* The Constitution is described using holy words. Followers worship it.
* It is the document to rally around -- in the same manner the Bible was back in 1992.
* It is being used divisively -- you either love the Constitution as much as I do or you aren't American. It's a moral issue, not a legal or logical issue.
* It is being used as a refuge against the turmoil of the modern age, a way to impose a simpler past (in which they were in control).
* Followers can recite large portions of it.
* Followers claim their political platform is completely derived from the Constitution. They are only following the Framer's precise instructions. Oppose us and you oppose James Madison.
* Failure to follow the Constitution has led to our decline. We must return to the era before progressives took hold -- perhaps somewhere before the early 1930s when the Supremes said the Income Tax was constitutional. Everything since then -- Social Security, Civil Rights Act, unemployment benefits -- should be abolished.
* Even though they worship it they find that it isn't conservative enough. Michelle Bachmann has proposed 40 amendments (including that ban on gay marriage).
* Their comments and actions frequently show they misunderstand, misrepresent, or outright contradict the Constitution. There is no effort to align political positions to the actual text of the Constitution.
* Followers are seeking comfort in an authoritarian scripture and an imagined past the document is supposed to represent. They see only confirmation of existing beliefs. They ignore details and ambiguities. Those who disagree are enemies and evildoers.
It is great to have a discussion, even a debate, about the role of the Constitution, about what it means, and about who we are as Americans. To truly honor the Founder's spirit, the debate has to actually happen.
The final word goes to Thomas Jefferson, written to a friend in 1816. He mocked…
men [who] look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched … who ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. … Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs. Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before.
No comments:
Post a Comment