US Members: Are you a strict or loose constructionist?

Loose constructionist.

The founding fathers were actually anti-slavery. They even were going to add a part in the Declaration of Independence that condemns slavery. The reason it was removed was because it would draw away support from southern states, and they needed their support in order to fight England.

 

Loose constructionist. The very reason the Constitution was written as vaguely as it was is because the Framers didn't know what the political issues would be 227 years later. The conservative "original intent" schtick is laughable in my opinion as the Framers are all dead, and your guess is as good as mine as to what they'd think of today's issues.

 

That really depends on which "founding father" we're talking about, and even then, it's pretty debatable...

 

Sure...which is why several of them owned slaves for their entire lives.

 

I'm definitely a loose constitutionist. In a way, it has to be. Otherwise it'd become completely and would be nearly impossible to deal with any problems or create any relevant legislation.

 

Perhaps I should reword that. 'many' of the founding fathers were actually anti-slavery.
Sure, the ones in the south were pretty pro-slavery. Many of the northern founding fathers freed their slaves.

 

Wasn't the Constitution ratified about a decade after the Revolutionary War?

 

Sorry, I was just tasting my own vomit, there, nothing to see. Some of the founders were anti-slavery. Others were in favor of slavery. And by in favor, I mean endorsing the use of the national military to put down revolts.

Anyway, as for Thomas Jefferson, it's pretty much known, like DNA known, that he had multiple children with Sally Hemings, who was his slave at Monticello. Now, I'm just going to put a simple question out there, which is "to what degree does slavery invalidate consent?" I'll let the group draw its own conclusions.

For what it's worth, Thomas Jefferson, in his crimes bill, proposed "Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least."

John Jay, that's the illustrious First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, thought that "those who own the country ought to govern it."

This now, is the wisdom we look back to fondly and chide the younger generation for being suspicious of the founding fathers' ancient wisdom from on high?

 

I mean here's the thing. The people that are against any gun regulation think they are literalists when it comes to the constitution. However, they aren't. The rules WELL REGULATED are in the 2nd amendment. I look at the deeper meaning of the constitution. If the constitution was literal, you could make a bomb threat and say that you have the right to under the first amendment.

 

I disagree with your interpretation of the Second Amendment for the purpose of literalism. I really doubt that English grammar has substantially changed since it was ratified. The amendment reads as follows: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The phrase "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" is a subordinate clause that serves to explain a justification for the right to keep and bear arms. It does not spell out conditions in which the right exists. That is, it's not only when a person is in a "well regulated militia" that a person has a right to bear arms. On this interpretation, the Amendment is quite silly. Obviously, a well regulated militia is like, I don't know, the city police department, the state troopers, the sheriff department, the national guard, the army, and the marines. So, if the only well regulated militias are in fact the arms of state power, why enumerate the right at all? On this interpretation, the Second Amendment is simply "Since cops need guns to do their jobs, the right of cops to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." (Replace cops with troopers, guardsmen, soldiers, or marines as you like.) This is dumb, and the founders would not have enumerated a right and attributed it to the people, but limited it to only the people executing state functions assumed implicitly by the operation of the state, as such.

Let's just do a quick thought experiment about what your kind of interpretation would look like if we did this to other amendments.

Let's pretend for a moment that the First Amendment read this way: "Unfettered inquiry and expression, being necessary for the orderly administration of a free state, Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people to peaceable assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

It would be quite odd to say "well, see, the First Amendment only protects political speech, because this is the speech which is the "expression" "necessary for the orderly administration of a free state." The introductory subordinate clause in my Fake First Amendment here is only showing us the civic value of the true content: "Congress shall pass no law abridging" the important freedoms: i.e. speech, press, assembly, petition for redress of grievances. (Let's ignore religion for a moment, since that's kind of irrelevant crap in this argument.) Now the Fake First Amendment only protects political speech. It doesn't protect art; it doesn't protect commercial speech; it doesn't protect student speech.

