<< I don't want you or anyone to make changes that undermine the intent of the US Constitution>>
So do you want to go back to slavery and not allowing women to vote?
The supreme court decides what the original intent was. That was an 18th century document. Do you want to go back to the way we lived in the 18th century?
I think the first thing that you should do is to quote my entire statement.
>>I don't want to change it. I don't think it should be changed. Any changes should be minor and would assume the original intent of the federal government providing the simple framework for protecting the rights of individuals and defining the interaction between the disparate states. <<
The quote that you included is accurate and important. But it would be more representative of my thoughts to add "Protecting the rights of individuals".
Second, the straw man of slavery and women's voting rights is something that wasn't initiated by the founders. It was something that was ingrained in the culture. The US Constitution provided the vehicle fromn which the rights of all individuals would be protected.
The U.S. Constitution was actually written correctly for the most part. Obviously some things needed to be changed. Article 4, Section 2 needed to be amended because it acknowledged persons who are held to service or labour and that they had different rights. But the fact that they acknowledge that slaves and/or indentured servants are "persons" shows a clear violation of individual rights. So Amendment 15 very specifically protected the rights of individuals.
Amendment 19 didn't give women the right to vote. The way that it is worded assumes that they always had the right and this clarified that the right cannot be violated based on sex. You will also notice that it didn't repeal any other part of the Constitution. The reason, the Constitution didn't say that women couldn't vote. It didn't say that only men could vote. It was more a matter of culture.
Amendment 24 didn't repeal any other part of the Constitution either. But there were those who tried to deny the rights of some people to vote by imposing a poll tax. This one protected the rights of individuals to vote regardless of the ability to pay a poll tax.
Amendment 26 is pretty important. It said that the right to vote of anyone 18 years of age shall not be denied or abridged. Of course, the reason for that is that anyone who is eligible for the draft should be considered an adult and should have a voice in elections.
Most of the amendments deal with clarifications on how the government operates. Which I think is appropriate.
Where it clarifies the protection of the rights of individuals, that is obviously legitimate.
Of course, I approve of the anti-FDR amendment....#22.
But why in the hell would the federal government get involved in Prohibition? (amendment 18).
In short, the US Constitution didn't overtly legalize slavery. It did however acknowledge states that allowed slavery and mistakenly legitimized slavery through that acknowledgement. The original Constitution didn't restrict women's right to vote. And in fact, it too was a cultural thing since it was just assumed that a woman would vote with her husband. But when the culture changed, it was appropriate to protect women's right to vote.
No, the problem is that the role of the federal government is outlined very well in the US Constitution. The constitution states exactly the powers given to the federal government by the people. The 10th amendment even expounds on the fact that any power not granted to the federal government by the Constitution is retained by the states or the people. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
So I like how the amendment process has been used so far. Except for prohibition, it has been used very responsibly.
What I don't like is that the federal government has overstepped its power as defined by the US Constitution. If we wanted to grant more powers to the federal government, then it should have been done through the amendment process. I certainly wouldn't like it, but I will concede that this would be the way to do it. But there is no amendment that says that the federal government can be involved in healthcare. There's no amendment that says that the federal government can have a department of education or that it can fund public media (NPR, Sesame Street, etc...). There's no amendment that says that the federal government can interfere with the free market by giving grants to cronies.
The federal government has so far exceeded its authority as to become something that barely resembles what is described in the US Constitution. These things that have expanded the role of the federal government should never have gone through congress as traditional bills. Anything that expands the role of the federal government should go through the amendment process.
And if you want to deny me my rights, you damn well better go through the amendment process.
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