Hi Jason
"giving up" on the constitution would just give the US a new
constitution. tradition and respect? that's all well and good, but
somebody's going to want to write it down sometime or another, and
it'll be the same rusty old arguments with a different piece of
parchment two hundred years from now... there's no such thing as
"new".
Paper shredders? :-)
Sorry... He does have a point though, more than one, IMHO.
From another old bit of parchment: "The thing that hath been, it is
that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be
done: and there is no new thing under the sun."
Would that it were still so. Until not very long ago, people were
born, and not long after that they'd die, and between the two events
very little changed, if anything. Now, for many or most of us, change
is about the only thing you can rely on (seven billion humans ain't
new?).
The Bible is a wonderful book to go cherry-picking in. I suspect it's
the same with the other great religions. And I think the US
Constitution is often just the same - I posted a recent article
explaining the crucial difference between what it actually says and
what most Americans think it says about gun rights, for instance. Too
often, it's just dogma. You don't need it. Other countries don't even
have a constitution, like the UK, for instance.
Literal, or legalistic, interpretations of the past aren't always the
best guide to dealing with today's problems, let alone tomorrow's.
Things do change:
> And a genocide, and a civil war, over slavery.
The interesting thing for me is that slavery was not a problem for
Jesus (I'm not sure about most other major religions but I think
this is true of them also), and nowhere does He mention democracy,
equal rights, or any of the current cornerstone concepts we take
for granted as truth. That is a surprise to me, and I wonder why,
and I wonder what deep and complex lessons that might have for us,
and what it tells us about our new thinking. And if democracy was
not mentioned as a system of government, then what was, and why?
They had the Roman Empire on one hand and kings and priests on the
other, there probably wasn't much left to discuss.
But then they didn't argue about healthcare either, nor women's
rights, or racism, the environment, libraries, education. We do make
progress, we humans, we have a much better class of problems now.
All best
Keith
> Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2013 23:54:37 +0200
To: sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org
From: ke...@journeytoforever.org
Subject: [Biofuel] Let's Give Up on the Constitution
> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33506.htm
Let's Give Up on the Constitution
> By LOUIS MICHAEL SEIDMAN
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