List of dubious Constitutional amendments

I was referring to how libertarians percived the reactions members of the two major parties had towards activist judges.

Both parties?


I am well aware of the liberal activist judges and the way they are being used and many of the subjects that they are "advancing" on, primarily gay marriage.

But my (admittedly partisian) view has been that this has been mostly limited to the left. Can you give me some examples were the right has played this game?
 
Kratman also gets the walking caricature/strawman, ex-President Wilhemina Rottemeyer, to attack his proposed amendments.

"So you think you can change things," Rottemeyer sneered. "You have come here to make up a new set of rules, have you?

"You're pathetic. You're also hopelessly beneath the challenge. I can see that by the silly amendments you are already proposing. Let's look at some of them, shall we?

"You want to repeal the income tax and the social security tax? Let me assure you; it is too late. This country's economy would collapse almost overnight from the disruption or cancellation of all those federal procurement contracts and the loss of spending power on the part of those working in the federal bureaucracy. What's more, I see very few young faces out in the crowd, mostly older people. What are you going to do when you get older and find you haven't saved enough for your retirement? And find further that your kids, like yourselves, don't want to be bothered taking care of their parents? I'll tell you what you'll do; you'll vote yourselves federal relief that might not be called social security, but will be the same thing, perhaps not half so well organized and run, under a different name.

"And who takes care of the people already retired? Their social security savings?Nonsense. They don't exist, not in the sense that the money exists in such a way that it can be paid back in full."

Rottemeyer shook her head as if scolding naughty schoolchildren. "At least one of the lunatics here has, apparently, some legal training. This idiot wants to re-create the old nondelegation doctrine the Supreme Court repudiated in the 1930s. Not a chance. There's simply too much. Too many of you want—or will want—the federal government to do for you that which Congress cannot hope to do."

"And speaking of the Supreme Court, are you all really so enthusiastic about castrating it? Creating some governor's council that can overturn its decisions? Hmmm. So, when Alabama decides to reenact some Jim Crow laws and the rest of the South follows right along, you really don't want anybody who can say 'no'? I don't believe it for a minute."

Rottemeyer paused briefly, scanning her audience with boundless contempt. "And you want term limits? Well, you've always had them. All you had to do was not vote for someone for another term.

"No federal interference with religion? Oh sure . . . and when Utah decides on polygamy again?

"Now let me tell you why none of this will work. You—all of you—want the federal government to do things for you. The things you want done may vary, but you all want something. And so you, and people just like you, will demand that the government give you those things you want. And so, no matter what you do now, you'll be racing each other beginning about two weeks after this convention closes to give the government back whatever power it needs to give you what you want."

She summed up in a voice dripping scorn and contempt, "And that is why this . . . movement . . . is doomed. Have a nice day, suckers."

With that comment Wilhelmina Rottemeyer simply turned and, accompanied by her guard detail and a thunder of boos, left.
 
I'll just take this one:



Right, because the Depression was caused by that nasty interventionist Mr Hoover, and would definitely have gone away on its own. Oh, by 1965, definitely.

Actually, Hoover did support some interventionist stuff like the Hawley-Smoot Tariff.

Plus, in the TIME article, he tried to get Capital and Labor to keep wages at a standstill, which might not have been such a good idea.

And don't some of those "prosperity pledges" look a lot like jobs programs, particularly $200,000,000 in shipbuilding contracts?
 
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I'll admit I'm an unabashed libertarian and this gives me a particular ideological bias, but to put all of one's faith in an all powerful nanny-state central government feels a bit too Germany 1933 for my tastes.

Benjamin

It's ever so immature of me, but: Godwin's Law!
 
It mostly sounds like a Conservative Libertarian pipe dreams about how somehow everyone will get behind them and then their revolution (or rather, counterrevolution) will win and everyone will live happily ever after in laissez faire paradise where abortion is not allowed no matter what and that social security that makes sure Grampa can live doesn't exist anymore. And I have heard this type of thing enough to the point where it kinda gets sad because its ideas unique to libertarianism that don't have anywhere near majority popularity, but magically after XYZ, everyone magically believes in them and the heroes ride of into the sun set. It is so two dimensional.

benjamin said:
Amendment—The Second Amendment is hereby repealed. The federal government shall insure that no private individuals keep or possess nuclear, chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction. All other forms of weapons may be owned, borne and possessed by the citizens of the United States without restriction or registration. Such weapons may not be taxed.

