Another Reason To Not Dump The Constitution

One of my great fears if we try to replace the US Constitution is that, given the current lack of brevity in the world today, we will end up with some wordy banana republic document that gets amended 100 times in 5 years before a military junta takes over. And when you look at the newly proposed EU Constitution and the US Constitution you can get an idea as to why I might be concerned.

Any more, it seems like we no longer want to define rights in terms of what the government can't do, but rather in terms of what we can expect from the government. The EU Constitution isn't a framework; it is a list of do's and don'ts for the people. In the EU people will only have the rights granted by the government; in the US, theoretically, the government is only allowed the rights granted to it by the people - through the Constitution.

The difference is small in that it is really only a change in the order of the words. But in practice, it is a huge and significant difference. And one that we need to protect.

That is why I think that we shouldn't even consider replacing the Constitution.