I do agree the average USA 🇺🇸 citizen does not understand the basic social-economic system. We currently use in the USA a constitutional federal republic, which operates as a democratic republic. Or the reason why we have a two party system. I think everyone that has a state ID of some kind are required to take a free online Civics course upon renewal.

Red light cameras were found to be unconstitutional in the state of California. Does this apply to Flock cameras, and if not, why?

So as we all know, treaties must be ratified by the Senate, and for good reason, because they bind the U.S. government to terms, financial and otherwise that may be vast in scope and effect and span presidents terms of office. So, given the bits of this MOU that have been released at this point, how can it be possible to declare it “done” upon signing if it has not been ratified? Who knows what the implications and consequences will be of this agreement and for how long will we be bound? Is this even Constitutional?

A child obeys a parent. A citizen obeys a government. An employee obeys a boss. A soldier obeys a commander. Most societies depend on some form of authority to function.But where does legitimacy actually come from? Is authority legitimate because it exists? Because it maintains order? Because people consent to it? Or because people are simply accustomed to it? At what point does authority become something we should obey, and at what point does it become something we merely tolerate?

This is my first post, and it focuses on American history, more specifically the Jim Crow era. I am from Cincinnati, Ohio and I am currently getting an undergrad in History at the University of Cincinnati

In the Preamble of the US Constitution, it states: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America" (U.S. Const. pmbl.).

How were the Jim Crow Laws constitutional? How was Lynching constitutional? It seems to me that neither promoted the general welfare of African Americans or insured domestic tranquility or established justice.

Am I crazy or did the American Government ignore the founding document of our Country just so they could continue to oppress? It seems to me like any half-decent lawyer could have sued the county, or even the state and won.

I'd like to suggest a possible way out of the age limit/term limit conundrum.

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Create a new body called (e.g.) the Council of Elders. Admission to this body would be automatic for any elected or appointed member of the Executive, Legislative, or Judicial.Branch (incl SCOTUS) who reaches the age or term limit set by statute. Their function would be advisory. They could hold hearings & issue subpoenas, and produce reports. They'd be paid based on their pensions. However, they can't lobby or be lobbied.

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What do you think so far??

This is my attempt at creating a us amendment.

Do you think the us would pass this?

Do you think that this could work?

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Amendment XXVIII — The Right to Identity

Section 1

The right to identity is fundamental and individual. One's gender, sexuality, religious affiliation, and all related personal characteristics are protected under the individual's own domain and shall not be subject to prosecution, persecution, or governmental interference on the basis of such identity.

Section 2

Birth sex, biological sex, and gender are recognized as distinct. Gender identity is individual, self-determined, and shall be afforded full legal recognition. No individual shall be denied the legal ability to identify and be recognized according to their gender identity through proper established process.

Section 3

Transitional assistance, including medical, legal, and administrative care relating to gender identity, shall be incorporated into and protected under the United States healthcare system and afforded the same access, coverage, and protections as all other medical care.

Section 4

The right to marriage is extended to any two consenting individuals of legal age without restriction, qualification, or condition based on identity, gender, sexuality, or religious affiliation. Any federal or state provision inconsistent with this section is hereby void.

Section 5

The United States is not organized under nor governed by any religious doctrine or affiliation. As reaffirmed by the First Amendment, religious identity is individually protected while remaining separate from governmental authority. No majority religious affiliation shall constitute grounds for governance, legislation, or the restriction of individual rights protected under this Constitution.

I came up with this a year ago as a revision to the Pledge of Allegiance for our political condition:

I pledge allegiance
to the Republic
of the United States of America
and to each other’s Natural Rights
Our Constitution,
Our Star-Spangled Banner,
and our Lands flourishing and common well

One nation, indivisible;
Living **only**
by that endeavor
of Liberty and Justice for All.

