The Glade 4.0

I never said that the constitution was supposed to evolve via court decision.

That said, the interpretation of the constitution has most certainly evolved over the years, which is if nothing else inevitable. One can complain about that, but it's about as effective as complaining that the sky is blue.

That was the context of your statement. Perhaps you should be more clear. Lack of clarity happens to all of us.



I'm not complaining about interpretation. I'm complaining about the document itself. People want to act as though the document itself is evolving. It isn't really. Which gets into the flaw of stare decisis that I think Khross is hinting at.

To me, we shouldn't really give a **** what the last court said. That court might be wrong. We should instead look at what the actual Constitution said, and go from there. That is, at the level of the Supreme Court. Lower courts should abide by stare decisis.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I am listening to a podcast of a popular local Philadelphia morning show - THe Preston & Steve Show.

Yesterday, they had two ex-mafia members (Michael Franzese and Sal Polisi) as guests of their show. They were on to plug an upcoming show on NatGeo about the American mafia.

In their interview, Michael Franzese talked about how he had control of the security guards union and how him and Nicky Scarfo were going to unionize the security guards in Atlantic City, NJ and Al Sharpton was going to help them by gathering "his people" to picket all the hotels in AC.

Here is an ex-mobster talking about how Al Sharpton was a Gun-for-hire (Michael's own words) for the mob and how many other stories that he could share about Al.

How in the world does anyone follow this shyster, a race-baiting POS with past ties to the mob?

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

It isn't a matter of the document itself evolving; it's a matter of the meanings evolving in the common understanding. The plain meaning to the everyday person right now is the default meaning of the Constitution, but since no one knows exactly what that is, it falls to the courts to make a decision. The decisions are "right" in the sense that they establish an answer that people can act on in the future, not in the sense that they are objectively the best decisions.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

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The Dude abides.

The Constitution was signed by no less than 39 delegates, plus William Jackson, and an additional 15 persons were delegates that did not sign. They represented 12 of the 13 different states, with very divergent attitudes as to how things ought to be done, and the document was the product of a large number of compromises and proposed plans. The idea that there was any singular idea of its exact meaning is utterly fantastic.

More importantly, the idea that it can mean only what it meant to the writers at that time, and Madison's statement to that effect, is an unjustified conceit. Madison is not privy to the personal understandings of everyone else, nor immune to personal pride at his situation in the forefront of it. The delegates, while representing the States, wrote the document on behalf of "We the People", and at that time the common understanding of the everyday person, not the level of understanding of well-educated delegates, is what governs. The delegates do not and did not own the document. Today, "We the People" still own the document, and its meaning is what it is in the everyday language of today as the average person understands it; not in the nitpicking of the specifics of grammar and dictionaries.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That is ridiculous. The Constitution was not written with imagery and symbolism. As DFK says, words have meanings, and the signers agreed to those meanings when they signed their names to the document. If those "honest enquirers" interpreting the document do not do so through the lens of the history of its adoption (which necessarily includes language), then they are not honest nor unbiased.

We the people are sovereign and we do indeed own the document. But we were given a mechanism to modify the powers enumerated to the government and it is decidedly not the evolution of language. If we no longer agree with the intent of a clause in the document then we can pass an amendment to supersede it. Otherwise getting what you want is as simple as getting people to use words incorrectly, which liberals have successfully been doing for years.

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The Dude abides.

No one said anything about imagery or symbolism. "Words have meanings" is tautology; all words are defined with other words. Those meanings are never entirely clear to anyone; the only possible exception being those words that represent mathematics in language. As for your last line, it's merely begging the question.



We don't use amendments for matters of intent. Amendments are when we want to change what is said.

The simple fact is that there is no one right interpretation. Those insisting that there is, no matter what means they rely one, are nothing more than petty tyrants trying to outlaw ideas they disagree with.

