Conversation

Replying to
No, 235 years of field use doesn’t make the case you might think it does. It’s a version of appeal to nature fallacy. Mere survival of a thing makes no case one way or the other about its moral value. Especially when propped up by violence.
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Replying to @TheMindScourge
The “proof by real world demonstration” doesn’t show what origins lists claim. Slavery was ignored and took a century to blow up in a bloody civil war and still isn’t sorted out. The demonstration is that bad thinking can be propped up by violence for centuries
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Hmm. Arguably Hamilton did foresee and in fact seed the Industrial Revolution in his 1791 report on manufactures that set up the American System. It was just kinda against the spirit of the Jeffersonian constitutional grain. Michael Lind’s land of promise covers it decently
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Replying to @vgr
I think their main failure was the failure to imagine the Industrial Revolution... and what would happen to representation when states or territories are added to the Union.
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To the extent the job of politics and law is to articulate and codify a causal and moral rationale for good fortune (aka claim parentage of success), you could say the deadbeat parent got custody of the prodigal child and the nurturing parent got ignored and cut out of the story
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Good question. I suspect perhaps the only morally defensible goal of a constitution is planned obsolescence. “This document will explode into flames in 42 years and you must hold a constitutional convention to reboot”
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Replying to @David_o_Bedlam and @vgr
Depends on what you consider the goal is or should have been. They created a compromise governance agreement for themselves, not for a country of unknown size and economic situation a century onward, much less two centuries.
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27 amendments in 235 years, the most recent proposed in 1791, in year 4, and only revived from the dead and acted on 202y later. “Submit a diff” = “fuck you” basically
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Replying to @vgr
They literally wrote a 1-pager w/ a version control process that's grown to 300M+ users, lasted over 200 years, and produced the largest economy in the world. Your critique compresses to "I don't like the contract anymore." Which is great. Submit a diff.
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Declaring the American experiment an unqualified success (ignoring negative externalities both domestically and globally) and attributing all that presumed success to the genius recipe of the constitution (ignoring historic luck and depredations) = bozo patriotism. Flip bozobit.
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Bozo patriotism is eating the world This problem is not unique to the US but is most pronounced here due to the odd combination of simultaneously being the oldest modern state and youngest nation
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Replying to
The only thing I’m “pinning” to you is the “submit a diff” rhetorical challenge which I read as a fuck-you move. The tweets that follow are not a response to you in particular. They merely continue my thread which you’ve already decided compresses to “I don’t like the contract”
Replying to
Thanks for clarifying. That was not the intent. I see the only solutions here (to the amendment process, which seems like the real issue) as amendment or violence. I’d like to see an amendment. And I think you’re smart enough to figure it out.
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