Fortunately, we didn't write the First Amendment this way. But, I can bet you that if they actually had, we would be embroiled in some terribly stupid arguments with right-wingers about their efforts to ban speech that wasn't "political" or that was political in ways not sufficiently connected to or supportive of the "orderly administration of a free state." They could claim wiggle room that some kinds of political speech are illegitimate because they argue against "orderly administration." Another argument might be that certain political speech undermines a "free state" and is likewise unprotected.

In such a dystopia, we would argue that the Fake First Amendment should not be narrowly interpreted, because the introductory subordinate clause is not providing a total and limiting justification for free speech. It's merely providing one of the reasons the right has value.

I cannot imagine a greater utopia for sexist, racist, homophobic, and transphobic would-be murderers and batterers than a gun-free America.

 

Clearly they cared more about their own political significance than liberty. I don't buy that they truly cared that much if they owned slaves and refused to legally abolish slavery.

 

The founding Fathers were not against slavery necessarily because if Washington had many slaves, Thomas Jefferson as we know had slaves(and slept with many of them), James Madison did as well. But you are right, they did not mention the word slavery in the constitution because they were aware that the northern and southern states would not agree. But they did actually have slave rights in the constitution, The 3/5th compromise were 3/5 of slave population counted as a vote is a prime example. Art 1. Sec. 2 "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." The term Other persons is a direct correlation to slaves. Also to gain the Souths Support of the constitution they made yet another compromise to not have another vote to abolish slavery till 1808 and that the articles could not be amended.

Of course, the USA gets a lot of shit for having slaves like we did. But what many people fail to realize is practically every continent had slaves during the same period for just as long if not longer, Europe had relied on Indentured Servants for quite a while, and commonly did not give them their freedom after the specified years of service. Africa was selling their own people as slaves, of course they were generally from other tribes. South America actually imported nearly 4x the amount of slaves that the US did, nearly 2 million. They just primarily imported men, where as the US imported men and women, which later would have children.

Now, by no means am i saying it was a good thing. But the world would not be the same if slavery, in its entirety (indentured, the slaves in Europe, South America and North America), had not existed and turned out like it did.

 

That describes the apportionment of representatives and direct taxes. It doesn't enumerate "slave rights."

 

This really is what it boils down to. The 9th amendment rules out strict constructionism.

 

You're right it doesn't directly show their rights, but it does show that they were used as a taxation purpose and were considered to be property rather that people.

 

Yep. Okay...

Anyway, this all gets back to why the hell are we privileging the ideas of dead white men who were quite unsophisticated philosophically and enshrining that as "The Way" from which we cannot divert our course?

 

I would say that their is quite a few things, in our constitution that seem very unrelated and vague now, and yet we still allow courts to have set precedent. Some of which are set back when society was a very different place. I also find it said, that many of the congressman don't know the least bit of info about a bill in which they support. It makes you think that money and congressional lines have a little more to do with how things turn out then what the people really want.

 

Considering the threat that England still posed after the war, this is a legitimate concern. The War of 1812 happened, as stupid as it was.

Compromises were made, yes, even in contradiction of stated principles. That doesn't mean that it wasn't a decent job at the time and it certainly doesn't mean that we should hold it up as an ideal model for our current time. It should give us some hope that we can make things better but it should not be held up as a utopian ideal.

 

Uh... I guess I'd go with what's in the Constitution already, so on a personal level, I'm leaning towards "strict constructionist", but it's not like I worship the thing.
Honestly, I'm not really taking sides here.

 

"Strict constructionist" and worshiping the thing seems kinda like a package deal.

I tend towards some literalism as a societal goal, so I can understand why we'd want a constitution that spelled things out exactly. But it's crazy to think that they'd had it all figured out, forever, and ever.

We can make it better. Are we really not better than those slave owning, genocidal, sexist, bigoted, racist asshats just cause they had some power and some slightly less assholish ideas than George III?