Yeps. One of my electives at uni was the history of the US constitution law for non-legal majors. I had to take 2 history classes for my degree and I thought it would be an interesting subject. Not only read it also had it read to me by my professor. He was a retired JAG officer and militant ACLU supporter.
I guess we need to know what people consider long. The full document is longer than the Declaration of Independence , which I know a lot better. I can’t remember having to read the Constitution in school, just the preamble and a couple of amendments. This doesn’t excuse my ignorance though. Thanks for providing the whole document.
Compared to most constitutions on the planet, it’s considered a short one.
I think compared to most governments on the planet, the US Federal government was supposed to be a tiny one. That’s why it’s not supposed to be allowed to do virtually anything it does today.
The workarounds to grow the federal government are kinda like you’re stuck on a desert island and all you have is coconuts, so you build your house out of coconuts, you build your car with coconuts, you build a wife with coconuts, you build your kids with coconuts, a whole society built out of coconuts. It’s like "This is impressive, but what the hell made you think this was the intent of the assignment?
I just looked it up and it seems that the German constitution has more than 350 pages. But the first 20 sections contain the most important and almost unchangeable foundaries.
19 pages isn’t really a lot, , but this guy doesn’t strike me as much of a reader.
Reading it and going over the contents is also a part of standard US high school curriculum. It’s a graduation requirement. At least, it was when I graduated high school in California in the 90’s.
Yeah I kind of doubt that was a real requirement then and not something your social studies teacher mandated. It’s definitely not the case now or anywhere outside of the state afaik
We did similar in primary school in Australia. A big portion of the seventh grade is learning about the Westminster style of government, state and federal roles, and the courts. We even did our own class parliament session each week to debate and try pass different levels of law. We were able to get Grade 7s a specific hang out area at the school cafe passed based on our lower house (classroom) sittings, then our senate (Prefects and the primary school principal) passing it.
If only people would respond with respectful “I doubt that, but ok”.
These days, such a response is as scarce as an honest politician.
In my experience, the two things that seem to surprise conservatives I’ve talked to are: the constitution is less than 20 pages long, it’s on my phone, and we could read it together in about 30 min (no takers so far), and that there are living redwood trees in California older than Jesus. I don’t know why the second one surprises them so much, but it’s one that seems to consistently elicit surprise.
Old trees are such a treasure. It’s a shame that despite their strength they can also be fragile. My house has chestnut floors, easy to find in 1927, but then a blight wipes out 90% of the population. And not to mention us humans but we don’t need to constantly talk about that, except to say it should be our goal to help these things grow for millenia.
There was a quote attributed to Lao Tzu I saw on tiktok the other day, and I was pretty damn sure it was nowhere in the Tao Te Ching, but I was curious if there was some weird translation out there I wasn’t aware of.
The conversation went EXACTLY like this. Like down to the word.
If you look into the original sources, it gets confusing pretty quickly. There’s a bunch of other sources (e.g. the zhuangzi) that assign quotes to Lao Tzu, but they’re probably made up.
However, Lao Tzu probably didn’t write the Tao Te Ching, so 🤷♂️.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laozi
Basically, by making shit up and saying Lao Tzu said it, tiktok is continuing a long Chinese tradition.
I’m confused, what was the quote talking about? Surely not the US Constitution…
“Simplicity in governance is essential, just like they have in the United States Constitution. That thing is only like 19 pages long. I read the whole thing.” -Lao Tzu
As a machine language model, it was a pretty easy read I will say.
One of my favorite things to do with chat gpt is having it rewrite things as Trump. I wasn’t interested in rereading the constitution a second ago, but it’s going to be tremendous, you wouldn’t believe how great it’s going to be
You know, folks, everyone says I’m the biggest Harry Potter fan, and I have to say, I probably am. I’ve read all the books, all seven of them, and let me tell you, I’ve read them many times. People come up to me and say, “Donald, how do you know so much about Harry?” Well, I just do. I know all about the wizarding world, the spells, everything. Some people might say they’re fans, but I’m the biggest fan, believe me.
In the magical world, folks, there’s this incredible, absolutely tremendous thing called the Philosopher’s Stone. It’s like pure gold, very, very valuable. You wouldn’t believe how valuable. People are saying it can make you live forever, and let me tell you, that’s a fantastic idea. We need more things like that, don’t we? It’s a winner, folks.
