Thanks to Looms I have been reading up on the President to be 2008. great link.
http://www.ontheissues.org/Jesse_Ventura.h...vernment_Reform


The argument over the Constitution and what it really says or declares has been going on since it was written. During debates the demand to honor the "intent" of the Founders is a constant from one side of an issue or the other. But since it is in many cases vague it is open for debate as to their intent.
I agree with Ventura that is was designed more along the lines of guidance than set in stone in many cases. There are sections that are VERY clear and some pieces that seem inspired by Nostradamus for clear interpretation.

Why should the Intent of the Founders be the defining guideline for Constitutional interpretation?

What is the benchmark for defining the "intent" of the founders?

Should the Constitution be rewritten to better reflect the current conditions of society? There are/were several provisions to make the changes difficult to do,so is this safeguard not sufficient to protect the Constitution from whimsical and "heat of the moment " fads and "Will of the Mob" assaults?

What would you change if you could change one thing in the Constitution?

Why should the Intent of the Founders be the defining guideline for Constitutional interpretation?

Knowing history will prevent us from repeating it.

What is the benchmark for defining the "intent" of the founders?

Dairies kept by the founding fathers and the letters they wrote.

Should the Constitution be rewritten to better reflect the current conditions of society?

Nope.

There are/were several provisions to make the changes difficult to do,so is this safeguard not sufficient to protect the Constitution from whimsical and "heat of the moment " fads and "Will of the Mob" assaults?

Yes. 200+ years and only 27 amendments, all stemming from a need to address changing attitudes.

What would you change if you could change one thing in the Constitution?

Nothing. I would change the mind set of people who use it. People need to understand the Constitution, not wave it as a flag, but use it as a shield against swords of destruction.

Why should the Intent of the Founders be the defining guideline for Constitutional interpretation?

If we know the Intent of the Founders when they wrote the Constitution, we can know how to Interpret what they meant.

What is the benchmark for defining the "intent" of the founders?

The Federalist Papers for the original document, and the congressional records for the several amendments.

There are/were several provisions to make the changes difficult to do,so is this safeguard not sufficient to protect the Constitution from whimsical and "heat of the moment " fads and "Will of the Mob" assaults?

Possibly, look at the 18th amendment.....

What would you change if you could change one thing in the Constitution?

The Seventeenth Amendment, Why? Amplifying the Tenth Amendment

What amendment would I want to replace it with? Link (near the bottom of the page)

Why should the Intent of the Founders be the defining guideline for Constitutional interpretation?

It is always the go-to final arbiter. Precedent can be deceiving, errors are built upon errors and the Constitution is left in shambles.

What is the benchmark for defining the "intent" of the founders?

Channeling Jefferson or Madison is not necessary to understand what they believed in and the philosophies they adhered to. They did not hammer out this nation's government in a vacuum.

The rationale of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, rests on the writings of Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, Harrington, Cato's Letters, the English Whigs, Rousseau, Burgh, Montesquieu, Beccaria and many others. These writings Jefferson called, "the elementary books of public right." These writers based their governmental model on clearly defined, strictly limited and delegated powers, held by a government that only keeps that power with the consent of the governed. The citizens retained everything not delegated to the government. Our rights are contractually understood to be inherent and inalienable. That is, our rights spring from a higher plane than the legislative acts of man and that each person's fundamental rights are of such intrinsic value that a person, even willingly, can not relinquish them.

Knowing and understanding what philosophies and principles the framers endorsed and embraced and included in our Constitution is a wonderful thing. Knowing and understanding those philosophies and principles the founders disdained, dismissed and discounted as instructional for the formation of our Republic can be even more informative and helpful, especially when you hear those principles promoted by a candidate for national office. The systems promoted by those writers, mainly Jean Bodin, Sir Robert Filmer and Thomas Hobbes were authoritarian political models that stand in stark contrast to the limited powers / inalienable rights ideals embraced by the founders.

Should the Constitution be rewritten to better reflect the current conditions of society?

No, the unchanging, timeless fundamental principles should be applied to the modern issues.

There are/were several provisions to make the changes difficult to do,so is this safeguard not sufficient to protect the Constitution from whimsical and "heat of the moment " fads and "Will of the Mob" assaults?

