On 22/12/2012 9:23 AM, Warp wrote:
> I have always wondered why Americans take the constitution and other
> founding documents as Holy Scripture. They are the unchanging truth.
> If the Founding Fathers intended for thing X, then that's the absolute
> truth and it's set in stone forever, and cannot be changed, ever.

You are not the only one to think that. It seems such a backward idea 
for a progressive country.

> It's just a question of understanding what they meant.
>

And to do that they use Dr. Johnson's dictionary as the American 
Constitution was written using it. I read somewhere (I can't find the 
article) that about 200, of the dictionaries, a year are sent to America 
to help interpret what was actually meant when their constitution was 
written. (Don't take me up on that. Even I can see some questions that 
should be asked. But it makes a nice story. I seem to remember that they 
were sent as a gift. Maybe a plot by HM government's dirty tricks 
department, to keep the rebels in the 18th Century. :-) .

> Even the idea that the Founding Fathers might have been wrong, that they
> were just flawed humans who lived in the 18th century, that they were not
> perfect, is tantamous to blasphemy.
>

I get that feeling too.

> I don't know of any other country where the Constitution is considered
> such a Holy Scripture that even the idea of correcting it, or even just
> clarifying it, seems blasphemous.

True. But it gives people a lot of amusement watching the hoops some 
jump through, to justify their opinions. If it weren't to serious it 
would be funny.
"To comma, or not to comma, that is the question:"
"The answer, my friend, lies dying in the wind."

To mangle two well known lines.
-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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