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Comment by peteretep | Hacker News Reader

    > whether the founding documents were ever useful, what
    > governing principles do we want to live with now?

My understanding is that if you can get 2/3 of Congress to agree with whatever governing principles you want to live with now, you can amend the constitution. It's far from clear to me (a bleeding heart liberal) that 2/3 of the people, let alone 2/3 of Congress, want to see the 2nd Amendment rights re-amended.

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Well, it needs 2/3 of Congress to propose it, and then 3/4 of the states to ratify it, so it's a bit harder than that, but your point stands. The constitution does indeed have provisions to change with the times, provided the nation agrees.

Stability is also important of course, but a reasonable balance seems to have been struck. The constitution does indeed evolve with the times, while still remaining more or less the same document, upholding the same basic ideals.

I think you'd find very little informed support for that claim about a reasonable balance. The US is on the very far end of rigidity in its political system among the western nations. Heh, no less a progressive extremist than Antonin Scalia himself said that, if he could amend the constitution, it would be to make it easier to amend.

Oh, yes, change happens veerrryyy slowly. Agreed, 100%.

chroma's insight was that the question we should be asking is not "what do these centuries-old documents tell us to do?" but "how do we want to live, in the world we have now?"

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