The Constitution is more in danger from activist jurists than the constitutional procedure for amendment.

What would you change if you could change one thing in the Constitution?
I would insert language commanding the instruction of every person in the principles behind the Constitution. Jefferson mandated the reading of John Locke and Algernon Sidney at the University of Virginia, I would be happy with just that.

Original intent is not a difficult concept to discover or understand. It is however, at odds with the modern Social Democratic agenda and because of that, The Constitution is dismissed as a metaphysical framework, not intended to establish any rules or restrict governmental action in a meaningful way. Just the simple fact that the Constitution promises to the states a Republican form of government establishes stone walls in the left's path.

Unfortunately for this nation, the citizens have no comprehension of those ideals once considered "self evident." Now, if one speaks them, you are declared a right-wing extremist or worse.

Quite true. The question is "How do we fix this?"


I would go as far to say that the 9th and 10th amendments are SERIOUSLY abused. Part of this is that the states do not have an effective check on the federal government. This was not always so, but it was removed in 1917 (read: 17th amendment).

The other part of the problem is that the House needs to be closer to the people. This can be fixed by decreasing the ratio from 1 Representative per ~600,000 to 1 Rep. per 200,000-100,000 (read: 1,000 or more Represntatives).

Why should the Intent of the Founders be the defining guideline for Constitutional interpretation?

The intent of the founding fathers should always be considered, but we must realize that there are things we have to deal with that they never thought of. There were no trains, automobiles, telephones, airplanes, etc. when the Document was written. Yet over the years many constitutional court cases have involved answering the question "what is interstate commerce." No where was this more evident than when the public accommodations section of the 1965 civil rights act was pinned to the condition of businesses having a significant impact on interstate commerce. A restaurant, for example, was subject to the provision if it got substantial business from an interstate highway.

What is the benchmark for defining the "intent" of the founders?

As others hae already said The Federalist Papers and other primary source documents.

Should the Constitution be rewritten to better reflect the current conditions of society? There are/were several provisions to make the changes difficult to do,so is this safeguard not sufficient to protect the Constitution from whimsical and "heat of the moment " fads and "Will of the Mob" assaults?

I don't think the Constitution should be rewritten. I am opposed to most of the recent suggested amendments, like the one on gay marriage and school prayer. The document was supposed to be a framework. Historically Congress and the courts have fleshed out the working product. As my constitutional law professor said many years ago, "the Constitution is what the courts say it is."

What would you change if you could change one thing in the Constitution?

If you will provide me a wee bit of license here, I have two changes.

1. I would repeal Amendment XXII that restricts Presidents to two terms. Since the amendment was passed, the only three presidents I think might have been elected for a third term were Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton. Eisenhower and Reagan were both advanced in age. My dislike of this amendment is that I don't like term limits in general. If voters want to keep someone until they have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, that should be their choice. I think term limits are artificial.

2. To bring the Constitution in line with current population demographics, I would amend Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 6 to eliminate the requirement of being a natural born citizen. I would, however, place a restriction on the amendment prohibiting anyone, including Arnold, from running for 25 years (basically a generation) from the date of passage. In other words, I agree with the idea, but not passing such an amendment to benefit a particular person.

Why should the Intent of the Founders be the defining guideline for Constitutional interpretation?
I don't think it should be the "defining guideline." Issues raised about the text of the Constitution seem to play with the idea that there was a specific purpose behind each statement beyond what the statement itself says. This kind of deconstructive analysis of the text treats these statements as if they were placeholders for what the Founders really wanted to say, but couldn't or wouldn't for one reason or another. It assumes that there is this whole other world behind the articles, and we have to open them up like doors (or hyperlinks) in order to see what they really mean. I think this does a disservice to the process of creating the document, because, in essence, this kind of thinking culminates in the idea that we don't really need the Constitution because the intentions of the Founders can be gleaned elsewhere.

The idea that the Constitution can be interpreted in many different ways for many different ages seems to be scary to a lot of people, as if there could be a time when it might be seen as a dadaist document, ready to accept all kinds of absurd interpretations. What if, for example, we did not have the history behind the creation of it? Would America be able to govern itself with just the rules?

