Under the article linked in the previous post, wherein a moronic state college professor calls for rescinding the 2nd Amendment — that is, the repeal of what is a natural right by those the framers and founders were determined to make sure could not take that right away — sits a comment that I addressed there but that I’ll address here as well, given this site’s commitment to language and intent.
Writes the commente, who is taking issue with the quip that we should maybe do away with the First Amendment, too (and who strangely seems to share the author’s last name),
[…] The first amendment hasn’t caused anywhere near as many deaths as the second amendment. As Dr. Oberg said in the article, the constitution is a living document, which can and should be changed when the situation calls for such change. I believe Thirty-Thousand Plus gun deaths is a pretty sufficient reason to move for change.
To which I replied,
The Constitution is not a “living document,” Adam. Texts don’t “live.” They are a collection of intended (if we’re talking about language) signs imbued with meaning by those who produced them. They are a communicative means to an end — namely, fixing meaning or distributing it over time and distance, using code and convention to aid in the interpretation [required in a second order system of reference] . In the case of our Constitution, corporate intent plays out in the process of ratification. To make the claim that the document is living is to make the claim that it is unstable and that therefore law is open to the whim of temporary majorities who pretend to extract from the document meaning that it never had. It is the rejection of the text of the Framers and the ratifiers and the embrace of a fraud, whereby just because THEY can create new texts from the fixed text by way of their own intentions, proponents of the “living Constitution” try to convince you that they are allowing the Constitution to grow and breathe. They aren’t. They are granting themselves power and privileging their own intent using methods that are linguistically incoherent. If you wish to change the Constitution, go ahead and try to repeal the 2nd Amendment. But don’t pretend it doesn’t mean what it means, or that there doesn’t exist an abundance of evidence to suggest exactly the intent behind the 2nd Amendment, which exists to protect a natural right FROM the government.
One of the reasons I left academy is that it has been overrun by leftist thinking. And that makes it a bastion of anti-intellectualism and dogma, not a place to think or consider — lest what you end up believing and considering matches the hivemind’s approved conclusions.
Imbeciles like this professor, passing off sophistry as argument, are a dime a dozen — and commenters like Adam, sadly, are assured that they are subtle, sophisticated, rigorous thinkers just so long as they parrot the approved narrative rather than thinking through problems for themselves, and agree to view the shallow and the tenuous as deep and solid.
Like nearly all the left takes hold of, the academy — in many ways — has degenerated into a sham and a scam. And its priests are either perverse or mere puppets, dancing along on strings they are too un-self-aware to feel tugging them to and fro.
Any reply to your comment that contains the sentiment, “that’s the most [absurd | uninformed | racist] thing I’ve ever heard,” is the comment of someone having encountered your argument for the first time and is struck stupid by its novelty.
Linked here: http://bobagard.blogspot.com/2013/06/parroting-approved-narrative-agreeing.html
Imbeciles like this professor, passing off sophistry as argument, are a dime a dozen [..]
And 10¢ doesn’t buy what it used to. Oberg doesn’t strike me as the kind of prof used to sharpening his skills by defending his ideas.
I kinda wish you’d posted the “Imbeciles like this professor, passing off sophistry as argument…” bit in your comment to his risible “editorial”.
For a living document, the Constitution sure seems to want a life of subservience. Maybe we should start a movement to promote the living document’s self-esteem, so that it could insist on more self-reliance and independence and less State interference with its day-to-day affairs.
Sure, the usual suspects will insist that these are Straight White Male traits with no place in modern animate textual instruments, but I think it’s a fight worth having.
Setting aside for the moment the spurious of the notion that the Second Amendment is responsible for any deaths (I mean, seriously, if that’s what we believe let’s excise Congress’s and the President’s war powers –peace in our time!), anyone who truly believes that the misuse of the fundamental, natural, human rights, to whit, the right to have ideas, and to then act on those ideas, while encouraging others to do likewise –rights the existence of which, by the way, is merely codified, not created, by our Constitution– hasn’t caused more death and suffering than cancer is either too young to remember the twentieth century, or simply wasn’t paying attention.
Sorry for the word salad, I’m hitting and running, so to speak. But that jumped out at me as laughable. And if we’re going to protect people from bad tools, we’d better start with the crooked timber of the toolmaker.
Or is that too theocratic sounding?
Funny, but my Constitution just grew a flat appendage to the 16th Amendment.
is the tax code a “living document”?
I’ve been waiting for the 9th Amendment to “grow a pair”
Well, in all fairness, if it isn’t “living”, torturing it is not much fun.
I think Ernst just said that the pen is mightier than the sword.
– It is highly probable that instances of these sorts of outbursts from the Leftist perverts, seeking perverse excitement as a result of heteronormative reaction from their cognitive disonent bullshit, should answer the question; “Are all Leftists perverts?”.
– It’s who they are. It’s what they do.
– Sometime soon we will have to put them in a safehouse just to keep the inflamed populace from hanging them outright.
Or, more economically, IWTAIWTD.
Could be we’re simply mishearing these living document dopes: they’re actually saying “leaving document”, the sort they wish to put behind them never to have to truck in again.
no better just shoot their “living constitution” and put it out of it’s misery.
go away and take marco with you
Jeb Bush Calls His Conservative Critics “The Chirpers” (Video)
Exclusive: Whistleblower Says State Department Trying to Bully Her Into Silence
You’d think that a history professor would know that “well regulated” in the context of the 2nd amendment means well disciplined, drilled, and efficient, much like a well regulated clock.
I don’t bring much to the picnic, but I show up late to make up for it.
this is a picnic : where’s the chips and dip?
– Two hours after CBS News made inquiries to the State Department about these charges, investigators from the State Department’s Inspector General showed up at her door.
– This is why they are corrupt. Because they can. The only question left is how much longer this will go on before something is finally done about it. There are no encouraging signs.
– BTW, does this mean CBS has decided at the 11th hour to stop ankle licking Bumblefuck and at least try to report the news. If so it might actually save them as an org, who knows.
Outlaws.
And more at Foggy Bottom.
– The TP counters.
– “No way in hell” from Bonhead only makes you wonder what it was he wanted that the Dimbulbs wouldn’t give him.
– Another sign the end is neigh. When bills in Congress no longer need to be passed based in any way on their contents.
– From the book “Is there anything that’s gone right under Bumblefucks watch?”, or one more thing for Putin to rag on Waffle ears about.
Well, Jeff, sauce for the goose . . .
Perhaps you could treat his essay as a “living, breathing document” and hilarity could ensue, no?
OT:
Anyone see the current Drudge headline?
– Oh, ok, I knew there had to be some self-serving reason Bonehead is temporarily pretending to be a Conservative.
Pssh. Weepy should have been ousted after his humiliation on the debt deal in 2011. The fact that he is still in charge at this point is all the proof needed to show that the GOP wants big, out-of-control government, too.
“You’d think that a history professor would know”
You’re assuming that a history professor actually studied history in grad school rather than Marxist twaddle.
That assumption is, to a very large degree, incorrect.