Liberals also say and do stupid shit

So thus far, you have said that this idea is dumb, and that his argument is unconvincing.

And yet you continue to defend it… while simultaneously saying that you aren’t actually defending it.

This is a ridiculous position to take.

So, you aren’t an expert in it, and thus you can’t make any kind of evaluation on the subject. So what do you do when experts disagree? How do you know which one is right?

You have a brain Matt. You can execute some degree of basic critical thinking. And again, Ortz is not an expert in this. He is not a constitutional law professor.

Do you agree that, at least on its face, it seems very illogical for the framers of the Constitution to have explicitly forbade the amendment of the document to allow for this kind of restructuring of the Senate, if they intended for such a thing to be allowed via the far simpler mechanism of simply passing a law? Do we even both agree on that?

The idea isn’t bad because it’s “unconventional”. It’s bad because it makes no sense, for the reasons already stated.

Ideas don’t gain merit simply by virtue of being ideas.

Well, all I know is, if I can’t find my cat, he’s in the box.

And dead/alive.

I try to avoid binary resolutions.

The whole controversy (on this thread, not in the article itself) is a lot like the controversy over the Yglesias Ocasio-Cortez column. Some liberal writer points out a serious issue that merits consideration and also points out how “conservative” (in the true sense) conventional wisdom is on the issue with a slightly facetious proposed solution that is guaranteed to outrage those who are procedurally conservative regardless of their partisan politics. It gets linked here as an example of “Liberal Stupidity”. Someone posts here to explain the actual thinking behind the piece. Timex goes to the mat that it is actually stupid, regardless. Much talking past each other ensues.

To me, there is a meta-narrative here, where these writers are suggesting that the “liberal” left is holding itself to a standard of discourse and norms of behavior that movement conservatives abandoned decades ago, and maybe it needs to stop handicapping itself that way.

When Republicans wanted to make Schwarzenegger eligible to be President, people took it seriously. People take seriously proposals from the right to abandon the direct election of Senators. But equivalent ideas from the left are “Liberal Stupidity”?

What are you talking about? Repealing the 17th amendment? Or i guess, to make an analog to the proposal being defended here, the idea of just ignoring the 17th amendment entirely and passing laws that say senators aren’t directly elected anymore?

Who here is defending that as a serious proposal? Who anywhere is? Because that’s a dumb idea too.

If you google “Repeal the” 17th amendment comes up before 2nd amendment. Lots of hits there, like this piece from the quite-mainstream The Hill: Is it time to repeal the 17th amendment.

And that idea is stupid, right?

Although actually less stupid than what’s being described here, in that it at least suggests using constitutionally valid mechanisms to achieve the result.

But it’s still stupid.

So I’m not understanding the point here.

Right now it is a pretty fringe position, but if you listened to the NPR show More Perfect, you would see that it is something that certain right wing groups are trying to gather support for.

Just, to further explain why the idea that you don’t even need an amendment to change how the Senate is elected is a really dumb idea…

We can imagine what would happen if Congress simply passed a law about that, right?

Because the Constitution is very specific about how the Senate is elected. It’s not vague at all. There’s no real room for interpretation when it comes to how many senators every state gets.

So if you made a simple law that said it was fine in some other way… What would happen?

That law would be in conflict with the Constitution, since you wouldn’t have changed the Constitution via amendment. This is essentially why we have the amendment process, to deal with this kind of thing.

So in a situation where a law is in conflict with the Constitution… What happens? The law is ruled invalid.

Again… The idea is dumb, not because it’s"outside the box". It’s dumb because it doesn’t make any sense. It’s not a matter of what your political persuasion is. The only context in which this is is valid, is if you believe that the Constitution itself doesn’t matter at all. That it doesn’t matter if a law is in conflict with the Constitution.

First of all, it doesn’t matter what the framers intended. This article proposes following the letter of the law, not the spirit.

Secondly, the argument (IIUC) is that we have already amended the Constitution sufficiently to support a law that changes the composition of the Senate.

If you look at the Fourteenth Amendment, nothing in the text specifically says that it is referring to the 3/5 formula in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3. But it clearly contradicts that clause, so that clause is no longer operational.

Likewise, the author argues that the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth amendments effectively contradict the two Senators per state clause in Article V. Hence, it should no longer be operational.

I haven’t defended any jot or tiddle of it. I’ve merely advocating against dismissing ideas prima facie because they sound ridiculous. The Senate actually is a real problem with American democracy. It is among the most undemocratic legislative bodies in any democracy worldwide. Equal representation actually is being denied to people.

No expert that I know of has weighed in on this issue. An analogy: I firmly reject any form of creationism. That said, I’m not a biologist and thus could almost certainly be crushed in a debate with a creationist who knows their stuff. I have to rely on experts to evaluate the arcana of their discipline and make them comprehensible. No one (except Orts himself who, although not a Constitutional scholar, is a legal scholar and this is more familiar with the interpretation of the law than I am) has done that for this argument. I am more than willing to read a refutation from someone who knows what they’re talking about. In fact, I have a strong suspicion that most people who know what they’re talking about would reject it, with good evidence and powerful reasoning. But until someone does, I can–and have–evaluate the political feasibility, because it relies on buy-in from non-experts like me which–based on my own skepticism of the idea–would likely be hard to get.

You think I’m arguing with you about the merits of his idea, but I never have. I’ve merely said that flippant rejection with “obviously wrong” just paints you as dismissive, patronizing, hidebound and hubristic.

And I think it “makes no sense” that Washington DC can’t enact a handgun ban. I think that a century of precedence establishing the 2nd Amendment as a collective right is pretty conclusive. Apparently what “makes sense” isn’t what is, particularly with regard to the law.

What good would it do you? You aren’t an expert, right? Clearly you can’t parse whether the arguments make sense, without that expertise.

How would you evaluate those counterarguments? Length?

No one’s refuted the timecube guy either. Doesn’t mean his insane ramblings make sense.

You don’t need to be a legal scholar to see the obvious faults.

The idea that we can change something that explicitly can’t be changed even by Amendment with legislation is so stupid that calling it something that “merits consideration” is a thing I can’t even parse.

Except when you say likewise it would be more accurate to say “in a completely different manner”.

Everyone knew the 14th amendment repealed the 3/5 compromise at the time. It was utterly unambiguous. That’s a very long way away from discovering an interpretation that allows you to take several amendments together and make an argument for a potential unforeseen circumstance.

Yet in our lifetime the second amendment has come to viewed as a personal right, the Constitution has come to include a right to privacy, that inferred right to privacy has come to mean you can’t outlaw abortions, and we aren’t far away from coming to believe that you an outlaw abortions whether or not the right to privacy is there.

And many people have come to view health insurance and other social welfare programs as constitutional rights.

Not so much as constitutional rights as basic human dignity.

There are people wo say they are “rights”. I have always assumed that term meant constitutional. If not I wonder what they are talking about. Let’s face it, the constitution isn’t about “basic human dignity”, it never has been.

Who needs human dignity when you have a perfect, immutable document set down by your betters 250 years ago?