The constitution?

FiveB247x

My point was not to emphasize a golden age of involvement, but to merely say, the average person in our nation is now far less aware of the world and nation around them even though there's far more opportunity to access to information and ability to be involved if you wanted too. For a long period in our history, the average citizen was aware of the current events around them and specifically how it effected them and our nation as a whole. Voting is just an act some people partake in either every 2 of 4 years where as staying informed or being involved is a daily routine. The simplest thing even as reading a newspaper to stay informed wasn't even done by one of our most recent Presidents. Politics and party affiliation/biases aside, there's something very fundamentally wrong with a population that checks out on it's own affairs yet complains when things are left in the hand of greed and power-mongers. This is the catalyst for the downfall of our republic as it is and was the only thing ever built in the system to keep it balanced. It's out of balance and now there is no going back to fix it. As for the nation spiraling down, I'd love to hear and have you list some detailed examples of how this is not correct. Whether it's socially, politically, economically or morally, our nation and society has lost its way and are just floundering to hold onto any last grasps of what we consider legitimacy or decency. Whether it's wall street robbing the citizens through government bailouts or the failure of the family structure to create a young generation inspired to fix the future, all shining examples of how we're on a big drop. And no that doesn't mean one day everyone will be speaking Chinese or Russia will take over the world, it merely means we'll be on the same level playing field as other powers in the world. Our economy sucks and shows no real sign of upswing, we owe far too much to legitimately get out of debt without drastically changing every way we operate as a nation (citizens wouldn't stand for this kind of adjustment) and morally, we've become a nation of entitled and spoiled people who value nothing but money and consumerism which both leave a person seeking further to create a false sense of happiness but only for a brief time. So I ask you, where's the next leaders.. where's the hope?? There is none and we just delude ourselves to thinking that things aren't as bad as they actually are. It's not conspiracy, it's not fixable, it's reality and it's far worse than anyone is willing to fix... so we slowly but surely spiral down as the system and nations' tenets crumble. The economy, the education system, the healthcare system, social security, the military... little by little each shows big cracks in the armor til there's a point of no return..and guess what.. we've past it. Our lifestyle is not balanced nor feasible for this many people, in these times, with these people's mentalities. But I'd love to hear your plans or commentary saying otherwise, so please do post it.

Go Beavers wrote:

FiveB247x wrote:

Thanks!

VINNY GOOMBA wrote:

FiveB has great posts all the way around in this thread.

Don't really agree with the "lackluster involvement" comments and "nation is spiraling down". It suggests that there was this ideal time in America's past where the people had the power and were all actively involved. Seeing how women couldn't vote until 1920, you could say that half the population was completely shut out of the process, as well as other minorities. Thankfully, we have amendments.

mikepegg44

brandon10 wrote:

I asked this in another thread. I don't understand the obsession with a document that was written so long ago. My grandparents can barely work a remote control, why would I want to let the words from so long ago dictate the way society is governed today?

Americans get so worked up about the constitution. But if this document is so great, then why all the amendments?

I guess I'm just looking for answers from my American friends on either side of the political spectrum. What's with the obsession over the constitution?

there isn't a whole lot to add to this thread from my perspective other than to reiterate that the Constitution is there to show the framework for how our Union is supposed to work. The explicit and implied powers within the document have set a frame work for a very successful type of government. Unfortunately, like with any good idea, there are those that abuse the system for personal gain at the expense of the union...this happens at the local level, but unfortunately it happens with more grave consequences at the national level. That isn't the fault of the document, but the fault of those that spit fire and lies in its name. The Union itself has become a state and that was never meant to happen. Basically one clause, the interstate commerce clause, is the reason the federal government has become so involved in local and state governments. But fortunately or unfortunately the document, which was written surprisingly well 200 plus years ago, is open for interpretation and things like the interstate commerce clause end up interpreted so the federal government can regulate all sorts of other things that end up not really supposed to be federal powers...like drugs for instance. The police powers are supposed to be reserved for the states, in which they are granted the power to make laws protecting the people...Drugs should not be prohibited by the federal government, but by states themselves.
But that is my interpretation
I guess if I could get enough people to agree with my interpretation of the document I could do something about it...and there in lies its beauty...the country can look a lot of different ways and remain constitutional...doesn't mean I have to agree with the interpretation...and the document itself has set protections guaranteed to everyone to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. I just wish more people would take an active role in the people's job...which is simply to be involved and vote. I actually have come away from typing this appreciating the document even more.

