Hey look! the FBI and NSA are data-mining and analyzing your data!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Seriously? Have you considered what that would entail? The original only came about because men of wisdom fought and bickered and compromised. At the Virginia ratification discussions Patrick Henry said there should be a new convention then, and a Bill Of Rights should be placed withing the document itself. Fortunately he was not heard, mainly because they weren't sure a second convention wouldn't create an entirely new Constitution that would be much worse.

If a new Constitutional Convention were to be called (and thank whatever powers you pray to that they made it so difficult) there is no rule that it would have to do what you want, and every chance that the things you believe in would be ignored. They would have carte blanc to create whatevery they wanted. What if it came up with a new Constitution that truly made America a socialist state? What if it took away all our rights? What if it went in the opposite direction, and guaranteed all rights but totally eliminated all Federal interference, for better or for worse? First off, at least two-thirds of the States would have to ratify it (unless of course it did away with the States entirely, as some have suggested in the past), and that in itself seems highly unlikely.

So let me ask this: If you had the power to rewrite the Constitution as you say, what exactly would you change? How would you make it better?

The declaration of independence was a good thing. The constitution less so, mainly for it founds the belief that the people must be governed by a government (that there must be a general state). From a libertarian POV, that statement already is unacceptable, no matter the idea of the people being allowed to chnage the government (which in practice proves almost impossible, I would say, for people have to deal with the same politicians time and time again and agfain and again - you just cannot get ride of them, for decades).

What it comes down to, is a question I assume you would like: who monitors the monitors? The checks and balances do not work well, for the judge's name is Capone, the grand jury is formed up by mafiosi, and the witnesses are next of kin of the suspect.

See, you absolutely sank some hooks in me back then. More than you or Neal maybe imagine.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Skybird

The declaration of independence was a good thing. The constitution less so, mainly for it founds the belief that the people must be governed by a government (that there must be a general state).

I see your point, but for them it was more than just a belief. They were faced with the reality of three major powers (Britain, France and Russia) who refused to make trade treaties with the individual states. They had to have some kind of central power just to deal with foreign governments, or else face the possibility of separate States making their own deals and possibly being swallowed up by those powers, leaving the rest surrounded and outnumbered. For them it was an absolute necessity. Franklin's statement from the signing of the Declaration, "We must all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately", was a very real concept, and one which affected the next generation, which accounts for Lincoln's belief that the Union had to come before all. Right or wrong, that was the bogeyman they saw awaiting them if they didn't create a strong central government.

As for the monitoring question, that is something that is always there as well. They had their own arguments, hence the battle between Hamilton and Jefferson over the National Bank. They couldn't concieve of modern technology and its problems. On the other hand the fact that this has come to light at all shows that the invasiveness of such technology works both ways. In this case the people really are the monitor. Yes, it was done, but it has been brought to everyone's attention and it is the government that is on the run because of it. It will continue to happen, and all we can hope for is that we can keep up with them, if not ahead of them. The beauty of it is that the technology involved is available to everybody.

In wanting to understand why these processes nevertheless run on, I realised that my old ideas did not work and that I needed to pout everything into question. And that I did.

Yet the answer to the questions which you cannot even see is that your new "ideals" don't work any more than your old ones did.