A constitution reflects only the type of people who wrote it, the time period in which it was written, and the people over time who will find ways to exploit it. Although we are raised to believe that a constitution is the greatest thing since sliced bread, there are many flaws. Section 2.1(d) of the Aug.
The 1992 Constitutional Accord states: Canadians and their governments are committed to the vitality and development of official language minority communities throughout Canada.” However, except for 2.1(b) concerning native languages, all other languages are deliberately left out. This is utterly and completely racist.
This leaves out millions of Canadians and turns them into second-class citizens.” It would be more appropriate to have “official” replaced with “white.” How can we preach equality if we’re not equal? If we left no room for racism in our constitution, we would have the word “official” replaced with “working” since it is neutral but still recognizes that French and English are the most dominant languages.
However, the Canadian constitution is not alone in its racism. When the American constitution was written to uphold equality for all and the freedom to pursue happiness, were the blacks of the country involved? No, of course not. The constitution reflected only the white people’s values at the time.
The people who wrote it brought me to my next point. Written constitutions are primarily flawed since they can’t evolve with the nation. They usually represent ignorant views that are no longer relevant to modern society. How good will our constitution be in two hundred years? How good will it be in five hundred years? A good example of this would be the American right to bear arms.
This was initially done to protect themselves from the British, which made perfect sense at the time. However, now it is totally absurd. People have to live in fear and protect themselves, ironically enough, with guns because there are so many out there. School shootings seem to happen once every month, and controlling guns is nearly impossible because it is protected by the constitution. This directly correlates with my last point. Writing a constitution gives practically total immunity to everyone.
Yahoo out there. The biggest example of this is the NRA, despite some good promotion by Charlton Heston. They have the right to bear today’s most deadly assault weapons because they know they can hide behind the all-powerful Constitution.
The Constitution in the U.S. is exploited so that individuals can exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms. However, attempts to implement stricter gun control measures are often met with opposition, citing the unconstitutionality of such measures. It is unlikely that this aspect of the American Constitution will change anytime soon.
This shows the kind of damage that can be done with the Constitution. My argument can be summed up as follows: A Constitution is a mirror that attempts to reflect the national soul.” This allows for inevitable errors but ensures that we are continually improving our Constitution.
