POSTED BY ROGER VALDEZ | Sightline Daily – SPECIAL SERIES: GAME CHANGERS #07 | April 05, 2010
Solving big problems might mean giving up some cherished myths.
(Image of US Constitution from the National Archives of the United States)
Now that the health care proposal has been approved by Congress and signed into law, some people are feeling pretty happy I suppose. Much of the angst and anger about the procedures impeding reform—reconciliation, procedural delays, etc—has receded. But the basic problems that stirred everyone up in the first place haven’t disappeared. As Alan has suggested in the Game Changers Series, the problems might be structural rather than political. The fundamental flaw in our system is not the absence of a big political majority. Democrats have that right now. Instead, the problem is the underlying document—our written constitution—that frames the debate and our deep, almost pathological, attachment to the halo of myths surrounding it. Changing the structure of our system—our constitution—is difficult and only made more so because of our flawed understanding of our own history, especially the origins of our founding document.
Read on: http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2010/04/05/a-weak-consitution