Comment by bombcar
2 days ago
The problem is that "all sides" agree that if the constitution was written today, surprise, surprise, it'd totally agree with them; the gun control people are sure that the 2nd wouldn't cover military weapons, the gun lovers are sure that it would mandate tanks for everyone.
But since having 300 million people have a detailed, nuanced discussion about anything is impossible, everyone works at the edges.
I think their point was that a lot (but not all) of the existing argument boils down to “Well it should be that way because someone decided it hundreds of years ago” so if we are consciously starting again from scratch, ideally that specific argument no longer holds water. (I’d say we should instead use data based approaches, look at what has been successful in other countries, etc, although that’s slightly expanding the current topic.)
One big difference between the UK's historic constitutionalia and the US is that the UK generally recognises that we only do things a certain way because agreeing how to change them is too hard, while the US appears to think that they do things in their certain way because that's the right way to do them.
Specific examples for the UK: inducting politicians into the Privy Council in order to qualify them for security briefings, Henry VII powers, and ministers' authority deriving from the seal they're given by the sovereign. Which would almost make as much sense if it were a marine mammal as it does being a stamp.
The thing being, they work well enough. And if you want to replace them, you need to work out what to replace them with and how.
Modern democracy starts to make a lot more sense when you realize the driving principles are "what works easy enough" and "how do we prevent getting to the point of violent revolution".