U.S. Constitution Too Old, Ginsburg Says

[Will69ease Profile]

Supreme Court justice encourages Egypt to look to South African model instead.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg must have missed the memo about Egypt’s radical Islamist transformation over the past 12 months. Since Hosni Mubarak’s government crumbled under heavy pressure from the United States, Islamic extremists have been assaulting Coptic Christians, raping their wives and daughters, and burning their homes and churches to the ground. They’ve ambushed Israel’s embassy, prompting a late-night emergency evacuation in September. They won’t recognize the State of Israel and they’ve vowed to dissolve the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

Last month, Islamist hard-liners, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, won 72 percent of the seats in Egypt’s parliament. So much for the supposedly unpopular, bumbling Brotherhood, to paraphrase what the New York Times wrote a year ago. “There is little reason for the United States to fear a takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood,” the Times assured its readers last February. Today, of course, Islamic fundamentalists are now in charge. Just this week, Egyptian authorities decided to prosecute 19 Americans accused of fomenting unrest in Egypt.

Yet, despite the transparent nature of Egypt’s Islamic revolution, liberal elites in the West continue marching along in total darkness, fantasizing about what rights the new Egyptian constitution might guarantee for homosexuals and women. These blind guides act as if a piece of paper will prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from implementing tyranny and enforcing sharia law and usher in a new era of Western-style freedom and peace in Egypt.

“It is a very inspiring time—that you have overthrown a dictator, and that you are striving to achieve a genuine democracy,” Ginsburg said last week while visiting Cairo. She lavished praise on Egypt’s recent parliamentary elections, saying they were free and fair.

After that, she proceeded to trash the United States Constitution—the very document she’s sworn to support as one of just nine sitting justices on the United States Supreme Court.

“I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012,” Ginsburg told her foreign audience. Egypt needs a more recent document to work from, she believes, like South Africa’s constitution. South African law guarantees citizens the rights to housing, education and health care—all high-ranking items on the liberal agenda. South Africa’s free speech clause, on the other hand, is much more restrictive than the U.S. Constitution and could be used by oppressors as an easy excuse to squelch any expression deemed to be “controversial.”

“It really is a great piece of work,” Ginsburg said, referring to the South African document. As for America’s Constitution, it’s just too old, she told her Egyptian interviewers.

Of course, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is hardly the first progressive to call for a more flexible constitution that can be periodically adjusted to accommodate a radical leftist agenda. But it’s still shocking to hear a Supreme Court justice, of all people, insult the supreme law of the United States in front of a foreign audience.

On the other hand, in today’s upside-down world, if you’re a Supreme Court justice with a hankering to bash the U.S. Constitution, what better place to receive a warm reception than in Cairo?

Cairo, remember, is where President Obama spoke in 2009 about Islam’s “proud tradition of tolerance.” British-American “colonialism,” on the other hand, “denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims.”

If only those old documents, like the Constitution and the Magna Carta, would have guaranteed more rights for Muslims. Think of the peaceful and cooperative spirit there would be between Anglo-Saxon nations and the world of Islam!

In another interview this past Sunday, nbc’s Matt Lauer asked President Obama to respond to critics who say he hasn’t been the kind of transformational political figure he promised to be.

“What’s frustrated people,” the president said, “is that I have not been able to force Congress to implement every aspect of what I said in 2008. Well, you know, it turns out that our founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes” (emphasis added throughout).

If it wasn’t for that old document, we’d be a lot further along with our radical agenda of fundamentally transforming the United States of America!

The president has long desired to cast off the restraints of the U.S. Constitution. During a 2001 interview, many years before he became president, Mr. Obama criticized the document as being a charter of negative liberties. He said, “It says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.”

They’re not exactly concealing their contempt for the Founding Fathers and the rule of law. But then again, why should they? Most Americans are far too busy watching reality shows and sporting events to actually take note of what’s happening. And then there’s the liberal media establishment. It’s full of devoted followers who worship before the altar of progressivism.

Early this week, for example, the New York Times rushed to the defense of Justice Ginsburg’s near-treasonous remarks in Egypt. It referred to a Time magazine article from 1987, which estimated that out of 170 countries in the world at the time, more than 160 nations had “written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”

But oh how times have changed in just one generation. Today, the supreme law of the land is losing its appeal around the world—and even here in America, in the case of liberal progressives.

“There are lots of possible reasons,” the Times explained. “The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution’s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/us/we ... .html?_r=1

The ignorance is stunning. America is besieged by all kinds of problems and evils. Its stature and influence among nations has been massively diminished. And yet, rather than view the Constitution as a way to solve our problems, many of our leaders see it as part of the problem!

[99socks Profile]

The article isn't exactly objective, but worth a bump anyways.

