Part of what I see with 50501/Hands Off protests is that they have a theme of “defending the Constitution” from Trump. This is really a somewhat conservative position and doesn’t have much historical rigor to it.
Prof. Aziz Rana of Boston College Law School is having a moment on Jacobin Radio right now. His basic thesis is that the Constitutional order is so deeply antidemocratic that the left argued with itself and the liberals over whether to focus efforts on challenging it in the early 20th Century. In the broad sweep of history since then, Americans have come to view the Constitution as a sacred text, but in fact, that order is part of what gives the Republicans and the far right their advantages despite losing the popular vote.
The shorter interview: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S250424 (April 24, 2025)
The 4-part long interview: https://thedigradio.com/archive/ (see the Aziz Rana episodes starting in April 2025) - Part 4 isn’t up yet.
So why should we venerate the Constitution, when it holds us back from real, direct democracy? I think part of what our liberal friends and family hold onto is a trust in the Constitution and the framers. They weren’t geniuses, they were landowners worried about kings taking their property. Use these interviews, or Prof. Rana’s book, to handle those arguments.
almost every comment here reads like an LLM sharting out a light novel in response to a prompt that didn’t tell it to format it as a comment…
The discussion on this post is a sick joke and parody of the content of the interview and real life. You want to call all the leftists on lemmy right wingers because we believe something that is obvious if you have ever lived on the west? You all are precisely the type of people who hold the constitution to be a sacred document instead of actually understanding the legal framework within or it’s intent. You really think you are going to be protected by a document that describes Black Americans as three-fifths of a person and in the amendment that overrides that language makes room for the carceral state? You really think you’re going to be protected by a document that describes a non functional state? The constitution as a legal framework is fundamentally broken, no amount of bolstering that is going to fix it. It is because of the design of government as described in the constitution is why the US federal state is unable to operate and it is because of the constitution you’ve seen a minority of view points, neo-liberal conservatives, take it over to destroy it. By criticizing the constitution you are not threatening your rights or liberty, a constitutional convention that doesn’t include the right wing is required for anything to change in America or it will dissolve.
The Frozen Republic by Daniel Lazare - https://archive.org/details/frozenrepublicho0000laza/page/n5/mode/2up
Read this book. It is from 1996. I read it the first time in 2002 while I was in law school and it really opened my eyes. The accounts on this thread who immediately go to attacking leftists on lemmy and protecting this document are running on pure vibes and low education. No other modern democracy runs on anything like it for a reason. No other modern democracy is unable to rewrite their document as appropriate, the fact that the US is stuck with this and people like Phillip are why you’re going to descend into fascism while screaming to protect the past. You are the conservative.
You all are precisely the type of people who hold the constitution to be a sacred document instead of actually understanding the legal framework within or it’s intent.
Ctrl-F “code-word” in these comments.
You really think you are going to be protected by a document
Ctrl-F “old-world”.
By criticizing the constitution you are not threatening your rights or liberty, a constitutional convention that doesn’t include the right wing is required for anything to change in America or it will dissolve.
Pretty much agreed, Ctrl-F “crooks and tyrants”.
It is because of the design of government as described in the constitution is why the US federal state is unable to operate and it is because of the constitution you’ve seen a minority of view points, neo-liberal conservatives, take it over to destroy it.
This one I haven’t really addressed in these comments specifically, but I’m happy to talk more on it. I think the problem is in the nature of people. Any massive power center will attract evil people to try to hijack it and take control for their own malicious purposes. That’s happened in every empire in history, in the USSR and China as it did in the US, in European governments, in little fiefdoms in the Global South wherever they have sprung up. It takes constant pressure from the people to stop it from happening, and there are design elements that make it more difficult. That’s why the US has some semblance of democracy when most empires of its size lost it instantly once they achieved real geopolitical power.
I have no idea why you think the constitution is somehow responsible for any of that. What’s the link between the corruption of the current day (citizens united, ICE, MAGA) and the constitution? What would you want to replace it in order to solve any of those problems?
The Overton window is anchored by a series of landmarks. The most effective way to lose one of them, like the Constitution, is to start discussing whether it has merit.
