this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Just because America hasn't lived up to its values doesn't mean that the values are wrong
Dude. Our constitution said black people were 3/5ths of a human.
Exactly, thanks for supporting my point.
Does it still? Or did we change the Constitution to better reflect our values?
I mean the constitution is the backbone of the system and it used to be updated, but now people treat it as this perfect monolithic unchanging thing. If any modern politician tryd to add amendments it would not go well(also Canadian here)
I agree with that. Thomas Jefferson had the right idea that the Constitution should be rewritten every generation to better reflect the people.
Maybe not that often, but certainly more than it is
Every generation sounds about right (maybe not completely rewritten, but with significant amendments).
One generation recognizes that if black people are free, they should vote. A couple generations later starts recognizing that women are people, not property, as well, and that they should have the right to vote. Then the next generation realizes that shenanigans are being used to keep people from voting, so they get make those things illegal. Then the next decides to establish 18-year-olds are adults, so they should be able to vote.
...and then they decided that things are great, gerrymandering is fine, skewing the voting to benefit the party in power should be within the powers of the states, and outright ignoring a public vote is perfectly reasonable in a democracy, so the constitution should be treated as a complete, unalterable document, since we apparently got it right now.
And that's just voting. I definitely think we could use some changes based on this new generation (gender/orientation protection, voting rights, etc).
I've long thought that every amendment and major law needs an expiration date upon which time the current legislative body is forced to vote to uphold it or let it expire.
We shouldn't have these because we have sanctified them, we should have them because we still believe in them. If we don't believe in them anymore, they need to go.