on this side of the water, the european human rights convention has
just been enshrined in UK law. dire things were forecast, none of
which have come true. For the UK, for the first time, people have
rights, not by omission, but by the letter of the law. I think a
written document for such things is a good to have, ymmv.
agree about the environment . also, don't you think that how the US
constitution is interpreted will be important in the coming years in
cases where a re-run of the roe v wade decision might well come about?
roger
On 1/18/06, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The problem, of course, isn't how the constitution is interpreted,
> but that we're shakled in this country to a document that seemed the
> way to go 200+ years ago. And wasn't so smart even then--the decision
> to put off dealing with slavery may have made it possible for
> Virginia and Massachussets to be in the same country, but it resulted
> in catastrophic suffering, and not only for those who continued to be
> slaves; 600,000 died in the civil war, considerably more were maimed,
> and the south, where most of the battles were fought, was devastated.
> The sequellae of this disaster still dominate race and regional
> relations in the US.
>
> But that's a done deal. What we still live with is a system in which
> California, with 35 million people, and Wyoming, with 500,000, have
> two senators each. To get the senate votes of the intramontane west
> on board we've enshrined a regional economy entirely dependent on
> federal subsidies (half the income of ranchers, for instance) and
> distorted any attempts at environmental stewardship. At a time when
> the environment begins to appear the only crucial issue--how we get
> along with each other in other ways hardly matters if we no longer
> have a viable place from which to draw sustenance.
>
> Mark
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