Seven Ways Rick Perry Would Change the Constitution

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/seven-ways-rick-perry-wants-change-constitution-131634517.html

More from the "constitution is a perfect document......except where it doesn't address our need to impose theocracy on the masses" sect of our country.

Is it just me, or are the current batch of GOP candidates overplaying their hands? Are they really this brazen, or have the GOP handlers just given up on this election and letting the crazies out themselves?

 

You know... how about we just take the Constitution at face value? Right now we have a president who looks at the document as a list of what he can't do to citizens... Wasn't it meant to be a document that protected citizens from the federal government? If I remember correctly, there was such fear that this new republic would encounter a power grab that states' rights would be flushed away. Let's let states decide on things like abortion and same sex marriage, we do not need the federal government regulating anything like that. I wish the major candidates got that in their collective psyche. What Americans want is to be protected from threats and generally be left alone. Maybe I'm off base here, my political savyness has waned a bit sitting here in this godforsaken country (Afghanistan), but if I am in a state that passes a law that I disagree with, I have the option to move to another state. Once the federal government takes something under its wing, the result usually isn't good!

 

I've never understood the desire to leave things to the states. What makes you trust the state governments any more than the federal government? And don't tell me that they 'better represent the area' or whatever.....are the wishes of constituents in, say, Austin, TX the same as those in Corpus Christi? States are no more homogenous in their ideas of government than the country is

 

That is all true, but there is jurisdiction of issues. Marriage is a federal issue. Hell, it might not even be a state issue. The only federal document that should have anything to do with marriage is US Census. 10th amendment applies here. There are few states that think a like. Gerrymandering has made it such that some states are so screwed up that the populace is not truly represented in the voting districts. For example, Sheila Jackson-Lee seems to have a jacked up district and puts all the heavy black areas on Northern Houston into one district. Thus it nullifies their interest and wants into a single vote. Since most of the state reps follow the federal layouts, it really jacks up areas.

State governments are bad at things, but federal government is all out worse. That why they need to not touch the Constitution at all. My only exception would be term limits on Senate and House members. Maybe 3 terms in the Senate, 6 terms in the House. Total of 12 for BOTH COMBINED. So one person is not a career politician for both sides of congress.

 

Well you have the state powers (traditionally police powers, health, welfare, *morality*) clashing against the 14th Amendment Substantive Due Process (almost) right to marry. Regulation of family law has almost always been the exclusive province of states. If one rejects morality as a basis for law, you'd end up repealing all sorts of polygamy, prostitution and drug laws.

Eitherway, Rick Perry is a moron and god help us all if he gets elected. Theocracies, as we've seen in the Middle East, tend to not work so well.

 

Is state vs federal powers one of those "grass is always greener" type of things? We want state's rights, unless the states do things we don't like, in which case, that issue should be handled federally. Or vice versa.

 

Those should be protected in the Constitution. That's the whole point of a constitution, to protect people's rights from the tyranny of the majority.

 

Okay... I understand the issues raised with the states' rights comment I made, I don't know if I agree or not, but I understand.

Perhaps what I should have communicated is that I really am tired of the government meddling in everything we do. Individual freedom is one of the things that make us so unique as a country. I do not pitch for anarchy or some crazy idea of utopia, just a limited government. A government that is enabling to us citizens instead of seeming to stand in the way all the time. Isn't that what we started out as?

I have seen firsthand that "freedom" isn't free, no matter how corny that statement sounds. I just think that over the decades we have surrendered too much of our personal liberties in the name of convenience... I feel we are on a slippery slope and there are those that don't mind where we are heading. I for one am not happy. I see tax dollars being wasted and I have absolutely no say in how that money is spent. I see a perpetual state of conflict and little resolution... I mean is Iraq or Afghanistan any better off than they were 10 years ago, I mean really better off. Mind you I have multiple deployments (currently sitting in Afghanistan) as an both an Infantry and Special Forces officer in the US Army. Many friends have died and I am not sure that we can ever really leave this place and truly expect a sustainable peace.

So how does this relate to the OP's topic of Rick Perry and the Constitution? I want politicians to stay the hell out of our business as much as possible. Listen to the people (like they failed to do with health care), understand what we want as constituents and respond honestly and represent the people whom you serve. If that requires amending the constitution, do it, but do it with the people of the United States in mind and our founding principals. What I absolutely loathe is politicians take so much of the time that they are supposed to be serving us and devote it to their reelection and letting their elected duties go to crap.

Sorry for the rant... I'd erase it, but sometimes you gotta let it fly! Hope all you TFPers had a good weekend!

 

um...i really don't get how this massive displacement has taken hold that allows people to be entirely blind to what's actually going on right in front of them (helped along by those captains of industry that, if conservatives were to get their way, would be subject to even less regulation---to wit:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...data/2011/08/12/gIQAZwhqUJ_story.html?hpid=z3

but i digress)

and instead retreat into **exactly** the arguments for states' autonomy that were o so popular during the reconstruction period. and for really foul ends (the 40 acres and a mule idea was, in that view, nothing more than a government conspiracy to victimize petit bourgeois southern whites...STATES RIGHTS!)

maybe it's just easier to run away from the modern world entirely and to use some bizarre-o constitutional fetishism that runs counter to the entire legal system logic that the constitution frames (you know, common law, the role of precedent in adapting an otherwise static document to changing historical situations...the one aspect of the american system that in principle at least we, collectively, got right) to enable it.