Suicide Pact

When you hear someone, anyone, say: the Constitution is not a suicide pact, look out because they want to grab power.

When you read statements expressing this thought, like this from The Hill:

“None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former judge and close ally of the president who sits on the Judiciary Committee.

know that the individual does not believe in the Constitution of the United States.

As Barbara Ehrenreich points out in an article she wrote for The New York Times, the Declaration of Independence was, most definitely in the minds of those who signed it, a suicide pact. Those men were all subject to hanging for treason by signing the document.

Read the history and understand the times and those involved in drafting the Constitution. Almost all of them had experienced war on an up close and personal basis. The reason for the war was the need to preserve the rights they felt all citizens were entitled to. The whole history of the country is a story of extending rights to more and more people. That history has not been without bloodshed or danger, and some occasional backsliding, but the trend was toward an expansion of rights.

The purpose of any constitution is not to grant power, but to limit it. If left to their own devices, people with some power will always attempt to garner more, so the limits are written down. There are no “hidden powers” in the Constitution, only limitations.

The Shrubbery can’t do his job. He says it’s because he doesn’t have enough power. I say it’s because he can’t do his job, and giving him more power that he doesn’t know how to use isn’t going to help. He needs to resign so we can find someone who can do the job.