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Comment by OfSanguineFire | Hacker News Reader

Surprised to see this article makes a case only about the Republican Party's loss of interest in the Constitution. I personally know more Americans on the opposite end of the political spectrum and have heard the Constitution called illegitimate due to absence of input from BIPOC at its creation, or that the First Amendment is harmful because it does not curtail hate speech. The Second Amendment in the age of more powerful weapons than existed in 1787, is a popular subject of debate at this and similar sites.

Thus, there seem to be a broad array of Americans who no longer feel invested in the guiding document of their polity, which might augur tumultuous times as factions strive towards some new foundation for a country.

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Why are you surprised by this? You say "opposite end of the spectrum" but then the opinions you cite from the left which are so extreme that very few elected Democrats would be caught standing next to somebody espousing them. Contrast that to an ex-president who literally spent months trying to end-run the constitution and stay in power -- and the few Republicans who spoke out against that are deemed "Republican in name only."

Is it news that some extremists on either end want to tear everything down? No. Is it news that one of two political parties has rallied around a plan to tear it all down? We haven't seen that since the, perhaps first, civil war.

You write that elected Democrats wouldn't be caught standing next to people on the extreme left. At the same time Democrats rely on that extreme, too, for votes in tight elections and can't risk alienating it. That could mean that even mainstream Democrats might no longer be so willing to perpetuate the American national mythology -- the Constitution as a sacred document and the Founders as great men -- that both parties could broadly agree on for a long time. And as other poster here mentions, when the left, too, loses interest in those founding values, it is less capable of standing up to alarming behavior from the right.

Obama famously snubbed Cornell West, but he still got re-elected and then his milquetoast veep got elected. Dr. West is now running for president, which sounds like it should test your theory that Democrats cannot offend the extreme left. Do you actually think he'll draw enough votes for (R) to win? I don't.

I daresay Cornell West is more extreme left than a broader “extreme left” that simply feels that the Constitution is a deeply, perhaps irredeemably flawed document. Moreover, the Obama reelection was over a decade ago, and with the events of this last decade and changing American demographics, the Democrat youth vote at this moment is probably even more cynical about the American national mythology. A mainstream Democrat certainly wouldn’t outright disparage the Constitution, but praising the Constitution as a sacred and well-designed document, as used to be done by both parties and perpetuated in American civics classes, could only turn those voters off.

Do you have evidence to support your feelings about what mainstream Democrats feel? Or can you name right-of-West-but-still-extreme-left politician who exemplifies your position? Because I'm pretty far out there but I love the constitution -- and while I think it's got its flaws, I'm no different from Ben Franklin in that regard and I see it as a living document: it can and must be amended as those flaws become apparent.

Post George Floyd, I know mainstream moderate Democrats now that call the constitution a “racist document.” For longer than that, mainstream democrats have dismissed federalism as merely a pretext for segregation. People will regularly argue against adhering to the original meaning or intent of the document “because the founders were slave holders.”

Ideologically, the fact that the constitution represents a compromise with slave holders has become increasingly intolerable for democrats. Anti-racism as a principle has become more important than rule of law or cultivating a shared respect for the fundamental law.

Democrats of these days call everything "tainted". That movement has only interest in defining flaws as inherent.

None want to burn it all down. This is for genuine fear of those who want fascism to encourage mob violence, discrimination and deny law and order to minorities.

Puritans are not the anarchists in this story. Little Nazis are trying to normalize revolution and idol worship as somehow universal.

Lying to kill the constitution is their main tactic.

I am not from the US, but if I was and I had to vote purely on who is less likely to tear democracy down, I would vote the Democrats and it is not even a close contest.

Your left leaning democrats are like our center-left government parties in terms of ideology. The Dems as a whole are slightly center right. Your Republicans are like our far right fringe parties.

Especially after how they handled their presidents insurection, the Republicans in my eyes should be unvotable for anybody who cares about democracy. And they should remain unvotable until they do some soul-searching. But this also includes things the GOP does outside of Trumps sphere of influence. E.g. look at the list of the worst gerrymandered states or at how the right tries to stop people from voting. If not enough people vote your party the democratic way would be to adjust which positions you offer to them, but the GOP seems like it would rather adjust their electorate.

Even if I liked the positions the GOP holds I would hate the idea to let them rule me, because this smells of "ignore what the voter wants". To theie credit, they managed to divide the electorate so much with culture-war bs that a big part of them actively want to become peasants under absolutist rule if it just meant the other side will lose.

But in the Constitution, state legislatures select the electors that pick the President. The GOP scheme has a better textual basis, and is better rooted in the Constitutional design, than any things that Democrats consider well established constitutional law.

Denying voters any rights of voting is "in the constitution"?

Welcome to your role as either a Nazi or a Mao-style communist. Lying is not a creative writing class.

There is no “right to vote for every government official.” Judges aren’t elected. Until 1913, Senators weren’t either. And the President still isn’t elected by the public. The constitution empowers state legislatures to select presidential electors.

Currently, those electors are selected based on a popular vote as a matter of state law. But that could be changed by the state legislatures at any time, because ultimately the power rests with them to select the federal president.

As you say, the power to pick electors is a matter delegated to state legislatures. Trump's efforts, as president, to replace those legally-selected electors with electors of his own choosing is, ipso facto, unconstitutional.

