Richard Stengel has authored a piece in Time recently (“One Document, Under Siege”, June 23, 2011) that, at its core, asks whether the Constitution of the United States still matters.  This is shocking to me as the Constitution is the underpinning of the ENTIRE governmental structure of this country.  Luminaries larger than I comment on the article as well – noteably Mr. Thomas Sowell and Mr. Walt Williams.  So go read them – I’ll chime in with a few of my thoughts after reading the Time article:

1.  Mr. Stengle is an idiot.  Plain and simple.  Both Mr. Williams and Mr. Sowell point out the following and it jumped off the pages when I read it as well due to how wrong the statement is: 

“If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so.”

  Excuse me?  How about reading the 10th Amendment (one that those on the left tend to ignore, in my opinion): “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  This is largely the crux of many battles between the GOP and the democrats.  Democrats manuever to use the commerce clause and other aspects to get around this but largely, in my opinion, it is an attempt to bypass the intent here.  Mr. Williams further points out that:

Mr. Stengle hasn’t read The Federalist No. 45, in which James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, said:  “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

2.  Mr. Stengle also ascribes to the same false arguments against the Constitution: it was written 223 years ago so how can it apply to the current day?  It can because it provides a framework for our government to operate within.  While the framers didn’t forsee the allocation of land area (or associated natural resources which largely drove the population) to each state over the next 200 years (see the excellent book, “How the States Got Their Shapes” for an interesting discussion on the topic of the land allocation), they made an attempt to make each state equal.  Mr. Stengle believes that California is more important than South Dakota applying a bias due to geography and natural resources. 

3.  This important document was a huge change to the way governments were structured in the 1700s and continues to be a model for new democracies.  It prescribes a balance of power between the three branches so that no one person or branch could steamroll over the citizens with a particular power.  This is why Obama’s “Czars” are questioned.  This is why the federal-level, mis-titled “Healthcare Reform Act” is questioned.  This is why various bailout programs are questioned.  This is why, to many degrees, why the public education system comes under such scrutiny. 

Keep in mind that over the last two years of economic turmoil, the federal government has prospered.  Federal workers enjoy an average compensation that is almost double state and local employees and more than double private sector employees.  The housing market in and around the Washington, D.C. area has been fairly stable – it is not without its foreclosures and hiccups. 

Feel free to read the Time article and see how un- or mis-informed some of these so-called leading publishers are.  There are people in this country that will take the information as factual when it is incorrect.  The Constitution is critically important to this nation and if events do surface where changes need to be considered there is a process to do it.  It’s been done 27 times and six other amendments are in various states (Pending: Congressional Apportionment, Titles of Nobility, Corwin Amendment (rendered moot by the 13th Amendment), and Child Labor, Expired: DC Voting Rights, and the ERA is expired but could be ratified).

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.