By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
sc94597 on 30 August 2015
Edit Thread
Shadow1980 said:
sc94597 said:
Shadow1980 said:
 Liberals and conservatives would never be able to come together to forge a new Supreme Law of the land. 

While I agree with the sentiment and specifics of your post, I think that liberals and American conservatives are not much more different than the Federalists and Anti-Federalists. Most things would be compromised on (as they are today, despite what people think.) Unfortunately the compromises would be on a lot of the bad things. 

But I honestly think that's for the best. The Articles of Confederation quite frankly sucked as a constitution and deserved to be replaced. 

See that is something the anti-federalists would have fervently disagreed with you on. The U.S constitution was a loss for them, and the AoC were never meant to institute a federal government, but rather a confederation (see: European Union.)  I personally think the largest issue that they were faced with back then - debt to France et al. , could've been solved without a federal government. France could've just billed the sum of American governments, and the AoC's national organization could've been an intermediary for this. Most anti-federalists also agreed and had alternative plans to resolve this issue. We don't know exactly how it would've ended with an AoC, but I would think the geographical region of the U.S would have many more Native Americans, and much more freedom all around without the U.S federal government, among other things. 

Nevertheless, the moderates and federalists won in the short-term during the debt crisis, not because the anti-federalists compromised, but because they were outnumbered and absent. When the anti-federalists came back into power, and the federalists died out a decade or so later, they were too worried about fixing the rampant mercantilism  that the federalists espoused, and had no resources to do the impossible task of demolishing the federal government that they did not support. Heck, even big Anti-Federalists like TJ embraced the Federal Government (to our detriment.) 

As for today, I can see a constitution working in the event that there is a large crisis, and a stronger party (rather than a 50/50 split.) This would be something New Deal -esque, but more grand as there would be precedent that the New Deal did not have.  Unfortunately the end result would likely be something bad. Things like, "gay marriage/abortion/etc" being illegal would not really come up. Special interests in general would not come up, because they are way too specific. There was a reason why the U.S constitution (and most state constitutions - which have been replaced - for my state - Pennsylvania - it has happened four times) are very general and vague.