As the 2nd Amendment was intended.

That is not what it was intended for. The 2nd Amendment was designed to protect the existence of militia's and the ability's of any citizen to join the militia's out of fear that the government would create select militia's. That's why its a well regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state that the people have the right to keep and bear arms for, and not just the right to bear arms for heck of it. You have what is permitted ("the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed") and what it is permitted for and why it is permitted ("a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state"). Simple sentence construction. To corroborate this, all state constitutions had similar clauses and all of those had the common element of the militia and focus on the militia, some going so far as to say that there had to be tents and rations provided by the state. So its not a gun amendment (and it says "arms" not guns or rifles). Its a militia amendment. To claim the former is absolutely specious and abridging the amendment for one's own purposes, and usually goes off of the amendment with claims such as it is to make sure people can get guns to hunt or fight criminals, which are nowhere in the amendment, while even though it actually says militia in there, that is somehow not the real purpose . You can argue culture of the period being more open to guns, but you cannot argue text. And seeing as power was transferred from the militia's to the national guard, one could say that the amendment today only protects the existence of civilian military services. And there was restriction and regulation when it was written, though loose. Often times, one had to swear an oath of loyalty to the government, prove capability and could be denied a gun if one had a criminal past.

And please don't bring up that whole "If you don't think I have a right to a gun in the Constitution, you think no one can have a gun and want to take all of them away" thing. Because just because something is not in the constitution does not mean it isn't acceptable by the culture and non-Constitutional law. IE, hunting rifles ok. AK-47's not so ok. There is no amendment that gives the right to drink coffee but that doesn't mean anyone is going to ban it. Though it could mean that a certain bean could get banned if it poison's little Timmy.
 
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Hendryk

Banned
A good chunk of them are good idea.
They are, let's not mince our words, absolute garbage, and I'm not surprised such brain-addled suggestions would have come out of the head of the guy who wrote Caliphate, A Desert Called Peace, and A State of Disobedience, which are all gutter-level hack jobs.

It's not even worth discussing, except as a telltale example of reactionary social conservatism cynically masquerading as libertarianism. It's liberty for rich Christian conservative white men, everyone else be damned.
 
They are, let's not mince our words, absolute garbage, and I'm not surprised such brain-addled suggestions would have come out of the head of the guy who wrote Caliphate, A Desert Called Peace, and A State of Disobedience, which are all gutter-level hack jobs.

It's not even worth discussing, except as a telltale example of reactionary social conservatism cynically masquerading as libertarianism. It's liberty for rich Christian conservative white men, everyone else be damned.

That's what Libertarianism actually is, at least in the U.S.
 

Hendryk

Banned
That's what Libertarianism actually is, at least in the U.S.
I sure had a lot more respect for libertarianism before I joined this forum. How can libertarians reconcile such mutually exclusive elements of their ideology? Or maybe they sincerely think that the world is best ruled by rich Christian conservative white men? Yeah, everything was so peachy in the 19th century.
 
I sure had a lot more respect for libertarianism before I joined this forum. How can libertarians reconcile such mutually exclusive elements of their ideology? Or maybe they sincerely think that the world is best ruled by rich Christian conservative white men? Yeah, everything was so peachy in the 19th century.

What it is in almost every case is a sort of reactionary idealism, i.e. they tend to look at society and history as static and assume that all negative changes since their idealized view of the past are due to excessive government meddling.
 
Most of the bills sounds a paleoconservative fantasy though I agree with the no-WMD-but-other-weapons-allowed bill, the anti-abortion bill and the English as official language bill.
 
Well technically if the vast majority of the US was completely happy under a functioning very socialist government, I would still find it inherently wrong and would want it disbanded.
*Uh oh. He has a differing view point on life.*
 

Susano

Banned
Well technically if the vast majority of the US was completely happy under a functioning very socialist government, I would still find it inherently wrong and would want it disbanded.
*Uh oh. He has a differing view point on life.*

People who put ideals before people are people who hate people.
 
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