Wednesday, February 1, 2012

The U.S. Constitution: Not Scripture

I always enjoy watching the far right wing's struggle to understand the simple (yet sublime) distinction between holy writ and our Constitution: the Constitution was designed to be changed.

It may very well be that the bible's authors were humble men who freely admitted to themselves that they didn't have all the answers. It may also be that they admitted this to their peers. It may even be the case that other writings of theirs, since lost to the ravages of time and humidity, reflected a genuine desire to reach a consensus in their communities, with an eye to avoiding dogmatism in favor of compromise. While there is as yet no evidence to support any of these possibilities, I for one certainly nurture a healthy skepticism on these matters.

Fast forward to the present day, read our Founders' papers with these maybes in mind, and I think you'll find all of them in evidence. We have reams of letters and exchanges reflecting a healthy sense of caution; a desire to establish a system of government founded on compromise and bipartisanship; and a humility that reflected an understanding of their fallibility. A quick review just of the evolution of the First Amendment displays all these qualities.

For these reasons, and others, they developed and refined a set of founding documents that reflect one of the most astounding legacies of the Age of Enlightenment. The Constitution is not a static, unchangeable set of rules for a nation. It rightly called a living document--mutable, with established (and onerous) procedures for amending it. By design, it is quite difficult to alter in substance, requiring as it does the approval of a large portion of not just the Congress, but also the states themselves.

We have seen it amended multiple times, and even seen Amendments reversed when it became overwhelmingly clear that the unworkable had to be undone (see Prohibition, for example).

We see NONE of these qualities in scripture. That is, if you don't take into account the committees which decided which writings were to be included, and of course the resultant book burnings, inquisitions, purges, executions, and other violence which is the inevitable result of people in power withholding knowledge from their subjects.

I laugh my ass off when I hear Tea Party idiots like Allen West and David Barton and Glenn Beck attempt to make the case that case law doesn't matter; that Amendments don't matter; that the Constitution represents what it clearly does not. From one side of their mouths, they speak of the Founders with almost idolatrous reverence, and then from the other side we hear statements, presented as historical fact, which directly contradict the Founders' own writings.

The Constitution can (and sometimes should) be changed, interpreted, and amended to deal with new issues, unforeseen consequences, and our developing understanding of the best ways in which to govern ourselves. In this alone, it merits more respect than any scripture of any religion ever produced by any writer. The best response any believer has been able to come up with as regards the more embarrassing verses is, "That was a different time and a different context."

Really? The inspired word of some omni(fill in the suffix of your choice) god can't stand up to the product of fallible men whose primary purpose was the establishment of a nation whose governmental authority resides within its own people?

Sounds to me as though we need better gods, not that we should foist failed dogma upon people who don't believe in them, in a country founded on the principle of freedom of thought and belief.

Next time you hear some Koch brother funded asshat talk about "going back to the original document" specifically to limit (if not destroy) our founding ideals and liberties, tell them to piss off.

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