My theory is that the American System, which arose despite the constitution rather than because of it (since it had a strong federal bias) paved the cowpaths of historic colonial luck with European technology imports and actually created American power
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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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Amendability is a tough design variable. The Indian constitution is 105 amendments in 75y but then the doc itself is way bigger and there are 3 types. Various US state constitutions are all over the place. Alabama is 977, California is 516.
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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
Pinning a lot of words and ideas on me that just aren’t there. Critique is easy, building is hard. I’d like to see your proposed solutions.
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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”
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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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I’m not smart enough and far smarter people have tried and failed. The amendability is an illusion


