It's pretty ridiculous to feel that way because if that was the sole intention why did they create the systemic checks and balances that make it possible to amend the constitution? Like all forms of government it was created with the knowledge that it is not infallible and that circumstances can change over time as society evolves.
I understand why someone would want to firmly stand behind what they believe are their legal rights, but I don't really understand the degree of fetishism that seems to exist in America. I have no idea how you would reason with someone like that either since their arguments are likely not coming from a logical place and, well, I don't know very many Americans thankfully.
I don't think the founding fathers were necessarily bad people. They took the time to listen to more civilized people and try to incorporate their culture into their own system, which is pretty chill I guess. Their attitude was probably something like "if these uncultured red savages can create a vibrant and strong democracy it would be despicable if a dozen glorious english colonies could not!!!" though so I feel ya.
While I'm on my tangent, fuck Sweden. Blathering on about how they are so proud of their 200 years of peace. Didn't know selling weapons to all of the warring sides constituted as peace. Typical Swedes.
edit: probably the best way to go about talking to those people about the constitution (if necessary of course) would be to inform yourself to a pretty good detail about the mechanics and details of it and talk to them with respect from that angle. the best way to frame it would be "the best part about the constitution is" and then explain how it is not infallible, that it is by design and that it is a good thing. i think that's how it works at least, i know the charter of rights and freedoms (our name is better suck it america) but i don't really know too much in detail about what you americans are up to with that whole freedom thing.
(08-29-2014, 08:37 PM)carlcockatoo Wrote: [ -> ]Okay everyone: Who here actually thinks the US Constitution was designed to be a timeless safeguard of liberty, that the "founding fathers" (in general) actually gave a shit about human liberty beyond themselves, and that there is nothing outdated about it?
Because I remain unconvinced. :/
I think that they totally gave a shit about human liberty, they just didn't think you were human if you weren't a white male who owned land. Its totally outdated in someways, and it definitely wasn't meant to be timeless, thats what ammendements are for. Really they just hoped it would last long enough to keep England from coming back and reclaiming the colonies.
I do honestly think they did a pretty good job on it though, I mean its lasted ~250 years.
I know it's a seemingly minor thing but the fetishism has a huge impact on public opinion and I think it's holding us back in so many areas (this was inspired by a certain gun thread but it goes beyond that >_>). It's impossible to argue (and I am well familiar with its contents) because they ignore it and go on rants about natural rights and American exceptionalism and shit. It's more the broader culture that I find limiting than individual arguments.
On the founding fathers: I honestly don't have any admiration for them, though some are less bad than others. Not just because of the obvious stuff like the fact that they they were slaveholders (if you're going to talk the talk you better walk the walk) but because I don't look at that time as this glorious 'America is the good guy standing up to centuries of oppression' moment. The system established was a slight upgrade from the British system at the time, but led to few improvements in terms of civil liberties/civil rights. In my view, the American Revolution's immediate effect was simply to transfer power to different rich white men (especially the founding fathers) and establish a new form of imperialism that was (is) almost like British imperialism 2.0 Some of them displayed good intentions in some areas, but were otherwise just typical historical patriarchs. They were excellent statesmen and political theorist; I'll give them that. The system set up in the constitution really isn't an 'America loves natural rights!' type of system. All that fancy wording will continue to support this perspective though.
And with the indigenous nations: I can't forgive them over that. Assimilation is a step above extermination (still not good) but the constitution itself has actually negatively impacted modern natives because it effectively strips them of any real self-determination and in the broader context, is one of many documents in American political culture that people use to justify the great injustices inflicted on them. I don't belief that the Iroquois Confederacy at that time had an admirable government either, and I'm not really impressed that he may have taken inspiration from that system. iirc, that joke quote you suggested was actually written by Thomas Jefferson almost word for word.
On Sweden: I do not have a largely negative opinion on Sweden but they have not been at peace for 200 years. There are Swedish troops in Afghanistan right now. In WWII, there's also no way they were really neutral, as you said. They sold weapons to both sides as you said, made concessions to the Nazis, supported Finland in the Winter War, and at times collaborated with the Allied nations, such as with the Danish Resistance (smuggling Danish Jews into Sweden is one of the best things a resistance group did).
@Danjo: Don't get me wrong, I definitely think it's historically important.
