Again, get rid of the he Constitution, and then what? This is is a typical MAGA strategy. They hate something, so they point out a flaw, and use that to rationalize getting rid of the whole thing, and replacing it with nothing. Like Obamacare.
Yeah, there are flaws in the Constitution, and MAGA is going to use the 13th Amendment to revive legal slavery, and like they do with EVERYTHING, we can expect them to exploit the shit out of it. But the foundational promises of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill.of Rights - that all people are created equal, and ALL people have the INALIENABLE RIGHTS to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - are STILL worthy goals upon which to build a government, and a society. What foundational promises would you replace them with?
You can just just throw away the entire car because it needs some repairs as it ages, or you can recognize that the old girl just needs some basic maintenance, a few new parts, and maybe some upgrades, and she’ll go another century. That’s what our Constitution needs, just a little attention under the hood, and she’ll be good as new.
That seems a more cautious and responsible choice than let the obviously crooked MAGA used car guys pick out your next ride. They be happy to put you in a new governmental vehicle of THEIR choosing. What do you think that will be like?
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 15 hours ago
Considering that some Founding Fathers wanted the Constitution to be a living document, the answer is obvious: Keep the best parts of the original, incorporate the good ideas from the charters of other nations, remove the awful, and try out wild new concepts that may or may not work.
When it comes to ‘weird’ ideas, I would like economic promises and rules to be added. You cannot pursue happiness nor prosperity, if you are impoverished. A renewed American society should adopt UBI, free education (all levels and types), universal healthcare, the rights of workers to vote on their leadership and the pay that leadership earns, absolute wealth and income caps, ect.
Wealth is a Goldilocks problem, where too much makes people like Trump or Epstein a common sight, while too little creates a caste of people who cannot live their best lives. I feel that creating floors and ceilings on wealth would help make the next American democracy much more healthy.
In any case, MAGA will ‘pick’ our ride anyways. As we have seen in Minnepolis, they make their own law. They murdered Pretti and Good, kidnapped children, ignore the 4th Amendment, ect. So we should consider civil war, and the ramifications that come with that, is creating new laws and institutions of our own. An overhauled Constitution is both functional and symbolic - a statement of intent for what we want our nation to become.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 14 hours ago
Keeping the basic structure and philosophy of the Constitution, reforming and refining the things that have proved to be a problem, and adding things that have worked, makes perfect sense. That’s a plan I can support, over just tossing it out, and THEN starting to figure out something new.
We need to clearly spell out the roles of each branch of government, and reconfigure our election system so that it doesn’t filter out the intelligent, competent and moral candidates, in favor of the worst possible candidates. Very importantly, we need to add teeth to the Constitution, to punish those who dare to make serious attempts to exploit our system.
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 14 hours ago
When it comes to teeth, I think 100% taxation should be imposed on people and companies whose wealth exceeds a cap. In the case of companies, their limit on wealth and assets should be based on employees. Someone makes 50k a year? Half of their income’s worth increases the cap for the business. O’course, incomes should be capped, workers voting on leadership, and so forth, to prevent stupid exploits for increasing a business’s wealth cap.
To keep the businesses honest about the book keeping, they don’t handle the accounting and employee records. The state and federal government should have rotations of overseeing them. They can roll a 1d4 dice each year, the first two rolls deciding which quarters of the year that the state government is responsible for. The federal government takes the other two seasons.
This helps prevent corruption, because a company and government observers can’t get too familiar with each other. If a company tries to offer favors to a randomized person, they will eventually be found out by someone honest, who can relate the issue to both the state and federal government. Also, both state and federal governments can compare their fiscal books on a company, to ensure that they match up. Each season a state or government observes, they use a different observer. So a total of four different observers each year to compare records with. Bigger companies, of course, should get more people watching them.
IMO, corruption in general is the biggest reason why America is becoming an awful place. Making it harder to do is crucial, and what I outlined above is just one of many approaches that will be needed.