polaris_x

the constitution has been shat on every since it was written ... it's getting to the point where it's simply symbolic in nature ...

puremagic

unsung wrote:

It protects the people from the government. At least that was the intention. Now you get anally probed to fly on an airplane and get wiretapped without warrants in the name of protecting us from terror.

The Constitution as written, as ratified, was for the sole purpose of forming a national government and does not contain any of the amendments commonly known as the Bill of Rights. These ten amendments were collectively ratified as part of the Constitution in 1791.

These initial 10 amendments were to serve as a buffer for the people and states against a federal government becoming dictatorial. The first 8 amendments are the ones most targeted to strip and water down the power of the Constitution and the civil liberties of the people.

Electric_Delta

unsung wrote:

It protects the people from the government. At least that was the intention. Now you get anally probed to fly on an airplane and get wiretapped without warrants in the name of protecting us from terror.

Well put. We barely use it anymore anyway, so I don't see what the OP is complaining about. Just ask Nancy Pelosi. She uses Constitution toilet paper.

Go Beavers

Electric_Delta wrote:

unsung wrote:

It protects the people from the government. At least that was the intention. Now you get anally probed to fly on an airplane and get wiretapped without warrants in the name of protecting us from terror.

Well put. We barely use it anymore anyway, so I don't see what the OP is complaining about. Just ask Nancy Pelosi. She uses Constitution toilet paper.

What do you mean by "we barely use it anymore"?

Go Beavers

My point was not to emphasize a golden age of involvement, but to merely say, the average person in our nation is now far less aware of the world and nation around them even though there's far more opportunity to access to information and ability to be involved if you wanted too. For a long period in our history, the average citizen was aware of the current events around them and specifically how it effected them and our nation as a whole. Voting is just an act some people partake in either every 2 of 4 years where as staying informed or being involved is a daily routine. The simplest thing even as reading a newspaper to stay informed wasn't even done by one of our most recent Presidents. Politics and party affiliation/biases aside, there's something very fundamentally wrong with a population that checks out on it's own affairs yet complains when things are left in the hand of greed and power-mongers. This is the catalyst for the downfall of our republic as it is and was the only thing ever built in the system to keep it balanced. It's out of balance and now there is no going back to fix it. As for the nation spiraling down, I'd love to hear and have you list some detailed examples of how this is not correct. Whether it's socially, politically, economically or morally, our nation and society has lost its way and are just floundering to hold onto any last grasps of what we consider legitimacy or decency. Whether it's wall street robbing the citizens through government bailouts or the failure of the family structure to create a young generation inspired to fix the future, all shining examples of how we're on a big drop. And no that doesn't mean one day everyone will be speaking Chinese or Russia will take over the world, it merely means we'll be on the same level playing field as other powers in the world. Our economy sucks and shows no real sign of upswing, we owe far too much to legitimately get out of debt without drastically changing every way we operate as a nation (citizens wouldn't stand for this kind of adjustment) and morally, we've become a nation of entitled and spoiled people who value nothing but money and consumerism which both leave a person seeking further to create a false sense of happiness but only for a brief time. So I ask you, where's the next leaders.. where's the hope?? There is none and we just delude ourselves to thinking that things aren't as bad as they actually are. It's not conspiracy, it's not fixable, it's reality and it's far worse than anyone is willing to fix... so we slowly but surely spiral down as the system and nations' tenets crumble. The economy, the education system, the healthcare system, social security, the military... little by little each shows big cracks in the armor til there's a point of no return..and guess what.. we've past it. Our lifestyle is not balanced nor feasible for this many people, in these times, with these people's mentalities. But I'd love to hear your plans or commentary saying otherwise, so please do post it.

