Rodimus Prime wrote:Written by white slaveowning men who had no regard in mind for natives, slaves or even their own women when they wrote it. Nevermind people who don't get a much better start in life because of the wealth left to them by their parents and grandparents and generations before them. "All men are created equal." My ass. Should have said "All rich white men are created equal." Because that's who it was written for at the time. I agree with the spirit of the constitution, but it is by no means perfect. If it was, it wouldn't have needed 27 amendments to it. It made sense at the time, but that was 230 years ago. Everything has changed since, the present time and its circumstances do not fit into the parameters of the constitution. So either the constitution has to be amended again or we have to go back to the societal structure as it was in the 18th and 19th centuries, up to the beginning of the Civil War, anyway.
I was going to write something earlier and it came off far angrier than I wanted it to. So I've given it time and now I'm better ready to respond to this.
Rodimus Prime wrote:Written by white slaveowning men who had no regard in mind for natives, slaves or even their own women when they wrote it.
I'm gonna start with this. So, because of who wrote the constitution, I suppose we should just disregard it. I'd like you to tell me first, though, which mistake was it? Was it the white part? Was it the men part? Was it the slave owning part? Or the idea that they had no interest in any other people besides themselves. Honestly, human cattle fit for slaughter. I suppose we can spend all day picking that apart. Lets move on to the next part of that though.
Rodimus Prime wrote:"All men are created equal." My ass. Should have said "All rich white men are created equal." Because that's who it was written for at the time.
So I guess it's just the rich then, the wealthy. The government shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, unless you're poor. The government shall make no law dictating the worship of religion if you own a certain amount of land. Shall I go on or can we forget this ever happened?
Rodimus Prime wrote:I agree with the spirit of the constitution
Obviously you don't because you already poisoned the well by somehow taking a document that was supposed to be a legal framework and making it about race, about sex, about wealth, about everything else it doesn't cover. Or didn't, but I'll get to that in a moment.
The constitution is not a permission slip. It's not a list of the things you're allowed to do if you're a citizen. It's a list of restrictions on the government telling the people in power what they are not allowed to do. And you're right, there is a flaw, but that flaw is not with the constitution itself. The constitution dictates the rights of the citizen shall not be infringed by the government. It does NOT, however, dictate who those citizens are. That was never enumerated in the constitution and fell directly into the hands of underwritten federal law until much, much later when it was written in under the 14th amendment. So your arguement about the scope of people it applied to was firstly nullified by it not being covered and secondly because that was later added. It wasn't originally the responsability of the constitution to grant citizenship and rights. But that's something I will get to later. Next.
Rodimus Prime wrote:it is by no means perfect. If it was, it wouldn't have needed 27 amendments to it. It made sense at the time, but that was 230 years ago. Everything has changed since, the present time and its circumstances do not fit into the parameters of the constitution. So either the constitution has to be amended again or we have to go back to the societal structure as it was in the 18th and 19th centuries, up to the beginning of the Civil War, anyway.
Here you are correct about one thing but you still show a fundamental misunderstanding. You're right, the constitution is a flawed, living document that was meant to grow and evolve over time. The people that wrote it knew that they would never be able to make it perfect, knew that it would need to change, and so they put in a process to change it. Had they ACTUALLY believed that the United States, as they were, were perfection incarnate they could have simply have written in that the words were law as passed down by God through their pen and that would have been that. They didn't. And it has changed.
But now I want to get back to the pin I left earlier. Look through the Bill of Rights and you will see that is a list of Shall Nots. The government Shall Not infringe on Expression, Shall not Disarm you, Shall not Quarter Soldiers on your property, Shall not Search or Seize your self or property without cause and warrant. It is a list of shall nots because everything else is permitted. You are free to express yourself in the way you choose, the government is not allowed to dictate when, where, how, and why to you. It means that you have all those avenues available to you instead of the myopic range that the government has given you. Keep that in mind as I detour down a little side street for a moment.
