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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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.
There’s a long history of the executive and legislature infringing upon our constitutional rights. There’s also a long history of the judiciary striking down those infringements and upholding our constitutional rights. This is what I’m referring to when I say the Constitution has acted as a safeguard throughout our history as a nation.
Regarding other actions we need to take, I neglected to mention the most important thing, namely that parents need to take back control of their children’s upbringing. For far too long we have abdicated this responsibility to the state and more recently, the internet.
You are quite correct to say that government is an extension of culture. The evildoers have been manipulating our culture for decades on end primarily through indoctrinating schoolchildren with their Social Marxism. This insidious cultural reformation has run its course to such a degree that we are on the precipice of voting in actual Marxism. We simply cannot withstand another generation of this indoctrination The only way we can stem the tide on the impending color revolution on the horizon is to restore American values in our education system and reclaim our responsibility for raising the youth. This happens from household to household and on the local level through direct parental involvement.
I agree with your sentiments regarding the role of government being to provide security. The social contract, as described by Locke, is an exchange of personal freedom for social security. In a purely natural state, we have infinite freedom. This is not entirely desirable being that in a purely natural state there is nothing to protect us person or our property from violence and theft other than the threat of our own violence.
In a civilized society, we have agreed to forfeit our natural freedom to commit violence and theft. Therefore, the legitimacy of any government is largely predicated upon the society agreeing that the government has a near-monopoly on the use of force. Should this agreement break, violent revolution is likely to follow.
I firmly believe violence is an option of last resort. Exhausting all other options is mandatory in my view. This is true at a scale i.e. regardless of whether we are discussing personal disputes or a corrupt government. However, if it is true that other options are impossible or ineffective, as you suggest, then those options have been exhausted. That being said, America is far from exhausting our other options. To be frank, the only reason things have gotten this bad is due to wide spread apathy. People would rather spend their time mindlessly consuming than actually taking interest in their society.
Previously you wrote that the tree of liberty must be fed with blood. It’s a profound quote. However, I also ascribe to the notion that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, which is ironically another quote from Jefferson. We, as a society, have utterly failed to maintain the degree of vigilance required and we are paying dearly for that failure.
Unfortunately, this comes as no surprise. All great societies follow the same general pattern: Revolution -> Golden Age -> Apathy -> Corruption -> Societal Breakdown -> Revolution. This is a natural and perhaps unavoidable cycle. When government is corrupt and mistreating the people, the people naturally become vigilant. Given sufficient corruption, the people may even be willing to overthrow the government through violence (i.e. the social contract breaks). However, when a Golden Age occurs, the natural inclination of the public becomes one of apathy. After all, if society is operating smoothly and there is abundance, it naturally follows that the people will become less civically-minded and more inclined to consume. However, once apathy becomes common, governmental corruption necessarily follow due to human greed. And thus the cycle repeats.
The judiciary has just as long a history of trampling on our rights as the other branches. I'll bring up some specific cases if you'd like, but they are just as guilty of using their personal beliefs to override the Constitution as the other branches. The Constitution itself is inert and can do nothing, and the institution you are using it as a proxy for is just as guilty of trampling on our rights as the other parts of the government.
Couldn't agree more. The family and the church are always the first institutions attacked by Marxists, as these are the most foundational building blocks of a society. We must repair this institutions if we are to have any hope of reforming our society through any means.
This is once again probably an area in which we primarily disagree on degrees and semantics. However, this is an area in which I believe the precise degrees and semantics are critical, which is why I'm so willing to passionately argue these points.
I feel that too many people, even if they admit that violence is an option, are not prepared to carry that out when necessary. That by viewing violence as a "last resort" they push it so far down the road that any violent action they might take is too late or too weak to be effect if resolving a situation. People ought to be prepared for violence. Not just to be victims of it, but to be capable of effectively inflicting it on others in defense of themselves, their rights, and those around them. Yes, violence is a "last resort", or at least a means of putting non-violent options back on the table, but it can only be a last resort if we are actually capable of carrying it out effectively.
America is not far from exhausting our other options, especially on a historical timescale, but I would agree that we are not out of non-violent solutions yet. I legitimately believe the Federal Government is a lost cause. The status quo has been set against our freedoms for too long there for reform to come from within. Reforms of the Federal Government must come from outside, and they must throw out every individual in it (elected or otherwise), along with a complete reset of our legal framework (essentially, keep the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. Everything else must be removed, and can be added back after we determine if it's what we want.)
I don't know if these radical reforms are possible without violence, or at least the credible threat of it. If they are, they will most certainly have to start at the local and state level, as you mention. Even so, I can't see America emerging from this as a unified nation. There are too many central beliefs on which we can no longer agree. Unless one ideology can win out and crush those incompatible with it (a process which takes generations, a length of time I don't believe we have) the only peaceful solution is a national divorce. This will undoubtedly result in our influence in international politics diminishing, which will likely have some negative consequences, but I don't see us gaining our freedoms back without some significant sacrifices at this point.
This right here captures exactly why I called the Constitution and Bill of Rights "just pieces of paper". In the hypothetical situation where we are able to reform our government, how do we ensure that in a generation or two it isn't trampling on our (or our children's or grandchildren's) rights again? No law is capable of enforcing itself, or we wouldn't have our current issues with the constitution being trampled. If we could rely on a steady stream of even a few good men we could simply set up an Autocracy and not have to worry the rest of the people about the functioning of their government. We must ensure that we are vigilant in preserving those freedoms, and that we impress upon successive generations the importance of that vigilance in preserving those freedoms. We can implement whatever sort of government we like, but without personal and societal vigilance to preserve that government, our freedoms are only ever one breath away from vanishing.