Right now, the country is in the sad state that the absolute minimum, adherence to a Constitution to which government official swear an oath of allegiance, is in question. You gain absolutely nothing, right now, by questioning the Constitution. You wait until the constitutional order is re-established and actors that routinely violate it are punished, and when the Overton window moves back … it’s not really to the left, it’s more towards democracy itself, then you discuss the flaws of the Constitution.
The Overton window is anchored by a series of landmarks. The most effective way to lose one of them, like the Constitution, is to start discussing whether it has merit.
Yeah. Why do you think that Lemmy, a markedly leftist platform, is so inundated with people talking about how useless all our imperfect tools for making the world slightly less authoritarian are? Why do you think they’re trying to get us to abandon them rather than bolstering their support?
I’ve been saying this for months. The people who are trying to get the left to abandon the effective means we have for shifting the overton window to the left are right-wingers or being manipulated by right-wingers.
The people who spend their days banging away about how we don’t have democracy, we’ve never had democracy, the constitution is useless, the democrats never accomplish anything, etc, are literally agents of the right whether they know it or not. But many of them probably literally do know it.
Why do we see this more on Lemmy than in real life or on other platforms? Because we’re being targeted.
Absolutely! I had the same impression with the Gaza protests. The Biden/Harris administration handled the situation absolutely horribly, but anyone who had watched #45 knew that things were going to get a whole universe worse for Gaza if Trump got reelected. And yet, there was that strange bombardment with “I can’t vote for Harris because of Gaza” that seemed astroturfed.
In no material way has the gaza situation become worse. The only change is our president is no longer shaking his finger going ‘oh no, bad isreal please stop’ and is extending the prosecution to Palestinians in the US.
You sound like one of those people who stopped caring about the child cages soon as biden was the one doing it.
All harris had to do was say ‘i will ensure american laws are enforced with respect to weapons sales to isreal’ and her major campaign problem would have disappeared.
Wouldn’t have helped with all her other shitty positions but at least we would have had a candidate who didnt support genocide.
Its not astroturfing when your candidate is so bad most people in her base dont actually support her but are voting against trump. Not a recipe for success.
We’re getting exactly what we deserve atm for running genocidal candidates. Next time tell your candidate to get a fucking clue and not support a fucking genocide and maybe she’ll win. Though i doubt it since shes a gaslighting fuck who doesnt give a shit about the working class. Her and biden cant disappear fast enough from the political sphere as far as im concerned
In no material way has the gaza situation become worse.
I have a horrible feeling that we may, this month, be watching the final death of Gaza. And everyone’s too distracted or too powerless to do anything about it.
They’ve just run out of food. There’s none left. I think this might be the end. I think by this time next year, what was “Gaza” may simply be Israel.
There’s a lot to criticize about Biden’s response to Gaza (Basically all of it). But, it’s outright absurd to pretend that all of that instantly applied to Kamala Harris, for more or less literally no reason at all, or that it represented a sensible reason to let someone come to power who turned “I’m going to hem and haw and at the end of the day support Israel in 90% of what they’re doing while making noise about humanitarian aid” into “Fuck it, kill 'em all, I’ll send their supporters to El Salvador to help support you.”
All harris had to do was say ‘i will ensure american laws are enforced with respect to weapons sales to isreal’ and her major campaign problem would have disappeared.
Incorrect. I think it would have lost her a lot of support. A lot more American people support Israel than Palestine, because they’re as unaware of the nature of the genocide as you are about the shockingly-good-for-American-politics steps Biden took to support the working class and a lot of the key issues the people on Lemmy are constantly clamoring about (police brutality, unions, climate change).
Fun fact: gaza lacked clean food and water for almost a year now. Its old news and was allowed under Biden. Its not a material change.
And no she wouldn’t have lost a ton of support. The jewish community is 1) small, and 2) divided on the issue. Further more most of zionist are literally christians thinking isreali reclaiming the holy land is a precursor to the rapture and don’t vote democrat. So no she lost more support from the antiwar Democratic base than she gained. (Fun fact she gained nothing by being pro genocide what were her % repub voters again? Oh right less than the typical. Good job)
Finally harris lost in no small part by demonstrating she’d throw any minority group under the bus and exactly how out of touch she was on working class economics.
