The Constitution is Utterly Worthless

Author: Dr.Franklin

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@949havoc
its worthless because it doenst mean shit anymore, any law in america can get passed and the Constitution is 100% useless, thats why blind worship of this piece of paper cant go on in the year 2021
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@Dr.Franklin
Argue for your limitations; they're yours,  but you're not selling me at all. The Constitution of the United States is simply the best damn secular document ever written, bar none.
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@949havoc
its a good document but useless today
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@Dr.Franklin
tell me, really, what rights guaranteed by the Constitution have been officially withdrawn from you, remembering that with rights come responsibilities. What actions by anyone else, to date, have curtailed your freedom, assuming you're otherwise a law-abiding citizen? Your consequences may have changed, and many of those are, indeed, unconstitutional, but until the Constitution's guarantees to the citizens have been removed wholesale, your "uselessness" of the Constitution is an excuse for laziness in defending it.

1281 days later

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I think this deserves a proper bump
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@Dr.Franklin
BUT a judge pulled some bullshit reason and declared it "unconstitutional", meaning it was voided, thats right in the United States of America a judge can declare something VIA THE CONSTITUTION to shut down something that WAS DEMOCRATICALLY DECIDED ON. 
Okay, so if 51% of the public were communist and voted in a referendum to seize your property and then lynch you and your family and all of your neighbors, it'd be wrong for a judge to keep them from doing this?

Also, how do judges get appointed? By elected officials, right? Meaning judges are, in fact, indirectly elected officials. But their appointments are greatly staggered over time, meaning the judiciary as a whole doesn't reflect the mood of the public at one given moment, but rather the public's aggregated attitudes over time, which lean less radical. Furthermore, rules like the filibuster tend to discourage the appointment of judges who are too radical, since an appointee has to be acceptable to at least a few members of the other party.

It's no accident that the judiciary is the least partisan of our three branches. The public has its short term passions and prejudices, which they express at the ballot box. But their excesses are tempered by the moderates in robes. Overall our system is pretty balanced, which is why it's survived 236 years, a civil war, two world wars, many recessions and depressions, etc.
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@Swagnarok
Im not interested in your hypotheticals but its clear that the judges have too much power. The "groundness" of the judges couldnt stop the civil war, did it?
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@Dr.Franklin
SCOTUS actually guaranteed the civil war with Dred Scott. Congress was working on compromises and resolutions, and then all of a sudden the court made slavery de-facto the national law.
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@Dr.Franklin
If the Scotus rules that district courts can dictate national security decisions, that will be the start of another civil war.
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@Swagnarok
Okay, so if 51% of the public were communist and voted in a referendum to seize your property and then lynch you and your family and all of your neighbors, it'd be wrong for a judge to keep them from doing this?
If 51% of the public were liberal and voted to let you keep your property but then a judge ordered you executed it would be wrong for the people to veto the judge?


Justice is just, injustice is not.

There is no reliable guide to the truth but reason, thus there is no reliable authority that can differentiate justice from injustice but reason.

Proxies are tolerable until they fail.



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@Dr.Franklin
I think this deserves a proper bump
Why? You ignored the central point everyone tried to make clear to you.

The constitution cannot enforce itself, that can only be done by human beings. So what human being(s) do you think should ultimately have the final say on matters of constitutionality?
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@Double_R
None of the rulings I discussed nor the recent ones were defending the Constitution
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@Dr.Franklin
What are you talking about? This thread is literally titled The Constitution is Utterly Worthless, and your point is that it's worthless because it can be disregarded by a bad actor. I'm responding to that central point.
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@Double_R
How is the constitution actually being protected?
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@Dr.Franklin
I have no idea what you are asking me.

I haven't argued that the constitution is being protected. I argued that the point you are making is fundamentally flawed. Again, the constitution cannot enforce itself. At some point in the process, it is inevitable that the constitutionality of any act will ultimately come down to someone's say so. The only question is, who?

The best solution to this problem is to designate the most qualified and least compromised individual(s) as the final arbiter, that's why we created the judicial system. That's our answer. But you seem to disagree, so what's your solution?

As best as I can tell, your solution is to have "the people" decide. That makes no sense on any level. It is first of all a practical impossibility - you cannot hold an election style vote for every judicial decision. It is also deeply dangerous as it would render the law meaningless, held to whatever pubic sentiment is as the time of the vote. That's not a constitutional system, it's just mob rule.