The Founders Would Not Recognize Originalism, Why Should We?

[Cecilie1200]

America did not happen by accident. Without the Constitution as the guiding document and the STRICT interpretation of it, America would be Northern Mexico.

The Constitution of the United States is Evolutionary in nature, not Stagnant.

Its interpretation changes to match the changing needs of The People and their Republic.

The Founding Fathers would be just fine with that; most would probably applaud that.

And for the handful who would not be fine with that, we'll just have to settle for disagreeing at a distance of 230 years or so.

Fuck the change by interpretation. That's not how it's supposed to work. the Founding Fathers sure as hell wouldn't be fine with it.

It's almost as though they included a process for changing the Constitution because they DIDN'T want it "changing by interpretation".

The arguments for the so-called "living Constitution" are all beyond stupid.

Of course. Look who's coming up with them.

 

[Kondor3]

...It's almost as though they included a process for changing the Constitution because they DIDN'T want it "changing by interpretation".

If that were true, there would be no need for a Supreme Court which settles matters of Constitutional import based upon (1) verbiage and (2) the needs of the Republic.

 

[Kondor3]

...Have you heard about the amendment process?

Yep.

In the case of "interpretation" is it NOT the WORDS that change.

It is the MEANING of the words.

A word (or collection of words) can be spun in multiple directions.

Spin A works for a while.

Then somebody comes along and says, well, what that really means (or can be construed to mean) is B.

If the needs of the People and the Republic evolve to embrace B rather than A, then the Supreme Court rules on whether that's legitimate, in a Constitutional framework.

If they find in favor of Spin B, then B controls, from that point forward.

Checks and balances.

Evolution.

Living, breathing Law, metaphorically speaking.

It's the way the world works.

It's the way the Founding Fathers intended our part of the world to work.

Sometimes it works in favor of Liberals.

Sometimes it works in favor of Conservatives.

But it works; it's one of the three pillars of the governance of the United States.

If you don't like it, you can always move to Russia, where their checks-and-balances may prove more to your taste.

 

[danielpalos]

what meanings have changed since our Constitution was written?

just lousy, right wing reading comprehension is all it usually is.

 

[MarathonMike]

...Have you heard about the amendment process?

Yep.

In the case of "interpretation" is it NOT the WORDS that change.

It is the MEANING of the words.

A word (or collection of words) can be spun in multiple directions.

Spin A works for a while.

Then somebody comes along and says, well, what that really means (or can be construed to mean) is B.

If the needs of the People and the Republic evolve to embrace B rather than A, then the Supreme Court rules on whether that's legitimate, in a Constitutional framework.

If they find in favor of Spin B, then B controls, from that point forward.

Checks and balances.

Evolution.

Living, breathing Law, metaphorically speaking.

It's the way the world works.

It's the way the Founding Fathers intended our part of the world to work.

Sometimes it works in favor of Liberals.

Sometimes it works in favor of Conservatives.

But it works; it's one of the three pillars of the governance of the United States.

If you don't like it, you can always move to Russia, where their checks-and-balances may prove more to your taste.

I like the Constitution and America just fine. I don't like interpreting what the meaning of "is" is.

 

[Cecilie1200]

...It's almost as though they included a process for changing the Constitution because they DIDN'T want it "changing by interpretation".

If that were true, there would be no need for a Supreme Court which settles matters of Constitutional import based upon (1) verbiage and (2) the needs of the Republic.

Well, at least we know you were consistent on misunderstanding the Constitution all the way through Article 3. So congratulations on that.

 

[Cecilie1200]

...Have you heard about the amendment process?

Yep.

In the case of "interpretation" is it NOT the WORDS that change.

It is the MEANING of the words.

A word (or collection of words) can be spun in multiple directions.

Spin A works for a while.

Then somebody comes along and says, well, what that really means (or can be construed to mean) is B.

If the needs of the People and the Republic evolve to embrace B rather than A, then the Supreme Court rules on whether that's legitimate, in a Constitutional framework.