Both issues are why the blue wall crumbled. She lost 2 critical states over gaza and support tanked even in blue states. The remaining support in the mid western states tanked due to her absolutely clueless positions on the economic hardships faced by the working class. Biden’s Presidency did not make any real gains for the working class and rhey didnt have a single policy on their platform that would. Trying to say he was ‘good for the work class economically’ is an absolute farce; at best he was neutral.
So kindly fuck off with your genocidal apology nonsense and go fuck yourself i have no interest in engaging with your stupidity further.
Fun fact: gaza lacked clean food and water for almost a year now. Its old news and was allowed under Biden.
You really don’t know?
There is 0 food coming in. The aid agencies inside have just run out. I’m not talking about “clean food.” I’m talking about mass starvation.
People can’t survive for a year with 0 food. That’s what I am talking about. There was food coming in before, including with that pitiful effort to build a pier to get the US military directly involved in providing it. It was terrible, but whatever, it was something. Now it’s 0.
Finally harris lost in no small part by demonstrating she’d throw any minority group under the bus and exactly how out of touch she was on working class economics.
No, Harris lost because masterpieces of propaganda convinced people that she would be worse for the working class and Trump would finally set things right. Her actual positions had literally nothing at all to do with it, and Gaza was a tiny sideshow to it that was only occasionally deployed to people on the left who it would influence.
They actually did opposite propaganda sometimes, depending on who was being targeted: To mainstream Americans, she was a friend to “terrorists” who was on Palestine’s side, and that’s why we can’t vote for her, and to leftists, she was a friend to Israel who was responsible for 100% of Biden’s Gaza policy, and that’s why we can’t vote for her.
And people bought it. Like you! Good job. And look at how we’re fucked now.
Lol im aware. They were fucked either way. Bombs or food. Pick one. Just happens to be bombs are more expensive. And biden let Israel murder aid workers and block food and aid literally until a month before November election when he wrote a strongly worded letter. Ooh ahhh so moral, 😍 so principled.
So yes no material difference the only difference now is the hostages are all dead or returned so no point in keeping up the farce of troops ‘fighting to retrieve them’ which you know got most of them killed. There is now no need to waste bombs and troop efforts. So they stopped that and just rely on starving them to death.
but anyone who had watched #45 knew that things were going to get a whole universe worse for Gaza
In what way exactly? So far it’s just a little more of what they’ve been doing since October 7th. Gaza was not a distinguishing factor between Republicans and Democrats in November unless you consider genocide with rainbows a distinction.
And yet, there was that strange bombardment with “I can’t vote for Harris because of Gaza” that seemed astroturfed.
You do realize that there were multiple large real-life movements about exactly that right? Like it or not that shit was real.
You wait until the constitutional order is re-established and actors that routinely violate it are punished, and when the Overton window moves back … it’s not really to the left, it’s more towards democracy itself, then you discuss the flaws of the Constitution.
But then your alleged temporary allies will turn back to enemies and you’ll be back to square one with neoliberals and conservatives playing their farce of a tug of war game.
Yeah, the constitution has a whole bunch of problems with it that are the direct cause of the issues the US has been seeing for decades (weighting a lot of the votes towards empty states, many of which were actually created explicitly in an effort to make sure the political balance remained the same).
At the very least talk about an amendment that fixes those issues, or you’ll just go back to a ratchet towards more inequality, neoliberalism and authoritarianism.
So… wait for never?
I think of this as an opportunity. The administration seems to be incredibly incompetent in addition to corrupt. The resulting economic calamity will probably taint everything they advanced with the stink of failure - from anti-trans policies to willy-nilly suspension of constitutional rights and declarations of phony emergencies.
It’s never good to have enemies, but it’s almost tolerable when they are incompetent.
Because the democrats work so hard to change things, right? Biden did so much the first time around.
Harder than you.
Got em
Seriously. What this country actually needs is a massive people movement to get the crooks and tyrants out of government. Trump didn’t invent any of that or even close to, but if him trying to have the government kill everybody who looks at him funny or gets in his way is what it takes to get that going, let’s fucking take advantage and accomplish some things, lord knows we need it.
I think what people cling to regarding the Constitution, is not that it protects democracy, but that it’s intended to protect the public from authoritarian rule. It was written explicitly in response to the dictatorial behavior of King George lll.
