Let’s Not Throw Out the Constitution

[EasyAce]

It’s not the Ten Commandments, but the Framers were right to fear direct majority rule. Majorities can become mobs.
By Jay Cost
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455855/progressives-trash-constitution-theyre-wrong-pure-democracy-can-be-dangerous

Writing for The Week, Ryan Cooper recently offered a provocative denunciation of the Constitution. “The American Constitution is an outdated, malfunctioning piece of junk,” he said, “and it’s only getting worse.” The basic problem, he argued, is that “elections generally do not produce functioning governments,” and he proposes a series of reforms — some modest, some radical — to increase democratic accountability within the government.

Cooper’s essay is of a piece with many I see nowadays, especially from progressives. Of late, the specific target of liberal ire is the Senate and its favoritism toward small, sparsely populated states. It is generally a very old critique. Woodrow Wilson once bemoaned our government’s rigorous separation of powers for how it denied the ability of the people to rule. Complaints such as those offered by Cooper and others come, more or less, from the same genre, even if the particular grievances have varied.

I am not entirely unsympathetic to their frustration: The Constitution is not like the Ten Commandments, handed down from God almighty. It is a document written by flawed humans that can, and often should, be critiqued. The Framers themselves acknowledged their own fallibility by including an amendment process.

Nevertheless, I think polemical calls to action such as this tend to dismiss out of hand the unique democratic theory underlying our system of government. In its place, they rely upon an undue confidence in the wisdom and virtue of numerical majorities . . .

[T]he masses are prone to being overwhelmed by fractious and even violent passions, and can repurpose the tools of democratic government for unjust ends. The classical solution was to check majority rule with some kind of hereditary estate, but the Framers rejected this, and instead used constitutional instruments to mediate public opinion.

In my judgment, this suggests that real question lurking behind any discussion of constitutional overhaul: Were the Framers too skeptical of the capacity of the mass public to rule in accordance with the dictates of justice and virtue? It is not just enough to complain that the Constitution impedes righteous actions from happening. One must go on to claim that, absent such restrictions, the people would govern righteously.

Do advocates of soup-to-nuts constitutional reform really believe that? Because I surely don’t . . .

(Note: I'm sure I don't need to point out that progressives aren't always the only ones who prefer mob rule.---EA.)

[INVAR]

It’s not the Ten Commandments, but the Framers were right to fear direct majority rule. Majorities can become mobs.

(Note: I'm sure I don't need to point out that progressives aren't always the only ones who prefer mob rule.---EA.)

No.  We have seen and learned that mob rule is just as preferred among Populists and Party Loyalists as it is among the Left.

[Bigun]

Instead of throwing it out perhaps we ought to actually use it and see how it works.  Haven't been doing that for a long time now.

[INVAR]

Instead of throwing it out perhaps we ought to actually use it and see how it works.  Haven't been doing that for a long time now.

Doing so would unravel the very fabric of how the entire Federal Beast works and operates.  Money, power and control cannot permit such a thing to happen - because too many are dependent upon the crony corruption and graft that supports the entire structure of federal government.

[EasyAce]

Instead of throwing it out perhaps we ought to actually use it and see how it works. 

@Bigun

Atsamatta fa you? You want to be sentenced to membership in the nation's largest organised crime family or sumptin? 

;)

(/sarc)

[RetBobbyMI]

Instead of throwing it out perhaps we ought to actually use it and see how it works.  Haven't been doing that for a long time now.

[Frank Cannon]

Christ. You know you are a worthless moronic writer when all you can find to opine about is a goofy piece in The Weak.