By Roger F. Gay
I'm a little amazed at the number of hits you can get googling for anti-Constitution arguments. Once past that amazement, I'm not so amazed by the unimaginative, unthinking, often downright stupidity of the repeated talking points and mindless personal attacks from the left, currently aimed against the left's current biggest boogie-man; the TEA Party.
At the War Room, Michael Lind says
Let's stop pretending the Constitution is sacred and claims that
Freedom rests on a culture of constitutionalism, not a particular document. That almost sounds right. In
WSJ, Roger Pilon argues brilliantly that in order to maintain freedom, there is a need to continue focused debate on the Constitution. But it's difficult to imagine Michael Lind's vision of a
culture of constitutionalism without a Constitution.
Somewhere in the midst of a circuitous argument intended to cast TEA Partiers and others who aren't members of his cult as stupid southern racists – especially if they're Protestant - Lind manages to choke out just what you'd expect – ye old “living document” dogma. And if you're not convinced of its wisdom, just ask the foreigners.
The blending of Protestant fundamentalism and neoclassical Legislator-worship explains the semi-religious reverence with which the Founders or Framers or Fathers of the Constitution have long been discussed in the United States. Other, similar English-speaking democracies -- not only Canada, Australia and New Zealand but modern Britain itself -- achieved self-governance or universal suffrage generations later, when these Protestant and neoclassical traditions had died out in their domains. The Canadians do not revere their first prime minister, John Macdonald, and to this day the British do not even have a formal, written constitution. Our Anglophone peers regard American constitution-worship as bizarre and quaint, like our fondness for displaying the national flag.
At Newsweek, where writers are too cowardly to sign their work, the article
America’s Holy Writ says
Tea Party evangelists claim the Constitution as their sacred text and promises to tell us
Why that’s wrong. The words “sacred text” appear to be from the Newsweek writers themselves, as they are never actually attributed (in quotes) to anyone. The authors associate their characterization with 2010 Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell, who says (in quotes) “American values” and “There are more of us than there are of them.” (Newsweek writers added – no quotes – “enshrined in our sacred text” after “American values.”)
But I suppose the only thing more boring than Newsweek's continuous stream of misrepresentations and twisted attacks is reading an article explaining them to you. (The link is given above if you want to read the article yourself.) Don't be surprised when Newsweek also blames “fundamentalism” - you know, those stupid southern racists that make up the Tea Party. Like Lind, Newsweek thinks it all wrong because Protestants are stupid.
At The Economist, someone named PRINT EDITION penned an article entitled
The perils of constitution-worship. PRINT EDITION claims
One of the guiding principles of the tea-party movement is based on a myth. His or her argument is that the Constitution doesn't say whether homosexuals can marry or what the founding fathers would have made of the modern welfare state. PRINT EDITION seems certain this is an intelligent argument, for it is inspired by the writings of Harvard Law School professor Michael Klarman, who labels “this urge to seek revealed truth in the sacred texts” as “constitutional idolatry”. The final blow of the argument is that the Constitution does not belong to the Republican Party and wasn't written for tea-partiers. OK. I'll accept that. It was actually written for me, for
I Am A Citizen!.
Greg Sargent at The Washington Post carries on PRINT EDITION's legacy with an article titled
The Tea Party does not own the Constitution. Whether the assertion is correct or not, he makes it no clearer why this would invalidate the document. Instead, he quotes a “legal scolar” (sic) who's written some gibberish claiming the Constitution is a “forward looking” (read politically progressive) document intended to maximize federal power.
I've left the most fanatic, dogmatic, goof-ball extremist fundamentalists of the left to last. Samuel G. Freedman writes “On Religion” in an article titled;
Tea Party Rooted in Religious Fervor for Constitution. Freedman is a Columbia University professor writing in the New York Times. That's two strikes. The third is the common nonsensical logic of his argument.
Freedman noted that a reverend who attended a Tea Party activity in Washington had quoted both the preamble to the Constitution and the Bible in his remarks. Therefore, he reasons, the Tea Party movement, and --- well --- you know, everyone who's not a member of his cult, can be characterized as a religious rather than a “populist or Republican or reactionary” movement. He then proceeds to transform the Constitution into a “bible” for the unthinking. To cap off this bit of extra-intellectually gibberish, he throws in “de facto televangelist, Glenn Beck” and asks his followers to “recall the religious battles throughout American history between literalists and interpreters of Scripture.”
Managing to at least spell “scholars” correctly, Freedman claims the term
du jour is “Constitution worship.” (Maybe his law professor – see below – can get together with Michael Klarman on whether it's “worship” or “idolatry”? I think “idolatry” does more to mocking religious people.) For him, the problems of religion and not being part of his cult “long predate the Tea Party,” apparently all the way back to the time of Jesus. “Some trace back to the implicit spirituality of America’s self-image as a chosen people,” Freedman writes. “... the image of this nation as a city on a hill.” (From the Sermon on the Mount.)
Freedman's law professor is Sanford Levinson at the University of Texas. Levinson opines that “In a country as fragmented as the United States is — we don’t have a national religion, a really shared ethnicity — the kinds of emotions that would be directed at organic nationalism are displaced onto the Constitution.”
Well, that proves it I guess. Now if we can just figure the oil companies into this and work out how George Bush is to blame …
