dangerous to all concerned.

[BurtWorm]

14. That is downright modern, that quote is.

Here's to Jon Stuart Mill, then. I couldn't have said it better myself. :toast:

The bit about states having a right to keep militias was intended as a check on the federal government's power to form a military. It was intended to protect citizens of the states against the potential for abuse of that federal power. But Americans only argue over the individual right that conservatives claim is explicit in the text. The problem for the conservative reading is that the exact phrase is "the people's right." Whenever the term "people" is used elsewhere in the Bill of Rights or the Constitution, it refers to the aggregate.

I don't think the founders thought much about infringing the people's right to own weapons, which in frontier America, were considered essential for one's livelihood. But I can't believe they thought this significant enough a right to include in the Constitution. In the context of the Enlightenment, it makes sense that they'd address the right of states to form militias as a check against federal power, though.

[T-Jeff_Dem]

18. Thomas Jefferson on the Constitution

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.
.....
The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the Judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. (think the repugs have this in mind vis-a-vis filibusters)
.....

[DrDebug]

21. Welcome. I like people who quote Thomas Jefferson

:toast:

[newyawker99]

22. Hi T-Jeff_Dem!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[expatriate]

24. In addition to the above

Many Americans believe, erroneously, that the "founding fathers" of America and the "framers" of the Constitution were all deeply religious men - and so, they believe that the Constitution is all-but a religious document, and the US is a "Christian" nation because the "framers" were Christians.

Since any kind of impartial history is not taught in American schools, these folks don't know that many of the "framers" were Deists or even freethinkers. Thomas Jefferson, in particular, was a freethinker, and both John Adams and John Quincy Adams were Unitarians and denied the doctrine of eternal damnation.

More "founding fathers" - Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, Thomas Paine - all freethinkers.

Somehow, somewhere, these people became, in the consciousness of many Americans, highly religious and pious people who "framed" the Constitution along religious lines.

They have obviously never read the Constitution or the Bill Of Rights.

[bunkerbuster1]

27. Thomas Jefferson re-wrote the friggin BIBLE

http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/

Note where his account of Jesus' life ends.