l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 So writes Adam Liptak of The New York Times, in an article entitled “‘We
The People’ Loses Its Appeal With People Around The World.”
In 1987, on the Constitution’s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated
that “of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written
charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”
A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. “The U.S.
Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional
drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington
University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.
… “Among the world’s democracies,” Professors Law and Versteeg
concluded, “constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone
into free fall. Over the 1960s and 1970s, democratic constitutions as a
whole became more similar to the U.S. Constitution, only to reverse course
in the 1980s and 1990s.”
… There are lots of possible reasons. The United States Constitution is
terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of
some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according
to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is
of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution’s
waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and
prestige.
In an interview, Professor Law identified a central reason for the trend
the constitutional marketplace. “Nobody wants to copy Windows 3.1,” he
said.
… These days, the overlap between the rights guaranteed by the
Constitution and those most popular around the world is spotty.
Americans recognize rights not widely protected, including ones to a
speedy and public trial, and are outliers in prohibiting government
establishment of religion. But the Constitution is out of step with the rest
of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to
travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and
health care.
… The new study also suggests that the Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms, adopted in 1982, may now be more influential than its American
counterpart.
The Canadian Charter is both more expansive and less absolute. It
guarantees equal rights for women and disabled people, allows affirmative
action and requires that those arrested be informed of their rights. On the
other hand, it balances those rights against “such reasonable limits” as
“can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
Ah, Canadian law … the same law that has been so easily twisted by
discontented Islamists and gay rights activists into a tool of persecution
and censorship. Maybe not the best example. Let’s try again.
What about the European Convention on Human Rights? Sure, it “guarantees”
a much broader array of rights than the US Constitution but each of those
enumerated rights also contains a conditional clause similar to this: “…
subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary
in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the
protection of public order, health or morals, or the protection of the
rights and freedoms of others.”
Given the current battle between the Roman Catholic church and the Obama
Administration over HHS’s contraception/abortifactant mandate, is it really
a good idea to explicitly give government the power to rescind either the
right to privacy or religious freedom in the interest of “public health”?
Still, I suppose it’s nice to see liberals occasionally admit in public
just how inadequate they believe our Constitution is. Consider Barack Obama
’s infamous 2001 radio interview:
[During the Civil Rights era] the Supreme Court never ventured into the
issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as
political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I
think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical.
It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the
Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted,
and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the
Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can
’t do to you. It says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it
doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your
behalf … the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there
was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and
activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition
of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.
On the other hand I (and most other conservatives) have a different view.
The primary objective of our Constitution’s authors was to protect the
citizens of the United States from tyranny, oppression, and manipulation at
the hands of the Federal Government; or more specifically, to prevent
political factions (socioeconomic classes, religious groups, etc.) from
using the Federal Government as a tool to terrorize, oppress, or manipulate
their enemies. They had no interest in central economic planning or
organizing the confiscation and redistribution of wealth. Perhaps they were
smart enough to realize that a government cannot accomplish either of these
things without threatening or manipulating its citizens.
The simplicity and straightforwardness of our Constitution is its greatest
strength. It doesn’t need to be endlessly amended because our courts have
established legal precedent for virtually every right that is considered “
essential” by contemporary standards yet is not explicitly included in the
Constitution. And whatever the courts haven’t covered via judicial rulings
, the Legislative branch has enshrined into law through its various Federal
discrimination laws and entitlement programs.
I’ll leave you with this exit question: How can anyone argue that a new “
progressive” US Constitution consisting largely of post-modern/utopian “
fairness” and “equality” gobbledygook will create anything other than the
most expensive, extensive, and intrusive government bureaucracy ever seen
by man? I ask this considering the dedication with which modern-day
liberals and progressives have searched our existing Constitution in order
to uncover “emanations” and “penumbras” that always seem to serve their
own political interests. How much more fodder will they find in a
Constitution that they themselves will have largely crafted?
Maybe Bill Whittle can explain this better than I can: |
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