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Is the U.S. Constitution in danger of becoming as dogmatic as the Bible?
When I see pictures of Jesus holding the Constitution, I worry that we're putting our Founding Fathers on too high a pedestal. The document was intended as a way forward from what they saw as the oppression of a monarchy, not as a document that would forever be enshrined as perfection of government. When government fails to move forward at the same pace its population does, it has become ineffective, and I think that's what we're seeing now- polticians worried more about things like budget ceilings than about giving people their rights, making institutions accountable for theft and fraud, and ensuring the welfare of the common people. This isn't about Republican or Democrat, nor is it about white or black, straight or gay, rich or poor. Do you think, merely as a matter of politics in general, that we are making the Constitution too.... rigid in how we make our laws?
2 Answers
- ?Lv 69 years agoFavorite Answer
The Constitution was viewed as elastic by the majority of the founding generation. Strict construction was deemed subversive by conservatives in those days.
' A member of a majority of the legislature would say to these defamers – "Your politics originate in immorality, in a disregard of the maxims of good faith and the rights of property, and if they could prevail must end in national disgrace and confusion. Your rules of construction for the authorities vested in the Government of the Union would arrest all its essential movements and bring it back in practice to the same state of imbecility which rendered the old confederation contemptible. Your principles of liberty are principles of licentiousness incompatible with all government. You sacrifice everything that is venerable and substantial in society to the vain reveries of a false and new fangled philosophy" '
-- Alexander Hamilton; from letter to George Washington (Aug 18, 1792)
"The Men who oppose a strong & energetic government are, in my opinion, narrow minded politicians"
-- George Washington; from letter to Alexander Hamilton (July 10, 1787)
- Jeff DLv 79 years ago
The US Constitution doesn't claim to be perfect because, unlike the bible, the US Constitution has a mechanism to change it--called Constitutional Amendments. If you don't like something about it then change it; but don't say that we shouldn't follow it.