I think you're making a lot of assumptions where you're revising the past, and you're also not looking at things that are better, things that are pretty much the same, and things that are worse. You're saying these things are worse and lumping them on to one downward arrow on the graph of the U.S. I'll try to touch on several of your points:

"the average person in our nation is now far less aware of the world and nation around them" I would have to disagree with this, both factually and anecdotally. There's a chunk of people who can't find Iraq, there was also a chunk who hadn't even heard of Vietnam, and before them, Japan. I would say that people are more informed than they were in the past. There's always been a large group of non-voters.

"failure of the family structure to create a young generation inspired to fix the future," This is just an opinion that you often hear from older generations about the next, when in fact, the next generation is always better than the previous, always smarter, always more inventive. Why do they recalibrate IQ tests every 10 years or so? Why is the level of math that I learned now taught a year earlier?

Corporations have been involved in government from the get-go, so this is nothing new. What I see is more awareness of it, and more opposition to it in the last 10 years than there was before. Electing those who respond to this will happen, but it takes time because of the oh-so-wonderful older generations.

We don't need to change the way we operate as a nation drastically to balance the budget. Just downscale the military, return tax levels to how they were in the past, and then some other smaller cuts.

I'm not sure how you're measuring moral decay of our country, but you do have to look for the good beyond the dramatic news story of the day of some mom killing her kids. Violent crime has been decreasing steadily for years, teen pregnancy is falling after and uptick in the 00's, teen sex and drugs has been pretty much the same levels for 20+ years (if you use those as indicators). I see good things in people everyday. Most of the 300+ million of us got along pretty well today.

If you've lost your hope, it doesn't mean everyone else has.

FiveB247x

There's no assumptions here. Our education system has been failing and our nation's reading levels, math and science levels have been getting lower and lower. Perhaps there's more access to information and knowledge, but from a wholistic standpoint, there's still a portion that go to college or professional careers (even though degrees are worth less in a practice standpoint), but the lower level of society have more dropouts and even the hs grads fill low level jobs. The middle in our nation has been shrinking for a long time, it hits every area of education, jobs and similar. If you look at any research poll regarding our society, education and intelect is way down from the generation before. Economically, this is the first time since the early 20th century, that the generation before it won't be better off than the one after. That's a huge sign of decline. As for "inventiveness", in what application are these talents being used? Look around society, we evolve (or devolve) which ever way you want to describe in less meaningful ways. What big inventions and break through's do we have ..even in the past 20 yrs? Technology mostly used for nonsensical use and purpose. Nothing substantial and nothing helping build a better future. Now that sounds overbearing on one generation compared to another, but in reality, in the past 25-30 years (a generation), what have we added to society to improve our future? Our education and short attention spans are dwindling our capability to better our future. It's exactly like the movie Idiocracy.. over time, we're just getting dumber as a whole and things are too far out of whack to adjust. It's polarization in every area of society - economics, socially and politically.

In terms Corporations and big business being just as involved throughout history, that is simply not true. Our society has moved vastly more to a Corporate Capital system in which lobbying, campaign finance and policy making is done with the strong if not direct influence of big business. Government serves our business interest and this system is so well entrenched, nothing will change it. The two party system only emboldens this relationship and minimizes the citizens access to change policy and the ways we want to run our society. To compare today's system to that of even of a few decades ago, it's gotten far, far worse and out of hand.. it's like comparing a puppy to a grown dog...and we're stuck with the crap.

As for your idea of how to change our economy.. you are offering something that makes sense theoretically, but in practice it's nothing more than a pipe dream. Our nation isn't gonna wake up one day and cut all of these billions of programs and jobs cause it's economically positive. There's many easy ways to fix our society and economy, but none of them are feasible because we are not willing to make those adjustments. Part of it is also related to big business wielding power to shoot down policy which is detrimental to their fields.

