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Jesus Christ. Can't get rid of the Electoral College, can't institute national popular vote for President, can't get more Senators for bigger states, can't get rid of each state having at least one member of Congress so now the plan is to rewrite and update the Constitution because Iceland did.
Iceland has fewer people than the city where I live. So, I suppose at the most, them changing their Constitution WOULD BE (since the OP noted they didn't actually change it) even less than my state changing their Constitution. Which has a method of amendment.
Ours is almost a quarter of a millenium old. Other nations have changed constitutions several times when the lawmakers recognized their constitution was inadequate for new times.
Iceland set out to do so, in response to the 2008 financial crisis in which Iceland did behave unwisely in the previous years. The Icelandic voters chose 25 members for the Constitutional Convention. Although it did not result in a new constitution, it did start a discussion about what their values are as a society and what kind of nation they want to be. It also stimulated new policy decisions.
What if the US followed the Icelandic example? What would you leave in or omit or add to any new constitution we happened to draw up under an Article V provision?
Oh no a quarter of a millennium! Has it ever occurred to you that our Constitution is that old because of how well it works? Who cares if other countries have changed their constitutions. There is nothing "inadequate" about our constitution, it's an exceptionally brilliant document. Anyone who thinks it's outdated, inadequate, or too old and needs to be replaced, shouldn't hesitate to move somewhere that has a new constitution that is more to their standards. Iraq has a constitution that's not even a quarter of a century old, they can go there. I hear its very nice there this time of year.
Who is going to rewrite it--Politicians backed by secret corporate agendas? Democrats disguised as socialists? Republicans disguised as extreme fundamentalist right wingers?
It's an entirely different era today, than it was in the late 1700s.
With social media influence on society with nonsense and foolery, and with all of the lack of wise people elected to Washington today, I feel like society has become much less wise and much more focused on following the tide of what is popular, rather than what is right.
The US constitution was written long ago. Times changed, Circumstances changed. America is quite a different nation. Some amendments are obsolete. Others need rectification. While still following the founding fathers principles, it needs to adapt (Its like writing today a constitution for the US in 2250. We can’t envision how that society will be, so we need to give them enough latitude).
The somewhat longer answer is that I am endlessly amused by the hubris of the current generation of Constitutional "reformers," of whom it would take 10,000,000 combined to equal the intellectual heft of even the least of the original Framers of the Constitution.
Those guys were truly giants of their own and all succeeding ages, utterly overshadowing our latter-day Constitutional revisionists, who are mere mental pygmies by comparison.
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
Who & when said?
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