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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