Hello NiftyNiblick,
If our Constitution does not meet with your approval, perhaps you would like to write us a copy of what you would like to see it replaced with?
I think the founders did a rather bang-up job.
Certainly considering the pressure they were under and what they had to work with. That this nation has stood for so long is a testament to their diligence.
Our biggest failure is complacency. Apathy. We have a government which required the people manage what their government is doing. Our problem is we have far too great a portion of the populace who simply take it all for granted and assume others are doing the management for them.
Our public servants work for us. The responsibility to oversee them falls upon each and every one of us. And yet if you ask 10 people on the street to even name the three branches of government the majority can't do it.
If I had my druthers our schools would be placing far more importance on educating our young to the importance of knowing why we have a country, what our responsibility as citizens is, how to stay well-informed, how to avoid being take in by propaganda, why that's important, our history, and why it is so important to remain constantly politically engaged and vote.
How important is that stuff?
It is, like, future-of-the-nation important.
And nothing less.
My education is not in the law or in government, so I'm not my personal first choice to write a new constitution. I believe in academic elitism when it comes to these matters. I'm not a populist.
I don't want a new constitutional convention convened with representation from states that are ideologically incompatible... that have people who want a totally different world than one another.
PoiiTalker obviously doesn't see what I see in the extent of polarization we have now. What I see is both irreparable and not worth the effort to repair if it was.
Education problem? No doubt. We've not made a sufficient commitment to education.
But we have states who'd put things like "creationism" in the public school curriculum.
That's not OK. I'm unwilling to accept theocrats at my constitutional convention. I don't accept they're being on my planet, but I'll settle for them not being in my nation.
Apathy? We just outvoted our last general election by about twenty million votes. People came out to vote. And they voted roughly 50/50 for totally incompatible values.
Incompatibility is our problem, not apathy.
PoliTalker is willing to accept less than I am.
PoliTalker is willing to break bread with racists, xenophobes, misogynists, religious bigots, and worst of all. anti-intellectuals.
People from bright red states are not people who should be sharing a government and tax codes and borders with more refined people with more liberal values.
I went to grade school school at the height of the cold war in the 1950s.
In retrospect, the education that I received at that level was a disgrace.
We were fed incredible right wing propaganda as the congress conducted its deplorable hearings.
We were coerced into beginning the day with prayers.
I had elementary school teachers with incredibly racist ideas...in Boston, mind you, not Bald Knob, Indiana. Imagine what those kids got
And we were told that we were the most moral and at the same time powerful people in the world,
but then I got drafted to murder freedom-fighting Asians with whom I had no grievance, and guess what? We got beat.
I saw the separate water fountains and rest rooms when traveling with my parents, so at a very young age, I understood that there were places much worse than home.
Today, we call those places Red State America. They should have been the Confederate States of America but the people who were here before my people arrived really fucked up.
Look what we've got instead.
PoliTalker likes it. He feels we can work with it. He thinks that there's hope. But then again, he probably bought all that bullshit they taught him in grade school.
I think a better standard of living, top to bottom, is far more important than preserving that dream of a United States of America.
It never was what we were told that it was, and it never will be.
I'm the one not afraid to try something better.
As I keep saying, catastrophic problems are not resolved with moderate solutions.
