Interpreting the Constitution

There are any number of legal and historical professionals that have devoted themselves to interpretation of the Constitution, what it's limits are, what the intents were. I'm not one, so I won't.

But I will say we should be cautious about how we react to the wording and what we ascribe to the intent. The right to bear a flintlock in a world where much of the population has wolves, bears and (justifiably) angry natives outside the door, where people had to surreptiously gather weaponry against an oppressor a couple of decades previously is not the same as having a few Uzis in the hall closet and Howitzer on the front lawn. There's no sense predicting what the founding fathers would have said; I doubt such a future complete with C4 and drive-by shootings were ever envisioned by our founding fathers.

That the Constitution has stood up so well with only a handful of amendments is praise indeed. That it foresaw the potential failings of a government with checks and balances was notable (but hardly ground-breaking).

But the matter of armament is not the only way the world has changed and we should be careful when we put absolute faith in the predictive powers of those same forefathers. Take for instance the matter of state's rights (for those of you who think this was settled in 1865, believe me, there are many still out there).

There can be no doubt, looking historically, that this country was originally forged by thirteen separate and disparate colonies who intended not to lose their individuality while banding together. They insisted on final say before the agreement was changed and reserved to themselves those rights they had not provided the federal government.

Many think we've moved too far in allowing the federal government power, given this clear intent. I do not. Why?

Because this isn't the same world that forged that original agreement. In that world, they were all but different countries, different banks and currency, different industries, different backgrounds. They were largely focused on their own business, their own news, their own little worlds. Travel from one state to the next might take days. Communication was very limited. The wonder wasn't the original focus on states, but rather that the farseeing notions like a US Postal Service were implemented.

In today's world, states are completely different beasties. Life in Virginia isn't notably different than it is in New York, with the differences between rural and urban locales (of the same state) more pronounced than state to state. In larger states, the differences in climate and environment vary more than it does through most of the original thirteen colonies (like, say, Texas). Communication is instantaneous not just within the country but all over the world. Depending on the size of the state, one could drive through half a dozen in one day and one can fly from anywhere in the country to anywhere else easily in one day.

People are far less likely to be born and die in the same locale than they were then. Then, having a state deal with education and health and crime made sense. Now criminals can cut a swathe through many states and children of mobile parents might get spotty educations vastly different from one area to the next.

And many federal agencies were not specifically sanctioned by the Constitution, but truthfully couldn't be done any other way: FAA, NASA, NOAA... We're a world now in borders mean less and less.

And we have a choice, I think, to keep building on the strengths of the foundation, using the model they gave us as an inspiration but not a boundary, or to limit ourselves to an outlook that was remarkable in a much smaller world but is dated and restrictive in a world like ours.

In my opinion.

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Thieving Thursday: The US Constitution

Given how much give and take on this topic there was in the comments, I don't think I'm violating anything by keeping up on this week's theme. I talked about "sacred texts" and explained how I feel about their authorship and the caveats I recommend on their applicability to here and now.

But, I contend, religious texts are not the only one's treated like holy relics. Take, for instances, one of the most venerated documents here in the United States. No, I don't mean the formula for Coca-Cola, though there are days you'd think it watching the news. I mean the Constitution of the United States of America, effectively the document that created this nation. Effectively, our charter.

Now, as a general rule, I eschew politics, though not as much as I thought I would. Part of the reason I've been more vocal than before, I think, have been the events for the past couple of decades, the extremes of vitriol one either side with extremists trying to shout each other down, both wrapped in the flag and the Constitution while arguing opposite points, and partly because I feel there is a potential for improvement right now - and I haven't felt that in a while. I'm not saying that because Obama is in office, but because I feel like people who felt like I did, who were tired of the backbiting and nastiness and hatred, want to move on from that and get to work fixing what's broken. I feel (though I'm sure there are those that disagree) that Obama's election was a symptom of that. But that's not what this post is about.

This post is about the tendency of some, whether defending or criticizing change, to quote what our forefathers would have wanted as if those forefathers had just stepped out to the john or they'd have spoken up for themselves. Or to hold up the Constitution and those who wrote it as if they were so sagacious, so knowledgeable, so far-seeing, that questioning the applicability of their requirements, their intents, their absolute solidarity today appears sacrilegious.

But, in my opinion, the limitations I've described regarding the ancient holy relics applies, to both a greater and lesser degree, to documents like the Constitution and those that authored it. Greater, because this was no work honed and filtered over centuries so that only the "best" bits remain (nor do most ascribe it as divinely inspired) and lesser because the culture and society of these forefathers is much closer to today's culture than that in the ancient texts. Much further from today than many appreciate, I think, but certainly less so than the ancient Hebrews or the early Islam.

But those are matters of degree. Our founding fathers were men, influenced by their recent war, their recent attempts at confederacy in shambles, with drastic differences in ideology that only became more pronounced as the common enemy (the British) faded from immediate memory. They were also products of a fairly enlightened society (same British) with leftover notions from their culture about noblesse oblige and what was required among gentlemen. Hand in glove with that notion was the implicit understanding that "men" and "people" was largely intended to mean "white men of property." It was a product of their time that the same man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and this quintessential line: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," was comfortable in his role as plantation owner and slave owner.

That isn't to say the document isn't amazing and farseeing or that the men weren't great. There are some fantastic and ground-breaking provisions, particularly in the Bill of Rights, provisions that set the tone for future improvements. One needn't think less of someone for being a product of his or her time nor sneer at an accomplishment even if adjustments are required over time. But I don't think we do ourselves a favor for thinking it more than it was - a political compromise using the best judgement of people who were intelligent, wanted the best for the future, but had a limited outlook.

Our love and admiration of the document has the potential for limiting us as well. Even the way we regard the amendments after that first set should tell us something. We talk about "the Constitution giving Blacks the right to vote" instead of seeing it as no longer restricting a segment of the population from enjoying the rights they should always have had (as a right, according to what Jefferson wrote and many signed, is inherent).

More tomorrow.

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