I think being appointed for life is bullshit. If there is anything that needs to be changed to the Constitution, it's that. Impeachment is way too hard and way too impractical, and it's probably not good if the term for judges aligns with the term(s) of the President. I say, give 'em 10 years!

[Will69ease Profile]

The Basic Reason for America’s Constitutional Crisis...
The government is operating under a flawed understanding about human nature.

Crucial question: Do you think human nature is fundamentally good—or evil?

The difference between these two opposing views forms the heart of a crisis in the United States right now.

The common liberal view of human nature is that it is fundamentally good and should be given room to flourish. The biblical and realist view is that it is fundamentally evil and must be conscientiously governed.

Thankfully, America’s Founders took the latter view. As a result, the system of government they created has stood for over two centuries and done much to guarantee the nation’s success.

They realized that government is necessary in order to check the evils of human nature in society. They also recognized—having fought and bled in order to free themselves from a tyrant—that firm limits on power are needed in order to check the evils of human nature within the government.

As James Madison wrote in Federalist 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

In the Constitution, the American Founders established a system that successfully governs the government.

The fundamental means by which the Constitution accomplishes this are representation, separation of powers, and limited government. The first of these puts the ultimate power in the hands of voters. The second lies in the checks and balances the Founders created through interaction among three branches of government. The third comes in the form of enumerated powers. Article i, Section 8, of the Constitution outlines the duties of Congress; whatever is not listed there falls outside its jurisdiction, and it may not do. And the president—very unlike a monarch—is voted in, carries out his constitutional duties for a short four years, and then can be dismissed.

These fundamental restrictions—again, borne of a realistic understanding of human nature—have helped preserve freedom in America for over 200 years. And right now, they are the target of extreme attack.

The Constitution demands that, upon entering office, the president solemnly swear or affirm that he will, to the best of his ability, “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” It also says that “The senators and representatives, and all executive and judicial officers … shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution.”

Far too many of these leaders, since taking that oath, have done the opposite! And the current president has, to the best of his ability, smeared, ignored and undermined that founding document!

America’s most powerful leaders today fundamentally disagree with the charter they are meant to uphold! “It turns out that our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes,” President Obama lamented in a recent interview. Frankly, in their eyes, the limits the Founders imposed to protect the nation from human nature are obstacles preventing them from remaking the nation according to their own perverse ideals.

As Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, points out, the seeds of this anti-law thinking were sown by Woodrow Wilson, who viewed the Constitution’s doctrines of limited government as obsolete. Notice the reasoning: “Wilson argued that progress and evolution had brought human beings to a place and time where we didn’t have to worry about limited government,” Arnn said. “He rejected what the Founders identified as a fixed or unchanging human nature, and thought we should be governed by an elite class of people who are not subject to political forces or constitutional checks and balances—a class of people such as we find in our modern bureaucracy. This form of government would operate above politics, acting impartially in accordance with reason” (emphasis added).
http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/ ... 1&month=12

Here is the crux of it. This thinking trusts in human nature and human reasoning. It sees nothing that needs restraining. It is so confident in its own correctness that it seeks to operate above the law.

Today, it is plain to see the problems that such thinking—which has been fiercely taken up by the present government—can create.

Recall Mr. Obama’s interview in 2001 in which he criticized the Warren Court of the 1950s and ’60s for not being radical enough: “It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution,” he lamented. He bemoaned the Constitution’s being “a charter of negative liberties” that describes what the government can’t do to you rather than what it “must do on your behalf.”

Right after Mr. Obama was elected, the Trumpet’s editor in chief, Gerald Flurry, wrote on this subject. “The Founding Fathers created the Constitution to limit the government’s power because they had lived under a tyrant who decided, according to his own whims, what was fair for the people and what wasn’t. The Constitution gave them a certain protection from evil human nature. The founders based this charter on certain biblical principles, not just human reasoning,” he wrote in the January 2009 Trumpet.
http://www.thetrumpet.com/5690.0.110.0/ ... nstitution

Today’s most powerful leaders view this foundational strength of the Constitution as a flaw. And, the president’s frustration with those needful limitations aside, the government today is attaining remarkable success at aggressively undermining them and, in the process, trashing the Constitution.

The course that began with Wilson and blossomed under Franklin Roosevelt—that of transcending the limits imposed by the Founders and transforming the government into an ever more powerful guarantor of “positive rights”—is now reaching its apex.

Today the federal government acts, for example, as though citizens have the “right” to material goods—housing, education, healthcare—which of course gives the government the obligation to take resources from other citizens to pay for them. This represents an enormous increase in federal power at the expense of the rights and freedoms of individuals.

The president is bypassing the democratic process with growing impunity. The legislature is blowing past its constitutionally enumerated powers and continually expanding its mandate. And the judiciary is torturing the Constitution’s language to force ever more bizarre meanings into it, thus bringing it into conformity with its own liberal plans. These efforts are just getting started—and are quickly picking up steam.

