Either more precision or clarification OR outright changes to both Articles and Amendments.
What changes do you think would make for a better US?
2nd Amendment - to clarify inalienable right of personal self defense instead of mingling with the Militia statement
Term limits for all 3 branches
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14th Amendment being used to justify anchor babies
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The 2nd Amendment was written by Madison based on John Locke’s writings on self defense as an inalienable right. The concept that any person has an inherent right to try to defend their life from being taken goes back to the beginning of written history and is even in the Hammurabi Code.
The militia thing, clearer in 1786, confuses things now and is a tool used by activist judges to deny self defense rights.
I would immediately get rid of the 16th, 17th, and 26th amendments.
Haven’t heard a ton of people hating on the 26th. You would remove the amendment entirely or just change the age to vote?
Change the age. So technically not a repeal.
What would you change the age to? 21?
Probably. 21 would be the most politically feasible.
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Repeal the 19th.
Actually, it is pretty clear. But, the left would try to take anything down that has to do with the personal right to own a weapon.
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I agree this has been abused to the max.
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I was wondering who would say it first, Silyak.
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What would you do for necessary funds on 16th and why on 17th?
Define necessary. We rely on income tax to fund government because it is somewhat steady compared to other taxes, but we could do without it. A sales tax is much more agreeable. You have to realize also that I would like to see the size and scope of our government halved, so losing a big chunk of funding would be a good problem.
I believe in State sovereignty. The Senate was designed to be chosen by state legislatures to check the power of the federal government. We have seen in the past 100 years that the Senate no longer serves the states. Senators are more concerned with D.C and a national audience than their actual constituency.
An example would be Obamacare. Look at how many state legislatures joined the suit to overturn ACA and their Senators voted for the law. That wouldn’t happen if we got rid of the 17th.
Bring back the [quote=“treco, post:1, topic:228344”]
Articles
[/quote] of Confederation.
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The 16th was passed largely to fund wars as countries around the world were doing the same thing and building large armies. Taxing income had always been considered immoral (along with charging interest on loans). I tend to go by “tax what you don’t want, subsidize what you want”, therefore income tax decreases the incentive to work (“I could go in on Saturday but income taxes will eat up most my time and a half anyway”).
I do see some of the reasoning, though, that prior to income tax the federal government made most of its income through tariffs. Tariffs cause a mess in the economy.
I’d support a national sales tax in exchange for income tax. Look at Europe now… VAT everywhere. Seems to work?
On the average, our government would have made better decisions over the last almost 100 years if the 19th Amendment hadn’t passed. It might be too late to make a difference now if it were repealed. but if it were never passed that would be good.
Everybody claims to agree with democracy, but then calls foul when the result doesn’t agree with them. The criteria for evaluating a system of government should be the quality and efficiency of decisions. Representation is an illusion anyways and is at best a means unto an end. In other words, letting people fill in circles on a sheet of paper (or pull levers or pierce chads) doesn’t make their life better on its own. Life only becomes better if the collective outcome of those voting actions over a long period of time lead to better government. The 19th amendment has not achieved that.
Lest it be interpreted that I am implying women made bad decisions, I don’t agree with that. Women make good decisions for themselves (as do men). The problem is that the stackup of economics, culture, and biology means that women voting in their individual self interests leads to a result that isn’t good for civilization as a whole. Allowing women to vote is what really institutionalized the welfare state and is the force that will cause us to eventually run out of other people’s money.
Men’s self interest is collectively a government of a certain balanced size. Generally, women’s self interest (and particularly single women) is to continuously make government bigger and bigger. They don’t have any particular interest in making government smaller. Thus, allowing women to vote has insured that government will continuously get bigger until we run out of other people’s money. As I said, it’s clearly too late to reasonably expect a repeal and probably too late to make a difference even if a repeal were possible.
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Silyak, I was mostly teasing you. Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
I’m pretty sure the gender gap with women voting Dem at higher rates than men has been going on since at least the Carter era. If you look at big policy areas, I tend to vote more like a man, so I’d personally be happier in the above scenario, where the roll and size of government is smaller. I think a lot of people look to countries like Norway as the ideal, but I’d rather have smaller taxes and be able to stay home and raise my own children, or care for my own elderly parents. That’s really not an option in highly socialized countries.
I don’t necessarily agree, but I appreciate when someone writes a thoughtful post on a topic I’d never quite considered from that angle, so here’s a Like for sharing your thoughts.
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