Justice Ginsburg Doesn't Recommend The US Constitution?

It is not race baiting to state historic fact regarding the choice of the founding generation to immortalize a formula for counting enslaved people in the document they intended to be used to govern the new nation, as well as including the earliest date the United States would end importation of African people, 1808, for the purpose of enslavement by the federal government in the very same document, allowing the country's growth to continue by using the forced labor of enslaved African people, allowing their numbers to continue to grow through inhumane importation, known as the Middle Passage, for an additional 32 years. That whole God given right to liberty thing went out the window on that one.

The women excluded from participation as full citizens, as mentioned by Justice Ginsburg, included women of European descent, from the same lineages as the founding men of the United States. 

The most obvious example of the racially biased intentions of the founding generation would be the Naturalization Act of 1790, which prohibited non-whites from becoming citizens of the United States.

The act was enacted 14 years after the founding of the country. 

These are all historic facts. Noting race, as was noted specifically in the Naturalization Act of 1790, being at the center of requirements for citizenship, stands on its own to inform all where the heads of the authors were when the act was adopted.    

As for the Constitution, it is argued by scholars that the genius of the U.S. Constitution is the ability to amend for its correction, as in the case of people of African descent, Native Americans and women.

The document was not a perfect example for governing since it ignored and treated as non-entities millions of the above named individuals.

The original document, when being examined from today, in 2012, which WAS Justice Ginsburg's point, the document was obviously flawed and should not be considered for use today, as it ORIGINALLY was written over 200 years ago, to be representative of a perfect form of governing.   

The argument is that the U.S. Constitution, at its inception and ratified in 1788, which was, by the way, 2 years before the Naturalization Act of 1790, was not a perfect document and should not be held up as such.

Given the greatest likelihood that I would have been an enslaved woman of African descent during the events you have named, it is unclear what my involvement in those events would or COULD have been.

The events you have named have not been diminished in their significance. The sacrifices made obviously still stand.

As has been my point in this discussion, the imperfections embodied IN the U.S. Constitution, noted specifically by Justice Ginsburg, who made note that using the U.S. Constitution as a guide, AS WRITTEN, for the formation of a society TODAY, in 2012, would leave some finer points for governing to be less than desirable, given its exclusion of women, Native Americans and the enslaved of African descent.

There isn't any valid argument to be offered that allow those glaring realities embodied in the Constitution to be dismissed as acceptable and it not be acknowledged that those errors should NOT be included in a document written TODAY, in 2012, to be used AS a guide TODAY in the formation of a free and fair society.

Indeed, to suggest that any modern society use the U.S. Constitution AS a guide as if it was perfection in THIS DAY in 2012, IS what is taking the document out of its time and context, that being that at the time of its creation over 200 years ago, the incongruous realities written of here and spoken of BY Justice Ginsburg, when it is suggested that the document should be used to form the basis of a new society. More than a century later, those incongruities have since been corrected and do NOT exist as issues for governing the U.S. today in 2012.

If it is suggested the Constitution, as it has evolved to date through amendments, be used for the foundation of a new society, with those initial imperfections having been corrected, that would be a less egregious suggestion.

Yes. Contradictory in many ways. The having ownership of slaves and then giving freed slaves the right to vote over the free white working class. Though the use of inherently contradictory or flawed is a stretch considering that at that time [and through 19 century] serfdom; serf from the Latin servus meaning slave, and indentured servitude was the global norm and not a matter of race or racism. Most certainly these were men of their time who had an eye on the future and who were want to question their own disparity in thinking on slavery and their owning of slaves. In the Virginia Assembly, in the 1780s Jefferson supported a bill to prohibit the state from importing slaves. In the 1784 Congress, Jefferson proposed federal legislation banning slavery in the New Territories of the Northwest, but it was not passed in whole. Jefferson refused to propose either a gradual emancipation scheme or a bill to allow individual masters to free their slaves. He refused to add gradual emancipation as an amendment when others asked him to; he said, "better that this should be kept back." In 1807 he signed a bill prohibiting the US from participating in the international slave trade. This is just a sampling of such a contradictory existence from one of the framers of the Constitution. However given our later history and especially our treatment of the Japanese Americans during WW2, or given that the Mexican American didn't fully receive the right to vote until 1975. I can't say we are better to judge those men and their times.

Well stated, JerryM.

I would add, it was the migration or flight of those elements into the Republican Party that has shaped the character of today's Republican Party.

The right wing that you speak of did not exist until sometime in the 1930's as political conservatives. These people as we concur today saw the out of control spending of progressive and Democrat party politicians whose approach to dealing with society and the Depression at the time was to continually invoke government spending while increasing taxes in order to remedy economic malaise. It was progressive Woodrow Wilson who after allowing the passage of the Revenue Act in 1913 which illegally ratified income tax while many Senators and Congressmen were away on Christmas holiday, and invoked the recreation of the Federal Reserve that the liberal utilization of the federal government to control our lives began in earnest. If you will review history it was the liberal Democrats of the South who continued to victimize blacks from attaining rights, not right wing Christians the right wing didn't exist.

If it was not for the (Right Wing) as you say, the US might have capitulated to Communism decades ago. Today as right wing Christians run amuck in America they are being mercilessly slaughtered in Africa and the Middle East while our US press corps refuse to run the stories. Our US mass leftist media also refuses to acknowledge the multi-million dollar food programs that missionaries bring to war ravaged and hunger stricken countries at the risk of being executed under the command of Muslim clerics. Pardon me if I point out that our right wing fanatical Christians are trying to keep the Cross at Camp Pendleton to give Marines a symbolic sign of hope and redemption before facing the ravages of battle, yet Atheists want everyone not to be able to pray, that there shouldn't be the 10 Commandments on court houses, that we can't pray before a ballgame or that our children can't say the pledge of allegiance to the flag in the classroom because God is mentioned. Yet, the kids are supposed to worship life size posters of President Obama in the classroom as though he is a messiah. What message does that send to our children, that their new God is government, that all our rights come from the government, that we must kneel to the all mighty government? Oh, yeah Dude that's so much better than praying to God in this crazy world that is full of anger and hatred. I think the statistics clearly point to a society of violent and degenerate behavior has emerged in the absence of morality, so welcome to the new world, Pal!

Aw the musings of impotence when confronted by superior intellect and reason. Good night oh vanquished foe, sleep tight.