Rewriting the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. How would you do it if you had a chance?

I will state right here and now that I wouldn’t change a thing. I love these documents. They are short, concise and to the point unlike our current tax laws.

But I keep seeing people saying that they are old (or old fashioned) and that we now live in different times and that they should be abolished and a new frame be drawn up.

Would you selectively edit them or totally rewrite them if you had a chance?

Have at it!

Very simple.

ALL PEOPLE are created equal. ALL as in not just rich white slave owning men,

I wouldnt change anything. Id just add an amendment to better regulate the corruption in politics....no lobbyist dollars, full transparency for just about anything to do with our elected officials.

Ive always thought that if your willing to serve your country in politics you should be able to sign away some privacy due to the power you hold. Same with cops.

Our soldiers dont have freedoms when they take that oath so neither should politicians

I would just like to add the intellgent folks who wrote them didn't consider them holy or beyond reproach and understood they should change with the times

I guess one thing I'd change is the central bank and congress' power to borrow money. I would require a balanced budget and zero debt or every elected official is thrown out of office and has to repay their salary

reply to post by syrinx high priest


balanced budget....that totally slipped my mind nice. Of course it would be hard for government to ever fully reach self sustainability monetarily but we can sure do alot better than trillion dollar deficits.

And of course down with the FED!

reply to post by DankKing420


I guess I would add one amendment.

The one amendment I believe that I would add would be that no laws be longer than 10 pages in a font size of twelve.

Nowadays, regulations seem to trump law. It should be the other way around. It's in the regulations/US Codes that lawyers are finding loopholes to get away with everything from murder to the stripping away of rights.

Regulations/US Codes should be no more than ten pages either.

They say ignorance of the law is no excuse, but only a very select few could know all the tax codes, etc that is on the books and changing daily.

Slim them down and put them in simple English. Do away with all the legalese so that they are more understandable to the everyday citizen.

reply to post by TDawgRex


i agree on that wholeheartedly. i was just trying to read the laws when it comes to guns on the michigan state police website i remember thinking to myself holy crap there is no way a normal person can make sure they are remaining legal when i cant even make it past the first page without being totally lost.

reply to post by TDawgRex


I'd go back to the Articles of Confederation.

avalon.law.yale.edu...

reply to post by TDawgRex


The maximum number of laws a person is required to follow should not be less than 100 and each law should be no longer than 100 words.

That is 10 times more than god asked us to follow and that worked for a couple of thousand years..

Originally posted by bknapple32
Very simple.

ALL PEOPLE are created equal. ALL as in not just rich white slave owning men,

Already in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution isn't a treatise upon the People, it is that of Government. When ratified, it was the culture of the period that lead to such thinking they can disparage the Rights of others and over time; that culture has drastically changed wouldn't you say?

You cannot find any exclusions (the 3/5th "compromise" didn't exclude anyone). The 3/5th clause didn't deny any person Constitutional protection but was an ugly compromise to determine how many representatives States would have. It was a money issue for the North and a representative issue for the Southern states. Still glad to see it struck from the original document though.

Your line though is one that many push, that the Constitution, in its original form denied woman, slaves, and the poor from being included -- except it was society and the culture that did that.

How about anyone trying to or supporting a change the constitution in any way must be imprisoned and questioned.

How about any politician taking money from any other source such as corporations must by fired and imprisoned on corruption charges.

Originally posted by TDawgRex
I will state right here and now that I wouldn’t change a thing. I love these documents. They are short, concise and to the point unlike our current tax laws.

But I keep seeing people saying that they are old (or old fashioned) and that we now live in different times and that they should be abolished and a new frame be drawn up.

Would you selectively edit them or totally rewrite them if you had a chance?

Have at it!

I'd simply copy and paste, then source.

Edit, Although I'd add in some sort of provision to prevent money from corporations to the politicians. I see this as a major issue.

It would be a great idea to incorporate the original 13th amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment and apply the 22nd amendment to all elected federal officials - maybe a tenure limit for SCOTUS. I'd also like to see modern language regarding "bill of attainder" and "corruption of blood".

ganjoa

reply to post by TDawgRex


Eplanation: S&F!

Do what you want and harm no one ... shall be the whole of the law!

Personal Disclosure: Crowley was half way correct ... so I have edited it to ammend and expand it to be completely correct!

reply to post by ownbestenemy


the people are the culture

the people wrote the document

it's inconvenient, but when the people who make up the culture wrote the document, if you were a slave or a woman you would have bristled at the audacity they had in writing those words

truth

Originally posted by syrinx high priest
the people are the culture

the people wrote the document

it's inconvenient, but when the people who make up the culture wrote the document, if you were a slave or a woman you would have bristled at the audacity they had in writing those words

truth

You proclaim truth as if you word is the arbiter of it, when if fact it isn't. While the People and more specifically the States did approve of the document, can you show me where in those documents it specifically calls out a race? Age? Gender?

Was there a clause that I missed that limited the enumerated Rights to only women? White land owners? You see, you cannot tell me otherwise because there is not. Those were implemented by a free society and while ill-mannered and misguided, they were not doing so because a document told them so.