It was a great compromise that arrived with an initial stack of amendments, to make sure that two critical facts were in play - first that the constitution qua constitution was amenable to amendments, and that there were some that were FELT NEEDED MOST IMMEDIATELY!
As a nation we had started, as some will recall, with articles of confederacy, which was not as gooder a plan as it had initially been presented. We would revisit the issues associated with that form of government after 80 years on, when members of the south opted to Go Galt and seek to return to a Pre-Constitutional Phase.
Those who have had the misfortune of living in the state of California understand that the California State Constitution is a huge loose leaf binder, where they are constantly adding and subtracting pages and sections, and trying to figure out if there is a better way to manage a state inside of a federal system, but without the need to actually confess that they want some sort of AnarchoSyndicalism based upon Pure Going Galt rather than the radical hard left policy of a representational form of government in which there are three main branches of government.... The Courts, The Executive, and the Legislative.
Under the sort of PureLandBuddhism in California, some how the state should be run by a series of voter initiatives, so that all things will be mandated in the State Constitution, and there will be no need for any other form of law, but that which is the True Mandate of God, as manifest in the state constitution. Since of course we will no longer have an executive branch of government and any of that mamby pamby soft on International space alien stuff like the Department of Transportation, with things like drivers licenses, which are there only to persecute white people and get mexiCanunkianists jobs.
But hey, folks, try to remember that the state of California gave you not only TrickyDick and Ronald "zap" RayGunn, it is also the Home of nanciiPelosiiItes Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage....
{ Please Note, known IslamoCyrptoZionists like hanoiAnnieCoulter are mere east coast effemete horror stories... You can not blame California for that.... In like manner, the John Birch society comes from the Godless East Coast of Appleton Wisconsin, where they have all gone galt, back before going galt was galtish enough... }So my concern about making sure that we allow for forms of Law that are exterior to mere "constitutionalism" is based not merely upon some pin headed academic pedantic snivelling fourEyedGeekIsm - but on the somewhat unpleasant reality that occurs in one of the largest economies in the world - the state of california.
By exterior, I do not mean 'extra judicial' - but matters which can be managed by either classical statute law, for both criminal and civil cases, as well as the boring tedium of mere civil law! ( tort, equity, etc )Much of which does not rise to the level of needing to have a full on parental heritage so that each line of each statute is shown to expressly derive it's power from some named section of the Constitution.
{ for the WHINERS yes, we should Note that GODLESS LIBERALS brought about the creation of equity as exterior to all of the TRUE TRUTHIER BITS of True Common Law as it was handed down by the elders... but that is of course what americans inherited from the British... and it is NOT OUR FAULT!!! }Just being able to realize that there is a distinction between criminal and civil law, without finding that this is expressly asserted in any of the articles of the constitution, would of course lead some strains of "PsychoReligious Strict Constructionists" to argue that there can be no such distinction made in america, as such would be 'extra constitutional'. A position that I feel would be patently absurd and far beyond anything that the founding fathers had actually intended.
Which I think is where we as a nation get ourselves at times into various types of messes.
On the one hand so many folks are all excited about the actual written text, without any regards for not only what is IN the text itself, but the various interpolative tools required to deal with the mere bits that are written down.
This is easy to see when folks are asserting that the American Constitution is based upon the ten commandments, and yet, for some strange reason they are never able to resolve for me how it is that the US Constitution does not mandate that there be but one GOD! Or are we to go with the more liberal interpretation, that it is ok to have other Gods in one's pantheon of gods, as long as the god of The Quick Ten still gets Poll Position....
I think one of the funniest things that I have ever noticed in the HORROR of BritainGoesFrench, is that the godless heathens in the UK publish both the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers in the same type font and the same size books. As if in some pre-Galt way they were clearly on par with each other, and that.... well the founding fathers were allowed to differentiate themselves and how they viewed the need for a shift from a confederacy to a federal system. Which as anyone can tell you, there are no references in the bible as to how the Kings Of God are to rule the land through a federalist system.
Whereas in America, it is often easy to find the federalist papers bound in leather, with gilt edges, as the true holy manifestation, and like so many other holy texts, no sign that a human had ever attempted to decrypt anything between the pages, since all that one needs is possession of the Holy Totem, and one can force back into the Pits of Cleveland the GODLESS HORDES of Satanic NanciiPelosii Voodoo Zombie Dust Bunnies Of Despair!
Not like there would be any good arguments as to what place reason might take in a federal republic.
But what if the founding fathers had actually engaged in the sort of intellectualism that are to be found in the federalist and anti-federalist papers? That there would be a bifurcation between the central government, and it's laws, and the various laws of the states.
Clearly starting out with working out which form of constitutionalism we MEAN may well help folks sort out if all must be constitutional, in a formal sense, as in being IN the constitution, or is it 'constitutional' in that it conforms to the distribution of power within the federal republic and it's various checks and balances.
I take us there, since the other half of the fun is that, well, Gosh, when exactly was it that the Supreme's would adopt the position that they were the final arbitor of ConLaw? ( cf Supreme Court of The USA as a nice introductory article... then make sure you understand Marbury v. Madison ) So let us pause for a moment and remember
At the federal level, there is no power of judicial review explicitly established in the United States Constitution, but the doctrine has been inferred from the structure of that document.[1] At the time of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, five of the thirteen States included some form of judicial review or judicial veto in their state Constitutions. Delegates at 1787's Constitutional Convention, including South Carolina's Charles Pinckney, spoke out against the doctrine of judicial review.Since the argument of some strict constructionists would lead us to observe that the first of the GODLESS GUACAMOLE HATING Radical Judicial Activists Legislating From The Bench, would, well, be of course Marbury v. Madison...
[ cf Judcial Review in the USA ]
And clearly if such were the Apostasy, to stab the Great War Thomas Jefferson in the back.... Or is it the argument that Thomas Jefferson was not really a Real Founding Father because of InsertIdeologicallyKorrektDogeralHereAbo
For our slower readers, you REALLY do want to read both the federalists and anti-federalist papers, and do so while chanting "going Galt", and all of the other popular bizz of the era.... I mean it will help you better appreciate why we are so clearly in a More Time of Holy Crusade... and thus are so clearly like our Founding Fathers seeking to END the horror of Liberalism in our Life Time, so as to restore our TRUE Family values.
{ yes, kampfrs, back in the day, the US Constitution was attacked EXPRESSLY for not having 'god' in the docuement, and thus being a Godless Document, which I hope helps some folks who have always opposed the US Constitution on it's GodlessUnamericanism, well, uh, feel, more in sync with someone... }Who knows, along the way, by retreating to mere reasoning, we might even restore a basis for actually respecting the Constitution, and the constitutional way of governing within a Federal Republic.
It could happen....