Let's Compare The U.S. Constitution and the Venezuelan Constitution

[Orwellian_Ghost]

America and Venezuela: Constitutional Worlds Apart
by Stephen Lendman
August 23, 2007

Although imperfect, no country anywhere is closer to a model democracy than Venezuela under President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias. In contrast, none is a more shameless failure than America, but it was true long before the age of George W. Bush. The difference under his regime is that the mask is off revealing a repressive state masquerading as a democratic republic. This article compares the constitutional laws of each country and how they're implemented. The result shows world's apart differences between these two nominally democratic states - one that's real, impressive and improving and the other that's mostly pretense and under George Bush lawless, corrupted, in tatters, and morally depraved.

US Constitutional Law from the Beginning

Before they're old enough to understand its meaning, young US children are taught to "pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands," and, by inference, its bedrock supreme constitutional law of the land. At that early age, they likely haven't yet heard of it, but soon will with plenty of misinformation about a document far less glorious than it's made out to be.

This article draws on Ferdinand Lundberg's powerfully important 1980 book, "Cracks in the Constitution," that's every bit as relevant today as then. In it, he deconstructs the nation's foundational legal document, separating myth from reality about what he called "the great totempole of American society." He analyzed it, piece by piece, revealing its intentionally crafted flaws. It's not at all the "Rock of Ages" it's cracked up to be, but students at all levels don't learn that in classrooms from teachers going along with the deception or who simply don't know the truth about their subject matter.

The Constitution falls far short of a "masterpiece of political architecture," but it's even worse than that. It was the product of very ordinary scheming politicians (not the Mt. Rushmore types they're portrayed as in history books) and their friends crafting the law of the land to serve themselves while leaving out the greater public that was nowhere in sight in 1787 Philadelphia. Unlike the Venezuelan Constitution, discussed below, "The People" were never consulted or even considered, and nothing in the end was put to a vote beyond the state legislative bodies that had to ratify it. In contrast to popular myth, the framers crafted a Constitution that didn't constrain or fetter the federal government nor did they create a government of limited powers.



http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=13598

[Dhalgren]

1. Reckick! Good article...

[Cha]

2. Thank you, Orwellian's G

Bookmarking this for tomorrow's read.

Viva Chavez!~

[originalpckelly]

3. Barbara Charline Jordan: Statement on the Articles of Impeachment (of Richard M. Nixon)

Excerpt:
Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: "We, the people." It's a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people."

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barbarajordanjudiciarystatement.htm

It seems that whenever I lose a little confidence in our US Constitution, I read this speech, and it makes me proud of it once again.

[rudeboy666]

4. Sour grapes. :( n/t

[leftist_not_liberal]

5. Recommended.

Karl Marx wrote that the ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of its ruling class. Looking backward, it is hard to dispute this observation, and here again is another example.

Have you ever heard of the Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Letters+from+the+Federal+Farmer+to+the+Republican&btnG=Google+Search

These are the populist counter to the Federalist Papers we are all force fed in our industrial skooling.



I'd never heard of them until recently, but then my skools were in Texas :)

Without them, there's have been no Bill of Rights.

[tom_paine]

6. K & R -- off to the Greatest Page with ye!

[tom_paine]

7. delete- duplicate

[malaise]

8. Michael Parenti's Democracy for the Few is the best book I've read

on the subject.

For the record the first constitution on the planet to entrench equality for all was the post Revolution Haitian Constitution. For that the Haitian people and their country have been destroyed by both France and the United States.