Tech_Esq
Sic Semper Tyrannis!
Shame on you for trying to distort what he said.
He was ABSOLUTELY talking about the way blacks were treated under our constitution. He was talking about them being considered less than a full person. In case you are unaware, and I know you aren't, the founding fathers specifically didn't make slavery illegal because they were afraid they wouldn't get the constitution enacted. That is a sad fact of life in a country that is theoretically founded on "liberty".
There is a difference between thining there are flaws in the constitution and thinking it is "flawed" in the sense that you are implying.
What do YOU think he was talking about?
AH! now that's the correct answer. It was the way blacks were treated by the Constitution because the Constitution did not outlaw slavery! Not because of the punishment of slave holding states by the 3/5ths rule. That is a distortion that is used to confuse people who don't know the Constitution. It makes it sound like black were counted as less than a person for the purpose of institutionalizing their status as such. When it was a penalty to the slave-holding states.
I think that people who know Constitutional history know that it is a document that represented pages and pages of compromises, some large, some small. Is a document flawed if their are compromises in it? If so, every law ever made except those handed down by dictators are flawed. I don't think that's a very tenable position.
The Constitution did as much work on the slave issue as was possible at the time. It banned the importation of slaves at a date certain. It penalized the slave states by reducing their potential representation (a carrot one might say, if they would only let the slaves be free, they could increase their Congressional power. I'm sure few if any slave states ever really considered that). It is true that the Constitution did not settle the matter of slavery in that one document. It took generations and a war to do that. I think it it too much to have asked of a document meant to set forth a form of government to also address a list of social ills. Instead, it provides a framework within which a list of social ills can be addressed.
When slavery was finally resolved, the Constitution provided a framework to pass the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and address aspects that could not be addressed in 1787. Is it a flawed document or a document that is fundamentally flawed? I don't see it. Not at all.
If we take the point of view that the document should not have been sign without resolution of the slave issue, it would have meant no Constitution. Would the world have been better off without an American Constitution or is it better off with one. I know what my answer is.