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Comment by krapp

6 days ago

>The issue here is that there's no practical way to ever update the Bill of Rights in the 21st century. Bug or feature?

Given that this isn't an issue in any other modern democracy, I'd say "bug."

9 comments

krapp

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nradov  6 days ago

The slow pace of change is a feature, not a bug. It's fine to wait decades or centuries until we have broad consensus before making amendments. While this might seem maddeningly frustrating or unjust in the short term, in the long term it makes our republic more stable. The USA has had an uninterrupted system of government since 1789. How many other major countries can say the same?

  • ceejayoz  6 days ago

    > The slow pace of change is a feature, not a bug.

    To a point. It seems to have ground to a halt.

    > The USA has had an uninterrupted system of government since 1789. How many other major countries can say the same?

    Quite a few of them can say "we took those good ideas and built on them".

    • nradov  6 days ago

      In what sense has it ground to a halt? Eight amendments have been ratified in the past 100 years. I think some people are taking a very short-term view here and lack a historical perspective.

      Let's see how those other countries are doing 100 years from now.

      2 replies →

  • UncleMeat  6 days ago

    > The USA has had an uninterrupted system of government since 1789.

    Sort of. We had a civil war. We had a second founding. Then we had violent overthrowing of the reconstruction governments in the south. It has been less than 100 years since the US has provided the franchise to everybody, and even then this is a bit questionable.

    Instead of constitutional amendments we get aggressive reinterpretation of the text by politically motivated efforts to change the courts. Despite no change to the constitution itself we've created criminal immunity for presidents and overturned interpretations regarding separation of powers than have been in place for a century.