David Ihde: 27 amendments
Maybe if you watched Fox News or listened to Rush Limbaugh and the others you mentioned, instead of disparaging them you would learn something, Mr. Farquhar. There are 27 amendments to the constitution, not 33. So it seems you are the impaired one by not watching and listening to the same, not Mr. Meglen.
I shudder to think that that is what is being taught in our public schools. But I tend to agree with Mr. Meglen in that it is not being taught at all anymore.
It was the British who brought slavery to the U.S. not Americans, and we had no stomach for another war over the same upon independence. And Mr. Meglen is correct that there would not have been a constitution at all if demands for abolition were met. Therefore, our founders gave us the tools to deal with the issue including a three-fifths compromise for representative purposes to change it legislatively to go along with the courts and the amendment process.
No, it did not work out smoothly, as most things don’t. But to assume that our founders could merely release them into freedom is naïve. Where were they going to go? Back to Africa where they were owned by black slave-owners?
The fact that woman did not have the same rights as men also misses the point of what they gave us. A document that we could grow with as we evolved as a society. Not to be perfect from the get-go. Women had no rights in any society that I know of at the time and still don’t in many societies. And the first 10 amendments, better known as the Bill of Rights, while not strictly part of the original document, were incorporated for ratification purposes. Otherwise it would not have been ratified.
And it’s the amendment process and only the amendment process that makes the constitution the living breathing document the Left refers to, not the interpretation process. Both Liberals (on the M.O.) and the Conservatives (it’s not one) get this wrong. It was both Parliament and the King of England. Not just one or the other. Therefore it seems that you are the one that needs the history lessen.
David Ihde
Steamboat Springs
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