These leaders are shucking off the constitutional system by which the government itself is properly governed. Why? Because of their basic, fatal misunderstanding of human nature, and the crucial need for all human beings—most especially those in power—to live by the law.

This rapidly exploding development calls to mind the darkest period in the history of ancient Israel—the period of the judges. As the nation turned its back on God and His law, it suffered curse upon nightmarish curse. Scripture uses a simple description of the moral and intellectual climate at that time—one that rings sickeningly true today: “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

Quoting that verse in his 2001 article “Justice and Our ‘Evolving Constitution,’” Mr. Flurry wrote, “This was the condition of our biblical forefathers—just before their nation collapsed and they went into slavery!”
http://www.thetrumpet.com/382.0.29.0/wo ... nstitution

Watch for history to repeat itself.

[Evildweeb Profile]

Well, despite the fact that this is some sort of judicial review, evidently this old wrinkled beyotch is a little too old as well.

Constitution a little too old?

Well she can suck my little too old dick.

The Constitution was here before wrinkled old beyotches, it is here during the old wrinkled beyotch paradigm, and will be here long after the wrinkled old beyotches GTFO.

Just cause she says so, don't make it so.

OMG, stop me now before I REALLY go off..........................

lol

cheers

[Will69ease Profile]

When the American Framers wrote the U.S. Constitution, they intended to prevent the abuse of power by carefully defining the specific responsibilities and narrowly restricting the administrative powers of all three government branches. The highest authority of the land wasn’t a particular branch of government or any elected official.

It was the United States Constitution.

Today, that supreme law is being attacked. Instead of enforcing the Constitution, many of our leaders are actively and openly working to undermine the very law on which America was established! And yet, even though this spirit of lawlessness now permeates the very highest levels of government, most people today, even those who know America is headed in the wrong direction, simply cannot conceive of this republic ever ending in anarchy, captivity or slavery.

And yet, God says that is exactly what’s coming! But you don’t even need a Bible to see where this is headed. We just need to learn from the “grand lesson of antiquity,” as Paul Johnson termed it back in 1999. In his essay “No Law Without Order,” Johnson warned that when the rule of law begins to collapse, the collapse of the nation soon follows.

The Founding Fathers understood this well. So did those who followed in their footsteps. For example, in 1838, when he was just 28 years old, Abraham Lincoln delivered a groundbreaking speech in Springfield, Illinois, titled, “The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions.” Here was a young man, less than a decade removed from his teen years, delivering a powerful warning to America—boldly telling the fledgling nation what it needed to do in order to survive.

He began his speech, also known as the Lyceum address, by expressing praise and thanksgiving for the stupendous blessings God had bestowed on this land. “We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate,” said Lincoln. He reminded Americans that they also owed a debt of gratitude to their ancestors—the “patriots of seventy-six” who helped establish and build such a powerful nation.

Given these unprecedented benefits and blessings, along with the fact that the United States was barricaded between two massive bodies of water, Lincoln could hardly conceive of any great danger ever coming from abroad to threaten the existence of the United States.

The real danger facing America, Lincoln warned, was the lawless spirit he believed to be spreading from within. In fact, it was several incidents of mob violence in America that angered Lincoln into preparing his Lyceum remarks.

“I know the American people are much attached to their government,” he said. He firmly believed that most people in his day were prepared to sacrifice and even suffer for the good of country. But if the rebellious element wasn’t stamped out, this hostility toward the rule of law would soon spread and it would eventually divide the nation and threaten its very existence!

The law is the law, Lincoln insisted. There may be some bad laws, he explained. And once they are discovered, they should be immediately repealed, in accordance with the guidelines set forth in the Constitution. But until changes could be lawfully enacted, the laws of the land—whether good or bad—had to be obeyed! The government was responsible for strictly enforcing these laws. And every American—citizens and leaders alike—was duty-bound to obey the law of the land.

“Let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty,” Lincoln said. “Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books and in Almanacs—let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.”

Just before making those powerful remarks, Lincoln urged all Americans to look to and follow the example of the Founders—those who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to uphold and defend the rule of law.

Now look around. Where in America today do we find that kind of reverential respect for the rule of law? Where are the courageous leaders who faithfully uphold and defend the law of the land? Where are the ones who would defend the integrity and the humility of the Founders—who would censure those who assassinate the character and reputations of the Founding Fathers?

Today’s leaders see the Founders as obstacles in the way of the progressive agenda. And they hardly bat an eye as they publicly denounce the very document they are sworn to promote and defend!

A nation at war against the rule of law cannot last. This is the sobering warning young Lincoln wanted to pass on to the men at Lyceum.

“If destruction be our lot,” Lincoln said, “we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” In other words, if we end in ruin, we have only ourselves to blame. “As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”