Why are conservatives, not liberals, fixated on amending the Constitution?

[n2doc]

Jeffrey Rosen
April 18, 2011 | 12:19 am



On January 22, the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, I attended a summit called We the Corporations v. We the People, sponsored by the Coffee Party, a network of liberals, leftists and progressives. The summit was designed to rally support for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United by declaring that corporations are not entitled to the constitutional protections of natural persons. But the attendance was sparse, the energy subdued, and the keynote speaker, Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig, urged the activists in attendance to scale back their ambitions and forego the push for a constitutional amendment, which he warned would not solve the problem of corporate corruption.

Things could hardly be more different on the right, of course. Conservatives are currently pushing a slew of constitutional amendments, ranging from proposals to repeal the federal income tax to proposals to allow two-thirds of the states to repeal any federal law or regulation. And these amendments are receiving full-throated support from party activists and members of Congress alike. This pattern has held for decades—recall the flag-burning amendment of the 1990s and the recent push to win a constitutional ban on gay marriage—and it raises a question: Why is it that these days only conservatives, and not liberals, seem to get excited about amending the Constitution?

The answer, in a word, is populism. Enthusiasm about constitutional amendments generally tracks closely with populist sentiment. Simply put, populist movements tend to expend energy on constitutional amendments; those that are more elite-driven do not.

Conservatives didn’t always dominate the market in constitutional amendments. During the last wave of progressive constitutionalism, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Harvard Law graduates like Louis Brandeis and muckraking journalists like Ida Tarbell helped mobilize grassroots support for trust busting and anti-monopoly laws by vilifying reckless bankers and oligarchs like J.P. Morgan and J.D. Rockefeller who took risks with “other people’s money.” At the same time, progressives pursued similar anti-corporate goals by successfully championing constitutional amendments that authorized a federal income tax and the direct election of senators.

more
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/86905/constitution-amendment-conservatives-united-states

[Proud Liberal Dem]

1. Also

most "conservative" amendments seek to TAKE AWAY civil liberties, not expand and protect them.

[aquart]

2. Because we're working on real change and they're faking it.

They know damn well they aren't getting constitutional amendments through fifty state legislatures.

[FiveGoodMen]

3. Because they hate us for the freedoms it guarantees.

[Igel]

4. The judiciary.

Many progressives believe in a "living" Constitution, in which the meaning and application of the text is fairly pliable. Rather than go through the hassle of getting Congress and then a supermajority of state legislatures to approve an amendment, you merely need to convince 5 judges on the Supreme Court for many things.

You see some of the biggest calls for Constitutional amendments not when the Congress does something, but when SCOTUS makes a ruling that those left of center don't like. You also see calls on the left for when they're afraid (sorry, "concerned") that some practice or policy they like or want might be subject to being overturned by SCOTUS.

Conservatives consider the Constitution to be a piece of paper with words on it, and tend to believe that the words have something nearly like a fixed meaning. Therefore SCOTUS and Congress are limited in how much they can bend the Constitution; it's not a living document, it's not even all that flexible. But they note that it contains a codified, formal mechanism for making large changes to the text. Therefore, esp. when SCOTUS has done something they don't like (parallel to the left), but also when they're concerned (sorry, "afraid") of some future practice becoming standard, they call for Constitutional amendments.

No worry. Constitutional amendments need a huge populist wave or a very clear, cross-party purpose to get passed.

Personally, the left has the winning formula. In a good democracy, it's much better to rely on the thinking of 5 judges than on the Congress and state legislatures.

(And if you take that last sentence at face value, may I suggest you peruse http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x921464 )

[EstimatedProphet]

5. Well, the "Coffee" Party has been mainly concerned with singing Kumbaya

Their side os overbearing, our side wants to get along at any cost.

[RC]

6. Not true.

http://www.kcmovetoamend.org/

KC Move To Amend

Welcome to the website of the Kansas City affiliate of Move To Amend, a national coalition which formed in response to the Supreme Court ruling, CITIZENS UNITED.
The disastrous ruling permits corporations to spend unlimited money campaigning for or against candidates in elections.

KC Move To Amend Contact Information:
[e-mail]
816-885-9996

[SheilaT]

7. My take is that over the two plus centuries

of this country, the Constitution has tended to be interpreted along what we call liberal lines much of the time.

Plus, conservatives are also people who fixated on words and the narrow meanings of them. Look at how many of them insist on the Bible being literally true, despite all the contradictions within it.

When I finally got around to reading the Bible when I was about 25, I was quite amazed at how it is the original short-attention span document. There is absolutely no sustained narrative, and so those who fixate on it, do not develop skills at reading something more than a paragraph long and then understanding that longer, sustained piece. Those people invariable come down to insisting that some sentence or phrase is all you ever need to refer to to know how to think or behave. While the Constitution isn't exactly a sustained narrative, it was written by people who'd had experience in that kind of thing, and they deliberately, as I understand it, left certain things deliberately ambiguous, knowing that future circumstances might be quite different, and the document had to be able to adapt to the future. That's also why they included a way to amend it, and promptly did so.

Just look at the Second Amendment. I know how I interpret it, but I certainly see that it can be interpreted - and is interpreted -- very differently.

[sinkingfeeling]

8. Because they're the only ones who love the Constitution and want the country to go back to 1783?

[surrealAmerican]

9. I think the failure of the equal rights amendment has a lot ...

... to do with it. Liberals are more likely to see an amendment as unlikely to pass, and thus pursue other means to achieve their goals.