Re:Supreme Court sides with high school coach who led prayer...
by dragonwriter on Friday July 01, 2022 @08:04PM
(#31954628)
If we are going to quote Jefferson, he cuts more to the point in a famous letter to Madison:
On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.
(Note that the 19 years is based on analysis of lifespans, etc., at the time, and is basically a model of generational turnover, so the same logic would get a slightly longer time today.)
So, at least as far Jefferson goes, the framers intent would appear to be (to borrow from Lin Manuel Miranda): “Uh, do whatever you want, we’re super dead.”
Of course, the cult that deifies an artificially constructed image of “the Founders” to justify their ideology wouldn't approve of that at all.
On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right.
(Note that the 19 years is based on analysis of lifespans, etc., at the time, and is basically a model of generational turnover, so the same logic would get a slightly longer time today.)
https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/tho...
So, at least as far Jefferson goes, the framers intent would appear to be (to borrow from Lin Manuel Miranda): “Uh, do whatever you want, we’re super dead.”
Of course, the cult that deifies an artificially constructed image of “the Founders” to justify their ideology wouldn't approve of that at all.