If they find in favor of Spin B, then B controls, from that point forward.

Checks and balances.

Evolution.

Living, breathing Law, metaphorically speaking.

It's the way the world works.

It's the way the Founding Fathers intended our part of the world to work.

Sometimes it works in favor of Liberals.

Sometimes it works in favor of Conservatives.

But it works; it's one of the three pillars of the governance of the United States.

If you don't like it, you can always move to Russia, where their checks-and-balances may prove more to your taste.

I have absolutely no reason to believe that the Founders thought the choice of words they wrote down was irrelevant, because they expected us to simply read them to say whatever we wanted at the moment. That contradicts the entire purpose of words, and of writing down laws in the first place.

Of course, I don't have an agenda that requires that a group of unelected oligarchs be able to impose legal requirements on people that I cannot get the people themselves to agree to, so that's probably why I'm free to use reason and logic.

 

[bendog]

what meanings have changed since our Constitution was written?

just lousy, right wing reading comprehension is all it usually is.

That's actually a good question.

Literalism has two schools of thought, historical and contemporary. A historical literalist looks for the 18th century meaning of words. A contemporary literalist consciously ignores what words would have meant to the drafters and people ratifying the constitution, and looks only to the contemporary meaning of words.

https://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_intr.html

Which definition of infringe is used, results in two different meanings of the 2nd. Scalia rejected the result contemporary meaning would have resulted in.

 

[danielpalos]

what meanings have changed since our Constitution was written?

just lousy, right wing reading comprehension is all it usually is.

That's actually a good question.

Literalism has two schools of thought, historical and contemporary. A historical literalist looks for the 18th century meaning of words. A contemporary literalist consciously ignores what words would have meant to the drafters and people ratifying the constitution, and looks only to the contemporary meaning of words.

https://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_intr.html

Which definition of infringe is used, results in two different meanings of the 2nd. Scalia rejected the result contemporary meaning would have resulted in.

just lousy right wing reading comprehension.

our Second Article of Amendment is not a Constitution unto itself.

 

[bendog]

what meanings have changed since our Constitution was written?

just lousy, right wing reading comprehension is all it usually is.

That's actually a good question.

Literalism has two schools of thought, historical and contemporary. A historical literalist looks for the 18th century meaning of words. A contemporary literalist consciously ignores what words would have meant to the drafters and people ratifying the constitution, and looks only to the contemporary meaning of words.

https://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_intr.html

Which definition of infringe is used, results in two different meanings of the 2nd. Scalia rejected the result contemporary meaning would have resulted in.

just lousy right wing reading comprehension.

our Second Article of Amendment is not a Constitution unto itself.

? The rules of constitutional interpretation apply to post-ratification amendments - such as the 14th - as well as the constitution and original BOR that were ratified at the same time.

I am not a modernist or cotemporaneous reader. I don't subscribe to originalism or a living constitution. Some concepts like commerce and urbanization could never have been anticipated by the Founders. Free trade, of course. Maybe even economies dependent of a single energy source that is found unevenly in different countries. But the ability to formulate propaganda and transmit it in nanoseconds to millions of people who have been pre-screened as to how they individually can be likely targets of consuming as true what others would discard as obvious falsehoods ... no fucking way. LOL

But to an 18th century person "infringe" did not mean some temporary and rather trivial impediment. It was more like "defeat."

Conversely, the drafters of the 14th explicitly considered whether the children born to people here illegally should be citizens. If birthright citizenship is the target, they gotta find a way around that fact.

 

[danielpalos]

Only well regulated militia may not be Infringed, when it really really matters.

And, how can the right wing allege to subscribe to the whole and entire Concept of natural rights, in its most basic form, natural birth.

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

Only well regulated militia may not be Infringed, when it really really matters.

Americans and the SCOTUS are laughing at you.

 

[danielpalos]

Only well regulated militia may not be Infringed, when it really really matters.

Americans and the SCOTUS are laughing at you.

