How Can We Learn From The Founding Fathers If We Are NOT Honest About The Constitution?

[kpete]

In fact, there is only one version of the Constitution - and it wasn't what the lawmakers read aloud. What the Republican majority decided to read was a sanitized Constitution - an excerpted version of the founding document conjuring a fanciful land that never counted a black person as Three-Fifths of a white person, never denied women the right to vote, never allowed slavery and never banned liquor.

The idea of reading the Constitution aloud was generated by the Tea Party as a way to re-affirm lawmakers' fealty to the framers, but in practice it did the opposite. In deciding to omit objectionable passages that were later altered by amendment, the new majority jettisoned "originalist" and "constructionist" beliefs and created -- dare it be said? -- a "living Constitution" pruned of the founders' missteps. Nobody's proud of the three-fifths compromise, but how can we learn from our founding if we aren't honest about it?

The selective constitutional reading was the latest indication that, for all the talk of honoring the Constitution, Tea Party-infused lawmakers are more interested in editing it. Some have talked of repealing the 14th Amendment, which gives birthright citizenship and guarantees equal protection. The new majority leader has endorsed a constitutional amendment that would allow a group of states to nullify federal laws.

the rest:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR2011010605705.html

[RockaFowler]

1. I thought the same thing

The Constitution is a Living Document. It is ever-changing and that is the way our Fore-Fathers wanted it

[enlightenment]

2. True, but it was also designed - deliberately - to retain original

language, rather than be modified in text and structure. That's why we tack the amendments onto the end of the document instead of incorporating them into the text.

The founders would not have approved of the selective redaction of the original text.


edited to clarify

[RockaFowler]

3. I agree with you

We can't forget the past, it's what makes this country so strong. We have to remember what makes us great and why we can't repeat our bad actions (ie electing repukes when they got us into this mess)

[Solly Mack]

4. k/r

[patrice]

5. K & R

[former9thward]

6. Almost everyone is in favor of editing it -- not just the Tea Party.

We wanted to edit it when the ERA was proposed. Some people would like the electoral college eliminated. Others want various other amendments -- they are posted here almost every day. We make laws based on the current version of the Constitution -- not the one that was ratified in 1789.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

7. They don't want to hear about judicial review. or the General Welfare Clause.

That's been the law of the land since 1803. Marbury v Madison.

Case law can expand or strike down statute law. That's why there is a right to privacy (marriage,contraception,abortion) extrapolated from the Constitution.

Case law, not amendments.

That's why there are tests in case law, such as the Lemon test, to determine government entanglement with religion and whether it violates the First Amendment.

And Brown v. Board of Ed of Topeka KS stating that separate but equal is NOT equal.

It's quite difficult to amend the Constitution. It has been changed far more by case law than by Amendment. The teabaggers don't want to hear about that.



I did not get my law degree from a mail order school. :D