I was asked once to define communism and fascism for someone, and tell them how the US is not a fascist state if I so believe it. I took a moment to think about that because I had never really thought that hard. Then I gave them an answer and I said this: "In a communist state, from everyone according to their ability to everyone according to their need is the rule of thumb. In otherwords, you work, and what you produce is taken from you, and once it is taken from everyone it is re-approtioned as the state sees fit according to your need. If you want more, or less, it doesn't matter. You are given what you are given. Fascism is less restrictive, but only slightly. In a fascist state you're allowed to keep what you produce. And you are allowed to spend or trade it but only in those places as dictated by the state. You can only buy food here, only trade clothes here, and anything not sanctioned by them is criminal. The I thought about the US. We have no such restrictions. What you produce you keep, or are compensated for in currency. Then you are allowed to use that whereever you wish, no one can stop you".
And that right there is the difference. The constitution is not to dictate what you can or cannot do. It is strictly to tell the government what it cannot do. The eleventh amendment dictates that the US government SHALL NOT prosecute you on behalf of a foreign state or actor. The thirteenth amendment states that state nor any citizen Shall Not own slaves or indentured servents. The fifteenth amendment states that the state Shall Not deny the vote to citizens. And this means that everyone is free from foreign prosecution, free from bondage, and free to be represented.
And then there's a few others that you might have heard of that are slightly more contraversial. Like the fourteeth, citizenship. Before, it was accepted that citizens were citizens, and after the end of slavery it was written in that all peoples born here, or all peoples that resided here for a period were citzens. The government MUST grant citizenship to all peoples that fall under these catagories. As you said, it made sense at the time, and look at where we are now. Entire caravans of people marching through thousands of miles of dangerous terrain because if they can get here, if they can have a birth here, if they can hide out long enough, they can secure citizenship. The amendment meant to grant citizenship to all slaves and indentured servants that had been denied before. Now it is being abused as a free ticket to ride. Or the sixteenth which gave the government(read: gave itself) the power to levy taxes without any restriction or moderation. As you can see, giving them the right to simply taken money from the people has worked out so very well. This was the right of the government to levy any tax, not the people shall not be taxed. By granting the right to the government, it has been taken away from the people.
So now getting back to you. You speak of the constitution writteh by men, by white men, by rich white men with no regard to anything or anyone other than themselves. You speak of generational inequalities in wealth and power. And you speak of using the constitution itself as a crowbar to fix it. And you may not like that analogy but that's what it will be. The constitution itself is meant to be a check on the government, a barrier that denies it the ability to oppress the people of the nation. But I can assure you of this. No matter the law, no matter the reparation, no matter the policy seeing to balance some inequality from the past, it will be done by creating inequality in the other direction in the present. Either by taking directly from those deeped to have benefitted from it and giving to others, a redistribution of sorts, or some other government program which merely draws from a larger pool, those being taxed by, again, that troubling sixteenth amendment I stated earlier.
I'm not going to deny that there are inequalities in the past. There are inequalities today, in every single nation on the planet. It's not a perfect world and it's not going to be. But if I can stress anything from this long and rambling entry then let it be this: You cannot change the past. What was done is done. It cannot be undone. Asians in WWII were interred wrongly. They were paid reparations. The black mark still remains. It doesn't go away. If you're sincere about dealing with generational inequalities then there is a conversation to be had there. It will not come from a constitutional amendment. It will not come from a federal law. It will not come from the jackboot of officers coming to take from one and given to another. If you want to fix generational inequality going forward then we have to move forward. Accept the past for what it is. Drop the malice, drop the hate, forgive whatever debts there are and build a better future because here's the dirty truth: There are debts in the past. Debts to previous generations. Those generations are dead. We do not hang the sins of the father, or the debts, upon the sons. And until we do that we will get what we have now: Hatred and violence on behalf of a bygone generation, claiming moral virtue in their names and revenge for their honor. If you try to use the constitution as a tool here, not only will it fail but it will invalidate any good it has done in history.
Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2020 6:40 pm
