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sprite wrote:
“Progressives look for and fight for NEW solutions. Conservatives fight to maintain the status quo. We don’t need no more stinkin’ status quo, people!”On point DCM and sprite.
The only constant is change!
The erosion of the US Constitution and of citizen’s rights based on political spin and fearmongering, is in fact leading to drastic change.
I fail to understand how these folks, who use the Constitution so often in arguing their points, can be so blindly welcoming to its evisceration.
The Founding Fathers did a good job in writing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights—-they provide the basis of the greatness and strength long enjoyed by the US, they should be left alone!
ed fThe constitution was created to be a living document, not some law written in stone by a man who says he got them from a deity. If you want such laws, and such an imaginary all powerful master, keep them inside the churches and away from rational human beings who want the freedom of will to govern themselves.
Edited on Aug 07, 2008 10:54
davidcmurray, “At least give Obama credit for coming up with new ideas” There is nothing new about socialism and Obama is a Socialist. I’ll give credit where credit is do, he has no new ideas, just more socialism. And not every new idea deserves credit when the idea may be very stupid.
Well, you’d better stop thinking about moving to Costa Rica then, Roark, because their government is modeled on Italy’s system which is clearly socialist. And what’s wrong with socialism anyway? And what makes Obama a socialist? I remember when they labeled Hillary a socialist because she talked about universal healthcare. What do you think a government’s purpose is? To make the multinationals richer or to provide for its citizens? please don’t give me the rap that socialism makes people lazy and dependent because that argument is specious at best.
What new ideas ? Barack Hussein Oboma never really says what he will change. Oh, except my taxes. It seems that Liberals want this one world where everyone is equal, not to mention income redistribution. Im self employed and worked real hard to get where im at. Why dont you liberals pay my extra taxes.
check your facts and relax..here are few links to help you put together what is REALLY going on
https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/WebHelp/ESTA_Screen-Level_Online_Help_1.htm#Which%20countries%20participate%20in%20the%20Visa%20Waiver%20Program?http://www.tsa.dhs.gov/approach/mythbusters/nprm_secure_flight.shtm
http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppt_card/ppt_card_3926.html
http://travel.state.gov/passport/ppt_card/ppt_card_3926.html
Maravilla, you and I on occasion agree on certain things. What’s wrong with socialism? A lot in most cases, but just as many things can be said of capitalism and certain democractic forms of governments. The socialist form does not lend itself to the individualist mind of the average US citizen. Social medicine in a totally socialist country works just fine, usually. I happen to think Cuba is a good example (please no one ride me on this, I know why it works, and why it was necessary.) In the US, although it is an altruistic thought, it would not work. In order for it to work, doctors would have to be educated for free in our colleges, thereby allowing for lower medical costs. It ain’t ever gonna happen here. Universal healthcare, and managed healthcare, is a compromise of the socialist idea, and is frought with problems. Managed healthcare is leading to doctors forming hugh medical groups, just to be able to practice, and get paid. Our family physician just sold his practice to join one. Now he is one of hundreds of thousands of doctors finding themselves in the same position. My wife was just diagnosed with a serious condition, and she gets referred only to doctors within the group. We haven’t tried outside the group for a second opinion yet, but I fear things will be getting a little tougher when it comes to medical choice. The semi-social medical disaster is coming home to roost.
DavidCMurray, putting air in tires, and conservation, are noble ideas. However, cutting petro usage by hugh amounts, requires solid comprehensive planning. It requires a change in a lifestyle that some won’t want to give up. Our entire family drives 4 cylinder vehicles. We check our tire pressure, and tune up the cars. And we don’t drive unless we positively have to. We burn wood pellets in the winter to offset our oil heat bill. We don’t want to have to cut further into our lifestyle.
I want to be off the foreign juice as badly as anyone else. I think we should drill our own oil, and let the nations that hate us, keep theirs. Why should we be denied our own resources?
Conserving is part of being a “conservative.” Along with that, how can I tell someone who wants to drive an SUV, they can’t? It’s not for me, or anyone else, to say how someone should conduct their life and pursuit of pleasure. Our resources belong to all of us. Good stewardship is important, but not everyone is going to look at it the same way. As someone who was born and raised in the USA, I have the opinion that everyone has the equal right to do for themselves as they see fit.
