Amy G. Bowersox
1 min readOct 15, 2020

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You talk about "originalism" as if we have the same Constitution we had in 1787. But we DON'T. It's been amended, now, 27 different times. Every one of those Amendments is as much a part of the Constitution as if it had been there from the beginning. Anything in the original document that has been superseded by an Amendment has been effectively "struck out."

It's possible to amend it AGAIN; Article V gives us the procedure for doing so. So, if people WANT things like health care, retirement, education, stable incomes, and good jobs in the Constitution...you can propose an Amendment that puts them there.

Of course, Amendments have a very high bar to clear: two-thirds votes in both houses of Congress (or in a Constitutional Convention, something that has never actually been tried yet), and then ratification by three-fourths of the State legislatures. But this ensures that only measures that have a truly broad base of support can be "etched in stone" in the Constitution. (Even then, we have made at least one mistake that required later correction, in the Eighteenth Amendment.) So your ideas have to play in Peoria as well as they do in New York, or Los Angeles, or Washington D.C.

You think your proposals have enough support? Take your shot. Just keep in mind that there have been more than 11,000 proposed amendments to the Constitution so far, and only 27 of them actually made it in. (Most of the proposed amendments died in committee, without even getting to a full vote of Congress.) Good luck!

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Amy G. Bowersox
Amy G. Bowersox

Written by Amy G. Bowersox

Lady in being. Software engineer in security. Author of Transition Without Tears: https://transitionwithouttears.com

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