The goal of the Constitution is not to use words "correctly". Complaining that they are being used incorrectly is doing exactly what you complain about liberals doing - using language to manipulate things. It is simply begging the question; insisting ones own way is right and there can be no debate. Once you retreat into the refuge of lingusitc technicalities, your opinion is essntially irrelevant. A fair, workable, liveable, just society is so in the practical aspects of it, not in adhering to abstract principle, nor linguistic convention. Adherence to the abstract regardless of consequences is a privilege reserved for God alone; no human document can ever demand it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

If meanings were never clear, we wouldn't have dictionaries and we wouldn't have books. And I don't think you understand what begging the question is. There is no way to discover a writer's intent without interpreting the document within its historical context. Those that are too lazy or willfully ignore historical context are not interpreting the text in an unbiased manner. James Madison told you in that quote "I used these words with a specific meaning and the text needs to be interpreted how I meant it to be." You are saying "I don't care to make a reasonable interpretation of his intent, I'll derive my own meaning because we can never know what anybody really wants."


Which is changing the intent of the document.


The goal of the Constitution was to set forth a system of government that has powers enumerated to it. Extra-Constitutional sources are on record expounding on the intent of clauses in the document. The combined works all point toward meanings which you are content to willfully ignore. The amendment process is there to modify the document beyond what was intended or unforeseen. This is how the government should be enumerated powers, not by willy-nilly interpretation because omg words. I won't deny that the amendment process would be laborious today, but it was made that way for a purpose which, again, you can understand through their historical context. You cannot have a fair, workable, or just society if it's impossible to tell the intent of law and you can't properly nor equitably apply laws when you rely on the interpretation of the week.

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The Dude abides.

Yes, actually you can; in fact worrying about intent is silly. The plain meaning to the evryday person governs, and unclear areas are resolved in court.
Changing the intent is not a problem because intent is not binding in the first place. Madison can say what he meant all he wants; he was one signatory from one state and his opinion is not binding.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The problem, in example, is I (and others) consider "Shall not be infringed" to be pretty plain and easy to understand, but others do not. So whatever 5 people say on the issue goes and the rest of us better sit down, shut up, and like it? Sounds a lot like a dictatorship to me.

But if the Constitution has meaning and intent that should be recognized, then there might be a recourse.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Do you need a remedial lesson on what a Representative Democracy is?

If you (and others) < whatever 5 people in an election to get someone in place who supports your views, then yes you do get to deal with it not going your way. However, so you are still welcome to improve your argument, try and convince others that you are right and try again in 4-6 years.

The U.S. isn't supposed to be a democracy, but rather a republic. But yeah, we're getting closer to tyranny of the majority these days.

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The Dude abides.

I'm gonna guess that most non-white, non-Christian and non-heterosexual minorities are going to disagree with that view of our national trajectory. It strikes me as pretty hard to argue that we're more of a "tyranny of the majority" now than we were in the days of Leave it to Beaver, Jim Crow, anti-sodomy laws and the House Unamerican Activities Committee.

This is very true.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Language is mutable; law is not. Mutability is the enemy of consistency and law. This thread screams of the Lawyer's Trap -- the conflation of justice and law presented on television and in popular politics that is the enemy of ANY stable legal system. Our Constitution provides for Justice, that Lawyers and Judges are hostile toward Jury Nullification is not my problem; it's the lawyers' and judges' and law enforcement officers' of the United States problem.

Allowing the mutability of language to change the meaning of law is asinine: it creates a system in where there is no Rule of Law. And the situation George Zimmerman faces is demonstrates as much. Eric Holder and Barack Obama have broken the law; they will not be held accountable. George Zimmerman will never be able to seek redress.

When you let politics and morality affect law, you defeat Justice. Juries exist for justice, and the Law cannot provide it.

