With the list of hotbutton issues, the author effectively makes the point about how difficult it will be to put together a new Michigan Constitution. (To the list I’d make it easier for the Governor to remove a mayor from office. But I digress…)

The cost doesn’t bother me; I see $45 million as an investment. Going at making changes issue-by-issue might work. If you’ve followed the sausage-making going on in those packaged federal economic stimulus bills then you shouldn’t wish the same for Michigan. With the issue-by-issue approach, however, you risk voter fatigue. Without the issue-by-issue approach, you can at least re-examine the fundamental relationships between the three branches and the configuration of the intermediate agencies between our elected officials and the citizens.

That conversation should be revisited every 16 years. Even if the outcome results in an endorsement of what we’ve already got, or some kind of a hybrid thing in which we agree upon a new structure for making issue-by-issue changes going forward, a con-con will have at least made possible the synergy of interested citizens sitting in a room together hashing things out.

I am sympathetic to the Chamber of Commerce’s concerns. It’s great to be having this debate. There is a logical fallacy in this particular argument, however — the fallacy of the appeal to popularity. Appeals to popularity suggest that an idea must be true simply because it is widely held. This is a fallacy because popular opinion can be, and quite often is, mistaken. Hindsight makes this clear: there were times when the majority of the population believed that the Earth is the still centre of the universe, and that diseases are caused by evil spirits; neither of these ideas was true, despite its popularity.

We are living in interesting times. I hope everyone commenting on this article would simply read our Constitution before making a judgment. It is available at this link:

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/publications/Constitution.pdf

I can’t resist adding another wish-list item before I stop typing. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could write into our new constitution that parliamentary thing the British and Canadians do when their prime ministers have to stand in front of both upper and lower houses and take pot shots from the opposition? They do it every week like Socrates speaking at the Agora and you can see it on CSPAN. (Check your local listings) Its absolutely hysterical…and you get to hear the most beautiful English spoken….

Imagine how having this job task written into a new Michigan Constitution would cull the gubernatorial candidates. We would have to raise the pay of the governor because anyone who could speak as eloquently, morally, and extemporaneously as, say, a Tony Blair, would find greater reward running a multi-national corporation. Hmmm — shouldn’t that be the kind of Chief Executive we would want anyway?

Only kneejerk reactionary CONCON activity is likely the outcome particularly in this time when already our federal government pushes the threshold of violating the US constitution, which will continue to drive more troubles for Michigan and other states. If we do anything at all, we need to turn down the option of wholesale discussion on it until we have steady times with which we can truly reflect on perhaps cleaning up language only.

The constitution of either this state, or the country ought not be thrown about in any particular partisan fashion. It is what it is. If we think it is worthwhile to make grand changes because of our “current” situation, we might as well throw IT and the ENTIRE process out, and succumb to MOB rule.