(08-29-2014, 09:24 PM)Danjo Wrote: [ -> ] (08-29-2014, 08:37 PM)carlcockatoo Wrote: [ -> ]Okay everyone: Who here actually thinks the US Constitution was designed to be a timeless safeguard of liberty, that the "founding fathers" (in general) actually gave a shit about human liberty beyond themselves, and that there is nothing outdated about it?
Because I remain unconvinced. :/
I think that they totally gave a shit about human liberty, they just didn't think you were human if you weren't a white male who owned land. Its totally outdated in someways, and it definitely wasn't meant to be timeless, thats what ammendements are for. Really they just hoped it would last long enough to keep England from coming back and reclaiming the colonies.
I do honestly think they did a pretty good job on it though, I mean its lasted ~250 years.
A lot of the reasons America lasted was from Iroquois influence rather than being things that should be directly credited to the founders. The idea of federalism mainly. It's pretty easy to build up once you have a foundation and the founding fathers did not invent the foundation.
(08-29-2014, 09:45 PM)carlcockatoo Wrote: [ -> ]And with the indigenous nations: I can't forgive them over that. Assimilation is a step above extermination (still not good) but the constitution itself has actually negatively impacted modern natives because it effectively strips them of any real self-determination and in the broader context, is one of many documents in American political culture that people use to justify the great injustices inflicted on them. I don't belief that the Iroquois Confederacy at that time had an admirable government either, and I'm not really impressed that he may have taken inspiration from that system. iirc, that joke quote you suggested was actually written by Thomas Jefferson almost word for word.
What was so wrong about their system of government? In many ways it still granted more freedoms than America does today. While there may have been gender roles, there was also equality. In respect to how the confederacy functioned internally I would say that it was more effective than what we had for hundreds of years afterwards. The confederacy was essentially born of peace between five nations. There are lots of different interpretations towards how it would have ended up if contact with Europe had been delayed/hadn't happened, but really the problem was once white people came.
Assimilation is extermination. The cultures are all but dead and that is by design. Destroy a culture, impoverish the people and then spew racist nonsense when you see alcoholic natives and natives in gangs. Wonder why dickhead.
If you specifically mean federalism I can credit that in part to the Iroquois :flower:
(08-29-2014, 09:55 PM)carlcockatoo Wrote: [ -> ]If you specifically mean federalism I can credit that in part to the Iroquois :flower:
Christ if the US Government can admit it I'm sure you can. US Government ain't one for givin credit to no red immigrants.
(08-29-2014, 10:04 PM)peternorthstars Wrote: [ -> ] (08-29-2014, 09:55 PM)carlcockatoo Wrote: [ -> ]If you specifically mean federalism I can credit that in part to the Iroquois :flower:
Christ if the US Government can admit it I'm sure you can. US Government ain't one for givin credit to no red immigrants.
I don't credit Americans for the idea at all. I was thinking of the Dutch Republic being another influence, which is why I didn't give the Iroquois full credit. :p Emotionally I would like to say they were the sole influence but I don't have the evidence to support that.
I agree with everything you said actually. I acknowledge the good aspects, but I don't like how it was in many ways an imperial power in its own right (via land conquests).
I also agree with the statement that assimilation=extermination. I didn't say it outright because I was under the impression you wouldn't agree and I didn't want to start this debate (looks like I did anyway). I am not at all happy with what's happened sense and I have hundreds of rants on the internet on this topic. >_>
Unrelated: Most people don't know this but Sweden was a "democracy" before America was (with a 30 something year restored period of absolutism):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Liberty
You probably already knew that. I don't admire this system either.
To me, "rights" doesn't mean anything. There isn't any situation where someone cannot complain that their rights are being "repressed". The only freedom we have is the freedom to be more judicially privileged than others.
Case in point: abortion. Pro-lifers believe that taking a fetus' life is a gross abuse of human rights and is murder, whereas pro-choice advocates believe that making abortion illegal infringes on the reproductive rights of a woman.
Another example: pornography. A lot of people believe it's a bad thing because it demeans and objectifies women, violating their dignity. Meanwhile, many feminists today believe porn is the greatest thing that could have ever happened for female empowerment.
Rights, in my opinion, are just conventions humans put on paper but haven't really defined.