For me, the opinions of the Founding Fathers about the Constitution are interesting, but if what they had to say in correspondence or other writings did not make it into the Constitution, I have to wonder why. Why, for example, was a specific contextual history not a part of it?

What is the benchmark for defining the "intent" of the founders?
The Constitution itself.

Should the Constitution be rewritten to better reflect the current conditions of society?
It might be an interesting exercise, but would it be possible to write this new Constitution without consulting other writings? Would it be possible to maintain the same level of vague malleability as was in the original using updated language?

There are/were several provisions to make the changes difficult to do,so is this safeguard not sufficient to protect the Constitution from whimsical and "heat of the moment " fads and "Will of the Mob" assaults?
Yes, it is sufficient.

What would you change if you could change one thing in the Constitution?
Nothing as far as I can see. But I'm still young.

Christopher, I so adore you and thats not patronizing. You have called me ever-so-passionate which I was not sure was a good or bad thing but I love the Constitution and Bill of rights and so many things the Founders stood for, as hard as they are to interpret and as opposed as they were at times over the right course of action, but the wording, the concept was so amazing in itself.
Here you ask difficult questions but so worth the thought.

I may have to freeform it about the Constitution.

Why should the Intent of the Founders be the defining guideline for Constitutional interpretation?

Because they wrote it? I believe they had an ideal, they knew this would be an ideal very hard to live up to given the nature of politics and people over time, but they outlined the very first 'european' ideology (other than native americans whom they copied the idea from- 'the Constutution of the Iroquois nation) that the 'people' could govern themselves and have a say altogether, other than a higher aristocracy or monarchy simply taking advantage of lower classes by birthright, and bleeding the people for wealth. THIS is the reason to read and know where they were going and somewhat keep to their philosophy.

What is the benchmark for defining the "intent" of the founders?
I would think the Federalist papers, but really even the Founders were at odds with each other and it was a time of making something so new, they worked on many compromises even then.

Should the Constitution be rewritten to better reflect the current conditions of society?

Absolutely not. What are the 'current conditions of society' that need Constitutional rewrite?. Nothing so grave. What will they be in 2025, 2090? We have an amendment process, I believe that is adequate. It is bad enough that what the Founders truly foresaw, that government would overtake what was direly fought for and granted to the people.. would eventually be relinquished by stupidity and undermined piece by piece until nothing of the original intent survived. However, there will still be a day when the Constitution is recognised as one of the greatest living or dead documents in world history.

There are/were several provisions to make the changes difficult to do,so is this safeguard not sufficient to protect the Constitution from whimsical and "heat of the moment " fads and "Will of the Mob" assaults?

We have gone through some, but few in a few hundred years, prohibition, and now gay marriage, or hetero marriage as sacred may be on the table. I will be truly suprised if this one makes it, but it could, of course it will be retracted in 10 years if it does go. The gay marriage amendment is backlash to a situation that is tide ridden, sort of like female or Af-Am persons rights were once in question and won also by tidal force.

If we think the 'mob' can make things happen by the Constitution, it is truly slow in coming unless the collective truly loses their mind, such as what happened with prohibition. Strangley it was the same women that fought 100 years for the vote, that won prohibition in short period of time, yet the vote for women was not as easy a task.

When writing the Constutution, Abigail Adams wrote to John:


Women were granted the right to vote in 1920, 144 years later.

Kind of strange when you think about it, then even in my lifetime females were second class citizens and we fought really hard to make that change, without an amendment to the Constitution. Some people cannot accept the inevitable in that ALL people deserve the right to life as dignified humans with the same rights as all others. Gay citizens will also have their day. And they will be the last to finally get their rights, and we shall then move to a fully integrative society.

I think the amendment process is difficult enough to thwart an extreme mob mentality, but not flawless. However, its well thought out. Of course there were only something like 13 states when the amendment process was written, but I have to give kudos to the founders because I truly think they were directed by the gods or some divinity when they wrote what would become an american dream.

I personally stand by the Constutution with all its flaws and rolleroaster interpretations. Without it we are lost in an abyss and are sure to lose to abject governmental tyranny without recourse. We have it, and we can live by it so far, quite an achievment.