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.
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.
To be fair, Germany has a loooong and mega history, and they’d have been thorough out of necessity. No idea what’s in there, but I assume there’s a lot that addresses all the parts and histories of Germany before it was unified. It would’ve been a nightmare drafting that thing up initially.
We couldn’t possibly agree on how the terminology in the original translates into plain language. We can’t agree on what it means in the first place, even the most obvious plainly worded things.
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.
To be fair, Germany has a loooong and mega history, and they’d have been thorough out of necessity. No idea what’s in there, but I assume there’s a lot that addresses all the parts and histories of Germany before it was unified. It would’ve been a nightmare drafting that thing up initially.
You can read a translation if you like:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/
My five year old’s Fancy Nancy books are more than 19 pages.
Less words per page though, and less confusing language.
True, we need to rewrite the US constitution as a kids picture book with appropriate language so that the 54% of American adults with a reading comprehension below 6th grade can keep up.
That’s a startling number. It goes far towards explaining some of the responses my comments get.
That… answers a lot of questions
We couldn’t possibly agree on how the terminology in the original translates into plain language. We can’t agree on what it means in the first place, even the most obvious plainly worded things.
For a book, remarkably short.
For a news article, quite long.
For a legal document, who reads those anyways?