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RE: The Liberty Movement Is Attacking The Constitution As A Form Of Self Destruction

in #anarchy8 years ago

While I agree that the Constitution is a legal document and a means of expressing a key concept of liberty, it should not be considered the be-all-to-end-all definitive document for liberty. In the 1700s, it was the most advanced concept of a guiding document for liberty ever defined for its time. However, Founding Fathers most concerned for the rights of the individual saw the seeds for tyranny in it and tried to resolve those issues with the introduction of the first 10 amendments. For the first, 70 years, it worked reasonably well, but even then, politicians would constantly ignore the Constitution for minor issues when inconvenient, and President Lincoln totally ignored the Constitution when he dragged the Southern States back into the Union. As time went on, more and more episodes occurred where the Constitution was ignored and eventually by the early 21st century, it appears that the Constitution has been so reinterpreted by statist judges and disregarded by politicians and govt administrators that the Constitution really is nothing more than an historical document. As the famous anarchist and abolitionist Lysander Spooner once declared: “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”

I have no problem with trashing the Constitution, because either it was designed to eventually bring about tyranny, or it was too weak to prevent its eventual existence. When a legal document no longer fulfills its intended purpose, the proper course of action is not to reinterpret it to your satisfaction or ignore the terms of the contract. You need to declare the contract null and void, and come up with a new legal agreement that satisfies the needs of the parties that must adhere to it. Too many in the liberty movement want to discard the Constitution as an ineffective document to guarantee the rights of the individual, which is well and fine. What's missing is a concerted effort to replace it with a document that further refines the concept of absolute individual rights and prohibits a federal govt that expands beyond certain well-defined boundaries.