Posted on 04/21/2015 1:28:33 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
GOP candidates constantly invoke the Constitution. A Yale Law professor reveals what they all fail to understand.
With the 2016 election cycle having kicked into first-gear already, any American who hasn’t inured themselves to the monotonous (and often ultimately meaningless) repetition of the word “Constitution” is advised to get to self-desensitizing — and quick.
Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have already made a fetishized version of the U.S.’s supreme governing document central to their campaign rhetoric; and even politicians less beloved by the supposedly Constitution-crazy Tea Party, like Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton, are likely to soon follow suit. That’s how American politics functions now, in the era of the NSA, Guantanamo Bay, lethal drone strikes and endless war.
But as that list of questionable policies suggests, there’s an unanswered question lurking behind so much of our happy talk about the Constitution — namely, do we even understand it? As dozens of polls and public surveys will attest, the answer is, not really. And that’s one of the reasons that Yale Law School professor Akhil Reed Amar has decided to write a multi-book series about the Constitution so many Americans claim to love, but so few seem to understand. “The Law of the Land: A Grand Tour of our Constitutional Republic,” released earlier this month, is that project’s latest addition.
Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Amar about the Constitution, his books, and why he sees Abraham Lincoln as perhaps the United States’s real founding father....
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
How many people around here would complain if they did?
Apparently,Yale had a quota box to check off.
I think he’s done an admirable job of presenting evidence that he’s an unassimilated grievance monger!
What Lincoln speech or writing is that from?
What difference does that make?
Curious.
It’s not a Lincoln quote but rather part of a letter sent TO Lincoln by the Reverend James Mitchell of Indiana.
But it's much more fun to attribute it to Lincoln I guess.
While I agree with you, one could, perhaps convert from Hindoism to Islam unless his parents disowned him for it.
Would you care to point out where the professor’s quoted words do this?
Not the prologue by the idiot from Salon.
As a Texan, on San Jacinto day, and from a confederate state, I concur with what you say. As far as the Emancipation Proclimation is concerned, it technically only affected the areas where the Union army had ( or would, in the near future) had control of. The pro slavery people obviously did not like it, but the abolishionist did not think it went far enough.
Not Really. Be happy to outsource it to you.
American Indians were a very literate people?
Of course, English law inspired the American Constitution. My hero, Richard the Third, initiated (did not invent) bail, forced courts to prosecute in English and posted all laws in English. And also started an early version of Legal Aid.
Whether he had the legal power or not, his actions certainly put an end to slavery in the U.S. ....which is what I meant to convey.
To liberals 2+2=5.
Post # 55, well said
Apparently, he believes there is the text of the Constitution and an "unwritten" Constitution that has to do with the way government actually functions. Or something like that. More here.
I don't think he's saying that there are different ways to amend the Constitution, but that court decisions and other changes in the way government does things change the political structure we live under. He may want to call this a change in the Constitution, but maybe it's more the small c constitution we live under that changes.
Obviously, if he teaches at Yale Law School he's probably not voting for Ted Cruz. Amar is more liberal than conservative, if only because he talks more about race and gender than conservative originalists tend to, but he doesn't quite fit the liberal activist mold Elias Whatshisname tries to fit him into. More here.
If you think Lincoln was ahead of his countrymen on the issue of slavery, please explain the following statement he wrote in an August, 1862, letter to Horace Greely:
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
It sounds to me that as late as August, 1862, 2-1/2 years in to the Civil War, Lincoln did not care about the fate of the slaves or “the colored race” - all he cared about was “preserving the Union”.
It's one thing to say that he's wrong (he is - terribly so). It's an entirely separate thing to say that he shouldn't be listened to because he's Hindu. Reject his arguments on their merits, not on his identity or ethnic/religious background.
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