The whole “democracy” part was always intended to be flawed, in favor of the wealthy landowners that wrote it…but the protections provided by it, were meant to prevent any future leader from ever threatening their personal freedoms.
It’s really too bad they never hard-coded the steps necessary to actually prevent a dictator from taking power, though. That sure would have been useful right about now.
The problem with your interpretation is that the constitution was not intended to protect the public from authoritarian rule. It was designed to empower the landowning merchant class above that of feudal nobility and organized religion while protecting their position of power from the “tyranny of the masses” (the working class). I would say it is accomplishing that quite well. That merchant class is quite free.
I’m fairly sure it is in one of the earlier of the amendments, actually.
As far as I understand it, the framers’ viewpoint was not “here are the limits on government, everything aside from this, we allow it to do, here are the rules for addressing problems” but more along the lines of “here’s how a government can earn for itself the consent of the governed, and if it’s not earning that then it’s up to the governed to adjust its parameters, and if they can’t manage that, they deserve what they get.” If that makes sense. They took a much more old-world approach to the realities of power than modern first-world societies do.
Do you think the constitution is a deeply flawed document written by the oligarchs of their time, which included among the institutions it codified slavery, misogyny, and war as a normal part of the human condition? Excellent, you’re in good company and I (among many others) agree with you. That’s why amendments and judges exist, also, so that we’re not limited to its fairly flawed implementations and goals in governing what we’re doing today.
Do you like having human rights, including the freedom to criticize the government, the right to due process, and the right to defend yourself against a tyrannical government? Great! So do I. As it happens there’s a common phrasing that you can use as a quick code-word for saying that, which will engage the support of a massive range of people including among them conservatives, liberals, leftists, military people, police, lawyers, judges, and so on. And you know? It won’t even made them want slavery back, if you do choose to say it that way. You could, of course, decide that it’s more important to alienate 99% of those people immediately, and then provide fodder for extensive arguments with the remaining 1%. You could do that, that would be fun too.
Do you like having big performative “I’m more left than you so I’m superior I’m actually very smart because everything YOU think is good is actually bad” contests which assail whatever people are trying to do and distract from the most urgent issues of the day? Well… you’re in good company with that one, too. This has always been a part of the left from the beginning, and I guess not for nothing; it’s connected up with the freedom to speak your mind, not having to agree with any particular herd, and with having passion about issues and wanting to analyze everything and be on the right side of history. I get it. But I think the fight this person is picking is a pretty silly fight to pick right now.
100% of people you will talk to will understand what’s meant by “the constitution,” and literally nothing about it is anything other than urgent self-defense against a genuinely very urgent threat.
Lol, a piece of paper will not protect you from jackboots. The constitution is a gentlemans agreement that is abided by because it is convenient for everyone most of the time. If it suddenly becomes inconvenient for the bourgeois to abide by it they simply won’t and by the time this happens they will have found enough desperate fascist thugs to make sure you feel powerless to stop them. You’re right though, we shouldn’t be trying to rid the U.S. of the constitution. It isn’t a feasible goal and it will be ignored eventually on its own. OP was not suggesting we start a political movement that focuses on abolishing or rewriting the constitution, they were asking how to convince liberals that the constitution isn’t such a big deal and doesn’t protect them from anything.
Lol, a piece of paper will not protect you from jackboots.
Do you want to address anything about what I actually said? This is one of the core things I’ve been saying here.
You can search for “code-word” in my comment to find where I talk about it, if it’s too long to read through and comprehend and you want to skip to the part where I indicate strong agreement with this.
These people who spend their days trying to prove how “leftist” they are by destroying every tool we have are literally right-wingers.
If you believe words on a piece of paper are going to protect you. you’re incredibly delusional.
They weren’t geniuses …
Actually some of them were Enlightenment polymaths.
I mean they did great given the circumstances. Their first try was a total failure but the revised version worked. They were doing their best. We don’t need to cling forever to the stuff they got wrong, but for the time they did a really incredible number of things right, far better than some governments that tried big ambitious reforms in the 20th century that I could name. (Although, they had a huge advantage by starting small and scattered with limited technology and then working out the problems of government in a sort of unnoticed backwater of the world as they went, without a lot of the pressures of a modern state in the modern environment. And even with that they still had to struggle a lot, a lot.)
I dunno y’all, maybe just listen to the interviews?
