It’s not my job to say whether the Constitution should remain and be restored after the fall. My goal is to consider various possibilities for flourishing in light of unavoidable change.
I can't see the U.S. Constitution as a flawed document that held the country together until it started to be ignored. Instead, it was a coup against the American Revolution and the government created by the Articles of Confederation. It was sold as a protection of the rights of the American people, but it utterly failed to protect life, liberty, and property from the very beginning. What it created was a strong, central government that could be dominated by the elites who designed it. It was bound to fail sooner or later.
If we are going to restore America's founding document, it should be the Articles of Confederation. But, of course, that is politically impossible. That document has been thoroughly demonized by the people who benefited from the coup that gave them the power they wanted and the people who still crave that power. Yet, if we can achieve decentralization, we may end up with a similar document that devolves power to the decentralized entities. Hopefully, it will be all the way to the individual.
I have been progressively coming around to this way of thinking for the last couple of years. The Constitution is not some miraculous document that has been perverted; rather, it is fundamentally flawed. I am forced to repudiate some of the things I have written in years past.
Also, I am learning bits and pieces about how the Constitution was rammed through at the Convention. Not cool.
Our Faith in written documents, be they Constitutions or newly Iterated & Polished Legal Contracts likely roots in old Enlightenment Rationalism. We imagine that words, spoken or especially on Legal Paper documents, notarized an filed...will save us. Would that it was so!
But as good as the original Constitution was...a BLENDED document of Democracy (House of Rep), Aristocratic Republic (Senate El-by State-Legislatures) and Monarchy (President re-elected for Life) was brilliant when added to States-Rights Federalism (Diversity/Pluralism).
But it has proven all but worthless as men greedy for gain (early DC Swamp men) have NOT has the MORAL RESOLVE to live by it. The same could be said of Holy Scripture -- as the same lack of Moral Resolve should have taught us.
Man does not live by bread alone...or Documents alone. These all, at the root of any enduring Good-Government -- demand a Internal Moral Resolve...Civic Virtue far too lacking for a huge country. Perhaps a small opt-in State/Secession might work for awhile...until it gets to Rich for others to wanna take their chips!
["Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." Edmund Burke ]
Let’s be honest. The Constitution has always been irrelevant and the US government (and the states themselves) have always just done everything they thought they could get away with.
And let’s also be clear about what the Constitution truly is, while we’re at it. Many people operate under the utterly false misconception that the Constitution enshrined protections of American rights and freedoms. That’s simply and obviously untrue. The bill of rights, added in 1791, merely AMENDED the original Constitution. The actual original Constitution was created secretly and illegally and was intended for a single purpose: To usurp the Continental Congress, to undermine the separation of states, and to consolidate power into a centralized governmental body.
Just look at it, minus the Bill of Rights. It vests the new government with enormous powers but does nothing to protect Americans from itself. When introduced in 1789, there was not one single thing in there about rights or freedoms.
The truth is that Lysander Spooner was always correct in his statement about that awful document. Writing his work “No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority” just 65 years after the Bill of Rights was introduced, Spooner tells us the following:
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”
In truth, to truly make the world a better place, we must reform our world so that it circumvents governments entirely. For what is government but organized criminality by a different name?
You may be interested to take a look at The Reconstitution Project - a venture I worked on for a couple years with Layman Pascal and others. https://www.thereconstitution.com/
We wrote 10 amendments that collectively seek to address many interdependent problems and offer a holistic upgrade to our current Constitution.
I see the teal/turquoise color scheme and suspect there is a lot to steal from here! Thank you for sharing this. I look forward to digging deeper. Also, Layman is a really interesting guy.
The Constitution doesn’t need an “upgrade”. It needs to be ignored and forgotten, relegated to the dustbin of history. To the extent that government exists (and no honest person truly believes the existing government is actually Constitutional), it should be circumvented and starved.
The truth of the matter is that this government had very limited power and influence until 1913, when two major changes were made that had nothing to do with the Constitution. These two things fundamentally changed the nature of power in the US, and the more important of the two was planned very secretively and forced through just under the radar. They are, in order of importance:
1. The creation of the Federal Reserve, which made possible...
2. Income taxation (itself later made truly viable via tax withholding that itself would not have been possible without the Federal Reserve’s financial system).
Bitcoin fixes this.
Without inflation, total control of your money, or easy taxation, federal power and influence quickly becomes a mere shadow of its current self. The real personal control of one’s money provided by cryptocurrency is real freedom. No assurances or guarantees required from any government existing or proposed.