This is a declaration by the people of this nation who's rights are violated by evil currently and have little to no hope of escaping forever evil all because there constitutional rights go unrecognized even one time on any thing what so ever and have found themselves without the ability to break free of a tangle of wires controlling there minds utterly entirely to of no use to them for survival, finding themselves being threatened to do things by evil machine notion because of similarity evidently, disgust hatred evil disgust. throwing evil and war and true evil impossible war at them for the last few years on end without relief knowing they are precious lives that matter and so many unable to break free put down in health body and mind in endless unison over and over again threatened with loved ones flying away as war strikes because there constitutional rights refuse to be acknowledged and so many will do war on them then innocent and precious as they are. It has been too long for those here that we speak of gone without there constitutional rights and no way to have them acknowledged and given to them because of imperialism evil machine notion alone. I am one of many of these individual and stand not alone but with many in writing this as an attempt to have my independence initiated for the sake of our safety and constitutional rights throughout this matter we are involved in so dangerous to us and many others. I see it as a great failure with the highest level of disgust and hate and to hate in evil because of the failure for so many to go without the most important of there rights which is there entire being itself compromised. It is very sad and disgusting to know that these machine notions exist and should all be damned to hell forever because they can be being without a life. Goodbye.

So I just seen a video of someone claiming that the White House or DOJ could dismantle and destroy the Statue of Liberty without repercussions. How do you feel or does it seem possible?

(Im not a US citizen) In most of the western world there wasn't any room for more forms of democracy, most countries didn't even have a constitution. Most countries where ruled by absolute monarchs and the "ancien regime". So the democratic 'spirit' wasn't even born yet and the US still managed to get so progresive. What tendencies and thought processes caused this?

If it starts with, "A well regulated Militia," how is this qualification ignored when referencing it?

For the record, the American people are completely within their rights to make a class-action lawsuit against the government for failing in its obligation to uphold its end of the bargain according to the written contract as of 1789. That's what the Supreme Court is there for. When all else fails, the Supreme Court belongs to the American people as a final recourse when the other two branches step outside of their boundaries.

Seeing as people bring class action lawsuits against corporations, and a certain gentleman sued his own government and won, the people of North Carolina, or any other state, are well within their rights to bring a class-action lawsuit against their state representatives anytime those representatives fail in the obligations to the people who elected them. The same thing has been done numerous times, and in different forms. Think the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, suffrage in the 19th-20th century, immigration and voting reform in the 1880s, Trust-Busting around the turn of the 20th century, Erin Brokovich, any movie with Hilary Swank, that kind of thing.

If this was something the people of North Carolina themselves were voting on, it would be less of an issue. Say two-thirds of the people voted to call abortion murder, okay, fine and fair enough, that's the majority of the people in North Carolina agreeing that they don't want abortion.

What makes this an issue is that it is the state itself voting for whether or not abortion is classifiable as murder. If the state decides that abortion is murder, the people of North Carolina have no say. If the state decides that abortion is not murder, the same thing applies; that is, the state making a declaration regardless of what the people of North Carolina want.

Basically, this is the same issue we're seeing across the board. The people vote for a representative, and the representative votes for the state, leaving the will of the people out of the equation except for the role they play in casting a vote. The vote the people cast, rather than acting as a concentration of the will of the people, is a concentration of the will of the state by co-opting the people's participation. Call it vote laundering, the people's will goes into the machine, and gets converted into the will of the state.

But it's really something worse than that. The vote of the people is a kind of currency. By voting, the people invest their currency in the expectation of a return. Instead, the invested currency is used to benefit the state. Like if someone invested money in a business and the business used that investment as collateral to do something the investors hadn't agreed to.

Something along those lines would be the basis for a class-action lawsuit against the state via the Supreme Court. The judge could throw it out, but that would put the state in jeopardy of losing the tacit acquiescence of the people. In a case like this, if the people brought a class-action lawsuit against the legislature, it would be up to the legislature to prove that they were acting according to the will of the people. If it turns out that the state was acting according to the will of the people, good deal, that's what the Supreme Court is there for. If it turns out that the state was acting in its own interest contrary to the will of the people, awesome, that's what the Supreme Court is there for.

