>Countries without a firm Constitution have absolutely
>no defence against anything the lawmaking body likes to
>do. In such countries, any law is ipso facto 'good',
>no matter how biased or hopeless on its face. In the
>US, grossly unfair laws generally get struck down by
>the Supreme Court as violating one of the
>Constitutional guarantees.
We're on the grounds of a secular religion here. If the U.S. Constitution is such a groovy thing, why do we jail more of our citizens than does any country aside from Russia and a few of its neighbor alumni of the USSR? Why do we have some of the most underdeveloped politics and the dumbest, most conformist media practically anywhere on earth? Why does money rule politics to the exclusion of almost every other influence? In the case of imprisonment, the Constitution does a piss-poor job in guarding against repressive legislation; in the case of underdeveloped politics, the Constitution has done a masterful job in limiting democracy, thanks to the Senate and all the other checks-and-balances. And we know what was supposed to be checked and balanced - the power of the masses to infringe on the most sacred right of all, the right of private property.
Doug