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 ...
What is that supposed to mean?
Speech on the Dred Scott Decision, Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln
So to a Muzzie libtardian the Constitution is politics and history, not a framing document drafted and written by men. If I need reference on the document I’ll go to the Federalist Papers which is the real “history” surrounding the document, not some rag head who hasn’t a clue about America.
I think it was some deal about how they had great agreements, as well as council meetings.
They didn’t necessarily document it, but it was supposed to be oral, understood, sort of like that “British constitution”.
Huh?
Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.
—Lincoln in a 24-page printed pamphlet in May 1861 to Reverend James Mitchell
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln
Thanks for the advice.
No one would care what he has to say if he wasn’t a Hindu first generation immigrant.
That’s his whole shtick, what he’s selling. If he was Joe WASP, his noise wouldn’t make it out of the Yale grad school review index.
No, that is what Mitchell wrote, not what Lincoln wrote.
“No one would care what he has to say if he wasn’t a Hindu first generation immigrant.
That’s his whole shtick, what he’s selling. If he was Joe WASP, his noise wouldn’t make it out of the Yale grad school review index.”
Not at all, really. He gets attention (to the extent he does at all - remember, this is an article on Salon we’re talking about) because he is one of the most prominent constitutional scholars/academics around. He writes a lot, publishes a lot, and speaks a lot.
And once again I would submit to you that if his name was Jim Smith, 10th generation American all around good guy and prolific Constitutional author, he’d be almost as well known on Free Republic as commentator Conscience of a Conservative.
However, Lincoln was definitely anti-slavery...just not as much as the Abolitionists. If the North didn't care about slavery, they wouldn't have passed the thirteenth amendment after the war.
I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m a lawyer myself, but there are plenty of prominent constitutional academics who are more “all-American” and are know around here- Cass Sunstein, Eugene Volokh, Charles Fried, Robert Bork, Alan Dershowitz, Laurence Tribe, Glenn Reynolds, to name just a few.
What color is the sky in your world?
I would not say 'regularly' but it has happened when the 'Supremes' inject themselves into the political system.
Dred Scott v Stanford, -- Plessey v Furgeson, -- Roe v Wade.
None of them has ended well.
A liberal wrote an article on what Tea Party don’t know about the constitution? Liberals don’t know what the constitution is!!!
Ah yes
A cast of Nobles
Excepting Mr. Bork of course....who was a bit conclusionary but clearly the victim of a Leftist smear campaign
Which Ms. Lynch should be subjected to as continuing, unrelenting payback
This is not so even if the Supreme Court says it is.
What is it I've heard said; "The Constitution may not be perfect but it would be far preferable to whatever it is we have been using."
Okay.
But you originally stated that Lincoln was ahead of his countrymen on the issue of slavery.
How could he have been both “ahead of his countrymen”, and not as anti-slavery as the abolitionists?
Did you read it?
Certainly, there were a number of Northerners who didn't care either way about the issue, and he was obviously ahead of them. But he wasn't as fanatical as the Abolitionists. And the Abolitionists were not real popular in the North and did not constitute a significant pct. (two percent) of the Northern population.
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