At the moment the Republicans almost control enough state legislatures to call a convention of states. Assuming they could all agree on something useful, what amendment or amendments do you think should be made?
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Bullshit. The reason we aren't having our rights openly trampled to the same degree as Australia is because there's enough (perception of) public resistance to such actions. But if there was not an armed, independent populace in the US, we'd be in the same boat as Australia. The fact that we have a Bill of Rights certainly doesn't hurt, but without popular (and institutional) support for the ideals of Freedom of Speech, the Right to Bear Arms, individualism, and more guns and ammo in civilian hands than all the world's governments (IIRC), the tyrants would have succeeded in installing their New World Order long ago.
Apologies if I come off as aggressive, but I think it's well past time that informed individuals should have realized that laws are only as strong as the people that back them. If they're inconvenient to the current regime they'll be ignored or disposed of. It's our job to do the same to laws or regimes we find "inconvenient" (read "tyrannical").
Remind me what is the second bill of rights?
The fact we have these unique rights that the vast majority of world does not is precisely the reason American culture is synonymous with freedom and liberty.
You're severely confused on what the Bill of Rights is from both a legal/theoretical and practical standpoint. From neither perspective does the Bill of Rights grant us any unique rights. Legally the Bill of Rights acknowledges rights that are inherent to all men, and guarantees that the government will not interfere with those rights. Practically the Bill of Rights is a piece of paper on which our founders wrote down principals without which they felt a just society couldn't function. If I recall my history correctly many were against the idea as they felt any document delineating the rights of the people would be used to restrict the rights of the people, as there was no way for a document to cover every right of the people. Therefore the document was written specifically to restrict the (federal) government, particularly with the 10th Amendment.
You're also confused as to the uniqueness of our Bill of Rights. Many other nations have something similar to our Bill of Rights which "guarantees" their population certain rights. Canada for example guarantees the Queen's subjects Freedom of Speech, Religion, et. al., but these are regularly infringed there. The only portion of our Bill of Rights that I am aware of being truly unique is the 2nd Amendment, and even then, other countries have adopted a right to bear arms for the purpose of self defense.
I think both of us would agree that the Bill of Rights contains principals which are essential to the functioning of a just society. I am not disparaging the bill of rights in any way when I say "it's just a piece of paper." Rather, I am pointing out something which the founders were well aware of: liberty is fragile. To borrow a metaphor from Jefferson: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
American culture being one of liberty and individualism necessarily predates the Bill of Rights. Without those ideas already existing in the culture no-one would have been willing to fight the British at Lexington and Concord when they came to confiscate the arms of the colonists. American culture is synonymous with freedom and liberty not because some people wrote down some ideas on a piece of paper over 200 years ago, but because they spread those ideas. And because they spread those ideas, people fought and died for those ideas.
Without a constant preservation of the ideals on which this country and it's liberties and freedoms were founded, as codified in the Bill of Rights among other documents, we will lose those liberties and freedoms. We must work diligently to ensure those ideals are instilled in each generation, and fight against those who would seek to destroy them.
The point is our culture of freedom would not have endured for so long if we did not enshrine that culture in our most important legal document. I've made no argument against a necessity for the citizens of the country to stand up for their rights. Much to the contrary, I find that to be imperative.
And I've shown evidence this is not the case. Such legal documents are regularly ignored in the US and elsewhere when inconvenient to the government. The legal documents mean nothing without the will and ability for the people to resist actions by the government that would undermine them, and there is no evidence that these are provided by the documents themselves.
I agree that we should hold these documents in high regard, but many (yourself included) seem to believe that the documents themselves have some power. That their status as the founding and supreme law of the land has given us a culture of liberty and individualism, as if by magic (or perhaps I misunderstand.) I believe this to be exactly backwards; that in having a culture of liberty and individualism, we have written our founding documents to reflect this.
This confusion of cause and effect will be disastrous to our ability to effectively implement reforms that ensure that we retain our liberties (as a country, not just individually) going into the future. The only time anyone should be bringing up "But the Bill of Rights says..." outside a history lesson is the trials of our politicians for treason, when we point out that they repeatedly violated their oath to protect and defend the constitution by passing and enforcing laws that violate it (OK, there's probably a few other places, but those are the big two.)
If I didn't believe this distinction of cause and effect was essential, that we were standing on the precipice as a country, I wouldn't be devoting so much effort to writing messages that are probably only being read by you. We agree on quite a bit; that a drastic change in our government and society is needed, what principles those changes should be based on, etc., but I think that a lot of people are still holding on to ineffective methods of implementing and maintaining those changes and ideals. I'm not saying this is you necessarily, but there's a lot of people that don't seem to be able to extrapolate from incomplete information. If we don't spell out explicitly that their freedom is their responsibility, that it doesn't matter what our founding documents say if they are unwilling to fight, that unless they pass along the will and ability to stand up for those principles to the next generation nothing we do now matters,