As for losing hope, seeing "good people" has nothing to do with anything. Our society has mostly checked out and doesn't participate, which is exactly why our government, big business and society is so screwed up and in the mess we see. There's no real signs of this changing but areas of worry keep growing and escalating. Nuclear weapons, wars, poverty, disease, environmental disasters, gradual breakdown of societal markers (bridges, roads, education, police, etc) and then you can add in the ever growing nuts (terrorists, crazy gunman, school shootings and access to guns).. you can see where I'm going with this. It's all headed in one direction..down. It may not be over-night, but things are slowly but surely spiraling and breaking down. It has little to do with "being good people" but more about people being self-interested and not doing their part to help build their future. People don't wanna hear it, but the simplest thing, like the American dream.. guess what, it's not good for our future. Having 2 children, 2 cars and a home, is not a feasible lifestyle in our modern times...cause guess what, public schools aren't all that good anymore (depending on your economic status this can change). And guess what, raising those kids means you don't have time to stay active or participate in government and politics the way our nation's founders actually intended (which is the only thing that keeps our system in check). People don't wanna hear that our lifestyles are too comfortable even if they think it's simple things that sound crazy. Wages are lower, working hours are greater, children need more and more attention and regimented activities. So in sum, as our population grows, guess what, less participation and activity towards the political climate around them. Our culture, how we think and promote our ways and the ways we consider "good" do not equate to a good, healthy (mentally, economically, socially or politically) society. People don't nor will never acknowledge this but is the red herring in our culture. Our way is not feasible for success.. it's polarizing just like capitalism.. and you end up with some have's and a whole lot of have-not's. And guess what, that's where we are, and it's only getting worse. You can hope it gets better, but you know the saying bout wishing in one hand and crapping in the other...see which fills up first.

Go Beavers wrote:

My point was not to emphasize a golden age of involvement, but to merely say, the average person in our nation is now far less aware of the world and nation around them even though there's far more opportunity to access to information and ability to be involved if you wanted too. For a long period in our history, the average citizen was aware of the current events around them and specifically how it effected them and our nation as a whole. Voting is just an act some people partake in either every 2 of 4 years where as staying informed or being involved is a daily routine. The simplest thing even as reading a newspaper to stay informed wasn't even done by one of our most recent Presidents. Politics and party affiliation/biases aside, there's something very fundamentally wrong with a population that checks out on it's own affairs yet complains when things are left in the hand of greed and power-mongers. This is the catalyst for the downfall of our republic as it is and was the only thing ever built in the system to keep it balanced. It's out of balance and now there is no going back to fix it. As for the nation spiraling down, I'd love to hear and have you list some detailed examples of how this is not correct. Whether it's socially, politically, economically or morally, our nation and society has lost its way and are just floundering to hold onto any last grasps of what we consider legitimacy or decency. Whether it's wall street robbing the citizens through government bailouts or the failure of the family structure to create a young generation inspired to fix the future, all shining examples of how we're on a big drop. And no that doesn't mean one day everyone will be speaking Chinese or Russia will take over the world, it merely means we'll be on the same level playing field as other powers in the world. Our economy sucks and shows no real sign of upswing, we owe far too much to legitimately get out of debt without drastically changing every way we operate as a nation (citizens wouldn't stand for this kind of adjustment) and morally, we've become a nation of entitled and spoiled people who value nothing but money and consumerism which both leave a person seeking further to create a false sense of happiness but only for a brief time. So I ask you, where's the next leaders.. where's the hope?? There is none and we just delude ourselves to thinking that things aren't as bad as they actually are. It's not conspiracy, it's not fixable, it's reality and it's far worse than anyone is willing to fix... so we slowly but surely spiral down as the system and nations' tenets crumble. The economy, the education system, the healthcare system, social security, the military... little by little each shows big cracks in the armor til there's a point of no return..and guess what.. we've past it. Our lifestyle is not balanced nor feasible for this many people, in these times, with these people's mentalities. But I'd love to hear your plans or commentary saying otherwise, so please do post it.

