Reply #193: On review, I acknowledge that my statement "the U.S. and its Constitution [View All]

[jody]

is the oldest government of any significant country in the world" is not as clear as I intended.

I was attempting to show that our basic form of government consisting of three equal and separate branches with the legislative branch and its house being truly representative of the people and the senate being truly representative of the sovereign states; the executive branch responsible for government operations; and the judicial branch as legal arbiter remains unchanged since the Constitution was written.

The amendments to our Constitution do not change the basic form of our government, they clarify procedural details, e.g. who succeeds to the presidency, or legal interpretations, e.g. civil rights.

It is in that sense that I conclude our basic form of government has remained since our Constitution was ratified while England's basic form of government has changed, e.g the diminution of the power of England's monarch and the House of Lords in 1911.

As I stated earlier, the notion of individual rights embodied in our Constitution was the product of many brilliant mavericks from all over the world. It is amazing to me that after nearly 217 years, our basic form of government as created by our Constitution has survived.

My major concern now is that our current executive branch bolstered by a slim majority in the senate might appoint activist judges that through interpretation could change our basic laws much easier than amending our Constitution.

A worst case scenario is that senators from 25 states representing about 16% of our population can appoint judges while one quarter of our states representing about 4% of our population could prevent our Constitution from being amended to correct such judicial abuse.

In my opinion, that is the biggest flaw in our form of government as established in our Constitution.