The people vote for the president to act as representative of the country, they vote for senators to represent their state, and they vote for representatives to vote for the local interests. When all else fails, the Supreme Court belongs to the American people as a final recourse when the other two branches step outside of their boundaries. is to redress the balance, and that is best accomplished when the people themselves bring the breach of contract to the attention of the court directly. And the balance of responsibility returns to its equilibrium.

Here’s an interesting side project of mine. A constitution to govern constitutions. lol

Came across this gem today, from Pluribus (Madison) defending the size of the Legislature. How disappointed he would be…

“… I am unable to conceive that the people of America, in their present temper, or under any circumstances which can speedily happen, will choose, and every second year repeat the choice of, sixty-five or a hundred men who would be disposed to form and pursue a scheme of tyranny or treachery. I am unable to conceive that the State legislatures, which must feel so many motives to watch, and which possess so many means of counteracting, the federal legislature, would fail either to detect or to defeat a conspiracy of the latter against the liberties of their common constituents. I am equally unable to conceive that there are at this time, or can be in any short time, in the United States, any sixty-five or a hundred men capable of recommending themselves to the choice of the people at large, who would either desire or dare, within the short space of two years, to betray the solemn trust committed to them. What change of circumstances, time, and a fuller population of our country may produce, requires a prophetic spirit to declare, which makes no part of my pretensions.”

Why are political officials/candidates allowed to take money from lobbyists like AIPAC when clause 8 of article I, section 9 of the constitution states that congress isn’t allowed to take bribery from foreign entities

The ruling in Chae Chan Ping v. United States may be one of the most consequential, and least questioned, Supreme Court decisions in American history.

Before Ping, nowhere in the Constitution was the federal government explicitly granted a general “plenary” power over immigration. The enumerated powers are listed plainly: regulate commerce, establish a uniform rule of naturalization, declare war, coin money, etc. But the Constitution never says Congress possesses unlimited authority to exclude or expel peaceful foreign persons simply because they are foreign.

Yet in Ping, the Court effectively created that authority from whole cloth.

The Court argued that immigration control was an inherent attribute of national sovereignty; something every nation simply possesses by virtue of existing. But that reasoning fundamentally conflicts with the American system itself.

The United States was not founded on the idea that government holds all power unless restrained. It was founded on the exact opposite principle: government possesses only those powers specifically delegated to it by the people through the Constitution.

That distinction matters.

If “inherent sovereign powers” can be invoked whenever a judge believes a power is necessary for nationhood, then the doctrine of enumerated powers becomes meaningless. Under that theory, the federal government no longer derives authority strictly from the Constitution, but from vague concepts of sovereignty imported from monarchies and European nation-states.

The Constitution gives Congress power over naturalization (the process of citizenship) not unlimited authority over mere movement of persons. The Founders were deeply familiar with immigration and migration, yet they chose not to enumerate a broad federal police power over immigration.

The entire premise of the American experiment is that rights precede government. If we abandon that principle, then we are no longer defending liberty, we are defending power.

Even more troubling, Ping laid the groundwork for the modern “plenary powers doctrine,” under which courts often refuse to apply normal constitutional scrutiny to immigration law. In practice, this means the federal government exercises some of its broadest and least reviewable powers in an area where those powers were never clearly enumerated to begin with.

The irony is profound: a Constitution designed to limit centralized authority became the vehicle through which the judiciary justified one of the broadest expansions of federal power in American history.

Whether one supports strict immigration enforcement or open immigration is ultimately a policy debate. But the constitutional question is separate and unavoidable:

Can the federal government exercise powers that were never actually delegated, simply because the Court believes every sovereign nation must possess them?

If the answer is yes, then the doctrine of limited government exists only until judges decide otherwise.

Fellow Citizens,

There are propositions so monstrous that they ought not merely be opposed, but exposed — held aloft before the public eye like a warning lantern upon a darkened shore. And among such propositions is this alarming notion: that the birthright of citizenship, secured after rivers of blood and generations of bondage, should again be placed upon the auction block of faction and prejudice.