I think you're making a lot of assumptions where you're revising the past, and you're also not looking at things that are better, things that are pretty much the same, and things that are worse. You're saying these things are worse and lumping them on to one downward arrow on the graph of the U.S. I'll try to touch on several of your points:

"the average person in our nation is now far less aware of the world and nation around them" I would have to disagree with this, both factually and anecdotally. There's a chunk of people who can't find Iraq, there was also a chunk who hadn't even heard of Vietnam, and before them, Japan. I would say that people are more informed than they were in the past. There's always been a large group of non-voters.

"failure of the family structure to create a young generation inspired to fix the future," This is just an opinion that you often hear from older generations about the next, when in fact, the next generation is always better than the previous, always smarter, always more inventive. Why do they recalibrate IQ tests every 10 years or so? Why is the level of math that I learned now taught a year earlier?

Corporations have been involved in government from the get-go, so this is nothing new. What I see is more awareness of it, and more opposition to it in the last 10 years than there was before. Electing those who respond to this will happen, but it takes time because of the oh-so-wonderful older generations.

We don't need to change the way we operate as a nation drastically to balance the budget. Just downscale the military, return tax levels to how they were in the past, and then some other smaller cuts.

I'm not sure how you're measuring moral decay of our country, but you do have to look for the good beyond the dramatic news story of the day of some mom killing her kids. Violent crime has been decreasing steadily for years, teen pregnancy is falling after and uptick in the 00's, teen sex and drugs has been pretty much the same levels for 20+ years (if you use those as indicators). I see good things in people everyday. Most of the 300+ million of us got along pretty well today.

If you've lost your hope, it doesn't mean everyone else has.

Go Beavers

There's no assumptions here. Our education system has been failing and our nation's reading levels, math and science levels have been getting lower and lower. Perhaps there's more access to information and knowledge, but from a wholistic standpoint, there's still a portion that go to college or professional careers (even though degrees are worth less in a practice standpoint), but the lower level of society have more dropouts and even the hs grads fill low level jobs. The middle in our nation has been shrinking for a long time, it hits every area of education, jobs and similar. If you look at any research poll regarding our society, education and intelect is way down from the generation before. Economically, this is the first time since the early 20th century, that the generation before it won't be better off than the one after. That's a huge sign of decline. As for "inventiveness", in what application are these talents being used? Look around society, we evolve (or devolve) which ever way you want to describe in less meaningful ways. What big inventions and break through's do we have ..even in the past 20 yrs? Technology mostly used for nonsensical use and purpose. Nothing substantial and nothing helping build a better future. Now that sounds overbearing on one generation compared to another, but in reality, in the past 25-30 years (a generation), what have we added to society to improve our future? Our education and short attention spans are dwindling our capability to better our future. It's exactly like the movie Idiocracy.. over time, we're just getting dumber as a whole and things are too far out of whack to adjust. It's polarization in every area of society - economics, socially and politically.

In terms Corporations and big business being just as involved throughout history, that is simply not true. Our society has moved vastly more to a Corporate Capital system in which lobbying, campaign finance and policy making is done with the strong if not direct influence of big business. Government serves our business interest and this system is so well entrenched, nothing will change it. The two party system only emboldens this relationship and minimizes the citizens access to change policy and the ways we want to run our society. To compare today's system to that of even of a few decades ago, it's gotten far, far worse and out of hand.. it's like comparing a puppy to a grown dog...and we're stuck with the crap.

As for your idea of how to change our economy.. you are offering something that makes sense theoretically, but in practice it's nothing more than a pipe dream. Our nation isn't gonna wake up one day and cut all of these billions of programs and jobs cause it's economically positive. There's many easy ways to fix our society and economy, but none of them are feasible because we are not willing to make those adjustments. Part of it is also related to big business wielding power to shoot down policy which is detrimental to their fields.