Sprite, where in the constitution does it say it is a living document? It can, and has been amended, but this is not a fluid document meant to be changed at a whim. Our founding fathers set up a framework for a republic to operate under. To treat it as a list of suggestions, or as something that changes with each new generation and its wants, defeats its purpose.
Concerning the Constitution of the United States of America.
It is not scripture, and we cannot assume that it is inerrant.
However, over two hundred years of experience has shown that it is a very good and very workable document on which to base a nation of people who are, for the most part, men and women of good faith who believe in individual liberty.
It was intended by its framers to be just that.
It was ratified by our forefathers who were alive and had the right to vote — the people of the several states — with that “original intent.” Thus, we should remember that when we speak of the “framers” of the Constitution, we include within the meaning of the word “framers” not only those gifted individuals who participated in the Constitutional Convention, but also the people of the United States who ratified their final product in “up or down” votes in the several states.
Upon that ratification by the people, and under its own terms, the Constitution became the organic law of the land — that upon which all other law is based, and that with which no other law may be inconsistent.
The framers included two methods of changing the Constitution within the document itself.
It was never intended by any of the framers, individually or as a group, or by those voters who ratified it as it was written and presented to them, that the Constitution should be changed in any manner other than the two methods provided for amending it.
[To borrow a phrase from Rush Limbaugh, I add, for those of you in Rio Linda, that “amending it,” means the same thing as “changing it.”]
It was intended that the people of the United States, acting through their elected representatives, should be able to change the Constitution in whatever manner the people might desire at any time in the future, so long as they changed it using one of the two methods provided for changing it.
The people of the United States did that shortly after the Constitution went into effect. Through their elected representatives, they duly and lawfully proposed the Bill of Rights, which consisted of 12 proposed amendments to the Constitution.
When the people of the several states, acting through their elected representatives, had finished their voting, 10 of the 12 amendments were approved, and 2 were not approved. The 10 that were approved became the Bill of Rights as we know it today.
The people of the United States have likewise changed the Constitution a number of other times since then, and have rejected many proposed changes a number of times since then.
The framers of the Constitution did intend that, at any given moment in time, all laws of the land should be made, enforced, and interpreted in a fashion consistent with the plain language of the Constitution, in whatever state of amendment it might be at such point in time.
It was never intended that any individual, or small group of individuals, should be able to make wholesale changes in the Constitution by order, fiat, or decree.
It is generally accepted, following the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison (U.S. Sup. Ct., 1803), [and especially after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment] that the federal courts do have the power to review laws, regulations, and actions by government and its agents to determine if such are permitted or proscribed under the Constitution, in whatever state of amendment it exists at the time relevant to the case before the court.
If any person, group, or entity had the power to change the Constitution by order, fiat, or decree, then the Constitution could be made to say, and mean, literally anything that such person, group, or entity wished for it to say, and this change could be imposed upon the people without their approval, and in clear violation of the Constitution.
This state of affairs was never contemplated or intended by the framers of the Constitution, and nothing written in the document indicates that the document may be changed by the order, fiat, or decree of any person, group, or entity.
Indeed, the presence in the document itself of two methods for amending the Constitution, and no more, implies that those are the only two ways in which it may be amended.
Thus, under its own terms, the Constitution of the United States absolutely may not be amended by the order, fiat, or decree of any person, group, or entity. That is simply a fact. That fact applies to everyone. It applies to the Congress and to the President, and even to courts and judges.
The Constitution of the United States may only be amended by the two methods provided in the Constitution itself.
Thus, we must honor the “original intent” of the framers, because if we do not, then we make the Constitution a “wax nose” that can be twisted into any form desired by whomever, or whatever, is in control of the political organs of the country.
If the Constitution doesn’t mean what it has always meant, but can be decreed to mean something new and different, then it doesn’t mean anything at all.
If any person or group wishes to see the Constitution changed in some respect, then that person or group must work within the two prescribed methods for making changes in the Constitution.