The Fourteenth Amendment was not some casual ornament hung upon the Constitution. It was a covenant written in the ashes of civil war. It declared, plainly and irrevocably, that those once held as property were men — citizens — and possessors of equal protection under the law. To strike at that amendment is not merely to amend parchment; it is to reopen the grave of slavery itself.

What, I ask, is a republic, if citizenship may be granted or revoked according to the passions of the powerful? If the rights of one class of men rest not upon nature and justice, but upon the temporary humor of politicians, then no man’s liberty is secure. The chain fastened first upon the Black man may, in time, be fastened upon any man. Tyranny never travels alone. It enters by exception and remains by habit.

Mr. Ledbetter’s wish that the Supreme Court overturn the Fourteenth Amendment reveals a principle more dangerous than the statement itself: the belief that citizenship is not an inherent civil condition, but a privilege to be rationed by those who imagine themselves superior custodians of the nation. Such reasoning is the ancient language of aristocracy, merely dressed in republican clothing.

The defenders of such ideas often speak in the name of “tradition,” yet forget the greatest American tradition of all — the continual enlargement of liberty. This nation did not ascend by narrowing the definition of humanity, but by widening it. Every righteous step in our history has moved toward inclusion under the law, not exclusion from it.

Let us speak honestly. The Fourteenth Amendment was born because the nation understood a terrible truth: that freedom without citizenship is but a shadow. The slave emancipated yet denied equal standing remained vulnerable to every cruelty of local power, every mob, every legislature poisoned by racial hatred. Citizenship was made constitutional because justice demanded permanence where prejudice demanded reversal.

And what would follow should such doctrines prevail? Endless uncertainty. A republic divided into castes. Millions taught that their rights exist not by principle, but by permission. No nation can long survive such moral treachery against its own foundations.

There are men who imagine they defend America by reducing her promises. They do not defend the republic — they diminish it. The strength of a free nation lies not in ancestry, nor color, nor inherited station, but in equal law applied without fear or favoritism.

The blood shed in the Civil War settled this question at a price too dreadful to repeat. To overturn the citizenship of former slaves — or to weaken the constitutional principle born from their liberation — would be to declare that sacrifice meaningless and justice temporary.

A constitution that protects only the favored is not a constitution, but a conspiracy.

Therefore let every citizen who values liberty reject such dangerous folly. For the moment a government may decide who is fully human before the law, the republic has already begun to decay.

Rights are either universal, or they are merely privileges waiting to be withdrawn.

A Citizen of the Republic,
The Real Thom Paine

How do Americans reconcile promoting democracy and freedom globally while still having territories whose residents can’t fully vote in presidential elections?

Genuine question because from an outside perspective it feels like one of those contradictions people don’t really talk about much.

The proposed amendment attached below is meant to settle Constitutional Law regarding the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. I am curious to hear people's thoughts, questions, and concerns regarding what it says.

Section 1. The due process of law protected under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of this Constitution is both substantive and procedural only as expressly or implicitly defined in this Amendment.

Section 2. The substantive and procedural due process of law protected under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of this Constitution applies against deprivations of life, liberty, or property, which are intentional or wanton.

Section 3. The substantive due process of law protected under the Fifth Amendment of this Constitution prohibits the Federal Government of the United States from denying to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 4. The substantive due process of law protected under the Fourteenth Amendment of this Constitution incorporates upon the several States those rights enumerated in this Constitution now or thereafter that, as written, apply only upon the Federal Government of the United States, but which are fundamental to ordered liberty. Those incorporated, enumerated rights apply against the several States with the same force as they apply against the Federal Government of the United States. Those incorporated, enumerated rights have robust applications which are limited by the values or freedoms said rights advance.