As for losing hope, seeing "good people" has nothing to do with anything. Our society has mostly checked out and doesn't participate, which is exactly why our government, big business and society is so screwed up and in the mess we see. There's no real signs of this changing but areas of worry keep growing and escalating. Nuclear weapons, wars, poverty, disease, environmental disasters, gradual breakdown of societal markers (bridges, roads, education, police, etc) and then you can add in the ever growing nuts (terrorists, crazy gunman, school shootings and access to guns).. you can see where I'm going with this. It's all headed in one direction..down. It may not be over-night, but things are slowly but surely spiraling and breaking down. It has little to do with "being good people" but more about people being self-interested and not doing their part to help build their future. People don't wanna hear it, but the simplest thing, like the American dream.. guess what, it's not good for our future. Having 2 children, 2 cars and a home, is not a feasible lifestyle in our modern times...cause guess what, public schools aren't all that good anymore (depending on your economic status this can change). And guess what, raising those kids means you don't have time to stay active or participate in government and politics the way our nation's founders actually intended (which is the only thing that keeps our system in check). People don't wanna hear that our lifestyles are too comfortable even if they think it's simple things that sound crazy. Wages are lower, working hours are greater, children need more and more attention and regimented activities. So in sum, as our population grows, guess what, less participation and activity towards the political climate around them. Our culture, how we think and promote our ways and the ways we consider "good" do not equate to a good, healthy (mentally, economically, socially or politically) society. People don't nor will never acknowledge this but is the red herring in our culture. Our way is not feasible for success.. it's polarizing just like capitalism.. and you end up with some have's and a whole lot of have-not's. And guess what, that's where we are, and it's only getting worse. You can hope it gets better, but you know the saying bout wishing in one hand and crapping in the other...see which fills up first.

"Our education system has been failing and our nation's reading levels, math and science levels have been getting lower and lower."

They've been getting lower and lower compared to what? I'm always skeptical when U.S. test scores are compared to other countries, both because they are likely comparing different tests, but also a different population of kids taking the tests. It's like back in the day when Iowa always scored considerably higher on the SATs than other states. That was due to the population taking the tests, which were highschoolers definately going to college. Where in other states, it included more kids who were just thinking about college. In my state every child takes the standardized testing, that includes special ed kids whose math and reading are at third grade levels. Their results are mixed in with everyone else's. Do you think test results from other countries that were being compared to also include the special ed kids? Doubtful.

People just adopt the notion that our education system is failing, and after looking at some poll results that you suggested, I found that 77% of parents give the school their child attends a grad of A or B. They see the rest of the nation's schools as the failure. Maybe the reality is that a smaller number of schools are doing poorly than the consensus opinion suggests.

I'm not sure what "education and intellect is down from the generation before" means. The number of people with college degrees has been increasing, and enrollement has gone up since the economy has tanked. You would have to define "intellect" to make a case for it decreasing.

"Our nation isn't gonna wake up one day and cut all of these billions of programs and jobs cause it's economically positive" The government is currently discussing cutting programs, so I don't really think this is a pipe dream.

I agree that a shrinking middle class is a problem. There are periods where the middle class also makes gains, which means something is occuring that effects that, and it can occur again. I also agree that our consumer based economy put us in a moral double bind. This economy wont last and in the next 100 years or so will evolve into something else. First, everyone will need their electronic toys and convience items (globally) and find that it's not economically sustainable. At that point the World's population will decrease, and when that happens, the global economy will shift because a consumer oriented economy can't sustain a population that is top heavy with old people. I see this as a change, rather than a decline.

My reference to good people was in response to the moral decline in the U.S., but maybe you were referring to a different moral decline, but then in this post, you also refer to "ever growing nuts".

There's a couple interesting contradictions in your post. First, you criticize our consumer economy, but then you use the reference that this generation won't be better off than the one before it, which is strictly a reference to income and wealth. Income and wealth is what a consumer society uses to measure success and happiness. You have to change how you measure success if you want to distance yourself from the pitfalls of a consumer society.

You also say that this generation is apathetic, while at the same time saying there is nothing we can do to change the current state of the nation, and we're "spiralling down". You're criticising the current generation, yet it seems more like a projection of your own attitude, as you feel helpless to the problems in the U.S.

Nothing but toys invented in the last 20 years? I'm not sure how to respond to that.