The U.S. Constitution is sacred, inviolate, an unchanging. That’s the current argument against gun control: yell “Second Amendment!”, drop the mic, BOOM, walk off stage, end of discussion.
Except, of course, a good portion of the people I know who are dropping that bon mot aren’t so defiantly defensive about absolute nature of the Constitution when it comes to the First Amendment. Mandatory prayer in schools should be okay, along with teaching creation science and intelligent design. Oh, and media people saying things we don’t like should be pulled off the airwaves and/or internet ASAP.
Oh, and the Fourth Amendment isn’t sacred, because we need warrentless wiretaps and indefinite detention because TERRORISM. Same with the Fifth Amendment, because enhanced interrogation isn’t cruel or unusual if it coerces someone to incriminate themselves.
And let’s not forget the Fourteenth Amendment, which is already less sacred because it wasn’t written by the Founding Fathers. That’s the one that establishes “anchor babies” and establishes the foundation for most equal protection laws protecting women and minorities.
If most of the people screaming that the Second Amendment is absolute and only open to one interpretation — theirs — were as vocal about the rest of the Constitution being inviolate, I might give them more credence. But you can’t cherry-pick and say that the document is sacred when you like what it says, and open to interpretation when you don’t. It’s always open to intepretation. Times change, people change, and the needs and wants of the nation change. We need a guideline, to be sure, and we need much thought and plenty of thoughtful discussion before we make any changes. But it’s never as simple as saying things are black and white, only one way or the other.
The Bill of Rights restricts what the federal government can do to us, the citizens within each state of the union. However, an individual state and the people of which it is composed are well within their rights to determine how restrictive or how loose these items should be based on their particular cultures and social mores. After all, the people of Texas are not the people of New York and vice versa.
Recall that certain states used to have state churches and they were well within their rights to mandate them for their respective citizens. We live in a Union of individual states each with their own executive, legislative and judicial branches. Each has its own constitution and laws reflecting the will of the people within their own borders.
Why is this?
If the federal government is supposed to be the central authority as you appear to suggest or have been led to believe, why the need for separate and distinct legislatures for each of the 50 states? The federal system itself was created by the 13 original states or colonies and is subservient to them and not the other way around.
Oh, and the 14th amendment was not created for the express purpose of creating ‘anchor babies’. It dealt with citizenship granted to emancipated slaves, cf. Dred Scott case.
You apparently missed my sarcasm.
This has absolutely nothing to do with Federalism or States’ Rights. It has to do with people who hold up the Constitution as an absolute when it suits them, then hold it up as flexible when it suits them, when in fact it is and always will be flexible, whether it’s on the Federal level or on the State level. When people like what it says, it’s sacred, when they don’t like what it says, it’s effectively a dishrag.
And I am absolutely aware of what the 14th amendment does, granting citizenship to those who were born on U.S soil so many freed slaves were retroactively citizens. Yet there are those who want parts of it repealed, because they don’t like that it grants citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.
Don’t forget that the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment, and the whole point of having “Amendments” is to prevent the Constitution from being fixed and absolute.
See what Thomas Jeferson had to say on the topic:
http://www.famguardian.org/Subjects/Politics/ThomasJefferson/jeff1000.htm
That too.
I would argue that the entire Constitution is (and should be) absolute. The point is to establish maximum liberty for the people and security (against foreign threats) for the nation (of people, not the gov.). To allow it to be a flexible document means the government can interpret it how they like to justify whatever action they wish to take, which was the problem we were having for a long time. Now, and for many years, actually, they’ve just been flat ignoring it.
Except for those amendments already repealed (like prohibition) the only amendments I can think of that should be repealed at this point are the 16th and 17th, dealing with the institution of the income tax and making Senators popularly electable rather than representatives of their State.
This really has nothing to do with your argument, just a random observation while thinking about your title: the phrase “only the Sith deal in absolutes,” is, itself an absolute statement.
Well, yes, that’s the joke. Obi-Wan was telling Anakin that only the Sith deal in absolutes, while himself issuing an absolute statement, therefore making it ironic and a touch absurd.