OpEdNews - Diary: Our Constipated Constitution

September 23, 2008 at 22:23:41 Permalink
Our Constipated Constitution

Diary Entry by Mark E. Smith (about the author)

Those looking to the Constitution of the United States of America for democracy will find that it is an inherently undemocratic document.

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Our Constitution is inherently undemocratic. It gives our government unchecked power and gives us, We the People, no way to hold it accountable.

The Constitution prohibits us from voting directly for President and Vice-President and gives the final say over who becomes President and Vice-President to the Electoral College, the winning candidate (who has the right to concede to the loser), Congress (which can accept or reject Electoral votes), and/or the Supreme Court.

The Constitution does allow us to vote for Members of Congress, but it makes Congress itself the sole judge of those elections, not the popular vote, which nowadays, with computers doing the tallying, we have no way to verify anyhow. And it does not allow us to directly impeach or remove anyone in Congress or the White House--once again the Constitution made that the sole prerogative of Congress. It also made an undemocratic, unelected body over which the people have no control and which we cannot hold accountable, the Supreme Court, the highest law of the land which we cannot appeal but which we must obey.

In the United States, an unelected Supreme Court can select the President, and then the unelected President can appoint justices to the Supreme Court, and it is all fully Constitutional.

The only checks and balances that the Constitution provided were to give the people in government the right to check and balance each other. But they quickly found out that they could make greater profits by cooperating with each other than by checking each other.

Our Constitution did not establish a democracy where power over government resided in the hands of the people, or a republic where people had a way to hold the elected officials accountable during their terms in office so that they would be obligated to represent the interests of their constituents. It established an oligarchy which has turned into a fascist tyranny, a government that uses its monopoly on violence to further the interests of business and suppress the rights of people.

Many argued that the interests of business and of people were one and the same, that what's good for General Motors is good for America. Ask any unemployed auto worker in Detroit if they still believe that.

One of the things that the framers claimed they intended to do by establishing the Constitution was to "promote the general welfare." But they stated their intentions in the Preamble to the Constitution, not within the Constitution itself where they gave an unelected Supreme Court the right to interpret the Constitution, and the Supreme Court eventually threw out the intent of the framers, finding that the Preamble was NOT part of the Constitution. Not that it matters as promoting the general welfare is a Commie, pinko, socialist, leftist, radical terrorist concept anyway, and could easily interfere with corporate profits.

What could the framers have possibly been thinking? ;)

I'm an anti-civilizationist and election boycott advocate in San Diego. For reasons not to vote in faith-based elections with secret vote counts for candidates you cannot hold accountable if they fail to represent you, check out the discussions, (more...)

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