The Constitution of the United States is a very good and very workable document for creating, building, and running a country. But it is only that. It is not a “living document.” It cannot change itself. And neither you, nor your friends, nor your political party can change it either, unless you follow the rules contained within it, and get a lot of people to agree with your proposed change, and to vote, through their elected representatives, to change it as you wish and propose.
That is how a democratic republic, such as the one created by the Constitution, is supposed to work, and that is how we must all require and demand that it work.
And again, I assert that the United States Constitution, or any democratic republic, can only be workable to govern a nation of people who are, for the most part, men and women of good faith who believe in individual liberty. It can only work for a nation of people who accept the following ideas: (1) that the process is fair so long as it allows all sides to be brought to the attention of the public for consideration or rejection; (2) that no side is going to always get exactly what it wants; and, (3) that each of us is subject to losing an election, just as we may win an election.
There have always been, and will always be, quacks and people on the fringe. It is said that during the American Revolution, only a third of the people supported the revolution, that another third opposed it and supported the British Crown, and that the other third was either undecided or indifferent.
On the whole, I think most Americans today would agree that the American Revolution was a good thing, and that the world is better for it having occurred and having turned out the way it did. There are probably some quacks who would argue the point, though.
Similarly, today, the quackery we see on the left is often maddening to those of us who ask the liberals and Bush-bashers for actual evidence to support their claims, but hear only more insults from the haters. The liberals, the tree-huggers, the Earth-worshippers, and the pro-abortion baby killers (who oppose the death penalty for brutal murderers who deserve death if anyone does) want what they want and they want it now! And they don’t care how they have to trash the Constitution to get it. That is a childish and shortsighted way of thinking and of being.
You can choose to act like grown-ups.
If you think you have a good idea for a change, then put it out there, and push for it politically — but follow the rules. Don’t tear up and throw away today the very Constitution that assures your God-given right and my God-given right to freedom of speech just for some faddish cause célèbre.
If, in the fullness of time, you can’t get the people to vote for your idea, then you lose. Maybe your idea wasn’t that good after all, or maybe its time simply hasn’t come yet.
© 2008
It is the brilliant and lucid writings of those like our own “WinstonChurchill” that keep me reading posts on this forum. It gives me a certain amount of comfort, in a world that is seemingly more difficult to understand.
I repeat: Progressives fight for change and new ideas; conservatives fight to maintain the status quo. Not all new ideas are good, of course, but sitting on a log while the world rushes by is a sure way to get trampled.
Social security here and national health care elsewhere are both examples of progressive, socialst achievements. And Costa Rica is a progressive socialist system which I assume is appreciated by everyone here. You conservatives who come here and like it are not being honest with yourselves. If you really prefer a more capitalist and less socialist society, you should stay in the States.Roark I know you love to torment all the “liberals” with Limbaugh style sound bites, but Obama is not a socialist. And conservation is the single best thing we can all do to free ourselves from the shackles of oil. In socialist countries like Venezuela gas is cheap because the government sets the price. In capitalist countries traders set the price of oil, offering us all the potential for more may drive the price down in the short term, but if we don’t learn to conserve we will be back to square one sooner rather than later. Conservation is good for everyone and our living planet, only the sly-est of politicians would politicize it.
a long dead person did not write, but someone wrote “The liberals, the tree-huggers, the Earth-worshippers,”
Wake up, you’re in Costa Rica.
Earth worship is a laudable quality, one even fundementalist Christians are beginning to embrace.ed f
How much money do I make in a year? And why is that relevant? I make enough to support two households — one in the US and one in Costa Rica — and can easily divide my time between my two residences. The real key to being able to live thusly is to have no debt whatsoever!
The managed healthcare system is not about socialism at all — it’s about PROFITS for the insurance companies managing healthcare. The reasons doctors are leaving their private practices is that they have to dicker with the ins companies over every little bill, and hire a full-time person just to deal with these monsters. HMOs are evil entities. Their primary purpose is to deny treatment, deny payments, and make the most profits. I hope your wife is able to get the treatment she needs. Otherwise, if you have CAJA in Costa Rica, you could take her there for treatment and it wouldn’t cost a colon.
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