"There's no out-of-the-box thinking in this country. If we were really looking for a new direction, we'd not just change Congress, we'd have another Constitutional Convention, as Jefferson suggested we do. Jefferson said: "Let us provide in our Constitution for its revision. . . every 19 or 20 years. . . so that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to generation." He himself was saying, "I'm a bright guy, but even I can't foresee the iPod." Or the assault rifle.
But that's Jefferson's phrase: periodical repairs. This thing needs periodical repairs, but it hasn't been in the shop for 219 years. Of course it's belching oil. Literally. And that's because one of the glaring flaws a Constitutional Convention might correct is something called corporate personhood, which means somewhere along the way, stupid or corrupted courts gave corporations all the rights of individuals, with none of the liability. If some person defecates on your lawn, we throw him in jail, but if a corporation does it, they get a tax break. Somehow "we the people" got to be defined as Halliburton. This thing needs to go in the shop!
And I know traditionalists are saying, "But Bill, it's a sacred document!" Please, it's full of crap about pirates, for God's sake. And I don't mean the kind that copies Justin Timberlake CDs. I mean peg legs and parrots. "The founders were so brilliant." Yes, they were: the proof being, the government they designed keeps functioning even with cement-head doofuses like you in it.
Listen to Jefferson -- he was saying, "We're smart guys, we're not Nostradamus." We deal with things today no founding father could have imagined -- the Internet, global warming. Toilet paper, instead of bark. If Ben Franklin got beamed in to visit us today, the first thing he'd say is, "For 17 dollars, I get porn on my TV all day? How can the hotel afford that?" And then he'd say, "You're still using the old Constitution that we told you to revise? That's so nuts hemp must still be legal."
Sunday, November 19, 2006
A re-look-see at the Constitution
While Bill Maher may not always raise the level of political discourse in this country, at least he puts a humorous twist on it. His commentary in the Boston Globe this week doesn't dissapoint. A brief excerpt:
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3 comments:
This op-ed piece may be injected with a funny one-liner here and there, but the underlying message -we need another constitutional convention - is a gross overreaction to problems that could still be fixed through established means. Maher oversimplifies corporate law and then uses that oversimplification to advocate for another constitutional convention. I dont claim to know enough about corporate law to make a confident statement as to how many rights corporations have, but if he believes we should revoke what rights they do have, and we can't do it through the courts, there's a little thing called a constitutional amendment that would achieve his desired ends. You're right, he doesn't raise the level of political discourse in this country and it's unfortunate that people might actually take his commentary seriously in this case. If he thinks the current constitution is fraught with mistakes and passing constitutional amendments would be too difficult, I wonder how smoothly he thinks a constitutional convention would go?
Regardless of the Scalia school of thought, there's definitely a fine line between respecting the constitution as the "law of the land" while also viewing it as a living document.
A constitutional convention would be interesting though, eh? We can barely stage political party conventions because of the in-fighting, imagine one in which all "parties" from the political spectrum would be forced to come together and find a common ground.
I also think we should exercise some caution when we quote the founders. Let's remember that Jefferson was an ardent supporter of the French Revolution, which no one would like to see repeated here.
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