And when someone says that a certain law couldn't be passed because it would be unconstitutional, I ask how that matters. The constitution is a piece of paper with words on it, not an Orwellian judicial elite that will come to your house and kill your dog if you look at them weird.
(08-29-2014, 10:14 PM)carlcockatoo Wrote: [ -> ] (08-29-2014, 10:04 PM)peternorthstars Wrote: [ -> ] (08-29-2014, 09:55 PM)carlcockatoo Wrote: [ -> ]If you specifically mean federalism I can credit that in part to the Iroquois :flower:
Christ if the US Government can admit it I'm sure you can. US Government ain't one for givin credit to no red immigrants.
I don't credit Americans for the idea at all. I was thinking of the Dutch Republic being another influence, which is why I didn't give the Iroquois full credit. :p Emotionally I would like to say they were the sole influence but I don't have the evidence to support that.
I agree with everything you said actually. I acknowledge the good aspects, but I don't like how it was in many ways an imperial power in its own right (via land conquests).
I also agree with the statement that assimilation=extermination. I didn't say it outright because I was under the impression you wouldn't agree and I didn't want to start this debate (looks like I did anyway). I am not at all happy with what's happened sense and I have hundreds of rants on the internet on this topic. >_>
I don't think it was a full influence either because I think they made the system a lot worse (that's just the repressed anarchist in me hehe). They took the Iroquois concept and made the centralized part a focus. It was and is much more repressive.
I understand the temptation to label the Iroquois as an imperialist power but I personally believe this falls too much into the label of conjecture and speculation to hold much weight to it. I certainly understand the possibility (and I believe at one point in my post I touched upon it but I probably deleted it) but I think pre-European contact it wasn't quite at that point. They were certainly going to be a superpower though. I could go on about this for pages so I'll just leave it at a respectful disagreement since we are not on UG.
Sweden is my least favourite place. Scandinavia is awesome (if I ever had to move from Canada I'd go to Belgium, the Netherlands or Denmark) but Sweden just ruins it for everyone. They had this big thing about 200 years of peace and it was just such typical Swede bullshit. I'm like a racist grandpa if he just had a really specific hatred. It's my one thing. They are cold and frigid people with a really odd mentality towards governance and society in general. They also ruined one of my favourite things with their terrible hockey players.
I'd echo the sentiment that rights are subjective Joel. I think it's society collectively coming to an agreement on defining that we find certain morality to be important to our quality of life and that we should be protected from certain abuses.
(08-29-2014, 10:29 PM)peternorthstars Wrote: [ -> ]I understand the temptation to label the Iroquois as an imperialist power but I personally believe this falls too much into the label of conjecture and speculation to hold much weight to it. I certainly understand the possibility (and I believe at one point in my post I touched upon it but I probably deleted it) but I think pre-European contact it wasn't quite at that point. They were certainly going to be a superpower though. I could go on about this for pages so I'll just leave it at a respectful disagreement since we are not on UG.
Sweden is my least favourite place. Scandinavia is awesome (if I ever had to move from Canada I'd go to Belgium, the Netherlands or Denmark) but Sweden just ruins it for everyone. They had this big thing about 200 years of peace and it was just such typical Swede bullshit. I'm like a racist grandpa if he just had a really specific hatred. It's my one thing. They are cold and frigid people with a really odd mentality towards governance and society in general. They also ruined one of my favourite things with their terrible hockey players.
I'd echo the sentiment that rights are subjective Joel. I think it's society collectively coming to an agreement on defining that we find certain morality to be important to our quality of life and that we should be protected from certain abuses.
I won't go into it either but I'll just add two more things that I'm pretty much in agreement with: I think America's take on federalism is very flawed and while I did label the Iroquois Confederacy as 'imperialist', I would never put it in the same category as the UK/France/USA/etc, especially with what little we still know prior to colonisation.
I brought up Sweden again just to fuck with you. :p I don't really have negative opinions towards countries, but I think people choose to take pride in the wrong things and it makes them look weird. For America, it's worshiping flags and documents, for Sweden it's bragging about 200 years of peace that never actually happened, etc.
Now I will acknowledge Joel: I pretty much agree. I think holding too much onto a vague idea can be limiting in advancing society. As much as I support human rights, I know that it's a subjective term and I know that it's still just an abstract idea. One that I support, but still.