Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rcthompson 3245 days ago
It's a necessary but not a sufficient condition. That doesn't make it useless.
2 comments

I think the US proves that the "constitution" as any mechanism for safety is absurd. It's ignored or abused when it's convenient.
The problem is that the protections of civil liberties work for for the times and contexts under which they were formulated, but they are not adapted to evolving technology and culture as frequently as efforts to circumvent them.

It's reverse hill climbing via million slippery slopes.

> The problem is that the protections of civil liberties work for for the times and contexts under which they were formulated...

The people who wrote the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights survived a time when the most powerful army in the world was marching through their backyards. I have no doubt they had that in mind when they were writing freedoms into law.

How is that relevant? The salient point in the comment you quote is "they are not adapted to evolving technology and culture." It doesn't matter how clever the founding fathers were, or how much foresight they had. They could not have anticipated the realities of today.
I wish I could give you more upvotes.