No, they aren't. I actually understand the federal doctrine.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

America did not happen by accident. Without the Constitution as the guiding document and the STRICT interpretation of it, America would be Northern Mexico.

Inferior People Have a Pathetic Need to Feel Superior to the Majority

Americans should make their own political decisions, not be tied down for centuries by shallow and primitive aristocratic ideas from the horse-and-buggy era. You want to be some entitled bully bossing everybody around by telling us we can't ask only whether some proposal is good for the country, but first have to check with some self-appointed supremacy document. Believing that majority rule is "mob rule" is the lowest form of self-glorifying treason. If you don't like what the majority thinks, the only option you should be allowed is to try to persuade us to change our opinions, not to play some infallible Pope forcing us to bend to your will.

"Self appointed supremacy document?" Could you possibly be any more of an America hating douchebag?

Constitutionazis Slurping and Drooling

An 18th Century document that empowers an oligarchy doesn't stand for America. It stands in America's way. Could you possibly be any more of a suck-up to the status quo?

we allege to subscribe to Capitalism. only lousy management stands in America's way.

We're Sinking Because No One Realizes That College Education Is a Fraud and Should Not Be Rewarded

Unions would force corporations to hire smarter and more energetic management, instead of the lazy Diploma Dumbos who turn a profit only because of low blue-collar wages. People should start on the ground floor and work their way up, not go off to a sheltered university and learn irrelevant and unrealistic Business Administration dogma. At America's most successful economy in the 1950s, only one-third of the CEOs had graduated from college.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

America did not happen by accident. Without the Constitution as the guiding document and the STRICT interpretation of it, America would be Northern Mexico.

Inferior People Have a Pathetic Need to Feel Superior to the Majority

Americans should make their own political decisions, not be tied down for centuries by shallow and primitive aristocratic ideas from the horse-and-buggy era. You want to be some entitled bully bossing everybody around by telling us we can't ask only whether some proposal is good for the country, but first have to check with some self-appointed supremacy document. Believing that majority rule is "mob rule" is the lowest form of self-glorifying treason. If you don't like what the majority thinks, the only option you should be allowed is to try to persuade us to change our opinions, not to play some infallible Pope forcing us to bend to your will.

I'm not even sure what point you are trying to make. "not to play some infallible Pope forcing us to bend to your will". What Pope? Me? Where did mob rule enter the discussion? What inferior people, Constitutionalists?

Puppets Programmed by the Plutocracy: Why They Allowed This Copycat Internet

Typical Netwit dodge. Pretend you're confused because you can't handle forbidden perspectives.

some on the left call it, crony capitalism.

By Allowing Dynasty, Our Economy Will Die Nasty

That's to cover up the cancer of hereditary ranking in the economic and political structure. Familyism is more primitive than tribalism, including the virtual inheritance of even mid-level positions.

 

[Contumacious]

What do historians make of originalism? Jack Rakove, the Stanford historian and one of the foremost experts on the revolutionary era, argues that there wasn’t just one meaning of the Constitution at the time it was written and then ratified, but rather the founders had disagreements among themselves over its meaning.

He points to the great Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, who wrote that “historians can never forget that it is a debate they are interpreting.”

The inability to recognize the extent to which the Founding Fathers argued among themselves is a major flaw in the conservative case for originalism since it is dependent on the theory that people in the 18th century shared a common interpretation of the Constitution.

In fact, they did not, as one of the earliest debates over the meaning of the Constitution shows.

The Founders Would Not Recognize Originalism—Why Should We?

I bet you will argue that we must adhere to the Communist Manifesto as it was ORIGINALLY INTENDED by "Founding Fathers" Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Shut the fuck up.

 

[danielpalos]

America did not happen by accident. Without the Constitution as the guiding document and the STRICT interpretation of it, America would be Northern Mexico.

