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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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,
The have done a good job bastardizing the Constitution over the course of centuries but you are being hyperbolic when you say that it is outright ignored. It’s an extremely important safeguard.
Yes, the culture of American revolutionaries is what led them to create the Bill of Rights. In turn, the fact that they created that document was an important safeguard in protecting those rights. No one will deny culture has changed significantly over the last 250 years. I have no doubt that without these legal safeguards it would be much worse than without.
That’s not to say that we can all just ignore what’s happening and expect to be fully protected by the constitution. Much to the contrary, we need to take affirmative steps to protecting our ideals and our liberty. This is accomplished through private enterprise and through interacting on the political plane, especially on the local level.
There’s a good reason the United States has enjoyed an unprecedented degree of peace since its founding. We have not had to suffer through the bloodshed of war on our own soil. Certainly, you must appreciate that violence is a last resort and is fundamentally a point of no return. You cannot fault people for avoiding that drastic step.
I don't think I'm being hyperbolic at all. They follow the parts the tolerate and at best pay lip service to the parts they dislike, but often do outright ignore it. I don't think there's a single amendment in the Bill of Rights that hasn't been infringed upon by Executive, Legislative, or Judicial fiat.
You've repeatedly made these claims, that the constitution and our legal framework themselves are a safeguard against tyranny. But I haven't seen any solid evidence to back them up. What evidence we do have says that different states operating under the same Constitution follow it to different extents depending upon their own culture and values.
I think we've discussed this point to death without much give either way, so unless one of us has additional evidence to support their claims I think it'd be best if we just dropped it.
The only disagreement we have here is that this is the only part that really matters long-term. Government is an extension of culture. Therefore, while it is important that we have a constitution we should not view it as affording any protection in and of itself, but rather that it is an agreement of the government with the people that "this is how we will act", and if they don't act in a manner consistent with that then we should remove them.
Government, by it's nature, cannot provide (or even maintain, I'd argue) freedom. Government is an inherently restrictive organization whose role is to provide security, which--while essential--is by nature at odds with freedom. Therefore it is the responsibility of the people to maintain their freedom, and ensure that the government infringes as little as possible in it's role in providing security.
This is honestly probably more due to geography and our neighbors than our legal framework
Discounting the War of 1812 and the Civil War I suppose you'd be right.
I can and do fault people for not acting violently when such action is warranted. I also think that viewing violence as a last resort is a somewhat flawed view. If violence is a last resort that implies I must exhaust all other options of conflict resolution first. Sometimes this is not possible, and sometimes it is not effective. I'm not sure I can provide an example without violating the (stupid and cowardly) rule against advocating violence, but if you'd like we can continue this part of the discussion in PMs, or perhaps u/DomitusOfMassalia or u/ClockworkFool could give me clearer guidelines, or an indulgence or something.