Courtesy of Andrew Goddard, we have two quotes:
"Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end
of nineteen years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and
not of right."--Jefferson to Madison in 1789
"The idea that
institutions established for the use of the nation cannot be touched nor
modified even to make them answer their end because of rights
gratuitously supposed in those employed to manage them in trust for the
public, may perhaps be a salutary provision against the abuses of a
monarch but is most absurd against the nation itself. Yet our lawyers
and priests generally inculcate this doctrine and suppose that preceding
generations held the earth more freely than we do, had a right to
impose laws on us unalterable by ourselves, and that we in like manner
can make laws and impose burdens on future generations which they will
have no right to alter; in fine, that the earth belongs to the dead and
not the living." --Thomas Jefferson to William Plumer, 1816.
And this is why we have a process for amending the Constitution, Pooch. Not a system by which you can just dictate that certain parts no longer apply because you don't like them.
ReplyDeleteWhat garbage. A different interpretation is not the same as saying they simply no longer apply. It is true though, that parts of the constitution simply no longer apply because the situation no longer exists.
DeleteSo shall we limit this to the Constitution? I've already commented that I think automatic sunset provisions of laws is a good thing. Like what happened to the first federal assault weapon ban. When they couldn't justify renewing it, it died a well deserved death.
ReplyDeleteBack to Jefferson and the Constitution. Fortunately, it wasn't just Jefferson there making stuff up. Can you imagine what might happen if the whole Constitution was scheduled to be reauthorized every so often?
Just imagine for example, joy of joys (for you at least) you manage to stack the deck in your favor in SCOTUS to get Heller overturned and then things get rewritten and its all for naught.
You continue this not justifying garbage about the AWB. There was no evidence one way or the other on the AWB, it was a political decision to let it lapse. More of your dishonest twisting by trying to inferr there was evidence that it did not work and therefore was allowed to expire. Nothing could be further from the truth.
DeleteMaybe it was the court deciding Heller that was slanted since that was a new interpretation on guns for the court in over 100 years.