I can't see the U.S. Constitution as a flawed document that held the country together until it started to be ignored. Instead, it was a coup against the American Revolution and the government created by the Articles of Confederation. It was sold as a protection of the rights of the American people, but it utterly failed to protect life, liberty, and property from the very beginning. What it created was a strong, central government that could be dominated by the elites who designed it. It was bound to fail sooner or later.
If we are going to restore America's founding document, it should be the Articles of Confederation. But, of course, that is politically impossible. That document has been thoroughly demonized by the people who benefited from the coup that gave them the power they wanted and the people who still crave that power. Yet, if we can achieve decentralization, we may end up with a similar document that devolves power to the decentralized entities. Hopefully, it will be all the way to the individual.
In short, the anti-federalists were right. I can't disagree.
Joyce, your bio-blurb says, "I promote special jurisdictions for better governance."
I think we should know each other…!
Yes, yes you should. And do what you can to get into Spencer Heath, whose work Joyce is helping to preserve.
Cool. Reading a summary now…
I have been progressively coming around to this way of thinking for the last couple of years. The Constitution is not some miraculous document that has been perverted; rather, it is fundamentally flawed. I am forced to repudiate some of the things I have written in years past.
Also, I am learning bits and pieces about how the Constitution was rammed through at the Convention. Not cool.
Our Faith in written documents, be they Constitutions or newly Iterated & Polished Legal Contracts likely roots in old Enlightenment Rationalism. We imagine that words, spoken or especially on Legal Paper documents, notarized an filed...will save us. Would that it was so!
But as good as the original Constitution was...a BLENDED document of Democracy (House of Rep), Aristocratic Republic (Senate El-by State-Legislatures) and Monarchy (President re-elected for Life) was brilliant when added to States-Rights Federalism (Diversity/Pluralism).
But it has proven all but worthless as men greedy for gain (early DC Swamp men) have NOT has the MORAL RESOLVE to live by it. The same could be said of Holy Scripture -- as the same lack of Moral Resolve should have taught us.
Man does not live by bread alone...or Documents alone. These all, at the root of any enduring Good-Government -- demand a Internal Moral Resolve...Civic Virtue far too lacking for a huge country. Perhaps a small opt-in State/Secession might work for awhile...until it gets to Rich for others to wanna take their chips!
["Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." Edmund Burke ]
Absolutely! And I'd add to that civic virtue just plain old virtue.
Let’s be honest. The Constitution has always been irrelevant and the US government (and the states themselves) have always just done everything they thought they could get away with.
And let’s also be clear about what the Constitution truly is, while we’re at it. Many people operate under the utterly false misconception that the Constitution enshrined protections of American rights and freedoms. That’s simply and obviously untrue. The bill of rights, added in 1791, merely AMENDED the original Constitution. The actual original Constitution was created secretly and illegally and was intended for a single purpose: To usurp the Continental Congress, to undermine the separation of states, and to consolidate power into a centralized governmental body.
Just look at it, minus the Bill of Rights. It vests the new government with enormous powers but does nothing to protect Americans from itself. When introduced in 1789, there was not one single thing in there about rights or freedoms.
The truth is that Lysander Spooner was always correct in his statement about that awful document. Writing his work “No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority” just 65 years after the Bill of Rights was introduced, Spooner tells us the following:
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”
In truth, to truly make the world a better place, we must reform our world so that it circumvents governments entirely. For what is government but organized criminality by a different name?
You may be interested to take a look at The Reconstitution Project - a venture I worked on for a couple years with Layman Pascal and others. https://www.thereconstitution.com/
We wrote 10 amendments that collectively seek to address many interdependent problems and offer a holistic upgrade to our current Constitution.
I see the teal/turquoise color scheme and suspect there is a lot to steal from here! Thank you for sharing this. I look forward to digging deeper. Also, Layman is a really interesting guy.
The Constitution doesn’t need an “upgrade”. It needs to be ignored and forgotten, relegated to the dustbin of history. To the extent that government exists (and no honest person truly believes the existing government is actually Constitutional), it should be circumvented and starved.
The truth of the matter is that this government had very limited power and influence until 1913, when two major changes were made that had nothing to do with the Constitution. These two things fundamentally changed the nature of power in the US, and the more important of the two was planned very secretively and forced through just under the radar. They are, in order of importance:
1. The creation of the Federal Reserve, which made possible...
2. Income taxation (itself later made truly viable via tax withholding that itself would not have been possible without the Federal Reserve’s financial system).
Bitcoin fixes this.
Without inflation, total control of your money, or easy taxation, federal power and influence quickly becomes a mere shadow of its current self. The real personal control of one’s money provided by cryptocurrency is real freedom. No assurances or guarantees required from any government existing or proposed.
Possible worlds. We have to explore all of them and get moving in a general direction in synchrony.