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Opinion #1
Debater: interested
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Rights and the Constitution
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The Articles and the Constitution itself were of the 18th, Century and based on 17th. Century thinking. The world moves on and the american Constitution which is far more than those two has necessarily evolved to accommodate changing times. All the world Constitutions have evolved similarly. To refer to original ideas is to place the nation in a straitjacket. Centralizing has been the experience of every nation; and necessarily so. (Too much power has shifted to the Presidency, though.)
The Bill of Rights was effective only against the Federal Government and there was no protection against most of the individual states. Centralisation of power is has brought protection to the people. It is absurd to say that the central government is a danger to the people when scattered authority was the danger. The Courts ensure this.
The backwards reference is reactionary. A colony securing independence is legitimate when it is recognized and in current international law is recognized as such.
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Opinion #2
Debater: The Wild Goose
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If Constitutions "must" evolve, what is the point in writing them?
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If the American constitution was designed to "evolve", why was it so carefully written in the first place? To suppose that the constitution was meant to evolve is to suppose that the framers didn't really mean what they wrote, or that we should ignore what they wrote. If they only wanted to give us "guidelines", they might as well have just written the preamble and ignored the rest of it. The idea behind the constitution was to organize the government along strict lines, with strict limits on its power, so that it could never "evolve" into a tyranny. Unfortunately, the experiment has failed, because the federal government made it policy to simply ignore those pesky lines in the constitution limiting its power. This is why secession and nullification must be preserved and defended. The federal government routinely violates the constitution, and it clearly is not going to limit its own power without any prodding.
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Supporting URL[s]:
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http://www.lewrockwell.com
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http://www.lewrockwell.com
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http://www.mises.org
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