CBS NEWS: 'Let's Give Up On The Constitution'

[KILLER_CLOWN]

Is the U.S. Constitution obsolete?

For anyone who missed this a few weeks ago, myself included -- CBS Sunday Morning with Georgetown professor of Constitutional Law, Louis Seidman.

What happens if freedom of speech falls out of public favor. Does Professor Seidman believe that we should therefore abandon our most sacred right because the only document protecting it happens to be... old?

You want to change the Constitution? Get an amendment passed. Until then, keep your hands of the parchment.



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Transcript

Georgetown professor of Constitutional Law Louis Michael Seidman (Bio - Link)

I've got a simple idea: Let's give up on the Constitution. I know, it sounds radical, but it's really not. Constitutional disobedience is as American as apple pie. For example, most of our greatest Presidents -- Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, and both Roosevelts -- had doubts about the Constitution, and many of them disobeyed it when it got in their way.

To be clear, I don't think we should give up on everything in the Constitution. The Constitution has many important and inspiring provisions, but we should obey these because they are important and inspiring, not because a bunch of people who are now long-dead favored them two centuries ago. Unfortunately, the Constitution also contains some provisions that are not so inspiring. For example, one allows a presidential candidate who is rejected by a majority of the American people to assume office. Suppose that Barack Obama really wasn't a natural-born citizen. So what? Constitutional obedience has a pernicious impact on our political culture. Take the recent debate about gun control. None of my friends can believe it, but I happen to be skeptical of most forms of gun control. I understand, though, that's not everyone's view, and I'm eager to talk with people who disagree.

But what happens when the issue gets Constitutional-ized? Then we turn the question over to lawyers, and lawyers do with it what lawyers do. So instead of talking about whether gun control makes sense in our country, we talk about what people thought of it two centuries ago. Worse yet, talking about gun control in terms of constitutional obligation needlessly raises the temperature of political discussion. Instead of a question on policy, about which reasonable people can disagree, it becomes a test of one's commitment to our foundational document and, so, to America itself.

This is our country. We live in it, and we have a right to the kind of country we want. We would not allow the French or the United Nations to rule us, and neither should we allow people who died over two centuries ago and knew nothing of our country as it exists today. If we are to take back our own country, we have to start making decisions for ourselves, and stop deferring to an ancient and outdated document.



Here's a good cartoon:
Founding Fathers Discuss The Constitution



http://dailybail.com/home/cbs-news-l...stitution.html

[CoMoChief]

I bet Direkshun, Cosmo, Literature, and all of the liberal goons are passionately flogging to all of this

[Comrade Crapski]

The elections over, Obamao has more flexibility.

[theelusiveeightrop]

CBS "News" ? Funny.

[rockymtnchief]

Don't like the Constitution? Move somewhere else!

[La literatura]

Originally Posted by CoMoChief

I bet Direkshun, Cosmo, Literature, and all of the liberal goons are passionately flogging to all of this

I can only speak for myself, but I respect originalism as a statutory interpretation. I have a different view than the professor featured in the video of that idea, and also, possibly, a different idea of what the ultimate conclusion of the 2nd Amend. interpretation is within an originalism interpretation.

I have the now-outdated view of the 2nd Amend. that it is less about personal safety against other citizens than it is about forming militias (the National Guard in each state).

So my view would be that the federal gov't cannot make laws that restrict national guard members from owning guns (any gun), but that the states can regulate them itself.

Like I said, this view is now outdated, and pretty much everyone subscribes to the view that the 2nd Amend. is about how grandma has a right to own a gun to protect herself from robbers. While I think that's a good idea, I don't think it's the original intent of the 2nd Amend.

Actually, the original view of the Founders would not think that the Bill of Rights applied to state regulations. In a truly originalist view, the 2nd Amend. (as well as the other ten, like free speech) would only apply as a restriction to Congress -- not the states.

So, if a state said something today like, "Dear citizens of South Carolina. You can not protest against this new law we are about to enact. If you pass out literature against it, we will arrest you." Pretending for a moment that South Carolina did not provide a freedom of speech in their own state constitution, an originalist view of the 1st Amend. would say, "Yeah, that's your problem. You should elect some better representatives."

Today, we don't say that because most of the Bill of Rights have been incorporated. The Supreme Court essentially said that "Fundamental Rights" must be protected by states, regardless of the original intent of the Constitution and BOR.

So we go along with that, particularly once we realized that some states just sucked at protecting fundamental rights (see Jim Crow).