Inferior People Have a Pathetic Need to Feel Superior to the Majority

Americans should make their own political decisions, not be tied down for centuries by shallow and primitive aristocratic ideas from the horse-and-buggy era. You want to be some entitled bully bossing everybody around by telling us we can't ask only whether some proposal is good for the country, but first have to check with some self-appointed supremacy document. Believing that majority rule is "mob rule" is the lowest form of self-glorifying treason. If you don't like what the majority thinks, the only option you should be allowed is to try to persuade us to change our opinions, not to play some infallible Pope forcing us to bend to your will.

"Self appointed supremacy document?" Could you possibly be any more of an America hating douchebag?

Constitutionazis Slurping and Drooling

An 18th Century document that empowers an oligarchy doesn't stand for America. It stands in America's way. Could you possibly be any more of a suck-up to the status quo?

we allege to subscribe to Capitalism. only lousy management stands in America's way.

We're Sinking Because No One Realizes That College Education Is a Fraud and Should Not Be Rewarded

Unions would force corporations to hire smarter and more energetic management, instead of the lazy Diploma Dumbos who turn a profit only because of low blue-collar wages. People should start on the ground floor and work their way up, not go off to a sheltered university and learn irrelevant and unrealistic Business Administration dogma. At America's most successful economy in the 1950s, only one-third of the CEOs had graduated from college.

solving simple poverty, promotes the general welfare.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

America did not happen by accident. Without the Constitution as the guiding document and the STRICT interpretation of it, America would be Northern Mexico.

The Constitution of the United States is Evolutionary in nature, not Stagnant.

Its interpretation changes to match the changing needs of The People and their Republic.

The Founding Fathers would be just fine with that; most would probably applaud that.

And for the handful who would not be fine with that, we'll just have to settle for disagreeing at a distance of 230 years or so.

Have you heard about the amendment process?

This Sacred Cow Gives No Milk, Only Methane

It's too obstructive. Why do we have to go through the insulting anti-democratic process to outlaw a simple thing like flag-burning? Every piece of legislation should automatically amend the Constitution. In a free country rather than one where the revolution was typically betrayed, the Constitution must be only a temporary start-up document. If you mistrust the lawmakers, put changes on a national referendum, as Brexit was done in the United Kingdom.

 

[Contumacious]

Inferior People Have a Pathetic Need to Feel Superior to the Majority

Americans should make their own political decisions, not be tied down for centuries by shallow and primitive aristocratic ideas from the horse-and-buggy era. You want to be some entitled bully bossing everybody around by telling us we can't ask only whether some proposal is good for the country, but first have to check with some self-appointed supremacy document. Believing that majority rule is "mob rule" is the lowest form of self-glorifying treason. If you don't like what the majority thinks, the only option you should be allowed is to try to persuade us to change our opinions, not to play some infallible Pope forcing us to bend to your will.

"Self appointed supremacy document?" Could you possibly be any more of an America hating douchebag?

Constitutionazis Slurping and Drooling

An 18th Century document that empowers an oligarchy doesn't stand for America. It stands in America's way. Could you possibly be any more of a suck-up to the status quo?

we allege to subscribe to Capitalism. only lousy management stands in America's way.

We're Sinking Because No One Realizes That College Education Is a Fraud and Should Not Be Rewarded

Unions would force corporations to hire smarter and more energetic management, instead of the lazy Diploma Dumbos who turn a profit only because of low blue-collar wages. People should start on the ground floor and work their way up, not go off to a sheltered university and learn irrelevant and unrealistic Business Administration dogma. At America's most successful economy in the 1950s, only one-third of the CEOs had graduated from college.

solving simple poverty, promotes the general welfare.

So is our job to support your lazy ass? SO is our job to make sure that you actually leave the house at 5AM and that you are actually looking for gainful employment?

Shut the fuck up

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

what meanings have changed since our Constitution was written?

just lousy, right wing reading comprehension is all it usually is.

An Anti-Democratic Document Dictated by Elitist Lawyers for the 1%

The whole specious spectrum believes in having an overlord crushing the people's will. High and might lowlife gives us these hypocritical and simplistic political choices. A real man asserts himself, he doesn't beg acceptance from some bullying self-appointed authority.