[tptacek]

The Constitution you took an oath to defend includes a mechanism for altering it, which is why we no longer have chattel slavery, why women can vote, why we vote for senators, why we have a federal income tax, and why we have presidential term limits, all of which contravene consensus principles among the founders.

You could even litigate some of these changes --- maybe it's a bad thing that we directly elect senators! --- and your argument still fails, because to survive, it has to establish that "fuck the beliefs of these old dead white guys" is a uniquely disruptive idea, when in fact it's an idea we've had over and over again throughout our history.

[rayiner]

> The Constitution you took an oath to defend includes a mechanism for altering it, which is why we no longer have chattel slavery, why women can vote, why we vote for senators, why we have a federal income tax, and why we have presidential term limits, all of which contravene consensus principles among the founders.

Sure. If people want to amend the Constitution to get rid of the second amendment, have at it. I’m not talking about attempts to amend the Constitution or argue in favor of such amendments.

But you don’t have to amend the constitution to whittle the second amendment (or any other constitutional principle) down to nothing as a matter of practice. (Look how we’ve created a fourth branch of government, the largest of them all, without ever amending their constitution.) And if you can’t reference “here’s what the people who wrote this thought ‘the right to bear arms’ meant and why it’s important,” than you enable whittling it down to nothing.

> because to survive, it has to establish that "fuck the beliefs of these old dead white guys" is a uniquely disruptive idea, when in fact it's an idea we've had over and over again throughout our history.

It’s always been a terrible idea, and it scares me every time it mutates into a new and terrible form. Civilized countries don’t work this way. You routinely hear ad hominem attacks on federalism whenever it gets in the way of some attempt to impose nationwide rules. But we’re hardly the only federal republic. Somehow, Canada and Germany manage to take federalism seriously. They don’t give it lip service, they give it due weight. And they manage to govern while accommodating federalism concerns instead constantly re-litigating such a foundational concept.

[tptacek]

I think you're just reading the rhetoric differently than I do. I don't read "these dead white dudes were slavers, so we should ignore the constitution". I read "these dead white dudes were slavers, so we should fix the constitution."

Many (maybe most!) of the changes the left would prefer for the constitution are things I wouldn't support. But then, that strongly suggests few other people will support them either, so I'm not too wound up about them. Adrian Vermuele genuinely and non-ironically believes that the constitution should be reorganized around the Catholic church, and he's got tenure from Harvard Law! I don't worry too much about his batshit ideas either, because of all the theocracies we could have, the Catholic one is among the least fun, and nobody is going to support it.

It's good that we can bat the ideas back and forth, though, if only to spot the bad ones! Vermeule and Deneen? Bad! Free cheeseburgers for everyone this Friday! But less reverence for the moral principles of slavers? I could be convinced!