If he had perhaps sought to convince those state legislatures to change their electoral process to favor him, that could have been constitutional. But the actions he undertook in his role as the head of the federal executive branch is clearly and egregiously in violation of the constitutional delegation of authority to state legislatures. Just because state law could be changed doesn't mean that the law was changed.

And that is why he stands indicted for election interference in Georgia, it's why I hope he'll be indicted in other states, and why I hope he'll be in state penitentiary before January 2025. Because he's a criminal who has zero respect for the constitution. He even said it:

> Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.

He literally called for the termination of the constitution, and you're here saying that we really need to be focused on how an inscrutable segment of "far left voters" might possibly dislike the constitution even though you have no evidence to show on that?

That is the most spit-in-your-face “well akshually” I’ve ever heard. Fuck your votes, because technically we’re allowed to ignore them and substitute our own…?!

It’s a shame that “have you no decency, sir?” would fall on deaf ears in Congress in this day and age.

The “rule of law” is all about who “technically” makes the decisions, and how power is “technically” allocated.

>would fall on deaf ears in Congress

Looks like you missed the part where the US Congress has no control over how the 50 states select electors.

I agree that disavowal of the Constitution isn’t restricted to one party, but would go further: the Constitution isn’t really intended for “the people” at large. It’s intended for the set of people who would rise to power in its absence — call them the ruling classes. It’s an agreement between the powerful that this is how we get along, this is how we share and restrict power, this is how we maintain a government that avoids the descent into tyranny or dissolution.

It may be that the Constitution is no longer a viable means of ensuring the peaceful transfer of power and of facilitating good-enough governance. It certainly has failed dramatically in the past to prevent civil strife. Is there an amendment that can fix whatever is wrong with the current situation and bring the elites back to the same page?

What is wrong with the current situation?

The fundamental problem is that the USA now thinks of itself as a direct democracy rather than a representative democracy and that modern technology has fueled the worst populist instincts of our population, creating an atmosphere ripe for demagoguery and factionalism. The Constitution had a solution for this — the indirect representation of the Senate, who up until the 17th amendment were chosen by the local state representatives. Indirect representation was meant to prevent “mob rule”. There is now no real difference in the makeup of the Senate and House of Representatives.

Undoing the 17th amendment would only result in even worse corruption and factionalism, but the idea of indirect representation is the correct idea.

After batting ideas around with GPT4 for a while, it seems one palatable amendment might be a three-fold change: 1) a 1-term term limits for Senators, 2) forbidding party primaries for Senate elections, and 3) changing Senate elections to Senate nominations, where any candidate who receives more than 20% of votes is sent to the current Senate for confirmation — the existing Senate, including the outgoing Senators, decide which of the nominees are to be confirmed. Confirmation is done Papal style — nobody goes home until the new Senators are confirmed by 2/3 majority.

Combining a 1-term limit with Senate self-confirmation means that more candidates have a chance of becoming a Senator without having to resort to demagoguery or factionalism, and that over time the composition of the Senate will trend away from power hungry individuals to civic-minded servants.

For clarity:

The Senate Renewal and Integrity Amendment:

*Amendment XXVIII*:

Section 1. No person shall be elected to the Senate more than once.

Section 2. No political party shall hold a primary for the nomination of a Senate candidate.

Section 3. For the election of Senators:

(a) Any candidate receiving more than twenty percent of the popular vote in their respective state shall be considered as a nominee.

(b) Upon receiving the list of nominees, the Senate shall convene in a closed session. Confirmation of a nominee requires a two-thirds majority of the Senate. Senators shall cast their votes anonymously. This process shall continue until a nominee is confirmed. Senators shall remain in session without adjournment until the confirmation is achieved.

Section 4. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

> I personally know more Americans on the opposite end of the political spectrum and have heard the Constitution called illegitimate due to absence of input from BIPOC at its creation, or that the First Amendment is harmful because it does not curtail hate speech. The Second Amendment in the age of more powerful weapons than existed in 1787, is a popular subject of debate at this and similar sites.

And yet none of these people have any real power, nor any party really backing their convictions, nor are they actively working to disenfranchise people and dismantle democracy. Absolutely a false equivalence.

The Republican party is unquestionably the party of Trump. And Trump demands to be king of America, no matter the cost.

It's surprising people haven't lost more faith in the Constitution given the last 3 and a half years since March of 2020 People didn't realize that things like Freedom of Assembly had a political check, where protesting lockdowns is killing grandma but protesting the police is stunning and brave.

> surprising

Can't be surprised if it's from The Atlantic :/

I agree with this. There are a lot of people who think American history is irrelevant to them, and I think a wedge is driven against people by asserting that American history is irrelevant to non-white people. Hate speech is a good example. It's not a new debate and it's pretty obvious to me that governments use whatever leverage they have against their citizens which is why free speech is important.

In places where there are restrictions on speech, we see it abused against citizens. For example, in Islamic countries with blasphemy laws, they are weaponized against the opposition. Germany aggressively prosecutes people using anti-Natsoc laws and anti hate speech laws on what seems like a very politically biased basis https://web.archive.org/web/20230316140458/https://www.nytim....

If government has a method to arrest and silence people it doesn't like, it will find a way to use that method. I think the US is already hopeless so technology is the solution.

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