It’s been too long without an ammendment.
Congress votes on party lines and there hasn’t been a 2/3 supermajority since 1977.
Every once in a while, a great tragedy strikes and our government comes together across party lines. Either the polarization is getting stronger or the information cycles are getting faster, because that time is just getting shorter and shorter. 9/11 unified our government for a couple years. Then COVID brought unity for a few months. Then Trump tried to overthrow Congress and hang Mile Pence on January 6, and the government was unified against him for a few days.
You had Republicans like Mitch McConnell giving a speech calling for unity and preventing “drifting apart into two separate tribes with a separate set of facts and separate realities.” He later went on to say there was no question Trump was practically and morally responsible for the events of the day, but at that point the cooperation was already fading, as he voted not guilty in Trump’s 2nd impeachment. He’s since endorsed Trump for president.
I guess my point is, if you ever want to pass an amendment in today’s political environment, it’s gotta happen after something shocking happens - and even then you’ve got a few days to get it done at the most.
I know fully grown adults who think the constitution has never been altered, the ammendments were always there and “just what the founding fathers worked on after signing it and sending it to king George”, and that any talk about congress changing things after the fact is just 'liberal propaganda" and at least one person, when asked why they think that, responded with “well I’ve never seen an Ammendment happen in my lifetime so obviously it doesn’t happen.”
Several of these adults are related, so I can see why multiple people in the same family might hold that belief, but the fact that I know MORE THAN ONE is insane to me.
I went to school in a non-religious school that was very much a religious area. Sex Ed was basically the scene in Mean Girls “If you have Sex you WILL GET PREGNANT and DIE”
well I’ve never seen an Ammendment happen in my lifetime so obviously it doesn’t happen
The 27th Amendment was ratified in 1992
2006 was only 4 years ago, right? RIGHT?
Still though, the average age in the US is 38 so for most people, there was an amendment ratified during their lifetime.
Speaking for me personally, I would consider anything that happened in my parents generation to be a recent collective memory, at least until I get to the age my parents were when they had me. Sure I wasn’t alive during the moon landing or JFK assassination, but they’re still pretty recent events in the grand scheme of US history.
The 27th amendment was sent to the states by the first congress allong with the 10 that would become known as the bill of rights. This group also included a still unratified amendment that would increase the size of the house of representatives based on population (as of the 2020 census, today’s house would have about 6600 members).
The way the 27th amendment got ratified is a truly inspiring story of political activism. It was largely forgotten about until 1982, when Gregory Watson wrote a paper arguing that 18th century proposal could still be ratified. This paper received a C in Watson’s undergraduate political science class. This injustice led Watson to lead a 10 year campaign to ratify the amendment, which ultimately succeeded in 1992.
This scandal was so big, that Watson’s professor fled academia [0]. Eventually, Professor Waite was tracked down to her family’s farm, and in 2017 submitted a grade change revising the paper to an A. Later that year, the Texas legislature passed a resolution on the subject:
RESOLVED, That the 85th Legislature of the State of Texas hereby congratulate Gregory D. Watson on receiving a revised grade of A in his 1982 Government 310 class at The University of Texas at Austin
Thus finally closing the chapter on one of this nation’s most infamous grading disputes.
[0] Historians dispute the fact thar Proffesor Waite’s decision to leave Academia, which occured prior to the ratification of the 27th amendment, was in any way related to this.
It needs to be called out just how weird it is that US Senators like this don’t understand the very document they have sworn to uphold.
The bar has been lowered so much that I wouldn’t be surpised to learn that some of them couldn’t even read.
I don’t think Diane Feinstein could really even comprehend anything at the end.
We should be careful about language like “can’t read,” when discussing taking away rights though. There are blind people who literally “can’t read,” but can comprehend information in an equivalent format and who’d be much more competent than someone like Feinstein.
Out of curiosity, what word do you use to describe the act of run fingers over brail characters to process their meaning?
At this point I’m almost for requiring at least some sort of legal degree for these positions.
The only problem is that means more lawyers in positions of power.
As a former lawyer, I think that’s a terrible idea as many of my former colleagues are basically retarded (but still cunning enough to get by the average person).
We are trying our best to vote this bitch out here in TN.
But I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
-Some stupid idiot who never read the Constitution, probably