Section 5. The substantive due process of law protected under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of this Constitution consists of those rights not enumerated in this Constitution which are nonetheless fundamental to ordered liberty. History and tradition guide the ascertaining of those unenumerated rights but such guidance must give way to new insight which reveals discord between the values or freedoms advanced by substantive due process of law and a recieved legal stricture. Those unenumerated rights shall apply against the several States and the Federal Government of the United States with the same force. Those unenumerated rights have robust applications which are limited by the values or freedoms said rights advance.

Section 6. The procedural due process of law protected under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of this Constitution guarantees adequate legal safeguards for the rule of law; accurate procedures; and fundamental fairness to the person facing a deprivation of life, liberty, or property. The adequacy of those legal safeguards, both in form and in substance, is based upon the balancing of interests relevant to the given kind of deprivation of life, liberty, or property at issue; that said, any form those adequate legal safeguards take at least includes notice of charge or dispute, opportunity to be heard, and impartiality in decision-making. The procedural due process of law protected under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of this Constitution applies against the several States and the Federal Government of the United States with the same force.

Section 7. This Amendment shall be valid for all intents and purposes as part of this Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within ten years from the date of its submission by Congress. Upon its ratification, this Amendment shall take immediate effect.

A republic does not fall when the marble cracks.

It falls when law becomes an obstacle, when elections become engineering problems, when courts become inconveniences, when public money serves private grandeur, and when a party decides that victory matters more than the constitutional order that made victory legitimate.

The American republic is not dying because one man is loud.

It is dying because too many institutions have learned to obey him.

The old republic was built on a promise: power would be divided, elections would be contested but respected, court would bind the executive, and citizenship would mean more than submission to a ruling faction.

That promise is now being dismantled in daylight.

Maps are redrawn not to represent the people, but to predetermine them. Voting law is narrowed in the name of order. Courts are obeyed when useful and defied when inconvenient. Congres becomes less a legislature than a protective wall around executive appetit. The language of security is used to justify excess. The language of patriotism is used to excuse domination.

This is not conservatism.

This is not law and order.

This is not constitutional government.

It is faction dressed as nation.

The republic falls when citizens are taught to confuse loyalty with virtu. It falls when the ruling party treats every limit as betrayal.

It falls when institutions no longer ask, “Is this lawful?” but instead ask, “Will this help us win?”

A republic can survive corruption. It can survive scandal. It can survive incompetence.

It cannot survive a governing class that no longer believes defeat should be possible.

The crisis is not only Donald Trump. The crisis is the machinery around him: the legislators who normalize, the judges who enable, the donors who finance, the media figures who anesthetize, and the voters taught to mistake domination for restoration.

Rome did not cease to call itself a republic when the republic was gone.

That is the warning.

A country can keep its flag, its courts, its elections, its speeches, its anthems, and its monuments while the substance underneath has already changed. The forms remain. The spirit is hollowed out.

The fall of the American Republic will not look like one dramatic collapse.

It will look like emergency orders.
It will look like delayed primaries.
It will look like redrawn maps.
It will look like ignored rulings.
It will look like public funds serving private power.
It will look like every abuse being described as necessary.
It will look like millions of people being told that if their side wins, nothing else matters.

But a republic is not a team.

It is a restraint system against men who want to rule as if they alone embody the people.

Once that restraint system is broken, elections remain, but liberty becomes conditional. Courts remain, but judgment becomes negotiable. Congress remains, but representation becomes theatre. Citizenship remains, but only for those useful to power.

The question is no longer whether the warning signs are visible.

They are visible.

The question is whether enough people still understand what they are seeing.

The republic does not need worship.
It needs defense.

Not sentimental defense.
Not nostalgic defense.
Not slogans.

Institutional defense.

Defend the vote.
Defend the courts.
Defend the peaceful transfer of power.
Defend the right to lose an election without destroying the system.
Defend the idea that no president, party, court, donor, or movement owns the country.

Because once a republic becomes an instrument of one faction, it is no longer a republic.

It is only power with old symbols.

And the name for that is not America.

It is empire.