Georgetown Professor calls for America to ‘give up on the Constitution’
A Georgetown law professor of constitutional law, Louis Michael Seidman, bashed the Constitution, calling for some radical changes from the current view of the Founders and the document.
Public domain photo/US Government
CBS News has transcript of the professor’s remarks:
I’ve got a simple idea: Let’s give up on the Constitution.
I know, it sounds radical, but it’s really not. Constitutional disobedience is as American as apple pie.
For example, most of our greatest Presidents — Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, and both Roosevelts — had doubts about the Constitution, and many of them disobeyed it when it got in their way.
To be clear, I don’t think we should give up on everything in the Constitution. The Constitution has many important and inspiring provisions, but we should obey these because they are important and inspiring, not because a bunch of people who are now long-dead favored them two centuries ago.
Unfortunately, the Constitution also contains some provisions that are not so inspiring. For example, one allows a presidential candidate who is rejected by a majority of the American people to assume office. Suppose that Barack Obama really wasn’t a natural-born citizen. So what?
Constitutional obedience has a pernicious impact on our political culture. Take the recent debate about gun control. None of my friends can believe it, but I happen to be skeptical of most forms of gun control.
I understand, though, that’s not everyone’s view, and I’m eager to talk with people who disagree.
But what happens when the issue gets Constitutional-ized? Then we turn the question over to lawyers, and lawyers do with it what lawyers do. So instead of talking about whether gun control makes sense in our country, we talk about what people thought of it two centuries ago.
Worse yet, talking about gun control in terms of constitutional obligation needlessly raises the temperature of political discussion. Instead of a question on policy, about which reasonable people can disagree, it becomes a test of one’s commitment to our foundational document and, so, to America itself.
This is our country. We live in it, and we have a right to the kind of country we want. We would not allow the French or the United Nations to rule us, and neither should we allow people who died over two centuries ago and knew nothing of our country as it exists today.
If we are to take back our own country, we have to start making decisions for ourselves, and stop deferring to an ancient and outdated document.
BECAUSE OF THE KENYAN’S ADMINISTRATION, The Constitution HAS BECOME THE EQUIVALENT OF TOILET PAPER.
IF THE FILM, “Amistad,” IS HISTORICALLY ACCURATE President Martin Van Buren (1782-1862; in office, 1837-1841) WAS SUPPORTIVE OF SLAVERY. THEREFORE, FROM THE FIRST “VERIFIED” RECORDED-ACCOUNT OF NEGROES IN THE COLONIES (1607) TO (AT LEAST) 1841, CAUCASIAN MALES WHO HAD POLITICAL POWER CONSIDERED NEGROES TO BE SUB-HUMAN. [And, this ideology continued past the “Scopes Monkey Trial” in the early twentieth-century].
MY POINT IS, The Constitution HAS BEEN AMENDED SEVERAL TIMES – WHICH MEANS LATER GENERATIONS DID NOT LIKE THE VALUES OF THOSE WHO WROTE THE ORIGINAL [AND, UNAMENDED] DOCUMENT.
LET US SEE – CAUCASIAN MALES ARE DEPICTED ON AMERICAN CURRENCY; WITH THE EXCEPTION OF YULETIDE, NEW YEAR’S DAY AND Martin Luther King Day, ALL NATIONAL HOLIDAYS CELEBRATE THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF CAUCASIAN MALES; AND, THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS BASED ON THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF PRIMARILY, CAUCASIAN EUROPEANS – AND, TO A LESSER DEGREE, CAUCASIAN AMERICANS.
BUT, WHEN AN INDIVIDUAL WITH A “NON-ANGLO” NAME ILLEGALLY CLAIMED THE EXECUTIVE, The Constitution LOST RELEVANCE.
LOOK PEOPLE, CAUCASIANS HATE BEING CALLED RACISTS. BUT, I GUARANTEE, Professor Louis Michael Seidman WOULD NOT WANT The Constitution TO BE ABANDONED IF THE KENYAN NEVER EXISTED.
CHRISTOPHER ALLEN HORTON