fatslob-:O said: I guess the founding fathers were delusional then. |
What gave you that idea?
PDF said: Naw, the constitution is great. After taking a US Congress, US Presidency and US political thought class you kind of realize the constitution is pretty amazing.
The only problem with the constitution is it has not aged with us in all areas. Certain parts are dated and need to amending but we shouldn't throw the whole thing.
Parliamentary system has its pro and cons but I like the US separation of powers more.
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That's kind of my problem, though. You have to take classes to understand it. If we made study of the constitution part of the core curriculum, that might help.
As it stands, the system is solid, if everyone is being honest. But it has too many opportunities for politicians to exploit it, and those holes are unlikely to be updated while the people who use them still hold office.
the_dengle said:
"Useless add-ons"? I hope you don't mean the Amendments. :P
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Oh no. That was referring to things like pork spending and convoluted regulations. Things that get stuffed into unrelated bills, and the like.
snyps said:
The constitution is working fine. It's the special interest that needs rebooting. If you want efficiency, get a dictatorship. A new constitution would lack basic rights, checks, balances, and limits of executive power. You want this? You think we can trust our politicians to write a better one than our forefathers?
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There's kind of the problem; the people best able to recognize the flaws of the current system are the ones controlling it, and they largely like it fine the way it is. Giving them the chance to remake it would be a bad idea.
The biggest issue is that our constitution is too broad; the specifics were never filled in because the founders couldn't see the future and know how the system would be abused, or how technology would render much of it obsolete. If they knew that something like our current crisis was likely to happen, they probably would have taken steps to prevent it.
And amendments could definitely fix many of these issues, if we could trust congress to perform open-heart surgery on itself...