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The problem, Khross, is language is used to make law. And there is no such thing as plain language. All language is symbolic. All language relies on the interpretation of the listener. WIth the infinite number of possible scenarios that can never be accounted for in any law, compounded by change in technology and scenarios existing that the original lawmakers could never possibly envision, when attempting to apply relevant law to scenarios so far outside the scope for which it was originally written, interpretation is needed. It will always be needed. That interpretation is, of necessity, subjective. Very few things are ever cut and dried, black and white. Life's complicated. The law is more so. And there's no way around that.

That doesn't mean some interpretations aren't just obviously wrong. However, interpretation is needed.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Language is a symbolic code, and if we want to start discussing 20th Century changes in the understanding of language as demonstrated by Ferdinand de Saussure and Claude Levi-Strauss, that's a completely different issue. When the Constitution was written, legal language was "set-in-stone" didactic language. The law and agents of state cannot introduce subjectivity into law or the legal system -- that's what Juries exist to do.

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No one is arguing for mutability in law. Once an issue is decided, that decision should standstand absent a compelling reason otherwise.

That does not, however, mean that we don't have to dwcide issues, or that decisions are wrong because they violate someones idea of intent or linguistc meaning. We have a system by which we decide issues of law. That system says pat downs are reasonable when supported by reasonable suspicion per the 4th amendment. Thats all there is to it.

If individual instances of patdowns dont meet that standard, that can and should be challanged, but it is not contrary to the constitution. The issue is already closed.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Except that this can be done. We dont need to talk about language in the 20th century, nor how law was written in past centuries. Immutable law is impossible.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Find me a single mention of reasonable suspicion and a warrantless search standard in the Constution.

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Then they'd be uneducated idiots.

We are, and particularly those groups are, in many meaningful ways, far more free than we were at the founding of this country, the civil war, or the 1950's and 1960's timeframe you're referencing.

That doesn't change the fact that over the last 200 years there has been a move away from ideals of a republic towards ideals of a democracy. Current freedoms do not directly relate to the method of governance. Screeling is merely pointing out that we are moving towards a "tyranny of the majority", insofar as governance methods are concerned.

Additionally, for every move forward you can cite in regards to freedoms, I can likely find a step backward in freedoms. Is one more or less severe than the other? Are we more or less free than 150 years ago, in aggregate? That's likely to be wholly subjective, and weighted not just by law but by culture.

Regardless, things like the push to remove the electoral college stand as a (quite perfect) example of people advocating for a move towards simple majority rule.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

That may be true in theory, DFK!, but in practice, the majority has lost power, not gained it. The majority of americans oppose abortion, and yet it is legal, because of basic individual rights laws. The majority of white americans 50-100 years ago were racist against black people, and the majority of men were sexist against women, and yet segregation laws were overturned, and discrimination based upon race is generally illegal, women were given the vote, and fixed rules about gender roles were gradually removed. The majority of Americans still oppose homosexuality, and yet America is moving inexorably toward treating them with the same dignity that straight people are treated.

It's an interesting situation, because existing tyrannies of the majority have been slowly eliminated, and yet the political system is changing to allow them to continue. Perhaps one is a consequence of the other? I don't know.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

No significant dispute except on some of the stats/facts:



Incorrect:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

Also, it's legal due to the 4th Amendment, basically.



Non-quantifiable, but I won't dispute the core assertion. I'll contend that, again, the level of freedom does not reflect the method of governance.



Again, factually inaccurate, but the conclusion is correct, so no significant dispute.

First line item: http://www.gallup.com/poll/162689/recor ... rally.aspx



A good question. I think one key consideration is that Screeling and I are talking about "tyranny of the majority" in the sense of the governance method that stems from pure democracy. I think you're talking about "tyranny of the majority" in the sense of the result of majority groups oppressing minority groups.

The latter is definitely disappearing, and that's what I meant when I say in a lot of ways we're a more free society than 200 years ago. I think the former is definitely increasing, and is disconcerting because it could undercut the gains of the latter, or of society more broadly.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Hate crime? Yeah, we got that...

Link



I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for the outrage over this one. It's OK because the perps are black and they are attacking/robbing an obviously racist white cracka.

Filth.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.