Dear visionaries,
Ted’s correction is accepted, and his caveat noted. Our elected officials could be replaced if we wanted to do it. But we don’t — which is why I wanted to say we have met the enemy and he is us. We don’t want the Constitution to be read right side up anymore than anyone else does. But we should at least be willing to live with the consequences of our actions — which in this case involves toppling another government without a declaration of war.
Steven asks my view on John Ashcroft. I do disapprove of many of the actions taken by the Justice Department under Ashcroft, and I do so with exuberance and enthusiasm. Ashcroft is a fellow Christian, but he appears to have bought into the idea that you can worship like a Christian and govern like a modernist. Which I believe he does. Most progressives oppose him because they think he governs like a Christian. I oppose him because he doesn’t.
Of course I agree that necessary amendments ought to be made openly and honestly, by means of the amendment process. They ought not to be made dishonestly by “interpreting” the Constitution. We have stretched it so much it cannot regain its original shape.
In response to Sandy’s comments, I am afraid this just gives us a blank screen on to which we may project our collective fantasies and desires. Want affirmative action? Never mind the Constitution. Want gun control? Never mind the Constitution. But there is a price tag. Want to take out Iraq? Never mind the Constitution. George Bush is doing nothing except what several generations of progressive legal theory have permitted him to do. But if you got off on a wrong road twenty miles back, it will not help to curse the asphalt currently under your car. (E.g. “No war in Iraq!”). You have to turn the car around. (E.g. “What is the nature of constitutional federalism?”).
Since it is as simple as “you have your truths and I have mine,” it is equally simple that “Dubya has his truths, and we have ours.” But not only does he have his truths, he also has an army and navy. As for us, out here in the hinterlands, we have no basis for objecting to anything. The right to protest the actions of our government actually means that we don’t have that right. “You object to this?” said the judge. “Well, you have your truths and I have mine. Bailiff, take this recalcitrant prisoner off for a little living document bastinado.”
This is what we are stuck with. The framers used generic terms so that “keep and bear arms” actually means “not keep and bear arms,” Congress shall declare war means that somebody else gets to do it, and so on ad infinitum. Would someone mind telling me where the brakes are on this thing?
Sam raised a serious question about this living document stuff, using the legal cases created by the Internet as an example. How could James Madison have anticipated something like that? My answer would be that the Constitution doesn’t pretend to be a detailed law for all things, like some Code of Justinian. It presupposes the on-going existence of common law, which functions with true authority within stated constitutional limits. The Constitution is a document of enumerated powers, and solving the problems created by time is therefore not complicated. If time makes some feature of the Constitution irrelevant (as it has, does, and will), then that portion of the Constitution should be amended by means of the amendment process. If time makes some feature of the Constitution just as relevant as it ever was but unfortunately disregarded, then the action should be to correct the problem by altering our political behavior.
But currently so many aspects of the Constitution are a dead letter (e.g. the 9th and 10th Amendments) that we should simply admit that the Constitution is the equivalent of America’s royal family — to be trotted out on formal occasions to make us all feel good about the old days. Lots of people swear to defend it, but not many read it — especially the lawyers. You see, it makes us feel good to swear to defend good queen Bess, or whatever.
In the meantime, we admit how this relativism and progressive thought has made it possible for George W. to do his thing ad libitum — because his interpretation is obviously as good as anybody else’s. We are now discovering, at the end of our relativistic party (now that we are all relativists), that some of the relativists among us have guns, lots of them. Of course, we hold fast to our principle, such as it is, by claiming that we reserve to our progressive selves the right to march against the war — all the way to the federal building, that’ll show ’em! Of course, we also, as good relativists, should defend Dubya’s right to nuke Iraq down to a lake of glass in order to go ice skating on it. He has his views, we have ours: “NO to war in Iraq!” And Dubya shrugs, and Ashcroft grins. “Who’s to say? Ya know?”
“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.