"America does not need another political campaign based on denial and avoidance of some of our real problems. It needs a crusade to reform and renew our country, its institutions and political system." - Richard Lamm
Flaws in the US Constitution: Some are baked into it. Others can be altered with sufficient political will. Each of these flaws below is connected, and each has dozens of quotes or articles that off great wisdom or details. Ask me for them and you shall receive them. Find more and I will add them to the collection. Find a quote that defends or denies the flaw and I’ll include it.
1. Lack of justice in US Laws(domestic and international) is simply unsustainable. In US courts an individual is better off being guilty and rich, than innocent and poor. The laws created and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of them are rarely just.
JUSTICE IS FOUND IN THE RIGHTS BESTOWED BY NATURE UPON MAN. LIBERTY IS MAINTAINED IN SECURITY OF JUSTICE. Engraved into the exterior marble of the US Justice Department
"Justice is the great interest of man on earth. Wherever her temple stands, there is a foundation for social security, general happiness, and the improvement and progress of our race." Inscribed above the entrance to the US Dept. of Justice, Washington DC.
“Equal justice under law is not merely a caption on the facade of the Supreme Court building. It is perhaps the most inspiring ideal of our society. It is one of the ends for which our entire legal system exists…it is fundamental justice that should be the same, in substance and availability, without regard to economic status.” Lewis F. Powell, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
2. Our political systems remain founded on the delusion of Independence: Independence exists nowhere in the known universe. It is virtually impossible for ‘independent’ agencies, states, or nations to resolve globally interdependent problems.
“Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort ... wherever feasible.” CISA Director Jen Easterly. CISA is the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency [our nation’s newest federal agency established in 2018].
3. Zero-Sum budgeting between “Independent” agencies: Some require secrecy and complete separation from other government agencies -- all compete for the same limited financial resources yet are essential to achieving sustainable freedom and security for all US citizens.
4. Democratic Republic: Lawmakers are elected by a majority of ignorant voters -- if they decide to turn out at all.
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” - H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy
"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few." -- John Adams (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President. Source: An Essay on Man's Lust for Power, August 29, 1763
5. Secrecy: This makes it virtually impossible to know the truth about what our government is doing or has done. This undermines the trust of voters and the value of voting. This also prevents citizens from holding government agencies, their leaders, or policymakers accountable in a timely manner.
Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show it can bear discussion and publicity. - Lord Acton
The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. - Patrick Henry, American colonial
America’s Secret Government Crisis, by Patrick Eddington Posted on January 20, 2022, https://original.antiwar.com/patrick_eddington/2022/01/19/americas-secret-government-crisis
“It’s important to remember that the Constitution only mentions secrecy once, and not in connection with the executive branch but Congress – Article I, Section 5. Congress was the original arbiter of what should or should not be kept from the public, and if America’s governmental secrecy sickness is to be cured, it must reclaim that leading role.” Patrick Eddington
6. Procurement process: Glacially slow in purchasing what is needed and for it to arrive in time for effective use. The evolution of technology is exponential. The government’s capacity for rapid change is virtually flatlined.
7. The Constitution was engineered to work slowly. With the pace of change in today’s world(money flows, miscommunications, hyper-weapons, pathogens, travel...)other governments can solve problems while we are still debating.
8. Senate approval process of Administration appointees. By Fred Hiatt, Former editorial page editor Washington Post August 8, 2021 Opinion | The U.S. government is designed for failure. And, a new study shows, it’s getting worse. - The Washington Post
9. Gerrymandering: the manipulation of an electoral constituency's boundaries so as to favor one party or class: It protects party lines and keeps bad incumbents in power. It effectively puts states' rights over human rights.
10. Election financing. Money most often results in a winning candidate.
Before Trump was elected a survey of US national security experts was conducted. They believed terrorism was our nation’s greatest threat and put our own government’s “dysfunction” as number two (above Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and climate change). The founding fathers warned about political parties. But then engineered the government to neutralize competition between states. They must have known that competition between parties would lead to the polarization of the population that would cross state lines. This reality now has made our government even more dysfunctional than it was before Trump was elected.
"I would not use the US Constitution as a template if I was creating a new constitution." Justice Ruth Bader Ginzberg
"The inherent right in the people to reform their government, I do not deny; and they have another right, and that is to resist unconstitutional laws without overturning the government." -- Daniel Webster (1782-1852) US Senator
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frederic Bastiat
"The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people." -- Dr. Ron Paul (1935-) American physician, US Congressman (R-TX), US Presidential candidate
Shred the Constitution? During the Cold War a secondary government was created to replace the real government had there been a nuclear war that obliterated it. Those who proposed and then organized such a ‘replacement government’ if that was ever needed suggested ‘shredding the Constitution” and starting over. I would love to know their reasoning.
