http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/12/06/3032421/americans-learn-constitution-nelson-mandela-signed/
i might ask all the right wingers please be seated you'll thank me later.In 2012, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made the impolitic suggestion that “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012,” instead pointing foreign constitution drafters to the constitution the late South African leader Nelson Mandela signed in 1996. Her statement received the predictable response from many conservative voices. One publicationcalled for her to resign.The truth, however, is that the United States could learn a great deal from South Africa’s constitution. As Ginsburg noted, that constitution was drafted much more recently than America’s 226 year-old founding text.Accordingly, its drafters benefited from more than two centuries of human experience that our founding fathers did not have. Ginsburg in no way impugned the genius of George Washington, James Madison or Alexander Hamilton when she suggested that these men could not possibility have known the things that we know today — and that nations drafting new constitutions should benefit from the full range of human experience.The South African Constitution begins with an absolutely breathtaking first passage: “We, the people of South Africa, Recognise the injustices of our past.” This is not just a document drafted by men dissatisfied by their lack of representation in a distant central government.Rather, this the constitution of a nation that is profoundly aware of how governments can go wrong — and why the inherent human rights of every individual must be honored to ward off atrocity.
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes instead of arrogant i'm all that their constitution is conceived of years of experience this is where that other thing about a more perfect union should kick in, some made it more perfect for them.
i've written before the world changes the constitution basically hasn't there goes that more perfect union thing out the window, no change because it works in favor of those who usurped it's intentions.
No doubt for this reason, the South African Constitution is structured very differently from our own. Our own founders believed that the best way to protect liberty is to structure government in a way that hinders attacks on individual freedom.“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men,” James Madison famously wrote, “you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”To accomplish this goal, “[a]mbition must be made to counteract ambition.” Senators must be played against representatives and justices against presidents — all to ensure that no one body acquires the power it would need to effect tyranny.For this reason, our Constitution begins by laying out the structure of government. Article I is Congress, Article II the executive branch, Article III the judiciary. The concept of explicitly protected individual rights was largely an afterthought.The Bill of Rights was not ratified until a few years after the Constitution went into effect, and it was originally understood only to place limits on the federal government — not the states.
this should send up a red flag we have seen throughout history where this scenario goes in the wrong hands, in our case republicans.
James Madison famously wrote, “you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”To accomplish this goal, “[a]mbition must be made to counteract ambition.” Senators must be played against representatives and justices against presidents — all to ensure that no one body acquires the power it would need to effect tyranny.
we have failed miserably at that those factions tend to stack the bodies with their own of like minds at that point anarchy begins and constitution ends.
