Posted by WallyP on March 02, 2008 at 06:57:19:
The Legal Question
Our Constitution, the law of our land, makes it possible to reconstruct our social institutions. Article V, the Amendment Clause, enables us to change the system through legislation, the legal and peaceful ballot way. The legal and moral basis for using a new system, for a fundamental change, is found in our early American traditions.
Thomas Jefferson, author of our Declaration of Independence, told us that his writings were for the people of that time, and that conditions would change as to the ways future generations would order and govern themselves. He declared that WE mustn’t look upon what his generation did as being written in stone, never to be changed, which is why the Amendment Clause, Article V, was included in the Constitution.
On the folly of keeping the Constitution exactly as was originally written, Jefferson wrote:
“We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him as a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their …ancestors.”
George Washington added:
The basis of our political system is the right of the people to alter the constitutions of government.”
Abraham Lincoln concurred:
Any people living anywhere being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most sacred right -- a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”
Lincoln went a step further:
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their CONSTITUTIONAL right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”
Perhaps James Madison, The Father of the Constitution, came closest to understanding how our present form of government, as well as the economy, established over 200 years ago, would not be desirable for future generations when he declared that the time would come when:
"Wealth will be concentrated in the hands of the few,” and that it would be necessary to “…readjust the laws of the nation to changed conditions.”
That time we believe is now. We need new laws… to democratize our necessary social institutions.., government and the economy. .We propose a social and economic democracy.
The general format of such an innovative concept can be further studied at :